第 019 Episode| Layer 1

???

Lika opened his eyes.

—Though "opened" wasn't quite right. After the download finished, he wasn't even sure he still had eyes. But "opening" was an action so familiar it was reflex; he'd done it at least a few billion times, so his brain still called the instant his awareness cut from black to a picture "opening his eyes."

—

The first thing to return was the sense of ground—suddenly there was something under his soles. In the 0.3 seconds from no weight to weight, his stomach gave a small lurch.

Light and sound came almost together. The light wasn't really light; it was the black before his eyes ending—shifting from pure black to pale blue, no source and no shadow, like a color the space itself owned. The sound was fed straight in by the brain-chip: a low-frequency pulse every 1.6 seconds, the speed of a heartbeat, but not his.

—

He looked down.

He had a body. Hands, feet, coat, boots, the reinforced-alloy test ball in his coat pocket—all of it there. Even the thin layer of frost that had settled back on him after he'd shaken it off earlier was still there—this frost should have melted at the Instance's temperature, but it held.

As if someone had taken a snapshot of the body from his original physical layer and pasted it into this space.

—

He raised his left hand and looked at his index finger.

The finger that had reached past the boundary earlier, the one whose touch had been "taken away."

The brain-chip interface threw up its first prompt:

[Instance sync complete: Rift Memory - Layer 1]
[Observer body: simulated · high fidelity]
[Original physical-layer pose: still maintained]

—

"Original physical-layer pose: still maintained," Lika read softly.

Meaning—his flesh was still at S-17-R. Whatever posture he'd been in the moment the download finished, it held there. The him here was a high-fidelity copy.

He'd written hundreds of sync protocols for VR systems in his time, and not one of them could pull off "original physical-layer pose still maintained." To do that, you'd need—

He stopped.

Meaning his flesh was standing exposed at S-17-R, with no one watching over it—minus 52 degrees, wind at 32 knots, no brain-chip link. Standing, kneeling, or fallen in the snow. He had no way to know.

He didn't say it out loud. Whether his flesh could last until he got back was no longer something he could manage.

—

Only now did Lika come back to himself and look up at the whole environment.

He stood at the mouth of a passage that ran downward. The passage walls weren't rock—they were ice crystal. Each crystal was bigger than a man, perfectly symmetrical, clear and bright. Light (if it counted as light) flowed slowly out from inside each crystal, slow as something diffusing through water—slow enough that the naked eye could watch it travel.

He knew this place.

Not because he'd been here—he was certain he'd never been here—but because this place looked like some memory in his own head that he himself couldn't say where it came from. The position of each crystal, the curve of each passage, that point of light at the far, far top—all of it felt right. Right enough that a voice somewhere deep in him said: This is what I expected to see.

A place he'd never been. And yet he expected to see exactly this.

—

The brain-chip interface threw up a second line:

[Rift Memory - Layer 1 · main interface ready]
[Observer has entered.]
[Awaiting choice.]

—

"Awaiting choice," Lika finished reading.

"Choice of what?"

The brain-chip interface didn't answer him this time. The interface just sat on the "Awaiting choice" line, the cursor blinking slowly.

He stood where he was for maybe 10 seconds. The interface still showed only that line.

—

He took a step deeper into the passage.

The brain-chip interface jumped at once:

[Choice registered: advance]
[Observer selection: explore]
[Layer 1 unlock depth: 0/4]
[Instance progress: 1.4%]

—

"So that's what it means," Lika said softly.

It didn't want him to pick A / B / C off a menu. It wanted him to perform an action—that one step forward, and the Instance logged it, treated it as a choice.

As for which actions counted and which didn't, the Instance didn't explain. But action was how this system took input.

—

Lika looked deeper down the passage.

It ran a little long. Light came faintly through from the far end, but the middle stretch was darker, and he couldn't make out the detail on the walls. From here at the entrance, walking down might take 5 to 10 minutes.

But just then he noticed something.

The inner side of the ice-crystal wall—what he'd taken for nothing more than decorative texture—moved.

Not a big movement. Like something long sealed in ice, deep inside the crystal, slowly turning its head.

—

The brain-chip interface threw up a third line:

[Notice: this layer's resident has noticed the observer]
[Recommendation: keep moving]

—

Lika's hand slid into his coat pocket and closed around the one test ball he had left.

"Let's go," he told himself. "I'm already here anyway."

He walked deeper into the passage.

With each step, the ice crystal underfoot brightened faintly, marking the spot he'd just trodden.

As if the Instance were laying a path for him.

And as if the Instance were tracking him for something else.

---

【Ch. 019 End · Inside the Instance · Rift Memory Layer 1】