chapter 1: A Gray Life and a Blue Sphere
If Max were to describe his life's color palette, he would likely use shades of gray, beige, and slightly yellowed white. He was 30, working in a call center, waking up at the same time every morning, walking the same route, and resetting his mind every evening by watching cheap sci-fi series in his single armchair. In the middle of Istanbul's chaos, Max was a man whose presence was as insignificant as his absence—a completely neutral figure who thrived in the comfort of invisibility.
On an ordinary Wednesday night, at 03:17 AM, Max was peacefully asleep, dreaming of organizing stock reports, when he was abruptly awakened by an intense vibration and a humming. It wasn't just his ears that were vibrating; the fillings in his teeth and the marrow in his bones resonated as the sound reached the deepest, most protected corners of his brain. The room was filled with an energy as cold as absolute zero; his breath hung in the air like winter condensation, but this mist looked faintly bluish and tarnished.
When he opened his eyes, a shimmering, blue-white, amorphous energy sphere appeared, suspended between the ceiling and the floor, seeming to warp spacetime around it. The sphere neither emitted light nor absorbed it; it simply was. Max's brain rejected the sight of this geometrically impossible anomaly, all while his consciousness was crushed by the pressure of knowledge proclaiming the entity's absolute order.
Max watched, frozen, as the energy sphere slowly advanced towards him. Then, not with the sound of breaking glass, but with the unpleasant, wet sound of a rusty lock being slowly forced, the sphere began to infiltrate Max's body. At the point of first contact on his chest, his skin instantly melted like boiling mud, only to freeze immediately into the hardness of an ice crystal. Max felt an indescribable, suffocating agony; it was as if every nerve fiber in his body was being simultaneously pulled and rewired to create a ten-thousand-year-old cosmic map.
Immediately following the pain, a divine wave of energy overwhelmed his entire system. Max's subconscious registered the infiltrating cosmic parasite, named T500, as an unwanted telepathic whisper:
• T500 (in Max's mind, commanding): Host. Hold tight. This nervous system is slow but functional. Organization process initiated. Deleting unnecessary files of your selfhood.
Max's consciousness instantly clashed with the entity's. The battle that ensued was composed of images and pure will. T500 tried to crush Max's self by showing him the vast, emotionless emptiness of the cosmos and the utter insignificance of humanity within it. In return, Max gathered all his resistance and hurled his strongest memories at T500—the simple joy of his mother's smile, the happiness of eating ice cream as a child.
T500 visibly faltered for a moment. T500: Such emotional chaos. Such... NOISE.
The internal battle lasted until the first light of dawn. T500 constantly tried to wear Max down by live-broadcasting Max's most humiliating memories—like the deeply embarrassing email he once accidentally sent to his manager.
It was during the early morning hours that T500 grew momentarily exhausted, and Max's pure will gained temporary dominance. A voice, tired but victorious, rose from the depths of Max's consciousness: "This is my apartment, T500. You will abide by the guest rules. And you will never show that email again."