Reverie Visage

Chapter 5: Visonary of a Doomed World

Quim awoke to the sound of electronic pulses and humming of an overhead light. The room he was in was a large, white dome with a floor lined with light blue, circuit-like lines branching across it. He unplugged the cable from his neck and tapped a series of buttons on the arm of the chair he had been laying on.

"Oooh, you're finally awake!" Called a flamboyant male voice. "How did the simulation go?! Was our first test of The Codex a success?"
Quim sat up and looked down at himself. Instead of his semiformal attire and amulet from before, he wore a simple white bodysuit with minimal design.

"Yes, Mandel," Quim replied. "the simulation ran rather smoothly. I have a lot to report on that place, though I'm aware you were monitoring it for the most part."
"Yes, yes, I saw all of it! It was pretty impressive, too. You only needed to use your necklace to modify the code a handful of times!"
"Right..."

Quim shifted his body to the side and hopped down from the chair. "You saw it too, right?" Quim questioned.
"Oh? Which part of it?"
"That island... Quetzal... Somehow it was able to sustain the life of all those people and open a hole in the sky... but there was something else about it that stuck with me..."
Mandel raised an eyebrow. "Well, what was it?"
"When I set foot on that island... I saw something. It was almost like a dream... but I could feel every bit of it... I didn't even know my body could feel things to that extent..."
"How curious... and what, pray tell, did you see in this... dream of yours?"

Quim shivered and took a breath. "I saw myself... dying."

Mandel's eyes widened as he dropped what he was holding. "What...?"
"I couldn't tell when or where it was... All I was able to see was myself in a cold, dark space, stabbed through the chest by my own heart."
"W-well, it was probably just a glitch in the system! The Codex creates simulations of people and places in the real world based on surveilance scans. It uses AI to act as the people in the area actually would, and plays out the most likely scenario based on your actions and their personalities... What you saw was probably just a projection of an intrusive thought or a skewed prediction. I see no reason to worry."
"I see..."

Quim stared at his palm with his golden eyes and let out a sigh. "Um... Hey Mandel... is there any chance... we could rescue those people?"
The man in the lab coat shook his head mournfully. "No... I'm sorry, Quim. As a Visage, your job is to analyze far away places so that we can learn more about what's going on with The Sun here. We could send out a rescue squad, but by the time they got there, the real life counterparts of everyone you met in the simulation would be long dead. I'm sorry to say this, but you have to accept that you can't save everyone."
"Yes sir..."

Mandel paced around the room trying to aleviate to tension he felt. "I must say though, this was quite the fascinating experience. Where exactly did you find a group of people so determined to stay alive?"

Quim raised his maroon face to the ceiling as if looking to the stars.

"They were on a planet called Earth."