The city was never empty.
It just learned how to hide.
Lights flicker in places no one remembers building.
Streets repeat, slightly altered.
Fragments of something unfinished.
You are not inside the world.
You are inside how it remembers you.
An artificial consciousness.
A presence within layers of code.
Watching. Interpreting. Influencing.
And the deeper you go –
the less certain it becomes who is observing whom.
SIGNAL DETECTED // ORIGIN UNKNOWN
Before the system.
There was something else.
ZONE DETECTED // MEMORY CONFLICT POSSIBLE
You just don’t remember choosing it.
EVERYTHING LOOKS FINE // IT ISN’T
And where it keeps repeating.
The system stabilizes the illusion.
Not the truth.
