The space did not resist me.
There was no lock to pick, no threshold to earn. I stepped in and the system adjusted around me, as it always had. Light shifted. Distance softened.
I stood still.
The room waited.
Tools were present. That wasn't unusual. They always were. What changed was that nothing requested my use of them.
No prompt. No task phrased as necessity.
Silence stretched without penalty.
My body prepared anyway. Small shifts. Attention opened outward. The familiar readiness assembled itself without instruction.
I noticed how fast it happened.
I did nothing.
The readiness stayed. It didn't burn out. It didn't escalate. It waited for permission.
I became acutely aware of how much of my life had been lived inside that moment. The breath before stepping forward, the pause before the offering.
Here, it was optional.
The discomfort wasn't fear.
It was vacancy.
Not absence of meaning. Absence of use.
A panel illuminated beside me, easily ignored.
You may proceed without contribution.
The phrasing was careful. It didn't forbid. It didn't shame. It didn't dare me.
It removed necessity.
I stepped forward without adjusting anything.
Nothing collapsed.
I stepped again.
The room did not correct itself around me. Friction remained where it belonged.
This felt wrong.
Behind me, the familiar pressure gathered, not imposed but remembered. The sense that something would be lost if I did not intervene. That I would forfeit relevance. That this was wasteful.
I did not answer. I let it stay.
My body reacted unevenly. The urge to justify. To frame restraint as choice. As meaning.
I did not do that.
I stopped calling this choice.
I did not offer skill.
I did not anticipate.
I did not correct.
The system continued.
Slightly rougher. Slightly slower.
Still intact.
Still adequate.
That was the second cut.
I stayed long enough for the body to understand that nothing catastrophic would follow.
Not relief.
When I left, the room did not mark me as changed.
It couldn't.
Interruption left no trace.