The light from the doorway faded, leaving them in a realm suspended in twilight. There was no ground, no sky—just a vast horizon of shifting static, like the noise between television channels. "Where are we now?" Aarav asked, voice echoing. Meera turned slowly. "This isn't a world—it's a transmission." Raj squinted into the gray haze. "Are we being watched?" Then they heard it—a faint hum, rhythmic like a heartbeat, but electronic. Ravi pointed. "There." A blinking red tower rose in the distance, flickering between dimensions. "We follow the signal," Meera said. "It's calling us."
Each step felt like walking through water and electricity. Time bent strangely—Rana spoke a sentence before he opened his mouth, Raj's shadow walked ahead of him. "Reality's unstable here," Aarav muttered. "We're in an interstitial space." Static curled at their feet, coiling around ankles like fog. "Stay close," Ravi warned. Suddenly, Meera stopped. "Did you hear that?" A whisper: "Rewrite me." A shape flickered ahead—part human, part television static, flickering in and out of coherence. "Someone's stuck here," Meera said. "Or… many someones." The figure blinked away. "They're memories," Raj realized. "Trying to escape the interference."
As they neared the tower, the ground solidified into glass. Beneath their feet—countless versions of themselves flickering like old videotapes. In one, Ravi was alone. In another, Raj and Meera never met. Aarav gasped. "These are alternate drafts!" A voice rang out. "Correct." From behind the tower, a figure stepped forward—part machine, part human, with a screen for a face. "I am Archivist-0," it said. "Curator of discarded timelines." Meera raised her chin. "Then you know who we are." The Archivist nodded. "You are anomalies. Survivors. Intruders." The screen glitched, revealing Meera's face. "You must be catalogued."
Rana stepped forward. "We're not here to be filed away." The Archivist cocked its head. "Everything must be classified, preserved, or erased." It raised its mechanical hand. "You have rewritten too much. You risk narrative collapse." Suddenly, lightning crackled across the static sky. "That sounds like a threat," Ravi said. "It is protocol," the Archivist replied. "You must submit to segmentation." Glass beneath them cracked. The tower pulsed. "Run!" Meera shouted. Tendrils of static erupted from the tower, chasing them across the fragile surface. Time stuttered—seconds repeated, skipped, rewound. "We're being edited!" Raj shouted. "Not if we edit back!" Aarav snapped.
They ducked into the base of the tower. Inside, the walls were made of screens, all showing loops of their lives. Ravi reached out and touched one. "These are drafts—failed attempts at us." Meera touched the golden page, which shimmered. "We can overwrite this." The Archivist's voice boomed from above. "Interference will result in permanent deletion." The tower shook. "He's destabilizing the feed!" Rana growled. "Then stabilize it!" Meera cried, placing the golden page into a console at the tower's core. It fused with the system, and everything slowed. The screens paused. The static faded. "Rewriting," the console said.
From the tower, a beam of golden light shot into the sky. The Archivist screamed—a mechanical, glitching howl. "You've corrupted the archive!" "No," Ravi said. "We restored what mattered." The screens now showed just one story—one timeline. Theirs. The Archivist's body began to unravel, turning into lines of corrupted code. "I was order," it gasped. "You are chaos." "We're freedom," Meera corrected. With a final pulse, the tower stabilized. The static around them turned into stars, constellations forming stories in the sky. "It's done," Aarav said. "This place is ours now." But the tower kept humming.
Ravi turned to Meera. "You feel that?" She nodded. "There's more beyond this." A new console rose before them. A question blinked on screen: "Do you wish to transmit?" "Transmit what?" Raj asked. "Ourselves," Meera said. "Our story. Into the void. Into creation." Ravi placed his hand on the console. "Let them know we were here." The screen flashed. A pulse shot into the stars. Somewhere, a child opened a book. Somewhere, a dream shifted course. "We've begun a new frequency," Meera whispered. "And we're not alone anymore." The stars blinked in response.