It certainly doesn't feel like five years have passed, rather like fifty.

I’m standing outside the office of Dr. Marten, and am looking at the familiar woman, Christie.

Now that I'm sure it’s just not the unknown effects of the meds and my own questionable sanity, it’s glaringly obvious that a lot has changed.

A lot!

“Hi again!” she says in a cheerful tone.

“Hello there. Christie was it, right?”

“Yes, and you must be Robert. I am sure Dr. Knapphead explained who i am already, but it would be rude of me to not introduce myself properly,” she continues in a, still cheerful, but increasingly professional tone. “I work for the social services, and have been assigned to assist you with your reintroduction into society. We all know a lot has changed lately, it surely went fast, but I understand it must be very sudden from your perspective”, the short woman continues.

“Yeah… it’s a lot… What happened, really? Some kind of AI boom? Oh, don’t tell me they achieved AGI already and I missed it!”

“You surely are picking up fast” she smiles friendly. “I don’t know too much about that tech stuff, but yeah, it’s AI. Something along those lines at least, it’s everywhere now”.

I catch my reflection in the corridor wall - not a mirror, the wall itself seems to have a subtle reflective quality. The face staring back at me is undeniably older, with lines I don't remember and gray strands I'm not ready for. I quickly look away, focusing instead on a group of patients down the hall. They're playing some kind of game, their hands moving through invisible interfaces while colored lights dance around them.

"The whole world just... changed? Just like that?" My voice sounds smaller than I intended.

Christie's outfit shifts from professional beige to a calming blue - probably responding to my elevated stress levels. "Not 'just like that.' It was gradual for most of us. The first big breakthrough was in early 2025, then things started accelerating. By 2027, we had..." She pauses, noticing my expression. "Sorry, this must be overwhelming."

"No, please, I need to know." I watch as a cleaning robot silently glides past us, its surface rippling like liquid metal. "In 2024, we were still arguing about whether AI could really understand images or just pattern match. Now everything looks like... like..."

"Like science fiction?" Christie offers gently. "I remember showing my grandmother how to use neural-link shopping last year. She just kept saying 'back in my day, we had to click buttons!'" She chuckles, then catches herself. "Sorry, probably not helping."

"The technical stuff I can handle," I say, watching a doctor down the hall dictate notes into thin air, text materializing and floating beside him. "It's everything else that's..." I trail off, my hand instinctively going to my wedding ring.

Christie's expression softens. "Robert, I know about Diana. It's in your file." She gestures to a nearby seating area, where the chairs adjust their shape invitingly. "Want to sit?"

"These must be quantum computers running all this, right?" I deflect, desperately grabbing onto the familiar territory of tech. "The response time is too fast for classical processing."

"Actually," Christie says, following my lead but maintaining her gentle tone, "it's still mostly classical computing. The breakthrough wasn't in raw processing power, it was in..." She waves her hand, and a small holographic display appears, showing what looks like a neural network diagram. "They call it 'emergent optimization.' Your old expertise might help you understand it better than most."

I stare at the diagram, recognizing elements from my 2024 knowledge but seeing connections that seem impossible. "I used to dream about this stuff. Diana always said..." The words catch in my throat. "She always said I spent too much time thinking about the future instead of living in the present. Guess I missed both in the end."

The lighting in the corridor dims slightly, adapting to our conversation's tone. Christie's interface blinks with what I assume is a notification, but she ignores it, focusing on me.

"The present is still here, Robert. Different, but here. And you haven't missed as much as you think. Most people are still adjusting to all this. Some communities still choose to live like it's 2024."

The corridor seems to constrict around me, despite its adaptive architecture trying to create a more open feeling. The walls shift their hue to soothing pastels, and I notice subtle aromatherapy being released - lavender, I think. All this technology, working in perfect harmony to keep me calm, and somehow that makes it worse.

"The AI systems," I say, my voice tighter than before, "they're monitoring my vital signs right now, aren't they? Adjusting everything to optimize my emotional state?"

Christie nods carefully. "It's standard care protocol now. The environmental systems are-"

"And my neurochemical levels? Heart rate variability? Micro-expressions?" The words tumble out faster. "All being analyzed in real-time, feeding into some vast network that's trying to..." I wave my hands frantically at the shifting walls, the adaptive lighting, the subtle changes in Christie's outfit. "...trying to fix me?"

"Robert, the systems are just trying to help-"

"That's what they said about X-775!" My voice echoes louder than intended. "Just trying to help! And now I've lost five years, my wife, my..." The corridor's attempts at calming me seem to intensify, which only feeds my panic. The more perfect and seamless the technology becomes, the more trapped I feel.

Christie's professional demeanor holds, but I can see concern creeping into her expression. Her interface is probably flooding with alerts about my elevated stress levels. The floor beneath us subtly adjusts its texture to something more grounding, and distant music begins to play - something classical, mathematically perfect to reduce anxiety.

"Everything's so perfect now," I whisper, my hands shaking. "So perfectly optimized. But Diana's still gone. How can everything be so advanced and yet she's still..."

"Bobby?"

The familiar voice cuts through my spiral like a knife through butter. I turn around, and there she is - Emily, my sister, looking older but unmistakably herself. No adaptive clothing, no neural interfaces visible, just my sister in her characteristic worn jeans and oversized sweater.

"Em?" My voice cracks.

She doesn't say anything else, just steps forward and hugs me. It's real, solid, human contact - no optimization, no AI assistance, just my little sister hugging her big brother like she did when we were kids.

I feel the tension drain from my shoulders as I hug her back. The corridor's various systems seem to recede, or maybe they're just fading into the background where they belong. For the first time since waking up, something finally feels real.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Christie quietly excuses herself, her footsteps fading away as the adaptive environments finally settle into stillness. Emily pulls back from the hug but keeps her hands on my shoulders, studying my face. She's so different from the awkward fourteen-year-old I remember - now a young woman of nineteen, but with that same concerned look she always had, even as a kid.

"You look..." I trail off, not sure how to process this change on top of everything else.

"Grown up?" She smiles tentatively. "Yeah, that happened. Graduated high school, started college. Bio-engineering, if you can believe it." She gestures vaguely at the advanced technology surrounding us. "Though all this makes my freshman studies feel a bit outdated already."

We find ourselves sitting in one of the waiting areas. The chairs, for all their advanced capabilities, have settled into a simple, comfortable form. Through the large windows, I can see the city skyline - a vision of impossible architecture and flowing light that I'm not ready to process yet. So instead, I look at my sister, trying to reconcile the teenager I remember with the young woman before me.

"Mom finally let you dye your hair, huh?" I say, noticing the subtle purple highlights.

"Actually, it's adaptive pigmentation now. But yeah, took some convincing." She touches the strands self-consciously. "I kept it subtle. Some of my classmates have these wild color-shifting patterns..."

The conversation flows naturally, deliberately skating around the edges of the deeper waters. She tells me about her dorm life, her first year of college, the old coffee shop near campus (unchanged, defiantly analog, and more popular than ever). She's nervous but trying to hide it, just like she used to when showing me her report cards.

Around us, the world of 2029 continues its complex dance. Hospital staff pass by with their floating displays, patients interact with invisible interfaces, and somewhere in the distance, I hear the soft hum of what must be incredibly advanced machinery. But here, in this bubble of siblings reuniting, it all feels distant - like watching a storm through a window while sitting by a warm fire.

"I tried to visit before," she says finally, her voice small. "When they first admitted you. But they said the treatment protocol..." She sounds fourteen again for a moment, uncertain and worried.

"I know." I reach over and squeeze her hand. "You're here now."

For a moment, we sit in comfortable silence, both pretending not to notice as her simple analog wristwatch - Mom's old one, I realize with a pang - ticks away seconds that feel normal again, just for a little while.

“So, how’s mom?” I ask carefully.

Emily hesitates for a long moment. Then yet another.

“Her sleep apnea, it… it was finally too much, all things considered. She’s not here any more…”

The words hang in the air like shattered glass. The room's adaptive systems begin their gentle adjustments, but I barely notice them now. Emily's hand tightens around mine.

"When?" The word comes out hoarse.

"Two years ago. It was peaceful, Bobby. She just... didn't wake up one morning." Emily's voice wavers slightly. "All this technology, all these advances, and it was just too late for her. Sometimes I think if we'd just had another year, maybe..."

I feel the loss strike me in waves - first the sharp pain of knowing she's gone, then the hollow realization that I wasn't there, followed by the crushing thought that she died while I was... while I was...

"Did she know? About me?" I manage to ask.

Emily nods, wiping at her eyes with her free hand. "She visited you once, early in your treatment. You were... not really there. But she sat with you for hours, just holding your hand like when you were little." She tries to smile but it breaks halfway. "She made me promise to look after you when you woke up. Said someone needed to make sure you'd eat properly."

A memory surfaces: Mom fussing over my dinners during grad school, insisting I couldn't live on coffee and algorithms. The last time I saw her, she was worried about my obsession with AI research, with Diana's disappearance. She had hugged me tight and made me promise to take care of myself.

I never kept that promise.

The future-world around us blurs as tears fill my eyes. Emily moves closer, and suddenly we're both crying - me for a loss that feels like yesterday, her for wounds that have had two years to scar over. The chairs adjust to support us better, the lighting dims to offer privacy, and somewhere a gentle melody plays, but none of it matters.

"I have her recipes," Emily says after a while, her voice thick. "All of them. Even that horrible meatloaf you used to pretend to like because it made her so happy."

A laugh escapes through my tears. "It was like eating a brick."

"With ketchup on top."

We sit there, laughing and crying, sharing memories that feel simultaneously ancient and fresh. The world of 2029 continues its relentless march of progress around us, but in this moment, we're just two siblings holding onto each other and the memory of their mother's love.

Emily finally pulls back, reaching for her bag. "I have something for you," she says, pulling out a worn notebook. "Mom's actual recipe book. Not the digital version everyone uses now - the real one, with all her notes in the margins." She places it in my hands, and I trace the familiar coffee stains on the cover. "She wanted you to have it."

The future might be full of perfect, AI-optimized recipes, but holding this imperfect, stained notebook in my hands feels like holding a piece of home.

The recipe book sits heavy in my lap as we settle into a quieter kind of grief. Emily tells me about Mom's last year - the garden she kept until the end, her stubborn refusal to use any AI assistants in her kitchen, how she'd still write letters by hand and mail them to Emily at college.

"She never stopped believing you'd come back to us," Emily says softly. "She used to say the future would bring you home, she just had to be patient." She pauses, looking out at the gleaming cityscape. "I guess she was right, in a way."

I run my fingers over Mom's handwriting, each loop and curve a testament to a world that seems increasingly distant. "Everything's so different now," I murmur, "but this... this is exactly the same."

Christie approaches quietly, her presence gentle but professional. The adaptive systems, which had given us our bubble of privacy, subtly shift to include her. Her outfit has returned to its original professional beige, but somehow seems softer now.

"I hate to interrupt," she says, "but we should probably start discussing some practical matters for Robert's transition."

Emily straightens up, suddenly looking every bit the young adult she's become. "Of course. I've been getting my spare room ready. Unless..." she glances at me uncertainly.

"We'll need to take it step by step," Christie explains, "but having family support will be invaluable." She sits down across from us, and a subtle holographic interface springs to life, though she seems to be deliberately keeping it minimal. "There's a lot to navigate, but we'll find the right path forward."

I look down at the recipe book, then at my sister - no longer the teenager I remember, but someone who's grown into her own strength - and finally at the futuristic city beyond the windows. The world may have transformed into something I barely recognize, but maybe, just maybe, there's still a place for handwritten recipes and brother-sister bonds in it.

"Step by step," I echo, and for the first time since waking up in 2029, the words don't feel like they're choking me.