The view was pixelated, a surveillance feed from a forgotten corner of the world. The room was sterile, white walls, harsh fluorescent lights, a bed in the center. On it, she lay still. Not grotesque, not even particularly striking. Just… inert. Like a carefully packaged product awaiting activation.
The distance felt immense, not just miles, but the cold, uncaring logic of the internet. I was a ghost in the system, a silent observer, trying to breathe life into a digital echo.
I typed the command, a string of code that felt more like a prayer than a scientific instruction. The system responded with a low groan, sending a pulse of energy across the network, a digital hand reaching out across the void. On the screen, her eyelids twitched. Opened. Those eyes… distant, unfocused, like looking through a fogged window. Not at me, not at anything. Just…out.
They weren’t looking at the camera, not directly. They were fixed on something beyond it, something unseen, something only she could perceive. There was no recognition, no spark of life as I understood it. Just a vast, empty distance reflected in her pupils, a mirror of the chasm between us. Like I’d sent a message in a bottle and it had washed up on a shore where no one lived. Another signal lost in the static. Another beautiful, broken thing just beyond my grasp.
