LIVE
The first thing I knew was pain.
No... not pain exactly.
Pressure.
Something enormous was building somewhere I couldn’t see or touch, somewhere I couldn’t even understand. It swelled until there seemed to be no room left for anything else.
Then...
Bang.
The world exploded into existence.
I hit the ground hard enough to knock what little breath I had out of me. For several seconds, I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t think.
I simply lay there with my cheek pressed against cold, damp earth while the world slowly assembled itself around me.
Wind stirred through leaves overhead. Trees creaked somewhere in the distance. A bird called from high above, its song echoing through a place I couldn’t yet see.
My fingers curled into the dirt.
I had fingers.
That realization came before anything else.
Slowly, I lifted one hand and stared at it.
Five fingers. Pale skin. A small scrape across one knuckle, already beginning to redden.
I turned my hand over.
It looked like it belonged to someone else.
Maybe it did.
My breathing quickened.
Where was I?
The question arrived fully formed, sharp and urgent.
Another followed immediately behind it.
Who am I?
I pushed myself upright.
Trees surrounded me in every direction... hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Their trunks stretched high into a dense green canopy, broken only by thin shafts of sunlight that managed to pierce through the leaves. Mist hung low between the trees, drifting lazily around their roots.
It should have been beautiful.
It probably was beautiful.
But beauty wasn’t particularly comforting when you couldn’t remember how you’d gotten somewhere.
I tried.
There had been...
Something.
Emotion, maybe. So much of it that I could still feel the residue clinging to me.
Grief.
Anger.
Fear.
My stomach twisted.
They weren’t memories exactly. They were more like echoes left behind after someone screamed in another room... the sound already gone, but the evidence of it still trembling in the walls.
I pressed both hands against my temples.
“Hello?”
My own voice startled me.
I froze.
A woman had spoken.
No.
I had spoken.
I swallowed and tried again, quieter this time.
“Hello?”
The forest swallowed the word.
Nothing answered.
I looked down at myself.
Clothes. Shoes. Hands. Legs. A body that somehow felt entirely natural and completely unfamiliar at the same time.
I touched my face cautiously, tracing my cheeks, my nose, my lips.
Everything seemed to be where it belonged.
I just couldn’t remember receiving any of it.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Apparently, I talked to myself when terrified.
Good to know.
“Okay. We’re... somewhere.”
I stopped.
We’re?
Why had I said we?
A chill crawled across my skin.
“Nope.”
I wasn’t unpacking that one yet.
Standing seemed like a more reasonable problem.
My legs trembled when I pushed myself to my feet. For one dizzying moment, the entire forest tilted sideways before gradually settling back into place.
I waited until I trusted the ground beneath me.
There was no road. No trail. No distant sound of traffic or machinery. No buildings peeking through the trees.
Nothing but forest.
And yet, something pulled at me.
Not physically. There was no tug against my clothes, no invisible hand wrapped around my wrist.
It was more like knowing.
Something was ahead.
I had absolutely no reason to know that, but the certainty remained.
So I walked.
Leaves crunched beneath my shoes, and tiny branches snapped underfoot. Every few seconds, I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to find someone... or something... following me.
Nothing ever was.
After several minutes, I began to wonder if I was walking in circles.
Then the trees opened.
And there was a house.
I stopped so abruptly that my heel skidded through the dirt.
“What the fuck?”
It was the most normal house I had ever seen.
Which made it deeply unsettling.
A single-story suburban home sat in the middle of the clearing, complete with warm beige siding, a dark roof, and a modest front porch. A few windows glowed softly despite the daylight outside.
It looked like the kind of house that should have had neighbors.
A mailbox.
A driveway.
A little patch of lawn somebody complained about mowing every Saturday.
Instead, there were only trees.
The forest ended neatly around the property, forming a small clearing as though the woods themselves had politely stepped aside to make room.
I stared at the front door.
Something inside me loosened.
Not completely. Just enough for me to notice.
I knew this place.
No.
That wasn’t right.
I didn’t know it.
But some part of me did.
Home.
The word appeared in my mind without permission.
I crossed the clearing.
With each step, that inexplicable sense of familiarity grew stronger.
By the time I reached the porch, my hand was already lifting toward the doorknob.
I stopped just before touching it.
“What if someone lives here?”
The forest offered no opinion.
“Great conversation.”
I turned the knob.
Unlocked.
Of course it was.
The door swung inward, and warm air brushed across my face.
The entryway beyond was softly lit and surprisingly cozy. A rug stretched beneath my feet. Framed pictures covered the walls. The furniture looked chosen rather than staged—comfortable, mismatched in places, lived in.
Shoes were tucked beside the doorway. A jacket hung from a hook nearby.
People lived here.
Several people, judging by the shoes.
“Hello?”
Silence.
I stepped inside.
The door clicked shut behind me.
That should have frightened me more than it did.
Instead, another strange wave of familiarity rolled through me.
Hallways branched deeper into the house, leading toward rooms I couldn’t see. Somewhere farther inside, a low mechanical hum vibrated through the walls.
Electricity.
Machines.
Something.
Then I saw the door.
It was much larger than any other door in the entryway, nearly black and made of two heavy panels that met in the center. It looked less like something belonging in a house and more like the entrance to a studio or control booth.
Directly above it, a red sign glowed.
LIVE
I stared at it.
The humming came from behind those doors.
My heartbeat quickened.
Something was happening in there.
Something important.
I reached for the edge of one panel, then hesitated.
For one brief second, I considered turning around. Walking back into the forest. Finding literally anywhere else to be.
Instead, I pulled.
The door slid open.
Light spilled across me.
I forgot how to breathe.
The room beyond was enormous.
Far larger than the house should have been capable of containing.
The ceiling stretched impossibly high overhead, covered in soft artificial clouds illuminated from within by strips of blue and violet light. Banks of monitors wrapped around the far wall—dozens of them, perhaps more... casting shifting patterns across the room.
Some displayed streams of information I couldn’t understand.
Others showed rooms.
People.
Places.
Memories.
On the largest screen, a pair of hands rested in someone’s lap.
I frowned.
The perspective was strange.
First person.
As though the camera were someone’s eyes.
Three people stood near the monitors.
The first sat in a black recliner positioned almost directly in the center of everything. They had short, messy blue hair, black glasses, several facial piercings, and tattoos trailing along their exposed arms. Their posture was relaxed in the particular way of someone who had occupied the same chair a thousand times.
The man standing to their left looked considerably less relaxed.
Dark hair. Glasses. A beard. A black shirt covered in skulls.
He stared at one of the monitors as though it had personally betrayed him.
Beside him stood a woman with bright pink hair twisted into two buns on top of her head, the rest falling around her shoulders. Black glasses framed her face. Heart-shaped gauges filled her ears, and several piercings caught the light when she moved.
She looked like someone holding herself together through sheer stubbornness.
Neither of them noticed me.
The blue-haired person did.
Their eyes shifted toward the doorway.
Then toward me.
They went completely still.
For several long seconds, neither of us spoke.
The man finally noticed the change in their expression and followed their gaze.
His face changed instantly.
The pink-haired woman turned next.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
Something cold twisted through my stomach.
“What?”
Nobody answered.
My pulse kicked harder.
“What?”
The blue-haired person rose slowly from the recliner.
“Easy.”
I hated that immediately.
“I am currently standing inside a house that shouldn’t be able to fit this room after waking up alone in a forest with no idea who I am.” I gestured helplessly around me. “I don’t think easy is happening.”
Something almost resembling amusement flickered across their face.
“Fair.”
“Who are you?”
“Skyler.”
They gestured toward the man.
“That’s Seth.”
Seth gave me a small, distracted nod.
“And Erika.”
The pink-haired woman—Erika—looked as though she might cry.
I glanced between the three of them.
“Okay.”
Nobody elaborated.
I waited.
Still nothing.
“That’s usually the part where you tell me who I am.”
Silence.
Seth looked away.
Erika dropped her gaze to the floor.
Skyler exhaled softly.
“We don’t know yet.”
A laugh escaped me.
There was nothing funny about it.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“But you know why I’m here?”
Another silence.
I was beginning to hate their silences.
Skyler glanced toward Seth and Erika.
Something passed between the three of them without a word.
Guilt.
That much was unmistakable.
My stomach sank.
“What happened?”
Erika whispered something I couldn’t hear.
Seth dragged both hands over his face.
“We didn’t know,” he said.
My eyes narrowed.
“Didn’t know what?”
Skyler stepped closer.
Not too close.
Just enough for me to see the concern beneath their composure.
“You’re new.”
“I gathered that.”
“No.” Their voice softened. “I mean new.”
Behind them, the enormous central monitor flickered.
Images flashed across it faster than I could process them.
Someone crying.
Someone screaming.
A bedroom.
Hands shaking violently.
A surge of anger so intense that my chest tightened merely looking at it.
Then grief.
Fear.
Loneliness.
Static swallowed the screen.
I stumbled backward.
I knew those feelings.
Not the memories themselves. Not the people or places.
But the emotions.
They were the pressure I had felt before waking.
The thing building.
The explosion.
The bang.
My gaze moved to Seth.
Then Erika.
Both looked devastated.
Skyler followed my eyes.
“They’ve been carrying a lot.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Skyler hesitated.
“They didn’t realize what was happening.”
Erika finally looked at me.
Tears shone behind her glasses.
“We didn’t mean to.”
My pulse hammered against my ribs.
“Mean to what?”
Skyler answered.
“Build you.”
The room seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
I laughed again, but this time the sound came out small and broken.
“Build me?”
“Not intentionally.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Skyler glanced toward the monitors.
“This place is an internal world.”
I stared at them.
“The house,” they continued. “The forest. This room. Us.”
Their eyes returned to mine.
“You’re inside a DID system.”
I waited for the sentence to make sense.
It didn’t.
Skyler continued carefully.
“Seth and Erika were overwhelmed. Emotions were bleeding together. Things the rest of us couldn’t process were piling up faster than anyone realized.”
My throat tightened.
“And then?”
Skyler held my gaze.
“And then you woke up.”
The silence that followed felt heavier than the explosion that had brought me here.
I looked down at my hands.
Five fingers.
Pale skin.
A scrape across one knuckle.
A person who hadn’t existed...
When?
An hour ago?
Yesterday?
Did time even work that way here?
“So I’m...”
The words wouldn’t come.
“An alter,” Skyler said gently.
My eyes burned.
“I don’t even have a name.”
“You don’t need one yet.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
Skyler studied me for a moment.
“For tonight?”
They gave me the smallest smile.
“Exist.”
Something about that nearly broke me.
Behind them, Seth and Erika stood quietly beneath the glow of the monitors.
They hadn’t wanted to make me.
That much was obvious.
But they weren’t looking at me like I was a mistake.
They looked terrified.
Maybe guilty.
Maybe sorry.
But not disappointed that I was there.
Skyler held out a hand.
“You probably have about a thousand questions.”
I stared at it.
“More.”
“Yeah. Figured.”
“And you’re going to answer them?”
“The ones I can.”
I hesitated before placing my hand in theirs.
Their fingers were warm.
Solid.
Real.
Or whatever real meant here.
Skyler nodded toward the doorway.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
Their smile grew slightly.
“You’ve seen the control room.”
They stepped past me into the hallway.
“Now I’ll show you the rest.”
Before following, I looked back one last time.
At the glowing screens.
At Seth.
At Erika.
At the enormous central monitor showing somebody else’s eyes looking out into a world I hadn’t even seen yet.
Then I followed Skyler through the door.
Above us, the red sign continued to glow.
LIVE.
And somehow, impossibly...
so was I.
