0X04 Resonance
This apartment could have been ordinary.
Scandinavian tiles in the bathroom, beige walls, IKEA kitchen, a pale wooden shelf stacked with boxes of odds and ends. A Bluetooth speaker on the windowsill, a bedside lamp with warm light, vanilla-scented candles, a clean sink, and a few slightly exotic plants. Anyone could live here: a freelancer just starting out, a remote office worker, students, a childless couple. A space that doesn’t ask questions. A place where the boundary between life and sleep, between body and home, between “now” and “tomorrow” still exists. A place where you could relax. Or at least stop thinking.
But this apartment isn’t like that. Not scary. Not dirty. The apartment feels like it knows. Like it scans—not with cameras, but with attention. The walls listen to the rhythm of his steps and adjust accordingly. The outlet remembers what was charged and when. The kettle doesn’t just boil water; it contributes to entropy. The air hangs thick, like someone poured a bucket of coconut oil into it. Sometimes, the lights flicker—just enough to make you unsure whether it was a glitch or just your perception blinking.
The sound is strange, too. Not loud. On the contrary: muffled, yet over-detailed. You can hear the plastic ticking inside the microwave. The router’s power brick humming. Somewhere deep in the servers, something is shifting bytes from one place to another. Sometimes it feels like you can hear speech—quiet, machine-like, with a digital accent. But as soon as you try to listen, it vanishes. Only the hum remains. Subtle, but inescapable—like the background drone of a massive city.
Olvir notices: familiar things behave differently. Shadows fall where they shouldn't. Objects in his peripheral vision sometimes shift by a pixel or two—not in his eyes, but in his awareness. As if reality is recalculating, but lagging slightly. It’s better not to look into mirrors—they return the reflection with a delay, always different. He opens the window—the air is fresh, real—but has a taste to it: neon-sharp, like an old retro-wave floppy disk.
He doesn’t know when it started. Maybe the day he came back. Maybe long before that. But now he feels it: the apartment isn’t his. Or worse—too his. To the depth of memory. To the layer where everything is connected.
Sometimes he wakes up to the sound of silence. Not the kind found in forests or late at night, but a thick, deaf stillness, as if someone filtered out everything except the bass of the heart and the rustle of synapses. It makes his teeth ache. Makes him want to open his laptop—just to generate some noise, turn on the lights, bring something old and familiar back.
His vision has become excessive. He’s started to see signals—not in letters or pictures, but as if the motion of electrons paints the air. The router glows cold blue. The Ethernet cable burns warm amber. The old mobile phone in the closet breathes a slow, dim green. When the microwave is on, the walls ripple faintly—like heat haze over asphalt.
Scents have changed too. Gained extra layers. He smells Wi-Fi packets like cheap syrup. Dust in the power supply carries the scent of an elusive, irreproducible glitch. His fingers leave a trail on the keyboard—not of skin, but of meaning—and if Olvir concentrates, he can feel the semantic tint left in the message.
He hears the network living. Not the routers or cables—the network. A soft rustling of logs, blending into a living murmur. DNS queries snapping like claws on tile. A gentle drone of DHCP, especially in the mornings. Sometimes, like a squeak of shoes in an empty hall—an unfamiliar device scanning his subnet. Hollow ICMP pings thumping like footsteps on a copper drum.
His body is changing. Sometimes he realizes he’s holding his paws not as a person would, but as a beast would find comfortable. Sometimes he catches himself standing at a strange angle to the light source, as if trying not to cast a shadow in a certain direction. And rarely—so rarely—his heartbeat seems not rhythmic, but encoded. QSB. QSX. QRV? QRJ?
Outside — it’s worse. Louder. Not to the ears. The world feels closer, denser, and now it presses against all his senses at once. Sounds that used to be mere background now crush him. Traffic lights click like they’re switching people and vehicles between channels. Trams screech out of tune, like a string quartet with broken instruments. Electric buses breathe ozone, but the smell escapes with a metallic aftertaste—like a deprecated protocol. Winter tires with studs sound like dying hard drives. And sometimes—there’s a whisper. Not in his ears—in the back of his mind. As if the network is whispering straight into his skull.
Smells are scrambled. The old city no longer reeks of damp stone and dust—it smells like fragmented data. Frames. Packets. Timestamps. Someone passes by—not a trace of cologne, but the scent of token-based authorization. Olvir feels—doesn’t know, just feels—that the man has a Bluetooth device in his pocket with a wide-open vulnerability. The woman next to him—she’s connected to something that should not be able to speak.
His vision is overloaded. Faces don’t double in his eyes—they double in his perception. Sometimes in a crowd, someone appears too sharp. Too defined. As if they were rendered separately. Like on a separate layer. They might blink off-beat. Glide rather than walk. Or vanish from one end of the street and appear at the other.
He watches—and isn’t sure he sees. A man in line for coffee. A woman with a stroller. A courier. Their voices don’t match their faces. Or their gait. Or their shadows. From them, he feels something wrong. Like chills from heat. Like unprovoked anxiety. Around such people, the air sometimes shivers. Or smells like iron. Or lemon. Or doesn’t smell at all—and that’s the most disturbing.
The electronics around him feel like they breathe. Sometimes—too loudly. He approaches an ATM and feels it watching him—not with a camera, but with its entire construction. At the pharmacy kiosk, he turns away—it’s lying in ambush inside, like a wolf, but older and cleverer than Olvir, forcing him to back off with his tail down. A laptop abandoned in an office window doesn’t reflect the street—it reflects… something else. Not a different place—a different layer. That one. From the night. From the forest. Full of panic from sensing the Other.
Sometimes, someone’s phone feels like a hole. Wide, crushing. Like a draft between worlds. He stares into that opening—and sees a cable hanging from a pole, pulsating like a cluster of veins and nerves. Sees an antenna swaying—and thinks it’s listening. Or repeating.
He can’t explain it. Can’t prove it. He only feels it—eyes, ears, nose, skin. Everything vibrates. Everything speaks. Everything knows.
He drinks—not for the taste, but just to dull the world. At first, it helps: sounds recede, colors and smells fade, signals seem to leak through his fingers. The network quiets down. The air becomes just air again. He almost believes he’s escaped.
But half an hour passes. An hour. And it all comes back. Louder. Meaner.
As if the alcohol scrubbed the old filters clean, and now nothing blocks the flow. Streetlights cut into his eyes. People in the subway don’t leave scents—they leave log trails. Elevator buttons under his fingers feel like open wounds. He walks the street and hears every smartphone in strangers’ pockets muttering to others—short, clipped bursts in a language he doesn’t know. Or maybe he does.
He tries to leave—get out of range, escape the coverage zone. Taxi, bus, commuter train—it doesn’t matter. He heads toward the station—and suddenly finds himself on the same street he started from. GPS freezes, maps spin in circles. Crosswalks loop back. He tries to go on foot—but turns around. The taxi brings him back to where he began. The space clutches him, won’t let go.
The balcony is the last place he can breathe. There’s familiar clutter, the burned-plastic smell, the hum of fan vents. He knows where everything is: which lights blink, which tile hides a cable. He can sit, turn his back on the world, and just exist.
Sometimes it helps. A little. For half an hour.
Then it returns: heat in the back of his skull, fur on end, trembling fingers, a whine on the edge of hearing. The air pressure—like in a “clean” server room. He feels every vibration, every hiccup, every touch of the network on his nerves.
And then he does the only thing that always works. He bites himself. At first lightly, barely grazing with his fangs. Then harder. Until it hurts. Until pain clicks in his head—sharp, clear, contained. Pain is simple. It’s real. Unlike all the rest. He claws at his wrist—not to bleed, but to regain boundaries. Watches the thin streams of blood—so real.
At first, pain helps. Simple, understandable, human. It brings the world back: the shape of objects, the smells, the awareness of his own body. He scratches his skin, tears with his claws, bites—to return. To remind himself: this is him, this is here, this is now.
But each day, it helps less and less.
He tries to trace the logs. Checks call history, browser, terminal, packet routes. Finds strange things. Sessions he doesn’t remember. Files he didn’t launch. Folders with names not born from language but from some algorithm dreaming in his sleep. He deletes them. But they reappear. In another place. With a different timestamp.
The flashes come more often now. Space breaks. The stairwell in his building becomes endless if he stares too long. Doors vibrate slightly, as if under internal pressure. The sound of the ventilation turns into a droning liturgy—with intonation, with breath, cyclical and hypnotic. Sometimes there's someone in the corner of his eye. But when he turns—nothing. Outside, it’s worse. People aren’t quite people anymore. On the back of some, the skin looks melted—pixelated. Others walk too perfectly. Once he looked at a guy in the underpass and felt a snap inside his nose, like a current had surged. A taste of burnt steel filled his mouth. He ran. Didn’t even look back. Later, he couldn’t remember where to.
His gaze has become dangerous. Frozen. Like a cornered wolf. People feel that kind of stare—and avoid meeting his eyes. His movements have turned sharp, angular. Sometimes he jerks without reason, sometimes freezes for minutes, staring at a fixed point. Someone asks if he's okay—and it takes him a second to realize they’re talking to him.
One day he walks the city—just to walk, to shake out the pressure inside. Evening, cold air, streetlights. And suddenly—like someone flipped an invisible switch. Everything shifts: the hum intensifies, city sounds condense, a ripple starts—not in his eyes, in reality itself. He doesn’t remember stepping into traffic. He’s standing in the lane, fists clenched, lips moving—but he isn’t speaking, he’s tuning. A car brakes hard, the driver jumps out, yelling—but Olvir just stares through him. Not angry. Not lost. Just tuned to another frequency. Then—a blackout. The next thing he knows, he’s sitting on a bench at a bus stop. Ears ringing. Blood on his hands, not his.
A few endless days later, he finds himself on Red Square. Just walking. Step by step, like in one of those old dreams you don’t choose. The sky is low, yellowed by city light, wind kicking snowdust around—but he barely feels it. He walks the cobblestones with no goal, no plan. Just walks. Around him: tourists, guards, teens. And—three of them. He spots them instantly. Not because they’re loud—but because they’re the opposite. Too quiet. Cats. Tall, thin. Central Asian, by accent. One’s ginger, in a work jacket. Another’s gray, narrow-nosed with thin fingers. The third—white, nearly colorless, glassy-eyed. They move against the crowd without touching anyone. Their footsteps make no sound. And something is wrong about them. He feels the network weakening around them. Like they carry interference. He freezes—and in that instant, one brushes his shoulder. No pain. Just a trigger. And then—a flash.
He’s no longer man. Nor beast. He is a return signal. His body moves forward on its own. He shoves—hard, precise. The cat hisses, fights back. A scuffle. Faces. Snow. Hands. Claws. Someone bleeds. Someone screams. Someone’s filming. Then—sirens. Voices. The smell of scorched metal and pepper. Cold steel. Cuffs. He doesn’t resist—he barely knows he’s being held.
Next, he’s in a patrol car. Silent. Staring out the window. One officer smokes. Another pulls out a thermos. Casual talk, like it’s just weather. Then—the door opens. A nod: “Go home. Next time, be more careful.”
They drive off. He stands there, unmoving, not believing it happened.
These episodes come more often. Suddenly he’s across town. A shattered phone in hand, a cut on his temple. Or standing in a stairwell holding a boxcutter. His forearms—marked. Some cuts fresh, some not. Someone cleaned them. He doesn’t know who. Maybe himself.
He blinks—and he’s in a corridor. Long office space. Plastic panels, warm light behind glass doors. The walls breathe through air conditioning. He’s cold, though his jacket is zipped. His hands are empty. No bag. No keys. Just a faint tingling in his pawpads, like he’d been typing for hours.
A door opens on its own. Inside—a jackal. Same as always. Slightly wrinkled shirt, photochromic glasses, black coffee scent. He looks up, blinks, and immediately stands.
"Hey. What’s going on? You okay?" He walks over quickly, like he’s afraid Olvir might vanish.
Olvir doesn’t respond. Can’t. In his head—drums and bagpipes. The space in the room feels tilted, off by a few degrees. He hears an autosave trigger at the next desk, and the sound of a document lands somewhere deeper than it should. The jackal grabs his shoulders—firmly but gently.
He nods. Probably. Doesn’t remember.
"I don’t know what’s happening, but honestly—you look rough, man. Want water? A pill? Just sit."
He sits. On a couch. It feels wet, though it’s dry. He looks out the window—and notices the clouds moving backwards. One second. Two. Then everything’s normal again.
"Look," the jackal sits next to him. "I know a psych. Private. Legit. He won’t treat you like a freak. I can give you the number. Or just stay here. No one’s going to bother you. You’re safe."
He nods again. The jackal walks deeper into the office. Someone waves—a fox, maybe? He’s not sure.
He considers asking for help. He is, after all, a citizen. He has dual citizenship—Icelandic and Ruthenian. Technically, he has the right to medical care through the state system. Yes, he could go through a psychiatrist at the local clinic. Yes, they could admit him to a facility. But all he’s heard are stories—of depersonalized wards, of being dismissed, of everything being written into a record that comes back to haunt you. Of how a diagnosis can bar you from working with hardware, restrict travel, revoke access to certain contracts. Especially if the diagnosis sounds "unusual."
He remembers how in Iceland, a psychiatrist might share coffee with a patient, talk things through, propose therapy like a partner. Here—he's afraid to even search for symptoms. Afraid that someone might knock after that. He’s heard stories. He knows the stories.
He knows he needs help. But trust is gone.
New Year’s is approaching. He feels it in the city's rhythm. Traffic growing. Lights multiplying. People bunching together. The world hums like an overloaded high-voltage line. Every garland feels like a waveguide. Every sparkle—a trigger.
He doesn’t sleep. Can’t. He paces the apartment, tracking impulses crawling along the floor. He feels them—with his pawpads, the scruff of his neck, his taste. Electric crackle. Burn. Fake honey on his tongue. The fridge hums like it opened a tunnel outside. He tries to disconnect. Turns off the routers. Covers the screens. Draws the curtains. But it doesn’t help. He feels the network in his bones. In his wrists—like current. In his chest—like a pulsing magnetic field. He realizes: there’s no place left to hide. It’s already inside.
Toward evening, his movements become jittery, feverish. He presses his palms to his temples, stares at the wall, howling. Pain no longer works. Bites, scratches, cuts—snuffed out by the noise like matches in a hurricane. He doesn’t remember if he’s hurt himself today, or just thinks he has. He walks into the bathroom—and forgets why. Stands in front of the mirror. Looks at himself. His eyes seem alien, irises gone—just black. Light vibrates. The image doubles. A faint interface flickers—as if someone opened a console over his face. Commands. Processes. Errors. He blinks—the interface vanishes. Or does it?
He steps onto the balcony. The city glows like an overheated matrix. The holiday is everywhere, but he can’t hear people. Only ringing. Only the constant pressure, like something tugging his mind out—through his skin, through his skull, into the network. He curls up. Leans against the concrete. Claws at it. Breathes too fast. Everything inside him is panicking without language. Only pulses.
Olvir circles the apartment. He doesn’t remember when he started, but his steps fall into a loop. Shadows and reflections glide across the ceiling with microsecond precision, each frame seemingly pre-rendered. He doesn’t turn on the lights—too bright. Doesn’t play music—his head’s already an orchestra.
Quarter to midnight. Everything sharpens.
Lights flicker in neighboring windows. Each flash—a jolt, a signal, a command. One window’s color shift matches the tic in his nerve. He’s not surprised. Just breathes. Then—five minutes left.
The screen is off, but the stream begins. Doesn’t matter whether he watches—he’ll hear it anyway.
The president. The address. The voice. That voice—calm, measured, enveloping.
“Dear citizens, esteemed residents of Ruthenia…”
These words don’t sound—they infiltrate. The resonance bypasses ears, goes straight down the spine. In the background—the network begins to synchronize. Pages open on their own, nodes respond. People start writing greetings—and Olvir feels it, like ripples in water.
“We conclude a challenging year…”
He breathes. Slowly. Counts each exhale.
The voice splits. Behind the official tone—a layer. A rustle, distortion, as if a second version leaks through the noise. It sounds different, with other inflections. And it holds the truth. Bare, terse, scorched.
“We continue to fight, though we avoid speaking of it directly. There’s little money left… I hope we can make it through another year…”
Olvir freezes. This isn’t just interference. Not just a corrupted stream. He realizes he’s catching the second wave—unencoded, internal. Meant to stay within the system, between levels.
The speech isn’t for him. But he hears it.
“We’ll share the burdens evenly among you, but we’ll make the decisions ourselves…”
The network trembles. The air in the room trembles. He sinks to the floor. Back to the wall, forehead to knees. He needs grounding. Any grounding. Just not to dissolve.
“Happy New Year, dear citizens…”
His legs give out. Claws dig into his palms. Blood flows. He’s shaking. The speech ends—but doesn’t leave. It loops in him, like a plastic bag caught in a fan. Each repetition increases the pressure.
Outside—fireworks. Inside—a vacuum.
He doesn’t remember standing up. Only that his legs carry him to the window. He throws it wide open, climbs onto the ledge. He sees the city. Lights. Flares. Cars. Everything shrouded in mist. Not from weather—from signal. Everything is wrapped in the network, like a second skin.
He looks at the sky. It’s bright yellow from lights and fireworks. But suddenly it seems—something moves beneath the cloud layer. Something else.
And in that moment, he gives in. Stops resisting.
No longer tries to “return.” Doesn’t seek pain. Doesn’t mute the senses.
He allows himself to be part of the stream.
He becomes a receiver. A bridge. The wave passes through him without reflection.
And—for the first time in weeks—there is silence.
Not the absence of sound. Clarity.
The world still hums, vibrates, rushes ahead.
But inside him—there is a pause.
He comes to as if exhaling for the first time in ages. He doesn’t jerk upright, doesn’t panic—just opens his eyes. Smoothly. Calmly. As if waking up in an unfamiliar place but knowing nothing here means harm. The back of his head aches—the balcony floor is still cold and unyielding. But the pain isn’t angry, doesn’t demand attention. It’s just a fact. Clear. Human.
He sits up. Slowly, carefully. Movements gentle. Inside—no panic. No despair. No dread that a single twitch will shatter the fragile silence. Nothing shatters. Everything is... still.
He feels it with his whole body. No noise. No vibration. No violent flare of light. The network doesn’t claw into his thoughts. It no longer forces its way in, doesn’t scratch from the inside. It’s there—alongside him. Calm. Balanced. Warm.
Olvir senses it like the heat from a vent or the low tremor of a subway beneath his feet—a presence. Still strange. But no longer hostile.
He exhales—and realizes he’s breathing easily. Not gasping, not gulping air like after a panic attack. Just breathing. No pressure on his chest. No racing pulse.
He looks out—and sees the snow.
Doesn’t register it at first. Just soft light, distant fireworks, a shift in the air. Then—flakes. Quiet. Real. Settling on the railing, his shoulders, melting on his nose. He blinks—and it strikes him how... normal this feels. After everything—just snow. Just a balcony. Just a city.
He stays there. Leans back against the wall, pulls his knees in, wraps himself in a blanket. The snow drifts onto the balcony, dusts his ears, his muzzle. Cold at first—then not. He feels it ease.
For the first time in many days, he can simply sit and be. Not fight. Not shield. Not mute the signal. Not bite until he bleeds. Not flee in circles. Just be. In his body. In his home. In this city.
The world hasn’t become safe. He knows that. There’s still the network. Still signals, glitches, noise. But now... they don’t attack. Don’t demand. Don’t claw at the door. Either they’ve retreated—or he’s no longer foreign to them.
For the first time in ages, he no longer feels the weight of loneliness.
