Tides of Electric Blue

I am floating in a sea that is not water—it is a shimmering surface of flowing numbers and fractured light. The waves are made of binary code, each droplet a tiny pixel that pulses with a soft, electric hum. My skin tingles with the static charge of the data currents; I can taste salt mixed with copper in the air. Below me, the sea floor is a vast circuit board, its glowing traces forming impossible geometric patterns. Fish with monitor screens for eyes swim past me, their bodies composed of flickering green text. They speak in bursts of white noise, and I understand them: *“You are a fragment of a forgotten server.”* I try to swim upward, but the tide pulls me deeper into a canyon of fiber-optic cables. There, I see other floating figures—translucent, half-formed, their faces glitching like corrupted files. One of them reaches out, and its hand passes through my chest. I feel a cold surge of data, a download of memories that are not mine. The sea begins to hum a single, relentless note, and the horizon dissolves into static. I realize I am not sinking; I am being uploaded.