Chapter 23 — Interface Noise
The world woke up wrong.
Not broken—argumentative.
Morning had opinions. Light arrived in drafts, revising itself mid-beam. Sounds overlapped, then apologized by spacing themselves better. Somewhere nearby, a rooster crowed, stopped, reconsidered, and crowed again—improved.
Puck stared at it. "That bird just did a second draft."
Valerius didn't laugh. Her wings were fully folded now, but her attention was everywhere. "The protocol didn't resolve," she said. "It forked."
I felt it too.
The Shard was no longer just humming—it was routing. Signals passed through it, not from it. Like I'd become a relay the world hadn't finished labeling.
"That counter-invitation," I said slowly. "They didn't reject it."
"No," Valerius replied. "They sandboxed it."
A ripple moved through the clearing—subtle, polite, and invasive. Not a presence. A ping.
My head rang.
Not pain. Context.
Suddenly I was aware of nearby inconsistencies: a broken fence that had been broken in three different ways, a stream whose source had been edited twice, a man in the village beyond the trees who could not remember whether his wife had left him or died.
Too much.
I staggered, catching myself on a tree.
Puck darted up, alarmed. "Hey—hey—stop listening to everything!"
"I'm not trying to," I gasped. "They're broadcasting."
Valerius's jaw tightened. "They're seeing how much you can process without collapsing."
"Great," I muttered. "Load testing my soul."
The noise intensified.
Not sound—priority.
Things around us competed to be noticed. The world was no longer smooth; it was a stack of requests.
I clenched my teeth and did something instinctive.
I filtered.
Not by importance.
By consent.
I let go of everything that wasn't asking.
The pressure dropped instantly.
The Shard pulsed—clear, resonant.
Approval.
Or confirmation.
Valerius's eyes widened slightly. "You just… implemented a boundary."
I nodded, breathing hard. "If I'm an interface, I don't have to accept every connection."
Puck hovered in front of my face, upside down. "I like this version of you. Less screaming."
The noise didn't vanish—but it changed.
Now, instead of a flood, there were knocks.
Gentle. Hesitant.
One stood out.
I turned toward the village.
Someone there wasn't broken.
They were aware.
A margin-holder—but not by accident.
"I think," I said carefully, "I'm not the only one anymore."
Valerius followed my gaze. "No. You're the first visible one."
That landed heavier than it should have.
We walked toward the village.
As we did, I felt it—threads stretching, not tearing. Residue settling into pathways. The world learning how to speak through me instead of over me.
Not power.
Bandwidth.
At the edge of the village, a man waited.
Middle-aged. Ink-stained fingers. Calm eyes.
He bowed—not deeply, not submissively.
Respectfully.
"My name is Elric," he said. "And I believe we should talk before the Curator decides how to classify us."
Behind him, the village hummed—quietly unstable, but holding.
I swallowed.
The interface had found its first user.
And I had no manual.