I jolted awake—no slow drift from sleep, but sharp clarity, like someone had thrown cold water on me. My heart raced as my eyes darted around, trying to make sense of the darkness. Where the hell was I?

A faint blue glow appeared on the far wall, soft at first, then growing brighter. It pulsed, almost like a heartbeat. I stared at it, transfixed. Dreaming, right? I’d had some wild dreams before, but this... this felt different. The light spread, tendrils of blue energy snaking outward, tracing strange patterns across the wall. It branched out, multiplying, forming rings that rippled across the room. More lights appeared—greens, purples, golds—each one revealing a little more of where I was. The walls curved upward, blending into a domed ceiling, and the floor beneath me was smooth, like glass.

I struggled to my feet, my skin prickling as I realized I was completely naked. The room seemed to breathe around me, the walls shifting and changing as the lights danced. It was like being inside some kind of living machine. Just as quickly as the lights had appeared, they faded, leaving nothing but that pulsing blue glow on the wall.

“Government experiment? Probably not, I work in a kitchen. Hell, I don’t even cook - I manage a kitchen. What secrets could I possibly hold? My cinnamon buns aren’t that good.” I thought to myself trying to make sense of the room around me. “Aliens? They’d be awfully sorry picking me up instead of someone else. Although I had always considered myself painfully average. Maybe I was statistically the most average human alive!” Not likely.

So I went with dream or more likely- hallucination.

Either way, this couldn’t be real. I squinted at the blue light, and it seemed to flicker, almost like it was responding to me. As I shifted my gaze, the light followed, tracking me.

"Hello?" My voice echoed in the room. No response.

I took a step forward. The floor felt unnaturally smooth under my bare feet, almost slippery. I wobbled, arms flailing as I tried to catch my balance. The light flickered again, like it was laughing at me.

I steadied myself, staring hard at the blue light. It seemed to dance, teasing me with half-formed shapes. Was that... a symbol? I squinted, trying to make sense of it. It flickered again, the edges blurring just as I was about to make it out. Frustration bubbled up inside me. I just needed it to be clearer.

“What the hell, Ben, what kind of dream is this?” I muttered to myself, staring harder, willing the symbol to reveal itself. The blue light deepened, growing more intense. Suddenly, I had the thought: maybe if it was red, I’d be able to see it better.

The light pulsed once, twice, sending little static shocks through me. Then, impossibly, it began to shift. The blue bled into crimson, the edges of the symbol sharpening, growing clearer until it was right in front of me—stark and vivid. I felt it, not just in my mind, but in my bones. The light had responded to me. I actually felt it change.

My jaw dropped. The symbol, strange and intricate, seemed to pulse in time with my heartbeat. It was bizarre—swirls and sharp lines twisting together. Somehow, I knew it meant light. No matter how I looked at it, no matter how strange, the symbol just... meant light.

A grin spread across my face before I could stop it. My fear was gone, replaced by pure wonder. What kind of dream was this? No dream had ever felt this vivid. But dreams were supposed to be random, right? This—this felt deliberate.

I narrowed my eyes, focusing harder. If it could change to red, then... what about—

The light flickered again, jolting me with a sharp static snap. It morphed, shifting into a bright chartreuse. The change happened so fast, I hadn’t even fully thought it through. My heart raced as I realized just how much control I had. Excitement bubbled up inside me, drowning out the fear. A wild idea struck me, and I went with it, imagining a swirling vortex of color.

The symbol obeyed.

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It spun, shifting through a dizzying array of hues. Magenta. Cerulean. Burnt sienna. Colors I couldn’t even name pulsed and twisted before my eyes. My mind raced with possibilities. Curiosity completely overtook panic. What were the limits? What else could I make it do? I pushed further, thinking of even stranger colors—opalescent shimmers, iridescent glows, shades that didn’t even seem possible.

I laughed under my breath, shaking my head. “Scary tech... But what about the invisible spectrum? Infrared...”

The symbol hesitated, pulsing with uncertainty. I focused harder, willing it to appear. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the symbol began to shift, bleeding into a deep, sharp red. Heat radiated from the wall, and I could feel the warmth prickling across my skin. Sweat beaded on my forehead as the air shimmered, distorting in front of me.

That same voice inside me—deeper, instinctual—screamed at me. This wasn’t safe.

I ignored it. I had to see it through. Fascinated, I pushed harder, forcing the light to sharpen even more.

The pain hit me like a live wire. Heat shot through my body, searing my skin. I stumbled backward, gasping as my head exploded with agony. The world blurred, and I crashed into the floor. “Shit!” The words barely escaped me as I slid across the room, slamming into the smooth wall.

I squirmed, eyes squeezed shut, trying to block out the pain. My hands pressed hard against my eyelids, but the afterimage of that violent red light still danced in my vision. The heat faded, but panic took its place.

This wasn’t a dream. I could feel it in my bones now, more than ever. This was real.

I forced my eyes open. The blue light was gone. But something else had changed.

Pulses of white energy rippled through the gray walls, the air around me growing heavy. I could feel it pressing down on my chest, making it hard to breathe. The walls seemed to shift, like they were closing in, each movement sharp and deliberate. My stomach churned, that deep instinct rising again—this was all wrong.

The walls pulsed again, the surfaces rippling like disturbed water. Patterns—geometric shapes—emerged and dissolved faster than I could track. Tessellations of triangles morphed into honeycombs, then spiraling fractals. A low buzz filled the air, growing louder, almost deafening. I stumbled again, reaching for something, anything, to hold on to. But the floor, just like the walls, was shifting, bucking beneath my feet. It felt like reality itself was breaking apart.

I gritted my teeth, forcing myself upright. My legs screamed in protest, but I couldn’t stay down. Not if this was real.

Golden light swirled around me, pulling my attention away from the chaos. Tiny motes of light, glowing against the gray of the room, spiraled together in intricate circuits. Symbols—more complex than the first—hovered in the air, arranging themselves like components in some otherworldly machine. They pulsed with an inner glow, almost alive.

One of the glyphs twisted, looping like a Möbius strip, its surface etched with patterns that seemed to stretch into infinity. My mind misfired as I tried to make sense of it. It was as if someone had captured the exact moment of collision between two planets and locked it into a single symbol. The circuits twisted, expanding into a galaxy of symbols, only to collapse into a singularity and explode outward again, spreading hundreds of new glyphs across the room.

I blinked, trying to follow them, but they danced just beyond my reach. The symbols, the circuits... I couldn’t grasp it. I was standing in the eye of a storm, some cosmic hurricane so vast, it felt like my brain was on the edge of breaking.

The room reacted, its walls rippling violently as though protesting the circuits’ presence. My stomach lurched, the floor heaving beneath me. The patterns blurred, folding in on themselves. The circuits pulsed harder, their golden light pushing back against the collapsing room.

Then the ceiling shifted—not a gentle ripple, but a hard, violent drop. My stomach flipped as gravity seemed to invert, pulling me toward the ceiling. I stumbled, gasping as the circuits flared brighter, their golden glow fighting back.

The symbols moved faster, spinning into a protective dome around me, holding the ceiling at bay. The room groaned, its walls protesting with a deep, resonant sound that rattled my bones. I fell to my knees, clutching my ears as the noise grew louder, reverberating through me.

The floor buckled beneath me, and suddenly, the world dropped away. I was falling. My stomach twisted violently, and I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for impact. Lights flashed behind my eyelids, sounds crashed around me, overwhelming every sense.

And then, a chime rang out. Clear, sharp, cutting through the chaos.

As I strain my neck and crane my head, I can barely make out the writhing mass of gray fractals above me. The golden circuitry surrounds me, almost blinding in its brilliance. Again, a chime rings out and everything goes eerily quiet as my ears adjust to the overwhelming roar of a shimmering white beam of energy. It strikes the golden circuits around me and bends impossibly, burning through some of the pathways before disappearing into infinity below. My head is filled with deep vibrations that pound at my senses, pushing them to their limit. Soon enough, my mind slips away and I find myself raising my hands halfway to cover my deafened ears, but they never quite made it before the darkness took over.