The Instance · Rift Memory

A man who steps into the Rift doesn't die. The system's term for it is the "download sequence"—moving a man out of his original physical layer and into another coordinate system, a space that looks like reality but runs on another set of rules. Observers call it the Instance.

Once inside, the neural-crystal interface still passes touch through to the nerves, but the field is tagged Tactile feedback: simulated. The first Instance on record was a mirror of a cave on the Frozen Continent, and when the intruder woke inside it the interface gave him only 3 lines:

Welcome to Rift Memory - Layer 1
Observer in position
Signature: L.K.S._Core

The Instance "throws errors" at the intruder, and the error messages are themselves the manual for this space. Every signal in the layer—the flicker of ice crystals underfoot, the light running across the walls, the interface redrawing—hangs on the same system clock, period 1.6 seconds; which is to say the whole layer runs as one process, and anything failing anywhere brings the layer down together. When compute runs short, the Instance simply gives up rendering certain places: a patch 30 centimetres square opens on the wall, exposing pure black ground and a grey grid of 1 centimetre cells.

Nor does it simply do as it's told. A command from the intruder gets executed, and once executed it begins drifting naturally, 0.05 seconds of drift every 5 seconds, sliding slowly back to how it was unless the command is reissued. The layer's compute has its own priorities as well: when compute is tight, the Instance protects what it wants protected first, and leaves the patch of ground under the intruder's feet undrawn.

Deep in the Instance hangs a set of progress figures, starting at 0.04% and climbing a notch at a time. It doesn't move with time, only with what the intruder does—put a thing where it belongs and the figure jumps a stretch; do nothing and the figure stays where it is. Some thresholds are even hard-coded to require the intruder to enter a certain range "of his own volition" before they will run on.

Objects in the Instance all carry tags and states, DEAD, ???, that sort of thing. The system can recognise the tag, yet often refuses to read the content.

A man who can read the error messages can find seams in there that nobody else finds—and can also find things that were never meant to be found by him.