CONTEXT: This Realm fragment describes a constructed world of The Hush Halo, where progress and decay coexist in uneasy balance. The remnants of humanity persist in form, not feeling; somewhere perfection has replaced pulse.
The Stillness of Now
A gray light drifts across the horizon, neither dawn nor dusk, but something in between. A suspension of time itself. Streets are not empty, yet they feel hollow, lined with movement stripped of urgency. Bodies glide in silence, gestures pared down to pure function. Windows reflect pale interiors, surfaces without ornament, without the ungoverned clutter of private life.
The quiet is not oppressive, but weightless. Like air filtered too many times, clean, yet scentless. To linger here is to notice the architecture of silence. The measured cadence of an opening door at the end of a corridor. A distant hum of circuits underneath. The flow of water itself chained, calibrated, optimized into resources rather than streams. A regulated sigh of a system breathing somewhere just beyond sight. Even stillness has been engineered.
From above, the world unfurls into slow geometry. Areas (prior known as cities) gleam with edges too exact, patterns too precise to have grown by chance. Ways (prior known as roads) curve not toward the land but toward calculation. Grids (prior know as fields) extend perfectly aligned under automated care, so symmetrical they resemble diagrams rather than nourishment. Wilderness remains only in curated fragments, green corridors arranged for balance, not for leisure, not for wonder. Everything appears calm, natural even, until the gaze lingers too long and begins to sense the absence. Absence of the unpredictability once woven into human life.
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©Samia Oldman
WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.
Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.
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I am down with this writing project of yours. Very cool.
A place without a soul. Which is weird to say because how can a play have a soul.
Reading this poem made me think of the typical American dream. How what’s sold is fiction and the reality is window dressing over a starvation for meaning. Because that’s what I sense is missing from this place you describe. Meaning. .