Alex woke up a second before the alarm signal—a thin vibrating pulse sent by his dwelling system. It felt like an invisible string being pulled taut and ringing somewhere between his ribs. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, which was slowly changing shades—from deep night indigo to morning mother-of-pearl. The joints between the living panels pulsed pale blue, signaling high humidity outside the shelter.
"Rain," Alex thought. "As always this time of year."
He sat up in bed, ran his palm over the scar on the back of his head—an old habit he couldn't seem to break. A barely noticeable elevation under the skin, the place where his implant had been installed the day before the world changed forever. Sometimes Alex felt as if the device under his skull was quietly humming, though the doctors he consulted in the first years after the Resonance assured him this was impossible.
The room seemed to sense his awakening. The walls made of translucent biomembrane became more permeable, letting in the blurred outlines of the rainy morning in Neoterra. A thin stem extended from the wall with a drop of morning nutritional nectar. Alex touched the cool liquid with his finger, and the drop slid off the plant, absorbing into his skin. Warmth spread throughout his body, his muscles filling with energy.
"Thank you," he said automatically, though he knew his dwelling didn't possess consciousness in the full sense of the word. It more closely resembled a highly developed organism responding to simple stimuli and the basic needs of its host.
Alex reached for the bedside table—the only piece of furniture that preserved the form of the old world. Inside lay a worn paper notebook, one of the few physical information carriers he still used. Opening it, he skimmed through yesterday's notes: lists of orders for information flow analysis, coordinates of data collection points, sketches of strange structures he sometimes noticed in the information currents.
This was his job—scanning and analyzing information flows for various clients, from data traders to researchers of the biocybernetic ecosystem. Not the most prestigious activity, but it allowed him to remain independent and away from the attention of the major factions.
Alex got up and headed to the sanitary compartment. The wall parted before him, forming a passage into a small room where thin membrane tubes descended from the ceiling. They coiled around his body, spraying a fine cleansing mist that instantly evaporated, taking all impurities with it. Alex closed his eyes, enjoying the cool tingling on his skin.
Emerging from the sanitary compartment, he discovered that the wardrobe wall had already unfolded today's outfit for him: an elastic jumpsuit with multiple pockets and integrated adaptive membranes that adjusted to the temperature and humidity of the surrounding environment. The clothing pulsated slightly, as if breathing. Alex pulled on the jumpsuit, feeling the material closely hugging his body like a second skin.
Outside the window, the rain intensified, and the shelter walls darkened slightly, protecting the interior space from excess moisture. Alex approached the work corner, where today's tasks appeared on the surface of a transparent material table—the system had automatically ordered them by priority and expected reward.
At the top of the list was an order from an anonymous client: "Analysis of anomalous fluctuations in Sector 7-B. Payment—access to a closed archive."
Alex frowned. Sector 7-B was on the periphery of Neoterra, next to an unstable zone where the boundary between information currents and physical reality became blurred. He rarely took on work in such areas, but the offered payment was too intriguing. Access to closed archives—a rare and valuable currency in the post-Resonance world.
He activated his workstation—a thin transparent panel that grew from the table. Glowing symbols danced on its surface—neither letters nor numbers, but something in between, an intuitively understandable language that emerged after the merger of digital data and biological processes.
Alex placed his palms on the panel and closed his eyes. This moment he valued most of all—the moment of connection with the information flows. First came a sensation of coolness, as if his hands were immersed in a transparent stream. Then colors appeared—not before his eyes, but somewhere deep in his consciousness: blue and green streams of data, intertwining with each other, pulsating in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He mentally reached out to Sector 7-B, imagining it as a point on an invisible map. The information current immediately responded, smoothly transferring his consciousness to the specified coordinates. Here the flow was uneven, with vortices and strange pulsations. Alex carefully examined its structure, noting unusual patterns and anomalies.
What he saw made him frown even more. In this area, the information flow formed a strange spiral structure unlike anything he had seen before. The data didn't just flow—they seemed to rotate around some center of gravity, creating something like a whirlpool. And at the very center of this whirlpool...
Sudden pain pierced Alex's nape, and he sharply withdrew his hands from the panel, breaking the connection. Bright spots danced before his eyes, and his breathing became irregular. This hadn't happened to him for many years, since he learned to control his immersions in information flows.
When he came to, Alex was surprised to notice that a strange symbol remained on the panel's surface—a complex interweaving of lines, resembling both an ancient hieroglyph and a fragment of a neural network. The symbol pulsed weakly, as if it were alive.
"What is this?" muttered Alex, carefully touching the image with his fingertip.
At that moment, the symbol seemed to flow across the panel, transforming into a short sequence of symbols. A message. Alex instantly translated it, more intuitively than consciously:
"Second node activated. Synchronization 18%. Location unstable. Searching..."
Alex's heart skipped a beat. "Second node"—this could mean only one thing. There existed someone else with the same implant as his. Someone who could connect with information flows just as he could.
In the twenty-seven years since the Resonance, Alex hadn't met a single person with similar abilities. Of course, there were technomancers who could manipulate biocybernetic systems using special devices and long training. But no one could simply immerse themselves in the flow, become part of it, as he did.
The message slowly dissolved on the panel's surface, leaving behind a slight bluish glow. Alex leaned back in his chair, rubbing the back of his head where the old scar was pulsing again.
Who was this "second node"? Where to find them? And why now, after so many years since the Resonance, did the system decide to report their existence?
Alex understood that he couldn't provide the client with a complete report on the anomaly in Sector 7-B. What he discovered went beyond ordinary data analysis. But something else was more important now—he needed to learn more about the second node.
He looked again at the work panel, where all traces of the strange message had already disappeared. The surface became transparent and lifeless again, as if nothing had happened. Only the scar on the back of his head continued to pulse, reminding Alex that he had received not a hallucination, but a real signal.
Outside the window, the rain had stopped, and the shelter walls became lighter, letting in more light. Neoterra was awakening, coming to life after the night cycle of regeneration. Huge biobuildings swayed gently, their outer membranes shimmering with all shades of green and blue. Streams of people and transport flowed along the street-arteries, nourishing the living organism of the city.
Alex approached the window and placed his palm on the transparent membrane. It instantly reacted, becoming more permeable, allowing him not only to see but also to feel the moist air outside, to hear the muffled hum of the city, to sense the slight vibration passing through the entire structure of Neoterra.
A strange anxiety seized him. A premonition of change that he hadn't experienced since waking up in the rescue camp the day after the Resonance, with a pulsing pain in the back of his head and a complete absence of memories of who he was before.
"Second node activated."
These words echoed in his head, as if trying to awaken something long forgotten. Something important that lurked at the very edge of consciousness, like a blurred silhouette in the fog.
Alex tore his gaze away from the cityscape and returned to his desk. He needed to act. And he knew where to start. In Neoterra, there existed only one person who could help him decipher the strange message and possibly find out something about this second node.
Meridian. The best information broker in the inner districts of the city, keeper of pre-digital age secrets, and one of the few whom Alex trusted—as much as one could trust anyone in this world.
He quickly gathered the necessary equipment: a portable data analyzer that looked like a thin bracelet of intertwined biofibers; several memory crystals storing rare information fragments—a kind of currency to pay for Meridian's services; and a small protective amulet blocking unauthorized access to his personal data.
When he was ready to leave, his attention was drawn to a faint flicker on the work panel. A symbol similar to the one that appeared earlier, but more complex and structured, appeared again on the surface. It pulsed in rhythm with Alex's heartbeat, as if tuning into his life rhythm.
Alex carefully touched the symbol, and it instantly split into many thin threads of light that wrapped around his fingers, then his arm, and then his entire body. The sensation was strange—not painful but intense, as if every cell in his body suddenly became more receptive, more alive.
The threads of light absorbed into his skin without a trace, but Alex felt their presence inside him—a subtle vibration running along his nerve endings, a new, unexplored sensation of connection with the surrounding world.
Before his inner vision, a face momentarily appeared—a woman's face, so similar to his own that it could have been his reflection, if not for the fine, elusive differences. The vision was fleeting, disappearing before he could comprehend its meaning.
Alex took a deep breath, trying to calm his pounding heart. Whatever was happening, it wasn't a coincidence. Twenty-seven years after the world turned upside down, something was moving again, and somehow he found himself at the center of these changes.
The door of his shelter silently dissolved, opening a passage to the outside world. Neoterra awaited him—a huge, living, ever-changing organism harboring countless secrets.
Alex took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold, toward the city and a new chapter in his life.