The next morning, Frei sat outside Dr. Maeda's office for thirty-two minutes.
He watched the same three people walk by the glass door. Over and over. Same man with the red umbrella. Same woman with the limp. Same delivery kid with the green backpack. On a loop.
It didn't make sense.
None of it did.
He thought about Naomi. The photograph. The line scribbled on the back „Draft 5.2 still unstable."
Who was writing drafts of people's lives?
Of his life?
"Come in, Frei," Maeda said.
The doctor stood by the window, staring at the Tokyo skyline like he wasn't surprised to see him.
As Frei sat, Maeda turned slowly, hands folded behind his back.
"I've been expecting this."
Frei's eyes narrowed. "Expecting what?"
"The collapse of structure. Memory bleed. Cognitive recursion. The symptoms are all lining up."
Maeda's voice had changed. Less clinical. More... precise. Like he was reading from a script he'd memorized too well.
"I think it's time," he added.
"Time for what?"
Maeda opened a cabinet and pulled out an old, thick binder with a red rubber band around it.
CANDIDATE: FREI
TEST SERIES: 5.2
MODULE: UNLOCK-BLUEPRINT RECALL (RESTRICTED)
"Blueprint recall?" Frei said.
Maeda sat, placed the binder on the table, and opened it to reveal a series of printed brain scans, flowcharts, and pages filled with variables and timestamps. It wasn't medical. It was architectural ...like his memories were part of a planned structure.
"It's a memory-mapping technique," Maeda explained. "We simulate a closed psychological space. A maze built entirely from your subconscious. You move through it. See what parts resist you."
Frei shook his head. "You want to... put me inside my own brain?"
"Think of it more like walking through your coding. If something wasn't supposed to be there
maybe it wasn't written in properly. Or maybe it wasn't written at all."
"Wait, what do you mean coding?"
Maeda smiled faintly. "You've already started to suspect it, haven't you?"
*later that Night*
They went underground.
A long corridor beneath Maeda's office, through a reinforced door that hummed as it opened.
The lab was sterile but strange
machines built from old typewriters wired into modern terminals, cables running into a reclined black leather chair in the center of the room.
Frei hesitated.
Maeda placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Whatever happens, remember: It only works if you believe it was real."
He didn't know what that meant.
But he sat down.
The headpiece came down. The machine whirred.
YOU ARE READING
Factured Strings
Mystery / ThrillerFrei, a tall, reclusive man living in modern Tokyo, battles with depression and dissociation. As his life spirals into surreal events and strange encounters, he begins to uncover disturbing truths about himself, memory, and reality. Slowly, he reali...
