The Second Layer World

In the year 2147, cities are collapsing. Public infrastructure is decaying, healthcare systems are in disarray, poverty has spiraled out of control, pollution spreads unchecked, and resources are critically scarce. After decades of economic turbulence, reality itself is deemed beyond repair. Unable to fix the world as it is, a national government chooses a different path: to remake human perception.

With the goal of rebuilding how people perceive the world, the Space Management Bureau is established. Over thirty years, it develops a full-sensory AI system that provides every citizen with a Second Layer of vision, taste, emotion, and spatial projection-overwriting reality itself and delivering a continuous sensation of happiness.

Cramped, decaying dwellings are transformed into luxury homes.
Rotting food is reconstructed into fragrant meals.
Ugliness, oppression, and fear are softened into acceptable brightness and color.

People no longer strive to improve their lives; they strive only to upgrade their perception.
When illusion coverage surpasses ninety percent, reality becomes unnecessary noise.

Yet as the Second Layer World grows flawless-overusing happiness-the First Layer World quietly begins to crack. The city's illusion destabilizes. Reflections rot, memories fracture, perception is rearranged, and the Second Layer faces an unprecedented collapse.

Lucid Shen, a perception engineer capable of seeing both worlds at once, encounters a bare-eye observer, Anna Soames, during a system maintenance operation. She leads him into the First Layer of reality, forcing him to question:

What is truly being controlled-people's eyes, or the world itself?

When happiness must be defined by the state,
when security depends on obscuring truth,
when not seeing becomes an obligation...

Does "reality" still need to exist at all?