The Figures in White

By Gerald Brown

I woke to a place that wasn’t my room.

At first, I thought it might be a dream, but the air carried a weight, a hum, like the inside of a machine larger than a city.

Figures moved before me, slow and deliberate, their white robes glowing faintly from within. They had no tools, yet they worked with a kind of silent precision, hands folding and lifting, as if they were winding down some vast and unseen system. Their glow reminded me of the cold light of reactors, steady and self-contained, as though their very bones held a quiet fire.

Others walked differently. They moved with intent, ascending and descending endless stairways that disappeared into haze. Their robes hung heavier, their eyes brighter, their steps perfectly measured. If the glowing figures were workers, these were overseers, engineers, guardians — maintaining something fragile, keeping order in a place I wasn’t meant to see.

One passed near. His presence brushed against me, and I felt it — awareness. I looked at him. He looked back.

That moment stretched like an eternity. His gaze was not cruel, nor kind, but piercing. And in it, I understood one simple truth: I was not supposed to be conscious here.

He raised a hand in a small, deliberate motion. The humming deepened, then everything folded in on itself like paper collapsing to ash.

And I was back. My bed. My walls. My breath catching in the silence of the night.

But the memory didn’t fade. Dreams dissolve. This stayed, sharp as glass.

In the days that followed, echoes of that place bled through. Once, while walking home, the city lights flickered during the evening power cycle. For less than a heartbeat, every lamp glowed not with electricity but with that same inner fire I had seen inside the figures. And in the reflection of a darkened shop window, I glimpsed the faint curve of a stairway dissolving into mist.

I told no one. How could I? I woke somewhere else, saw beings of light tending a machine beyond imagining, then was sent back. It sounded like madness. And yet, the more I recalled it, the less afraid I became.

Perhaps it was not an accident that I woke there. Perhaps it was a glimpse meant to remind me that life is not as fixed as it seems — that the boundary between this world and the next is not a wall, but a door.

Now, when I close my eyes, I no longer fear what waits. I have seen the figures in white, and their glow was not the glow of endings —

but of beginnings.

About the Author

Gerald Brown writes science fiction exploring dreams, consciousness, and the quiet spaces between realities.