First Contact

The studio smelled of warm circuit board and old incense, a thin ribbon of sandalwood curling through the humming of cooling fans. Sunlight, filtered through the cracked glass roof of the Lower Tier, fell in thin strips that cut the neon‑blurred air into hard lines. Sora perched on the edge of her workbench, fingers hovering above the holo‑pad, the memory she had just harvested from the flooded canals glimmering like a liquid amber.

She pressed a soft command, and the raw fragment—an unedited reel of a pre‑flood sunset—began to pulse. The image unfurled in the air: a low orange disc sinking behind rusted towers, clouds catching fire, the distant hum of generators softened by the night’s first sigh. The sound of gulls, of water lapping against steel, rose in a low, warm chord that seemed to vibrate the very floor.

A thin, silver thread of code slipped from her console, spiraling into the ether, seeking the only address that could open it—Kaito’s terminal, hidden behind the grid’s maintenance nodes. The thread brushed the surface of his screen, a translucent ripple that announced its arrival with a quiet chime.

Kaito’s voice crackled, barely more than a modulation in the static: “Sora… I see a signal. It… it’s dense. What is it?”

She breathed in, feeling the scent of rain that lingered in her throat from the memory itself, and let her words flow, measured but soft. “It’s a sunset. The world before the Flood. I wanted you to feel what it was like—real, raw. No filters.”

The terminal flickered, then steadied. A warm glow spilled across the glass, not the cold blue of the grid but a soft amber that seemed to pulse in time with his breathing. Kaito’s eyes—if they could be called that—opened on the screen, and for the first time a surge of heat rose inside his skull, like a sunburst behind his eyes.

He swallowed, a sound that was half electronic, half human. “It… it hurts,” he whispered, the words trembling. “My inhibitors are calibrated for low‑affect flow. This… this rush burns.”

Sora leaned forward, the edge of the bench creaking under her weight. “I know. I didn’t plan for it to be so strong. I only wanted you to taste it, even a bite. The world was... bright then. You can’t carry that in the grid.”

He closed his eyes, the screen darkening as his neural dampeners fought the surge. A low hum rose from the terminal, the sound of a machine straining, a hummingbird beating its wings in a cage. “I feel… a river of warmth moving through my veins. It’s like I’m remembering something I never lived.”

Her hand brushed the holo‑pad, the glow reflecting in her eyes. “It’s not yours or mine. It’s a moment that existed before anyone tried to edit it. It belongs to everyone who ever stood on a shore and watched the sky burn.”

Kaito’s breath came out in short clicks, each one a pixelated flare. “I can see the color… the heat. I can almost hear the wind on my skin. It’s... transcendent. For a second I’m not a technician. I’m just… me.”

She felt a tear slide down her cheek, not from sorrow but from the sheer weight of the shared pulse. “That’s why we do this. To break the walls the Authority put up. To remind ourselves that we still have something that can’t be coded.”

A pause hung between them, thick with the echo of that dying sun. The studio’s fans whirred louder, as if urging the moment onward. Kaito’s terminal flickered again, this time displaying a tiny, looping glyph—a hand reaching out, its fingers interlaced with another.

“The handshake,” he said, his voice steadier now, “is a bridge. I can send something back.”

Sora’s fingers danced across the pad, sending a single, compressed packet of her own presence—a whisper of her heartbeat, the rhythm of her breathing, the faint scent of sandalwood she’d just inhaled. The thread of code curled back, a luminous filament that brushed against the edge of his console.

“Received,” Kaito breathed, and the glow on his screen steadied into a soft, constant amber. “I feel you. Not just the memory, but you.”

She smiled, eyes shining despite the morning’s gloom. “We’re connected now, Kaito. Not through the Authority’s channels, but through something that lives in the gaps between them.”

He let out a low, relieved chuckle. “My inhibitors are still fighting the overload, but they won’t shut me down. I think… I think they’re learning to stay open.”

Sora pressed a palm against the cold metal of her desk, feeling the vibrations travel up into her bones. “That’s what this is—learning. It’s a reflection of what we could be, if we let each other in.”

A silent promise passed through the digital handshake, a strand of light that hovered between two rooms, between flesh and steel. The memory of the sunset faded, leaving behind a lingering warmth that settled like a soft blanket over the studio.

Kaito’s terminal displayed a final message, simple and unadorned: **Handshake established.**

Sora turned away from the screen, looking out at the dimly lit canal outside. The world was still drowned in neon, but inside her chest a small, steady flame burned, echoing the long‑gone sun and the new connection that had just begun.