A stylized image of a humanoid figure with circuitry on its body, looking up at a giant shadowy monster over a futuristic cityscape with holographic interfaces.

In a near-future dominated by ubiquitous neural interfaces, a clandestine corporate project aimed at harvesting the extraphysical substrate of human consciousness unleashes a horrifying resonance with a primeval, trans-dimensional entity, forcing humanity to confront the true nature of existence and redefine its place in the cosmos. The year is 2077. Nanotech bio-integration is commonplace. Neural Lace technology (NeoLace™) has made seamless human-machine interfacing (HMI) the norm. Global connectivity is absolute; individuals inhabit a pervasive augmented reality overlay. Information streams directly into minds, memories are sharable, and communication is instantaneous. Life is efficient, optimized, and, for the most part, superficially content. Underlying this veneer, however, a simmering uneasiness persists: instances of "Echoes"—brief, inexplicable cognitive dissonances, glimpses of bizarre, non-Euclidean geometries, and whispered fragments of alien phonemes—are on the rise. They are dismissed by the omnipotent tech corporations as neurological glitches, minor computational hiccups in the vast HMI network. Dr. Aris Thorne, a disgraced neuro-ontologist sidelined for his radical theories on the extraphysical substrate of consciousness, is reactivated by the shadowy "Project Chimera." Led by the brilliant but ruthless Dr. Seraphina Vance, Chimera's objective is to not merely interface with the human mind, but to map and harvest the very essence of consciousness from its See more