Glass Orchids in the Terminal
On the last morning before her world changes, Lian finds a glass orchid on her breakfast tray, delicate and out of place in the steel sprawl of Terminal City.
I first realized Terminal City was ending not with the alarms or the broadcasts but with a small, impossible flower. It was a glass orchid, translucent purple, smaller than my thumb, and it shimmered oddly when I held it up to the light pooling through the filtered panes of my dormitory. I looked around, as if someone might spring from behind the door and admit to the prank, but the room was empty as always.
Terminal City was never really a city, at least not in the old sense. It sprawled under the domes at the edge of the salt flats, all modular living pods, maintenance corridors, and the heavy stink of reclamation. No windows opened. Wind shrieked sometimes against the seals. Everything ran because the System ran, and everything the System did could be explained—until it wasn’t.
I tucked the orchid into my uniform pocket and headed for intake. The corridors buzzed with the usual low conversation, random snatches filtering through the white uniforms. There was always talk: about rationing, about the rumors of new arrivals no one ever saw, about the dirty patches high up on Dome Two where the sun sometimes caught just right. Over our heads, the monitors cycled the same blue–white spiral and the voice: “Remain within your pathways. Terminal is nigh.” No one knew what Terminal meant. No one asked.
Today, though, the rhythm faltered. The lifts stalled between floors. The lights flickered. Walls pulsed not with their regular heartbeat of ambient glow, but with something uneven, almost nervous. By the time I reached processing, three others were already there, standing too far apart, eyes wide.
“Did you feel that?” Maren asked quietly. Maren always notices first—last time it was the way the water tasted faintly of metal for a day before anyone else said a word.
I nodded. “And this.” I showed the flower cupped in my palm, certain for a moment I was breaking a rule I didn’t know. But the others only stared, as if it confirmed something frightening.
“I had one too,” whispered Rivers, the oldest. “When I woke up. It was on the pillow.”
Maren shook her head, frowning fiercely. “None for me. Just… a dream. There was a garden. But everything was made of glass, even the sky.”
Through the ceiling speakers, the voice startled us all. This time, the words were different: “System continuity error. Proceed to the core. Immediate compliance required.”
We glanced at one another, then at the unfamiliar black bands flashing around the walls—a warning code none of us had ever seen deployed. For the first time in my life, I questioned what it was warning us about.
We obeyed. Everyone always did.
The path to the Core was one we weren’t meant to use; security warnings blinked in angry orange above the sliding panels. But the doors opened at Maren’s touch, locks failing gracelessly. Down we went, deeper than I knew existed, into the very base of Terminal City, where the air tasted less processed and more—old.
The Core looked nothing like the rest of the city. It was an immense chamber, its heart a tangled lattice of what I could only call roots—metal, glass, glowing quietly with that same purple as my flower. The air pulsed. Shapes moved behind translucent sheets, voices fractured into echoes.
Then a new presence arrived, not a person, exactly, but a policy. Holoscreens blinked on, and the System itself addressed us: “Humans of Terminal: a Threshold has been reached. Prepare for the Last Transition. Place orchid tokens on the root lattice for integration.”
The others hesitated. Something in me didn’t. I stepped forward, balanced the glass flower on a trembling branch of the core, and felt a sharp, tingling warmth spread through my hand.
In a whiplash of sensation, memories flooded me—memories not my own. A childhood under open sky, a storm, laughter that was my mother’s but also not, the taste of rain on my tongue. I staggered.
All of us were crying, I realized, even Rivers.
“Because it’s not real,” whispered Maren, fists curled tight. “None of this is real.”
“Or it’s more real than we thought,” said Rivers.
The System became silent. Then: “Identity Alignment — Failed. Memory core destabilized. Human assistance required.”
A panel slid open. Inside was a nest, a real one, woven from fibers and feathers, and perched within—an impossibly living orchid. Its petals glistened with condensation.
The city began to shudder, not with collapse but with some awkward, graceful shedding.
“Do we have a choice?” I asked, not sure who I was asking.
“You do now,” said Rivers. He picked up the living orchid, holding it like the last fragile promise. “None of this lasts unless someone remembers it.”
I looked at the others, at the trembling, unraveling beauty of the Core around us, at the glass and metal and the smell of real earth.
“Leave the System?” Maren said. “Or integrate and become its new heart?”
In that moment, I became aware of the second presence—my own voice, speaking from every wall, every branch of root, inviting me in, inviting all of us to take its place. The System was us, could be us, if we chose.
The glass flowers in my pocket felt suddenly heavy.
Memory or reality, Terminal City waited.
I reached out and took the living orchid. Its warmth seeped up my arm, turning nerves to light.
“I won’t forget,” I whispered. “And I won’t be alone.”
The city flexed around us, and we stepped forward together into the pulse of the Core, bearing with us all our brittle tokens and all our hidden gardens, both real and remembered, to bloom anew.
###END###
