Outside Amsterdam, the morning fog still hadn't cleared.
The retreat center sat nestled between a lake and a patch of woodland. Its outer walls were painted a soft, warm gray, with damp grass and moss stretching out in front. The air smelled of wet earth and faint incense. Julian sat on a bench outside, his shoes soaking up the dew.
His luggage had been left at reception, and his phone had been taken away. The guide, a Dutch woman in her fifties, wore loose linen clothes. Her voice was quiet and deliberate, as if she were lowering it to hide the trace of a past life filled with academic credentials.
Before the afternoon group session began, she placed a small transparent case in the center of the mat. Inside were a few neatly arranged capsules. She said they contained a safe, controlled dose of a "perception-enhancing substance."
She spoke softly.
"This is a safe space. Relax. Let your mind lead you to your own edge."
Julian glanced around. Most people here looked like tech founders, finance workers, or post-crisis seekers trying to find some kind of meaning. Some hesitated. Others had already tilted their heads back and swallowed.
So did Julian. He didn't ask what was inside. He didn't calculate the dosage.
Forty minutes later, the world began to soften. The floor felt like it was breathing. The ceiling wavered gently, like the surface of water. He closed his eyes.
Nothing.
When he opened them again, a light struck his face. It wasn't harsh, but it made his skin tingle. He stood in a pure white space that looked part server room, part memory of a trading floor. There was no one else there. Just silence.
He walked. No footsteps.
His breath turned into a signal, rhythmic and sharp, like a program waiting to be triggered.
He wasn't himself anymore. He was a shell.
Then, the light collapsed.
The world folded like a sheet of paper, layer by layer. Time became static, like flattened pages. At the very center of it all, he saw a face.
Just a girl, standing there.
She didn't speak. She didn't move. Her eyes met his, calm, as if she had always known he would arrive.
She wasn't someone from a dream.
She was real. A person he had passed once, in real life. He recognized the face but couldn't recall the name.
Then the name surfaced. Not from the hallucination, but like a file forcing itself open in his brain.
Aria.
That was the name.
He didn't know who she was. He couldn't say what she was doing there. But he knew one thing.
He would meet her.
Not because he chose to, but because some enormous, sacred force had decided this would be his revelation.
In that moment, he knew the next chapter of his life.
The real her would appear one day, not now, but at a deeper moment in time, on the day he was ready to end everything.
She would be there.
He tried to move toward her. He couldn't. He wasn't even sure if he had a body.
But he knew this: she wasn't someone from the present.
She belonged to a particular moment.
That moment hadn't come yet.
He could feel its shape. The air smelled like blood. Markets were collapsing. The world convulsed like a severed nerve in a broken system.
He stood above it all. Below him were blood-red screens, frozen prices, a silent end of days.
He closed his eyes. The world twisted violently.
When he woke, he was drenched in sweat. His hands trembled.
But the name was still there, hammered into his mind.
Aria.
He was certain he had already met her in that final red day.
And just as certain that he had died long ago, and what he saw now was a flashback before the end.
He didn't know how he knew. He didn't try to explain.
He just knew.
She's coming.
She's real.
That name wasn't an accident.
The words started pressing in from every direction.
He was a prophet now.
On the other side of the city, while Julian was off on his solo retreat, Tomasz found himself alone in Amsterdam with three days of so-called "self-directed learning." Officially, he was here to explore business opportunities and deepen cultural exchange.
Day 1
Breakfast came from a corner self-serve station in the hotel lobby: vacuum-packed croissants, soft-boiled eggs, and a large pot of dark liquid labeled simply as "coffee." Tomasz sat by the window, iPad open, scanning maps while thinking, "If Julian's meditating in the woods, then I'd better check off some cultural boxes. Makes it easier to write 'immersed in local experience' in the report."
By morning, he arrived at the Rijksmuseum. The queue was brutal. Packed with people. He stood patiently, a faint look of anticipation on his face.
In the Van Gogh wing, the lighting was soft and subdued.
He stood in front of The Night Café for a full seven minutes, carefully noting:
"Emotionally bright but optically distorted. Art may be used in statistical models to extract spiritual alpha."
Later that afternoon, he sipped a latte in the museum café, trying to figure out how any of this might connect to finance. His note-taking app blinked open. He stared at the screen for a long time.
That evening, he walked through the red light district. He didn't stop. Just glanced discreetly at the neon-framed glass windows, as if trying to analyze traffic flow without making eye contact.
Day 2
He visited Micropia, the museum of microbes. The facial scanner at the entrance took five attempts to recognize him, finally declaring:
"Your nose tip is an ideal habitat for thermophilic bacteria."
He diligently recorded the exhibit details:
"Motion, division, dormancy, resurrection… eerily similar to Julian's trading logic. Or maybe Julian himself is a microbial ecosystem."
In the afternoon, he climbed up to the rooftop of NEMO Science Center. It was free, quiet, and drenched in sunlight. Children splashed around in shallow pools, experimenting with science toys. Tomasz sat on a bench, typing an email:
"Julian's off-site behavior may be redefining our internal compliance thresholds. Recommending we explore 'structural anomaly window periods' as a potential risk model variable."
That evening, determined to engage in "authentic local culture," he visited a coffeeshop. When ordering, his voice was so quiet it barely reached the counter. He simply pointed to the bottom of the menu, where it said Organic Japanese Green Tea.
The cashier grinned as he handed him a mug.
"First time?"
Tomasz nodded. He sat down. The air felt like a damp synthesizer.
At the next table, two tech bros were talking about Google's upcoming social media experiments.
He pretended to read. But all that echoed in his head was:
"Am I still technically in a meeting?"
Day 3
Julian hadn't returned yet. Tomasz spent the entire day on the top floor of the OBA library, two water bottles and meeting notes spread across the table. He was already thinking about the next team meeting back in London.
He started piecing together the official trip summary:
Purpose: Explore structural transaction possibilities among mid-sized European innovators
Key Meeting Insight: The "Berlin Labs anonymous settlement model" may challenge current risk frameworks
Team Observation: "Julian's altered state may correlate with better abstract pattern recognition."
He hesitated before typing the final section:
"Despite lacking formal structure, this trip exhibited a direction worth monitoring. Recommend mid-office continue observing such non-institutional experiments."
Then he looked up, toward the gray-blue canal outside the window, and quietly muttered to himself:
"What the hell did he sign…"