The Weight of the InvisibleChapter 1:
The StaticElias lived in the city of Oakhaven, a place where the sky was perpetually bruised by the neon glow of server farms and the relentless hum of the digital grid. In 2026, silence was a luxury few could afford.
Elias was a "Filter Architect." His entire job consisted of designing algorithms that stripped the "noise" out of people's lives—blocking unwanted ads, smoothing over political unrest in news feeds, and ensuring that no one ever had to feel a difficult emotion they hadn't opted into. He was successful, comfortable, and profoundly empty.
The emptiness didn't feel like sadness. It felt like static.
One Tuesday, while debugging a sequence of code intended to suppress "existential anxiety" keywords for a major pharmaceutical client, Elias's screen flickered. A single line of text appeared, bypassing his firewalls. It wasn't a virus; it was a quote, stripped of attribution:
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
Elias paused. His finger hovered over the 'Delete' key. In his world, "rest" meant a chemically induced sleep or a VR vacation to a simulated beach. But this text felt... heavy. Like real matter in a world of holograms.