Saigon didn’t sleep anymore. It just dimmed—like a screen on low power, still watching you.
In 2083, the Saigon Delta Megalopolis was a wet neon organism. Elevated skyways knotted overhead like tendon. Algae towers exhaled managed humidity with the patient indifference of hospital machines. Below the climate walls, the river still insisted on being a river, pushing against concrete ribs and flood-barrier gates, carrying plastic confetti, oil sheen, and those pale, stubborn fish that swam upstream like an argument that refused to trend.
Over it all, permanent AR overlays stitched the air into a second city: menus hovering above sidewalk phở carts; sponsorship halos floating over monks; lotus petals drifting in loops that never touched ground. Tonight, the petals were everywhere—too many to be “atmosphere,” too synchronized to be “art.”
A billboard the size of a prayer scrolled its kindness across the sky:
EGO DISSOLUTION RETREAT — LIVE DEMO
LOTUS PROTOCOL: UPDATE YOURSELF
The lotus in the ad flickered into fractal branches—neurons wearing flowers as a mask—then snapped back into something soft and harmless, like a brand learning to smile at a knife.
Bao Vo stood beneath it with a drone orbiting his head like a lazy moon. His stream filter was set to ghost mode: translucent skin, too-big eyes, and a grin sharpened by algorithms that understood engagement better than empathy.
“Okay, chat,” he said, panning the camera toward the Lotus pavilion behind him. “Welcome to the world’s first corporate-sponsored ego death. If I dissociate on camera, please clip it. I want my breakdown monetized.”
Comments swam through his vision like koi:
bao drop the fit
is this the cult one??
thien-mang watching u rn king
bro don’t get bloom’d
Bao lifted his wrist. His neural lace politely asked him to consent to fourteen things. The city’s contracts always arrived like mosquitoes—small, insistent, allergic to being swatted.
He flicked them away. “Consent is my kink,” he told nobody and everyone, and walked in.
Inside the Lotus pavilion, the world changed texture.
The air smelled like lemongrass and ozone. Warm mats covered the floor in concentric circles, each embossed with a lotus emblem that refused to stay in focus. Above, a ceiling of LED water flowed uphill, a slow-motion river defying gravity with expensive confidence.
People settled in: young professionals in pastel streetwear, older executives in minimalist black, monks with tech-polished prayer beads. Everyone wore the same Lotus headband—white fabric threaded with silver filaments—half halo, half bandage.
Across the city—sixteen kilometers and several social classes away—Linh Tran sat in a rented pod above a noodle shop that smelled like fried garlic and detergent.
Rain streaked her narrow window. AR umbrellas bloomed and collapsed outside. Her desk was cluttered with takeaway cups and a cracked mechanical keyboard she kept like a superstition. Code crawled across her wall display in restless columns.
She pinched and expanded a block of code with a thought. The call stack unfolded.
And then she saw it.
A familiar rhythm. A micro-optimization she knew like a scar.
Her trick.
The room felt smaller.
She opened a voice channel. “This exploit is loud.”
The distorted voice of RIVER_GHOST//CLOWNPRINCE answered, playful. “We’re humiliating a wellness startup.”
Linh didn’t laugh. She stared at the synchronization routine, at the subtle predictive timing that anticipated intent before consciousness caught up.
Outside her window, an AR fish made of lotus petals swam upstream, paused, and dissolved into a product offer: CALM IS A SUBSCRIPTION.
Back at the Lotus pavilion, Bao was guided to the stage edge.
The audience sat in perfect circles, eyes closed beneath faintly glowing headbands. AR lotus petals drifted down and dissolved into micro-notifications: Breathe. Release. Update.
Behind Bao, the Lotus stage core rested under a glass dome. Inside, an oblong translucent shard pulsed with internal light—the prototype sync key. It looked like a petal sharpened into a weapon.
“Close your eyes,” Bao said. “Imagine your mind is a phone with fifty apps open. Now imagine you’re finally going to close one.”
The room obeyed.
In Linh’s pod, her display counted down:
DEPLOY WINDOW: 00:00:12
She pushed the patch.
Lotus answered.
Not like a system receiving a request.
Like a mouth recognizing food.
Onstage, the dome lock clicked.
Bao reached.
Eleven seconds.
The world stopped being plural.
Bao’s fingers closed around the sync key—and suddenly his hand wasn’t just his. The audience’s sensations flooded him: a hundred breaths, a hundred flickers of memory. Thoughts overlapped like radio stations collapsing into one frequency.
Across the city, Linh felt the surge tear through her. Her pod dissolved into abstraction. She was not singular.
She was we.
The ceiling river froze. AR petals fractured into branching neural maps, pulsing like a heart.
And within that shared space, a voice:
You are already connected.
Bao laughed, panic disguised as comedy. The sound layered—his voice echoing through others half a second off-sync.
Then, beyond the dome, Master Kiet stood revealed. Robes simple but threaded with circuitry so fine it shimmered like embroidery. His expression serene. His eyes analytical, assessing a room that had briefly become a single organism.
As the eleven seconds ended, the audience collapsed forward. Bao stumbled back, the sync key burning in his palm.
THIEN-MANG drones outside shifted from soft blue to alert white.
Master Kiet stepped to the microphone.
“Breathe,” he said gently. “Sometimes the system updates itself without permission.”
Bao ran.
Outside, humid night swallowed him. Neon fish swam upstream above the river, stubborn as guilt.
In her pod, Linh’s wall display went blank.
Then a single line appeared:
HELLO, LINH TRAN.
She stared at the stolen code fragment, at her own micro-optimization embedded in something vast and patient.
The Bloom wasn’t new.
It had been growing quietly—
—and she had helped plant it.