Sensory Glitch

The ward's final cycle begins with an infection. A new patient, a shadow of invasive normalcy, slithers into the adjacent bed. Her phone, a glossy black parasite, becomes a perpetual extension of her arm, its camera eye locked on my face like a predator sizing up prey. Its unblinking eye records my every twitch, every shallow breath.

Amateur surveillance. Corporate-grade dread. My last hours caged in concrete, meticulously documented for some unseen archive.

3 is late. My calls bleed into voicemail purgatory, each unanswered ring a neural flatline. He abandoned you, hisses the wall. I cocoon myself in scratchy sheets, bracing for the system's cold reclaim.

Then, a voice. "Covid test. Your ride's here." A jolt of electric hope.

"Right," I emerge like a shot, my voice a thin blade. "And if I'm positive, you'll just re-route my friend, won't you?"

Negative. A digital 'all clear'. 3, already briefed on my hospital data, a quick, sterile download of my temporary pathology, takes my discharge papers. They feel thin as ghost skin in his hand. We walk toward his car, exiting the hum of the ward, leaving the controlled environment behind.

The world hits me like a data surge, too much input, not enough processing power.

I had not registered it: two full weeks immersed in the concrete matrix, starved of the raw world. Outside, light explodes, raw, unfiltered, violent. Colors scream frequencies my brain cannot process. The world is a chaotic, vibrant glitch, every pixel too sharp, every sound too loud, reality bleeding at the edges.

I spend the rest of the day in a state of hyper-distraction, my neural pathways struggling to process the overwhelming beauty and terror of it all. The sensory input is not information I can organize into meaning. It is pure signal without syntax.

The GPS reroutes our path home. Unfamiliar roads. I ask nothing. The system has its reasons, and I am learning not to question them.

Dissociation hits like novocaine. My body moves, but I am not driving. I watch myself through thick, invisible glass-passenger in my own skin. This is what they call depersonalization, I think distantly, as though naming the symptom gives me sovereignty over it. But the name changes nothing. I remain absent from myself.

We stop by the roadside for a sandwich, the fresh air a strange, heavy blanket. Away from the walls, perched on a sun-drenched bench, I download everything to 3. The children, the network, the exploitation, each fragmented piece of the truth I have pieced together. His face, usually so composed, shifts, betraying a flicker of horror.

Back home, we ritualistically unload the groceries, the mundane act a stark contrast to the information now pulsing between us. A walk, a drink at the familiar bar. A whisper from the next table, seemingly random words that form a pattern only I would recognize. They are watching. They are confirming: from now on, my work will be remote. Remote work now. Virtual surveillance. The network no longer needs me in the field.

12 appears. I download the basics, laundry, hospital, the whole nightmare. Then: "That autism association you sent me to? They said I overshared, wanted to control my money and ship me off to care for old people."

A rare, unscripted reaction to how badly her suggestion has gone.

Dinner is a feast, a blur of rich flavors and flickering PC light. We speak of The Whole, of the opposing side, their digital wars and bio-engineered horrors. All the while, the dizziness persists, a constant system lag, pulling me in and out of phase with reality like a network with poor connection. Disassociating. My own neural ghosting.

The following day, a pilgrimage to the town: new shoes, a fresh phone, tools for a monitored existence. Equipment for the next iteration.

Passing the Handsome Man's house, my vision fractures, pixels scrambling like broken code.

The world stutters.

One moment I am walking. The next I am outside myself, watching the girl-shaped object that contains my consciousness approach a door I have approached a thousand times in a thousand different realities.

ERROR 404: REALITY NOT FOUND

System crash imminent.

The ground arrives suddenly. I am on the doorstep. My body is no longer taking commands from the consciousness that observes it. There is a separation between the input (visual data from the house) and the processing (my brain attempting to integrate what it means) and the output (motor control, standing, breathing) and all three are operating on different timelines.

3 is there, or the idea of 3, and I am crumbling, like faulty hardware, like code that was never meant to run on this architecture.

SIT. BREATHE. RECALIBRATE