A week after the Inversion, Yohan found a way to get back inside the quarantine zone. It was not an official assignment.
Silas had forbidden anyone below the senior most ranks from entering the epicenter, deeming the psychic environment too volatile and dangerous.
But Yohan could not stay away. The image of the inside out houses haunted him, and the cold, pragmatic decision to simply erase the residents from the narrative felt like a profound moral failure.
He had to understand what had happened there. He had to bear witness.
He used a maintenance loophole, a temporary deactivation of a small section of the psychic barrier to allow him to pass through for atmospheric sampling.
Disguised as a low level technician in a jumpsuit, he slipped through the shimmering wall of force, his heart pounding with a mixture of fear and resolve. The moment he was inside, the silence was absolute.
The pressure of the anomaly, which was a dull throb from the outside, was now a crushing weight that made the air feel thick as water.
He walked the two blocks to the epicenter, his boots making no sound on the pavement.
The suburban street was frozen in time, a car door left ajar, a child's bicycle lying on a lawn.
He reached the edge of the Inversion and stood before the impossible location once more. In the flat, grey light of the overcast day, it was even more grotesque. The cheerful, floral wallpaper of a dining room, now exposed to the elements, was peeling in the damp air.
A television screen, facing outwards, reflected the dead street like a black, vacant eye.
He had a purpose for being here. He was not just sightseeing his own trauma. He wanted to investigate, to do what no one else was doing, to look for clues.
He chose one of the houses, one where the living room was exposed at what would have been ground level. The sofa, a comfortable looking floral piece, was bolted to the floor above his head. A framed family photograph had fallen and lay shattered on the inverted lawn, which was now a vertical wall of unnaturally green grass. Yohan picked up the photograph.
The glass was broken, but the image was clear: a smiling man and woman, their arms around two young children, a boy and a girl.
They were standing in front of this very house, in a time when it was still oriented correctly. They looked happy, carefree.
The very picture of a perfect Aethelburg family.
As his fingers touched the photograph, something happened. A jolt, not of electricity, but of information, shot up his arm and exploded in his mind. It was a memory.
Not his own.
It was a memory of a summer barbecue in this backyard. He could smell the hot dogs on the grill, and feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, also hear the laughter of the children as they ran through a sprinkler.
He felt a surge of paternal love, a deep, contented feeling of a perfect Saturday afternoon. The memory was vivid, complete, and it felt entirely his own.
He gasped and dropped the photograph, stumbling back. The memory vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving him dizzy and disoriented.
His heart was racing. What was that? It was a psychic echo, a memory imprinted on the object. That was a known, if rare, phenomenon.
But this was different. It had not been like watching a film. He had been in the memory. He had been the father.
Shaken, he forced himself to continue. He moved to the next item he could reach: a child's drawing, done in crayon, that had fluttered down from the inverted bedroom above.
It depicted a crude, smiling sun and a lopsided house. He picked it up. Another jolt. This time, the memory was different.
He was small, his head barely reaching the height of the kitchen table. He was drawing this very picture, the waxy crayon clutched in his small fist.
He felt the fierce pride of a child creating a masterpiece for his mother. He felt her hand on his head, her voice praising his work. The love he felt for her was overwhelming, pure, and absolute.
He let the drawing fall from his numb fingers. The memory receded, leaving an emotional afterimage of childish joy and maternal love.
But it was immediately followed by a wave of confusion. He had just experienced, with perfect clarity, a memory from the perspective of the father, and another from the perspective of the son.
Two conflicting, impossible memories, both of which had felt completely, utterly real.
He backed away from the house, his breath coming in gasps.
He looked at the other houses, at the thousands of personal items scattered and exposed. A book, a coffee mug,and a wedding dress hanging in an open air closet.
Each one, he now realized, was a potential psychic landmine, a vessel containing a fragment of a life that had been violently deconstructed. And these fragments were not just passive recordings; they were infectious.
They invaded his mind, overwriting his own sense of self with their powerful, emotional charge.
This was why Silas had forbidden entry. The danger was not just the volatile physics. It was this. A psychic contagion.
It is a place where identity itself was shredded and scattered like confetti. He had come here looking for answers, for a clue to what had happened to the residents. But all he had found was more profound and terrifying questions.
If their memories could so easily become his, what made his own memories uniquely his? What was the firewall that separated his identity from theirs? And what would happen if that firewall began to fail?
A warning chime resonated in his mind. His ninety second window was closing. He had to get out.
He turned and ran, leaving the silent, inside out street behind him. He slipped back through the barrier just as it sealed, collapsing against the exterior wall, his body trembling.
He had survived his trespass into the heart of the anomaly, but he had not escaped unscathed.
He had brought a piece of it back with him, not in his hands, but in his mind.