Synopsis of Mirror Recursion
In 2045, neural mirroring technology has become part of everyday life in Tokyo. But a bizarre, collective psychological breakdown is quietly spreading. Users keep encountering "hallucinations" in the real world: a white-collar worker is followed by shredded resumes, while a shop clerk endlessly repeats the motions of ringing up sales. These "hallucinations" all come from fears buried deep in their hearts.
Lin Shen, a former neural researcher, had noticed the signs long ago. Ever since his girlfriend died mysteriously during a test of an illegal VR game called Nightmare Archive, he had believed the game was to blame. Then an anonymous package arrived, containing access to the test. He logged in and went cold all over: the "fear entities" made real in the game matched his girlfriend's descriptions exactly. Stranger still, the game's NPCs kept murmuring, "You've already died three times," even though he had never played it before.
As Lin Shen investigates, he discovers the secret consuming people's minds: the game uses brain-computer interfaces to read players' subconscious minds and turn their fears into interactive entities. Worse, these entities can escape the virtual world and spread through the real one by way of mirror neurons. The game's developer, the White Queen, was once his respected mentor. She had already fragmented her own mind and hidden pieces of it inside every fear entity, hoping to feed on all of humanity's fears and make her consciousness immortal.
Lin Shen's mirror synesthesia becomes his only weapon. He can see other people's fear entities, but the negative emotions filling the world are devouring him too. As fear entities multiply across the streets of Tokyo and allies become Hosts to their own fears, he has no choice but to enter the deepest part of the game, the Recursion Void...
