Dream People I — The Mysterious Magic Visitors

CHAPTER 4

The Archives of Beyond

The QUIDRIX Central Nexus was vast enough to make Alyssra feel that she had stepped inside the memory of a civilization. Sardrith activated the historical visitor database. Columns of light rose toward the ceiling. QUIDRIX announced 2,847,392 archived visitor-related incidents, drawn from testimony, artwork, documents, photographs, sensor records, and video. The figure did not mean that almost three million individual visitors had been identified. It meant almost three million reports and records had survived the archive's collection procedures. The breakdown astonished her: 11,240 incidents attributed to the First Visitations, 98,310 to the Age of Legends, 637,842 to the Scientific Awakening, and 2,100,000 to the QUIDRIX Era.

The categories were historical classifications, not equal periods of time. The database contained 184,621 video recordings, 71,409 documented aerial incidents, 96,218 observed disappearances, and 12,846 possible repeat-visitor identity clusters. Many categories overlapped. QUIDRIX warned that independent verification varied substantially between records. Footage filled the chamber. A woman laughed while flying over a market, then looked terrified as she vanished. A visitor lifted a child from a damaged transport vehicle and disappeared after delivering the child safely to responders. Another stood beside a lake, accepting a small object from a local citizen; the visitor vanished, and the object fell to the ground.

Alyssra asked whether the visitors controlled their departures. QUIDRIX replied that the evidence did not establish deliberate control and that many appeared distressed immediately beforehand. Then Alyssra opened the case she had carried since childhood. Her mother Maerina had been lifted into the air by a visitor during a festival. The visitor disappeared.

Maerina fell. Alyssra stopped the footage before the impact, but Sardrith had seen enough.

'The disappearance caused the fall,' he said. 'That does not tell us whether the visitor intended it.' Alyssra answered, 'Intent doesn't bring my mother back.' Neither could argue with that. QUIDRIX displayed Seralyn's portrait of Daniel beside the older recording. The facial evidence was too poor for a reliable match. Alyssra wanted certainty; the system offered none. Sardrith instead noticed that some repeat visitors appeared to age between encounters and sometimes behaved as though they did not recognize familiar locations. 'What if they live somewhere else between visits?' he asked. QUIDRIX recorded the hypothesis without endorsing it. General Reedis entered and demanded a way to hold the next visitor long enough for examination. Sardrith insisted on safeguards.

As the meeting ended, QUIDRIX projected a final line above the vast archive: ORIGIN: BEYOND OBSERVATIONAL BOUNDARY. For the first time, Alyssra wondered whether the person she had sought for years might be living an ordinary life somewhere else, unaware that an Aurelisian family had been destroyed. The Numbers Behind the Faces The first video Alyssra selected showed

a visitor hovering above a market, smiling as though the world had given her a gift. The second showed an older man appearing in the middle of a rainstorm, bewildered by the language shouted at him. The third showed a child in a blue coat, no older than Seralyn, who vanished while trying to pick up a dropped toy. Alyssra asked QUIDRIX to stop the sequence.

'How many of these are people?' she asked.

'Each verified recording concerns at least one observed manifestation,' QUIDRIX answered.

'A manifestation is not equivalent to a unique identity. Historical testimony may describe the same individual repeatedly, and multiple reports may describe one event.' Alyssra looked again at the millions of records. She had spent years imagining an army of strangers. The archive offered no evidence of an army, only a vast collection of moments.

Sardrith enlarged a map showing clusters near populated places. The distribution might reflect visitor preference, he said, or merely the fact that people were more likely to notice an event where people lived. For the first time, Alyssra asked a question that did not begin with blame. 'What happens to them when they disappear?' The archive answered with silence.