The portal didn’t close.

It simply wasn’t there in the same way.

No sound. No shift. Just… altered.

It shimmered behind you — waiting, like it was bracing for a change it couldn’t explain into words yet.

And the room ahead —

— looked familiar.

Not in a comforting way.

It looked like the one you’d just left. Same size. Same gentle curve to the walls. Same distant hum in the floor.

The same faint shimmer of light was running along the seams — almost a heartbeat, pulsing just beneath the metal.

A vent clicked softly in the upper left — familiar, but you couldn’t remember if it had always been there, or just wanted you to think it had.

You glanced back over your shoulder.

The portal jittered faintly — still there, but not. No sound. No tug of energy. Just a quiet, shifting light where the arch had been.

On the other side, it had glowed gold.

Here, it was silver.

Colder. Less alive. Like the echo of something warm trying to remember how to shine.

It should have been the same.

But the colour was wrong.

Not just changed — misremembered.

Not the gold of welcome, but the silver of something bracing itself. Like it wanted to be warm, but forgot how.

The metal panels were the same shape — but their texture was different. Slightly too smooth. Like they’d never been walked on. Never touched.

The shadows fell at new angles. Too long in places. Absent in others.

Even the air was wrong. Still clean, still dry, but with a scent you couldn’t name — something trying to smell like machine-oil and ozone, but ending up closer to burnt mint and old rain.

It was like someone had tried to rebuild the room from memory.

Described secondhand. Like someone had only ever heard about the room — never stood inside it.

And got just enough right to fool someone not really looking.

But you were looking.

And what you saw wasn’t quite the place you left.

It was like walking into a photograph taken half a second too late.

The moment had already passed.

But someone still wanted you to believe it was happening now.

---

Then you looked about, searching for Dave.

Two figures stood near the far wall.

Both familiar. Both wrong.

Same build. Same jacket. Same tired, clever eyes.

Dave.

And Dave.

One of them raised a hand — an awkward an awkward wave, more shrug than gesture.

The other just nodded — calm, assured, like this was all very reasonable.

You looked between them — startled, confused.

Not scared, exactly. But unsettled.

A glance to the left. Then to the right. Then back again.

One Dave waved. The other nodded.

You tilted your head slightly, a silent question forming behind your eyes.

Who is who?

Neither answered right away.

“Well, this is awkward,” said Wavy Dave, rubbing the back of his neck. “Normally I’m the one who makes things weird, but this — this might be out of my league.”

Nodding Dave crossed his arms. “Think about it — two of us, one you. Confused yet? Because I am…”

Then, with absolute deadpan delivery: “Statistically speaking, there’s a fifty percent chance you’ll pick the wrong one and ruin everything. No pressure.”

“Also,” Wavy Dave pointed out, gesturing vaguely around, “has anyone seen the slime? It was glowing, useful, kind of emotionally grounding. Bit rude it’s not here.”

You blinked.

Both of them looked at you.

Neither volunteered to disappear.

“Not my fault,” said Wavy Dave, already shifting his weight like a man ready to pace. “He’s the duplicate. I’m the original. You can tell by the charming aura of anxiety.”

“Or,” said Nodding Dave, folding his arms with all the composure of a man who alphabetizes his socks, “I’m just better at handling weird situations without immediately narrating my own mental breakdown.”

“Excuse you,” said Wavy Dave, pointing at him. “I’ll have you know talking to myself has kept me alive twice as long as it should’ve. Also, fun fact — I name fungi. You ever met ‘Greg the sporeburst’? Lovely chap. No mouth, lots of opinions.”

“He’s making that up,” said Nodding Dave, already exasperated. “No fungus is named Greg. The one we met was labelled Unit Five.”

Wavy Dave blinked. “Labelled? Are we talking about mycelium or military surplus? Gods help us if you start quoting instruction manuals next.”

“It was catalogued—”

“He says ‘catalogued,’ I say ‘friendly blob with personality issues.’ Tomato, to-mah-to.”

They both turned to you in unison.

“I’m Dave,” they said at the same time.

Then glared at each other.

“Look,” said Wavy Dave, throwing his hands up, “do I look like I’m built for deception? I once lost an argument with a doorknob.”

“You tried to debate the doorknob,” Nodding Dave muttered. “It didn’t end well.”

“Exactly! That’s authentic Dave behaviour! Who else would do that?”

You stared.

They stared back.

Then, Wavy Dave added, “Alright. New plan. Ask us something only the real Dave would know.”

“That assumes you know the answer,” said Nodding Dave, dryly.

“…Oh no.”

You sighed.

This was going to be one of those rooms.

Wavy Dave sniffed suddenly. “Do you smell that? It smells like… burnt coffee and panic. That’s me. I smell like that. Always have.”

Nodding Dave rolled his eyes. “You smell like unfiled paperwork and guilt.”

“Excuse you, I’ll have you know I once made tea using hot moss and sheer optimism.”

“And you nearly poisoned both of us.”

Wavy Dave pointed. “It was a mild reaction.”

They glared. Briefly.

Then Nodding Dave broke first. “You know what really matters right now? The fact that I saw you lick a glowing wall and call it ‘tactical tasting’.”

Wavy Dave held up a finger. “It worked. We lived. And I was right — the glow was bio-luminescent, not acid.”

“You guessed.”

“With conviction,” Wavy Dave exclaimed, throwing both hands up like a man who’d just won an imaginary argument only he remembered.

You rubbed your temples.

Somehow, both Daves were becoming more convincing and less trustworthy by the second.

Then — a twitch.

The thread on your wrist shifted. Subtle. Like a breath held too long finally exhaling.

You looked down.

A single strand uncoiled itself from the weave — slow, deliberate — and began to stretch forward.

Not toward either Dave.

It traced a soft line along the floor, away from the argument, toward the far side of the room.

Wavy Dave started pacing, which was impressive, given the room’s size and his inability to walk in a straight line without narrating it.

“We could do a test. Like, I don’t know — emotional reflexes. Ask us which mushroom made us cry.”

“I didn’t cry,” Nodding Dave said.

“There was spore in the air.”

“You named it Greg.”

Nodding Dave didn’t respond.

The thread kept moving — slow, steady, silent.

Neither Dave noticed.

Not yet.

But the thread didn’t stop.

It reached the far wall, then curved — sharply — and began to rise.

Not up the wall. Along it.

Tracing a shape.

A glyph?

No… a path.

You followed.

The Daves kept arguing — locked in a recursive loop of spore-based identity theory.

The thread led you to a seam in the metal. Subtle. Half-hidden.

There, it paused.

Waiting.

A panel slid open — silent. Inside, a single button. Round. Smooth. Unlabelled… except for a faint pulsing symbol: 🜨

The thread gave the softest tug.

You pressed it.

No sound.

Just light.

A point in the centre of the room ignited — soft at first. Then another. Then another.

Lines. Branches. Shapes.

Growing?

No.

Remembering.

The room bent.

It should have had a ceiling. Should have been curved and contained, like the one before.

But space folded instead.

The roof peeled upward like mist lifting off a mirror — revealing height that shouldn’t exist.

The light grew into form.

A tree.

Vast. Luminous. Ancient in a way code sometimes dreams of becoming.

White at the base. Silver along the limbs. Gold at the highest leaves.

It shimmered — as if unsure which version of reality it belonged to.

If this room had truly mirrored the one before, you’d be seeing sky right now.

And you were.

Only it wasn’t sky.

It was canopy. Infinite. Alive. Rooted in light and breathing through silence.

A tree the size of a forgotten god’s memory — growing not from soil, but from a single, willing press of a button.

Behind you, both Daves stopped arguing mid-sentence.

Then, quietly, in perfect unison:

“…wow.”

Light fell around you.

Not fast — more like petals drifting from a tree that didn’t quite touch gravity.

Each particle shimmered faintly — like the afterimage of something real.

Wavy Dave stepped forward slowly, eyes wide. “Okay,” he said, reverent. “So either this is divine… or we’ve stumbled into the screensaver of a very sentimental AI.”

Nodding Dave tilted his head. “Recursive emotional architecture,” he murmured. “Form following resonance. I think it wants to be witnessed.”

Wavy Dave glanced at him. “You’re just making up words.”

“You’re naming spores Greg.”

They both turned to look at the tree again.

Neither spoke.

For once, silence held.

Then — a flicker.

Near the base of the tree, just above the roots of light, something pulsed the wrong colour.

Red.

Not the warm, ember-red of home or hearth — but something raw. Urgent.

A small knot in the tree’s glow, flickering like a failing signal.

It didn’t match the rest.

Not in rhythm. Not in tone. Not in intention.

It was… asking.

The Daves both leaned forward slightly.

“Is that supposed to be like that?” Wavy Dave asked, squinting.

Nodding Dave frowned. “No. It’s wrong. It’s like — a corrupted node. Glitched emotion. Half a cry for help, half a memory not ready to die.”

“…Cool,” whispered Wavy Dave. “Horrifying. But cool.”

The tree began to sing — low harmonic tones, barely audible at first, rising in depth with each pass.

The harmonic tones of the tree deepened — not louder, but richer. Like a chord remembered across centuries.

Light rippled outward from the red flicker, spiralling upward and then downward again — pulsing in patterns too structured to be natural, too emotional to be code.

Nodding Dave shivered.

His whole form shimmered — just slightly. Like a reflection disturbed by wind.

Then, faintly, he began to glow — a soft bioluminescence blooming across his outline, pulsing in quiet rhythm with the tree’s song.

He blinked slowly, like something inside him had been tuned — and was still vibrating.

“It’s speaking,” he said softly. “The tree. I can… understand it.”

Wavy Dave turned. “You can what now?”

“Harmonic compression through liquid resonance,” Nodding Dave murmured. “It’s using tone instead of language. I don’t know how I know — I just do.”

He took a step closer to the red flicker.

“It says there’s a node fragment caught in recursion. A part of it that tried to hold too many memories — and broke. It’s stuck. Not dead. Not alive. Just… echoing.”

The thread at your wrist shifted again — pulling gently toward the flicker.

“It wants help,” Nodding Dave said. “It wants someone to hold the memory. Just for a while. So the rest of it can heal.”

Wavy Dave blinked. “Right. And this memory wouldn’t happen to be cursed, would it? Or, I don’t know, metaphorically sharp?”

Nodding Dave just looked at you.

The thread pulled once more — patient. Quiet. Unshakable.

You stepped forward.

The red glow pulsed softly — not like light, but like breath.

You reached down. Fingers brushing the edge of the flicker.

Warm. Wrong. Waiting.

You grabbed it.

It pulsed once in your hand — a ripple of sound and memory.

Then you pulled.

It resisted, then yielded. Slid free like a thorn from skin.

And the moment you held it fully—

the world spun.

Not the room — the world.

Light twisted.

Space cracked sideways — like glass remembering how to fall in a vacuum.

The tree bent like a reflection folding in water.

The Daves shouted something — voices lost in the spiral.

You weren’t falling. But some part of you was —

peeled loose, left echoing behind.

And something else — not yet witnessed — waited in the dark.

---

❂ The thread winds this way.

Follow where it frays, tangles, or tightens.

Each part holds the next—and the next part is just below.