Men at War

The shimmer came without warning—no crescendo, no alarm—just a thin silver veil that draped itself across the world, rippling like heat over asphalt. The walls of the cavern blurred into water, and the lantern in Silen’s hand fizzed into a filament of white light that stretched until it snapped.

Darkness swallowed him.

Then—

Salt.
Sun.
The snap of flags in ocean wind.

Silen staggered forward onto rough planks varnished by sea spray and sun, the boards rising and falling beneath him in rhythm with an unseen tide. Voices shouted in clipped, purposeful tones—not the register of panic but the urgency of men at war.

A dock. June 1942.

The date arrived in his mind unasked, printed across his awareness like a classified stamp. He turned—and there she was: a battleship towering over the harbor, gray steel and bristling gun turrets, with sailors boarding up the gangway in rapid procession. The name stenciled on her hull was half-legible through glare—USS Vigilance—a ship that did not exist in any history Silen remembered, if any history he remembered could be trusted.

He moved toward it without thinking, as though some logic beneath logic compelled him. His boots—now military issue—clattered against the dock as sailors brushed past, saluting or nodding as though he belonged.

“Lieutenant Silen, sir! We’re departing in five!”

Lieutenant.

The word clipped neatly into place, another shard of a reality he had no memory of earning. Uniform fabric scratched against his neck, naval blues tailored with a precision that felt too real to dismiss as dream simulation.

He climbed the gangway and crossed onto steel. The Pacific wind smelled of oil, salt, and the faint sweetness of tropical rain somewhere beyond the horizon. Officers barked orders, signal flags rose, the ship’s engines rumbled awake from deep within her hull like some mechanical beast stirring to hunger.

And yet—

Something was wrong.

Not in what he saw, but in what he didn’t. The edges of the world were too clean, too definite—like a set rendered to perfection. And beneath the churn of engines, another sound threaded itself through his senses:

A low digital hum. Server fans. Cooling units. A clock pulse from a machine that had never heard of 1942.

The ship cast off, tugboats pulling her from berth, water churning white beneath the bow. The men cheered—not loudly, but with that solemn fervor of those who believe destiny awaits.

Silen gripped the railing and scanned the horizon. The Pacific glittered, unreal in its beauty—like someone had polished the simulation to show what the world used to look like before collapse.

His throat tightened at the thought.

He wasn’t alone on deck.

Footsteps approached—a sailor, young, face solemn, then softening as though recognizing an unspoken truth.

“Sir,” he said quietly, “you feel it too, don’t you?”

Silen didn’t turn immediately.

“Feel what?”

“That… slippage.” The boy swallowed, eyes darting to the sky. “Like we’re not supposed to be here. Like someone spliced a reel in the wrong place.”

Silen faced him now. The sailor’s badge read: M. Reyes—and with a jolt, Silen realized he had seen that name once on a map in the tunnels. Not as a sailor. As a rebel.

The glitch wasn’t random.

The simulation was threading eras, merging roles.

The engines grew louder, drowning conversation. A red flare arced across the sky from port—a signal. Officers rushed to stations. Anti-air batteries lifted toward the clouds. The Pacific shimmered like glass.

Reyes leaned close, voice trembling but certain:

“When the simulation fragments, it tests us. Different war. Same corruption. Same illusion. Same fight.”

Silen blinked, memory fracturing through decades at once—maps, lanterns, servers, rebels, Maren.

Maren.

The ship lurched forward into deeper water. Somewhere beyond the horizon, the war waited—one war overlaying another, the way a corrupted file overlays two video frames at once.

The simulation pushed onward.

And Silen—Lieutenant or rebel—followed it into battle, uncertain whether he was witnessing history or being asked to rewrite it.