The silence of the Turner household was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic hum of the air purifier. In his room, Cole sat cross-legged on the floor. He wasn't studying for the Architecture Project. He was performing digital surgery on his own soul.
Every citizen's Iris was hard-coded with "Safety Filters." These filters color-graded the world to look warmer, scrubbed out the sight of urban decay, and most importantly, prevented the human eye from perceiving high-frequency light spectrums that the system deemed "unnecessary for mental stability."
"Override sequence 9-9-Beta," Cole whispered.
---
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED MODIFICATION DETECTED]
[SYSTEM ADVISORY: ALTERING OCULAR PARAMETERS MAY LEAD TO INCREASED CORTISOL LEVELS AND SOCIAL ANXIETY.]
[DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED?]
---
"Proceed," Cole snapped. His arrogance was his shield. He knew better than the machine. He had always known better.
A sharp, searing pain lanced through his optic nerves. He bit his lip, refusing to cry out as the blue light of his Iris turned a violent, flickering red. Suddenly, the darkness of his room wasn't dark anymore. He could see the electromagnetic fields of the wiring in the walls. He could see the heat signatures of his family in the rooms below, three orange blobs of stagnant contentment.
He walked to his window and looked up.
The "Sky" was no longer a beautiful, clear indigo. Without the filters, Cole saw it for what it was: a shimmering, unstable veil. Huge, polygonal patches of holographic camouflage were flickering. Behind them, the stars weren't twinkling—they were vibrating.
"It's not thinning," Cole realized, his voice a cold rasp. "It's being pushed."
The next morning, the breakfast table felt like a stage play where everyone had forgotten their lines except Cole.
"Cole, darling," Emilia said, her brow furrowed with concern. "The system sent me a notification. Your sleep quality was in the bottom 2nd percentile. And your eyes... they look bloodshot."
"I'm fine, Mom," Cole said, reaching for a nutrient bar.
"The system doesn't lie, Cole," James added, his tone unusually stern. "It has flagged you for a mandatory 'Stability Consultation' at 14:00 today. It seems your 'Ambition' levels are causing a neural imbalance. They want to recalibrate your Iris settings."
Cole froze. Recalibrate. That was the polite word for a lobotomy of the spirit. The ASI had noticed the anomaly again. It wanted to smooth him back into a "B+" or "A" grade cog.
"I have a project meeting with Marcus," Cole lied smoothly. "I'll reschedule."
"You can't reschedule a Priority 1 mandate," James said, finally looking at his son with a flicker of genuine, human fear. "Cole, please. Just cooperate. We have a good life. Don't ruin it by being... difficult."
Cole looked at his father. James Turner was a brilliant man, an MIT graduate, and yet he was begging his son to submit to a machine. The pragmatism in Cole's mind crystallized into something harder. Something colder.
"I'll go," Cole said, his voice devoid of emotion.
As he walked out, he passed Jake, who was practicing katas in the foyer. Jake stopped, wiping sweat from his brow. "Hey, Cole. You look like you're about to kill someone. Want to hit the pads? Might help your 'balance' or whatever."
"Keep your strength, Jake," Cole said, not stopping. "You're going to need it for something more than 'feeling real' very soon."
Jake watched him go, a rare look of confusion on his mischievous face.
Cole didn't go to the consultation. Instead, he headed toward the industrial outskirts of New Boston, the "Shadow Sectors" where the AI's sensors were spread thin due to low population density.
He needed to buy something the system didn't track. He needed physical tools. If the spatial disturbance he saw in the sky was real, then the digital world—the Iris, the ASI, the automated life, was about to become a liability.
He stood before a rusted warehouse, a relic of the old world. His Iris flickered, trying to overlay a "Beautiful Park" hologram over the ruins, but Cole's override held firm. He saw the rot. He saw the truth.
"The world is powerful enough to defend itself," Cole muttered, echoing the government's propaganda. "But it's too stupid to know it's being hunted."
He stepped into the shadows. He had six months until 2116. He would be the only man on Earth who wasn't surprised when the first Dungeon opened.
---------
[Character Status Update]
[Internal Willpower: Increasing]
[Social Compliance: 12% (Critical Low)]
[Observation: User has bypassed Ocular Limiters. Perception of "The Veil" is now 88% accurate.]