The Wake Of Lighthd -

He reached the primary emitter, a pulsing orb of pure data-light. As he prepared the polishing lens, he saw a small bird perched on the rim. It wasn't an augmented creature; it was a common sparrow, drab and brown. In the glare of the Wake, the bird looked like a glitch—a smudge of low-fidelity dust against a masterpiece.

"The resolution is dropping in Sector 7," his comms crackled. "We're seeing artifacts. Real-world lag." The Wake of LightHD

The sky didn't go dark. It just... softened. The harsh, neon perfections of the Wake of LightHD began to bleed into watercolors. The jagged, perfect edges of the skyscrapers blurred into the clouds. Across Aethelgard, people stopped. They looked at their hands, seeing the honest lines of their palms for the first time in a generation. He reached the primary emitter, a pulsing orb