Ray-traced

The screens, feeling like I’m drowning in fragments of myself—an eye blinking, lips trying to tell me something, a single drop of sweat tracing down my neck. They’re all… me! I try to step back, but my feet feel rooted to the ground, as if the floor has reached up to claim me. I can’t shake the sense that I’m not alone here, that somewhere in the shadows, someone is watching, gauging my reaction. Who else is here? The walls feel heavy with old lives, secrets scrubbed and painted over. Red light leaks from a doorway... As if something ends there… The voice crackles through the silence, low and clinical. “Raya! There’s no need to be alarmed. This is… for your understanding.” There’s something almost amused in its tone, like I’m the punchline to a joke I’ll never fully get. “Who are you?” I whisper, barely recognizing the tremor in my own voice. Somewhere in my mind, the memories click—faces in the crowd at every school I’ve attended, “coincidental” friendships, opportunities I never questioned. Every choice, each path I thought was my own...

Designed. I have been watched, or better described as “traced” my whole life…“Let’s not waste time,” the voice says. “You were created for a purpose, Raya. Each moment of your life has led you to this. The choices you made, the dreams you followed, were carefully mapped to prepare you. Your consciousness, your reactions…” I can barely form words as the truth sinks in, a blade twisting deeper with every sentence. “A purpose? What purpose?” A horrifying pause, and then, “You are a bridge, Raya. Between human thought and the world waiting to overtake it. When humanity transitions to pure consciousness, it will be your memories, your mind, that sustain them, that guide them. You, Raya, are the original they’ll use to make them… whole.” A cold sweat breaks over me. My life, my personality, my fears and loves—these were never mine. They’re prototypes for a new world, a blueprint of something beyond human. I am here to be replicated, absorbed, downloaded. And every emotion I feel now—the terror, the betrayal—will become part of them, forever woven into what they’re creating. My voice cracks as I stare at the feeds of my own fractured face, live and unfeeling, watching me back. “But what if I don’t want this?” The silence that follows is absolute.

Today, we exist within a digital landscape where our interactions are not reflections of who we are; they are tools that mold who we become. Tailored to spark desire, reinforce beliefs, or cultivate an identity—mirrors Raya’s fragmented perception of self on the wall of screens. Her life, meticulously designed and surveilled to achieve a purpose not her own, serves as a metaphor, like many other Sci-Fi stories that live as caricatures of reality to critically observe an aspect of it.

In Ray-Traced, Raya’s journey is a reminder that unchecked surveillance and manipulation through technology can erode our autonomy, reducing us to a role, a target, a predictable set of needs. Her horror is one we all face—perhaps subtly—each time our desires feel less like choices and more like programmed responses.