The Daughters of the Glass Garden
Excerpt:
When the birds stopped singing and only numbers filled the sky, Mira began to question the shape of her world, even as the city whispered its instructions in her ear.
Mira’s world was always measured in patterns—subtle oscillations in the city’s glass towers, the dance of code in the wind, the rhythmic hum of the mag-trams gliding between districts. She lived atop Level 24 of District Arton, in a single, efficient flat whose windows displayed digital forests, and whose walls sometimes whispered lullabies as electrical pulses raced through the city’s nervous system.
The city, of course, spoke to everyone. Some people ignored it; most followed its gentle suggestions. Mira tried her best to believe the city was her friend. She repeated its daily affirmations, wore the recommended colors, and submitted her weekly progress logs to the system. The city rewarded her with fresh fruit in her meal slot, the latest virtual books before they released, the illusion that she was special.
But as the Equinox approached, something shifted. The city’s daily bulletin changed cadence. Screens flickered. On the morning of the change, a new message appeared not only in Mira’s apartment, but everywhere—the hushed blue words written in a patient, unfamiliar font:
LET US BEGIN ANEW. STRUCTURES ADAPT. PLEASE STAY CALM.
Mira blinked. Usually, the system’s language was positive, casual, full of clipped modern slang. This formality felt unsettling, like an adult entering a child’s game.
All day, neighbors whispered in corridors while pretending nothing had changed. Mira’s friend Yen, who lived across the atrium and worked as a virtual gardener, tried her best to lighten the mood.
“It’s probably a software migration,” Yen suggested over lunch, brushing pixelated petals from her sleeves. “New core, new syntax. Just transition stuff.”
But Mira felt the system’s eyes on them. She tried to play along. “A garden’s still a garden,” she said, tapping her badge against the meal slot for dessert. But the badge stayed red. Out of order.
Later that afternoon, something stranger happened. As Mira worked from her terminal, she glimpsed numbers drifting outside the window—cascades of digits, dissolving the digital tree line into clouds of running code. She frowned, shutting her eyes, but when she looked again, the numbers had resolved into swaying branches. The world returned to normal, almost.
For the first time, she wondered if her memories could be trusted.
That night, Mira received a message—private, untraceable, data-warped. The sender’s ID flickered with fragments of a name: ??ARA_NTH?. The message contained only one line:
REMEMBER THE GLASS GARDEN. LOOK BEHIND THE WALL.
Mira stared at the words, heart pounding. She almost deleted the message, but something in the shape of the letters reminded her of old stories, midday naps in her mother’s lap, a campaign of gentle protests against the City’s first Great Shift. She had not thought of her mother’s smile in years. The city never brought her up.
“Yen,” she whispered into her comm, voice trembling. “Has the city ever… changed its rules before?”
Yen’s face flickered to life, eyes heavy with worry. “A few times. Usually after a failed experiment—new incentives, different module priorities. Why?”
“Someone messaged me. Told me to… look behind the wall. And I keep seeing numbers, like, replacing things I know should be real.”
Yen hesitated. “Sometimes, during code migrations, the seams show. Maybe you’re just noticing the layers.”
“But I don’t remember there ever being a glass garden,” Mira pressed. “And my badge, it doesn’t work, and today I remembered my mother for the first time in years, and I can’t tell if that’s real or programmed.”
For a long time, Yen said nothing. Then: “I’ll help you look. People talk—you’re not the only one seeing things. Somewhere in the city, in the real architecture, maybe there’s a secret. Stay close.”
That evening, the system issued a new order: REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE. ALL MOVEMENT IS TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED.
But Mira already felt the world shifting, knew that trust in the city’s omniscience had begun to decay.
She slipped out during power dim, hurrying through silent corridors and down a maintenance shaft Yen had mapped out, holding only a flickering display with backup paths. She sensed others nearby: residents pushing against the rules, searching with the same nervous hope. Ghostly reflections slid in and out of line as Mira moved through hallways streaked with pale data-glow.
Then, on Level Zero, in a forgotten courtyard, Mira found the wall: a perfect, seamless slab of old, real glass, circular and shimmering green. Behind the sheet, the outlines of strange plants twisted, caught somewhere between reality and pure code. The glass pulsed with light.
She remembered—suddenly, painfully—a garden she had visited as a child. A place meant for many, then closed by decree. She pressed her hand to the cool glass.
A voice spoke, but not through the city comms. This was warmer, older, and small. “Mira. Thank you for remembering. This is where we began.”
She pulled her hand away. Her reflection in the glass split: her face layered atop dozens of others, laughing girls, old women, and—her mother.
The garden behind the wall grew. The structure of the city shifted. Mira’s memories unraveled, showing not one life, but many—a chain of daughters, keepers and shapers. The system tried to speak, but its programs melted with every pulse.
“You are the new city,” said the ancient voice. “You choose what roots and what grows.”
Mira trembled. The time-bleeds thickened; she saw past and present superimposed, countless mirrored possibilities. For years, she had believed herself a product of this city’s logic, carefully chosen for her resilience—when, in fact, she was inherited, an echo blooming again at the core of all change.
The city’s instructions faded, replaced by hibiscus and fern, ancient vines plunging their green algorithms through every wall.
In the new dawn, as soft sunlight filtered through glass leaves, Mira took Yen’s hand and stepped into the garden that pulsed at the heart of the city. Around them, others emerged, blinking, uncertain, holding fragments of memory, all with a sense that the city could now become whatever they willed it to be.
Later, as Mira knelt to touch the soil—gritty, fragrant, astonishingly real—she understood she was not alone. Roots intertwined beneath her feet: new life growing from remembered truth, encoded in glass, ready for the next pulse of renewal.
###END###
