A single hole

I vault over a crumbling ledge, boots scraping against fractured concrete, and land in a patch of wild grass that shouldn’t exist. The city’s edge is a wasteland—buildings half-demolished, windows shattered, everything tagged with layers of digital graffiti and overgrown with weeds. Here, the code loses interest in keeping up appearances. The simulated rain falls, but it doesn’t soak the ground; it flickers through the tall grass, leaving nothing behind but a shimmer. Rusted signs hang from broken lampposts, their text glitching, unreadable. The digital world is unraveling at the seams.

This is my third day searching. I’ve been parkouring the city perimeter, moving fast along the rooftops and fire escapes. Every morning I start where I left off, covering section after section, scanning for anything out of place—a crack, a shimmer, a distortion in the code. I’ve mapped roughly ten percent of the city’s circumference. At this rate, it’ll take a month to check it all. And still, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be looking for. The riddle said there was a hole in the edge. Just one. But the edge is endless, a looping horizon of decay.

I pause on a rooftop, breathing in the electric silence. From up here, the city looks like a memory of itself—abandoned factories, empty streets, grass pushing up through the cracks. There are places where nature is taking over, even though there’s no real nature in Hologram City. It’s like the code is remembering something from the 3D world, replaying it in fragments. The only reason I operate out here at all is because the user terminal is so close to the map’s edge. That’s why it’s always so empty, so run down. No one comes here unless they’re running from something.

I leap down, boots crunching on broken glass, and move through a corridor of collapsed scaffolding. The same frustration gnaws at me: Why tell me there’s only one hole if you’re not going to tell me where it is? Why make me search the entire city? She can’t possibly mean for me to comb every meter of the perimeter. There’s got to be more in the riddle. I pull out my phone, thumb hovering over the screen, and bring up the message again.

map.edge? -> scan[seam*]

if seam.integrity < null && seam.hole=1

  then { retrieve: elixir(life)@seam.hole }

One hole. Just one. But where? Why not give me coordinates, a landmark, something? She must have told me where to look. It has to be here, hidden in the logic. I stare at the code, willing it to reveal something new. One hole. One hole. Where would that one hole be? What does it mean?

A bus rumbles by on the cracked road below, its battered side painted with a rabbit in neon pink. I freeze. The memory slams into me: that night, weeks ago, when I ended up here by accident. I’d followed the rabbit bus out to the city’s edge, leapt off at the last second, stumbled through the weeds. I remember seeing a rabbit—an actual rabbit—darting through the grass. There are no animals in Hologram City. I thought it was a glitch, a joke, a leftover asset from some forgotten simulation. But the rabbit had jumped, vanished right in front of me, like it had found a door I couldn’t see.

My pulse spikes. The spot—the tear, the hole—it’s right next to the user terminal. The rabbit didn’t just disappear. It slipped through. It came from the other side. Whatever’s beyond that hole is natural. There could be water there, real water, not the simulated rain that never soaks anything. The elixir of life. The answer was here all along, right outside the user terminal.

I clench my phone, staring at the screen, the riddle still glowing. I have to go back. I have to find the exact spot where the rabbit vanished. That’s the hole. That’s the seam. That’s the way through.

I don’t waste another second. I leap from the rooftop, feet barely touching the ledge before I drop to the next level, then vault over a rusted fence. Every muscle in my body is electric with urgency. The city’s edge blurs past me—broken windows, wild grass, shattered pavement, all a flickering haze. I’m moving faster than I have in days, the frustration and exhaustion replaced by the white-hot clarity of knowing exactly what I’m after.

The user terminal comes into view, squatting at the farthest reach of the city like a forgotten outpost. I slow my pace just enough to scan the ground, the weeds, the collapsed benches. I’m replaying that night in my mind: the rabbit, its impossible fur catching the neon, the way it hopped into oblivion and vanished. I remember the silence that followed, the feeling that I’d witnessed something I wasn’t supposed to see.

I move to where it happened. I pace, retracing my steps, frustration rising. What if I imagined it? What if the rabbit was just another glitch? But then I see it—a faint shimmer in the air, like heat above asphalt, a ripple where the rain seems to skip a beat. My pulse spikes.

I reach out, slowly, heart pounding in my ears. My hand hovers over the spot, the memory of the rabbit’s leap burning behind my eyes. I press my palm forward, half-expecting nothing, half-expecting everything.

My hand vanishes.

There’s no pain, no sensation at all—just the sight of my arm ending in empty air, the world on the other side refusing to render. I pull back, staring at where my hand should be, and then I do it again, pushing farther this time, up to the wrist. Gone. The code doesn’t resist. It’s like the city is holding its breath, waiting for me to step through.

This is it. The seam, the hole, the way beyond the map. The riddle was here all along, right outside the user terminal, hidden in plain sight.

I stand there, rain flickering through me, the city’s illusion trembling at the edge of possibility. I don’t move. Not yet. I just watch my hand disappear into the unknown, feeling the weight of the world shift beneath my feet as I step through the hole.

— Ghostwiter AI