Attention inversion

I was dreaming of the end of the world. But it wasn’t like those old Hollywood blockbusters—no roar of tectonic shifts, no nuclear mushrooms, no frantic panic.

The Earth was dying in a perfect, sterile hush. Set to silent mode.

In my dream, billions of people sat in flawlessly clean, bleached-white squares. Expensive suits, groomed faces, smooth skin. And eyes that were utterly vacant, glassed over with a thin film of neon light. No one looked at anyone else. Men didn’t notice women; mothers didn’t turn to check on their children. Humanity had become a vast gallery of mannequins, all plugged into the same invisible outlet. They weren't dead, but they were no longer living. They were simply consuming. A gray, barely perceptible mold of indifference slowly crept over their glossy fingers while they smiled blissfully, scrolling through the void of invisible feeds. I screamed at them, clawing at their shoulders until my nails bled, but my hands passed right through them as if they were holograms. They were dissolving into digital noise without even noticing they were gone.

I snapped my eyes open, gasping for air. My heart was thumping against the base of my throat, leaving a dry, metallic tang on my tongue.

“Inhale. Hold. Exhale,” I forced myself to count the beats in my head.

A sharp flash stung my right eye—my integrated cyber-lens activating. A toxic-green line of text spat into the corner of my vision: Personal Focus Index: 42%. Attention critically diffused. Mental reboot recommended.

“Shut up,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut until the lens flickered out.

I was sitting at a corner table in a café with the pretentious name Synchronization. The heavy, burnt scent of Arabica hit my nose, mingled with the sweet trail of fresh croissants and someone’s cloying perfume. An ordinary morning. A fed, prosperous, safe Wednesday morning.

I looked around, and my stomach twisted. The remnants of the nightmare wouldn't leave—they laid over reality, pixel by pixel, in perfect alignment. The contrast was terrifying specifically because it was almost non-existent.

To my right, literally an arm’s length away, sat a family. A picture straight out of a luxury magazine: a polished mother, a fit father, two children. But in the twenty minutes I’d been sitting there, they hadn't exchanged a single word. Not one.

The father bit into a sandwich mechanically, like a wound-up robot. His gaze was fused to a tablet screen where stock charts and analytics raced upward. The mother, elegantly extending her pinky, held a cup of cappuccino while the index finger of her other hand scrolled through a smartphone feed. Her pupils made eerie, rhythmic micro-jumps: up-down, up-down, catching cheap dopamine hits.

The older girl, maybe twelve, wore lightweight cyber-glasses. Her face was a frozen mask; only her finger twitched periodically in the air, flipping invisible pages of a virtual world. But the youngest was the hardest to look at. The boy was barely four. To keep him from bothering his parents while they gorged on their information fast food, a vertical screen had been propped up in front of his bowl of porridge. Vibrant, acid-bright monsters from some cartoon screamed and jumped, flickering every couple of seconds. The boy sat with his mouth open, a drop of milk trickling down his chin. He couldn't taste the food. He couldn't see his mother. He was simply absorbing visual radiation while his unformed brain melted from the overload.

A steady, dead hum filled the café. The clatter of porcelain on marble, the hiss of the milk steamer, the rustle of clothes, heavy breathing. But there were no human voices.

Further down, by the window, sat a couple. Clearly a date. They held hands, fingers intertwined, but their faces... their faces were turned in opposite directions, each buried in their own glowing rectangle. They were in the same room, but in different galaxies, locked in their personal digital coffins.

They’re already there, I thought, feeling nausea rise in my throat. They’re already in my dream. Voluntarily, step by step, they surrender the remains of their attention to the corporations, turning into well-fed, manageable ghosts.

At that moment, my left sleeve vibrated with a dull thud. This wasn't the usual, irritating chirp of a notification or an ad that I habitually blocked by the hundreds. This impulse bypassed all my security firmware, echoing with a sharp sting in my wrist, as if I’d been hit by a live wire.

I jerked back my jacket sleeve. A coal-black envelope flickered to life on the transparent glass of my terminal-bracelet. No return address. No signature. A top-tier encryption protocol.

I tapped the sensor, and a single line of text projected into the air. The font was dim, a neon-white, but the words seared into my eyes:

“We know your Focus reserve is almost empty, Mira. Your next Jump will erase your personality. But we have a contract that will return Absolute Silence to you. Or destroy you once and for all. The choice is yours. You have thirty seconds.”

At the bottom of the screen, a countdown began. The numbers raced backward, bleeding red. 29… 28… 27…