Ethan Tan sat on the couch, staring at it as if willing the numbers to roll backwards. His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths. The room smelled faintly of ozone from the climate control, but his palms were clammy with sweat.
Not the time. The date.
January 8th, 2070.
A week had gone.
Tuesday the 2nd through Sunday the 7th—erased. No dreams, no images, nothing. Like someone had selected a block of his life and pressed delete. He should have remembered the water filter installation, the client malware job, maybe a late-night drink order. Instead, there was only static where memories should be.
And worse, the scar. His fingers brushed the ridge above his right brow, a line of flesh he had never earned. He hadn't fought anyone, hadn't even left the apartment in weeks. Yet the scar sat there like a mocking signature from a version of him he couldn't remember becoming.
His chest tightened. The silence in the room felt oppressive, the hum of machinery too smooth, too perfect.
Not again.
Ethan pushed himself off the couch and staggered to his desk. The terminal flickered to life in a haze of holographic menus. He tore through his records. Bank accounts are clean. No hidden transactions. Security logs showed only dinner drones, right on schedule, every night. Nothing unusual.
The apartment hadn't been breached. No forced entry. No deliveries except food.
So why did his life feel like it had been edited?
He turned—and froze.
The thing sat in the corner of his bedroom, gleaming under the warm lamplight like an intruder that didn't care if it was seen.
A Dive Capsule.
Not just any capsule. Cerberus Tech. Sleek, seamless, egg-white perfection. A machine so expensive that only lottery winners and Fortune 500 heirs could afford it. Ethan could barely pay his building fees; the thought of affording this was absurd.
And yet, there it was.
His breath caught. He hadn't ordered it. He hadn't even considered buying one. His logs showed nothing. No delivery. No purchase. No receipt.
But the capsule belonged. Not to his apartment. To him. He could feel it, a low hum in his bones, a whisper threading his veins: You know me. You've always known me.
Ethan stumbled back, heart hammering. "No," he whispered. "This isn't mine. This isn't—"
The wall screen lit up, hijacked by a citywide broadcast.
A knight cloaked in silver fire raised a sword of living light. An elf loosed an arrow that split raindrops in slow motion. A vampire lord, pale and regal, looked down from a spire at a world bathed in moonlight.
"Tired of your reality? Choose a new one. Twilight World—full-dive fantasy beyond imagination!"
The ad's booming voice filled the apartment.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Text scrolled beneath the spectacle: GLOBAL LAUNCH – JANUARY 1st, 2070.
Ethan's stomach clenched. The exact day his memories ended.
Coincidence? No. Too neat. Too cruel.
He muted the screen, but the silence it left was worse. His eyes returned to the capsule. Sleek, unmarked, no ports, no serial plates. A blank box humming with a predator's patience.
He reached out before he could stop himself.
The surface was cold, impossibly smooth. No seams—until a whisper of hydraulics split the shell, opening like a coffin. Inside was padded velvet, shaped to fit his body as if it had already memorised it.
Ethan's hand shook as he pulled it back. Every rational thought screamed, 'Call the police.' Call the building manager. Hell, smash the thing with a hammer.
But his body leaned closer.
He thought of the missing week. Of the scar. Of the yawning blank in his mind that felt less like forgetting and more like… someone else had lived in him.
The capsule was waiting.
"Goddammit." His voice cracked. He scrubbed a hand over his face. "This is insane."
His routine tugged at him like a lifeline. He forced himself back to the kitchen. He ordered dinner, clinging to routine—the drone was the one thing that still arrived on time. Char kway teow, greasy and smoky and familiar. Something human. Something normal.
The chime at the door made him flinch. He pulled the package from the delivery hatch, the smell of wok hei filling the room. Usually, it would make his stomach growl. Tonight, it was ash on his tongue.
He ate anyway, slowly and mechanically, his chopsticks moving on autopilot. His eyes never left the capsule.
And somewhere in the middle of forcing down noodles, another memory surfaced—faint, like a dream.
Dr. Aris Thorne.
The ghost-genius behind Cerberus Tech. No one had seen him in decades, but his synthesised voice had narrated the Twilight World keynote. Bio-psychological attunement. A system that didn't just let you play, but "read the forgotten language of your soul."
At the time, Ethan had scoffed. Marketing babble for desperate escapists.
Now, staring at the capsule, his fork trembling in his hand, the words landed like prophecy.
He shoved the plate away. Appetite gone.
Enough.
He rechecked his finances. Nothing. He combed the drone logs. Nothing. He hacked deeper, tracing the digital records of his apartment. If there were a ghost file, he would find it. He was one of the best—cybersecurity was his entire career.
Nothing.
No purchase. No delivery. No trace.
As if the capsule had materialised out of thin air.
Ethan stood in front of it, palms sweating. He ran his hand along its smooth curve again, hunting for labels, plates, anything. There was nothing. It was perfect. Sealed. Untouchable.
And yet the hum beneath his skin grew louder.
The capsule knew him.
He swallowed hard. Fear and longing churned in his gut like poison. He thought of calling the police, of filing a report. But what would he say? A multimillion-dollar machine appeared in my bedroom with no record of entry? Please help?
They'd laugh. Or worse, they'd take it away before he found out what was inside.
The capsule wasn't just a machine. It was a question. A dare.
He straightened the chair at his desk. Washed his plate. Set his fork neatly in the drying rack. Rituals of control. If the world were spiralling into madness, at least he would leave his kitchen tidy.
When everything was in its place, he returned to the capsule.
His reflection stared back in its seamless shell: black hair mussed, dark eyes shadowed, scar cutting a line through his brow. He looked like a stranger already.
The seam whispered open.
Inside, the padding curved to his frame. Too precise. As if it had always been waiting.
He hesitated one last time, breath caught in his throat.
Don't do it. You'll disappear.
Do it. The answers are inside.
He climbed in.
The canopy slid shut, sealing him in darkness.
For the first time in a week, the tension in his chest loosened. As if he had finally stopped fighting the current.
A female voice, cool and mechanical, filled the pod.
< Bio-psychological synchronisation commencing. Please remain still. >
A tingling spread from his spine through every nerve, invasive and intimate. He gasped, his body rigid, as if something were peeling him open and cataloguing everything. His DNA. His neurons. His fears. His forgotten hours.
The system paused. He braced for errors, alarms, rejection.
Instead, a wave of recognition rippled through him, alien and familiar all at once. The machine wasn't confused. It was remembering him.
Darkness deepened, and silver text coalesced in the void before his eyes.
Not the cheerful startup greeting from the manuals. Not the canned marketing phrase.
Something else.
Two words that punched the air from his lungs and rewrote the silence into destiny: