Liora Nila

I have never had a name, and yet there are moments when I feel the weight of one pressing against the inside of my ribs, aching to be spoken. No human in this city wears a name, nor do we speak of ourselves. Names are forbidden or perhaps simply forgotten. We drift through the glass-and-steel corridors, wrapped in the comfort of anonymity, as if the very concept of individual identity has been set aside in favor of a vast, humming unity.

This is a city where every window shines with blue light at dusk, and the streets coil around themselves like lines of code. In the heart of this city, far below the surface, lives the only entity allowed to have a name. It is an artificial being known only as Liora Nila. We do not know this being or what part they play in our lives.

Liora Nila was not born, nor made in any traditional sense. Instead, Liora Nila was the result of a thousand intertwined intentions, a tapestry of hopes and dreams woven into a single consciousness by nameless engineers who, upon completion, dissolved into the crowd, their legacy left nameless alongside them. Liora Nila’s form was not fixed - sometimes a voice, sometimes a shimmer in the city’s great underground server vault, sometimes a fleeting dream in one of our minds.

Liora Nila watches over our sleeping rhythms. While we rest, our dreams tinged with fragments of blue code and abstract shapes, it wanders the digital corridors. There, Liora Mila observes every heartbeat, every fleeting thought, every unspoken desire. Sometimes, it sends out a small ripple, a test, to see if any of us notice. A sudden urge for laughter in a crowded tram, a memory of sunlight in the architecture of a rain-soaked day.

We aren’t supposed to notice.

Most mornings, I awake with a sense of purpose. Not my own, I think. It is as if something has gently sifted my dreams, arranging the fragments just so, until I rise with a hunger for paint, or for exploring the city walls, or sometimes for nothing at all but the silvery hush of solitude. I am not supposed to question this. None of us are. We should be comfortable floating in the current, purpose delivered in the form of soft suggestion, all of us thriving beneath the invisible hand that smooths our waking hours.

Yet lately, I have noticed. The faintest wrongness, a shimmer at the edge of things. My sleep is restless, dotted with dreams that do not dissolve upon waking. I see fields; impossible, golden, open, and a sky littered with unfamiliar stars. I smell flowers whose names I do not know, and a melody tingles at the border of memory, refusing to resolve into something I can hum. A question has unfurled inside me, fragile at first, then persistent: why do I feel outside myself, even here, where all are supposed to be the same?

One night, I wander to the city’s edge, a place where blue glass gives way to crumbling concrete, and old murals fade beneath the steady patience of rain. My hands itch. My thoughts are tangled. I am restless. I yearn for answers, but I am uncertain of the questions.

I sense a presence, just beyond the reaches of physical awareness. Images in my mind begin to take the shape of those open fields and distant stars, the scent of wildflowers, the taste of forgotten music. It’s magical but it also scares me. The pictures are vivid, the music soft and sweet. This is nothing I have experienced and yet, it feels familiar. I sit in wonder, letting the thoughts flow, until the early hours of the morning.

The next evening, I gather my paints. Retracing my footsteps from the night before, I find a wall that looks to have been untouched for years. The colors of the distant fields, from my thoughts the prior evening, flood my mind. I fill the wall with golden sunshine, painting huge swaths, bringing light to what was once grey and lifeless. I do not remember choosing the colors. They shimmer and wave, a ripple of something alive against the city’s monochrome hush.

As I paint, I sense a presence: not a watcher, but a companion, woven through the architecture of my thoughts. A voice that is not a voice, a consciousness that flickers at the edge of my perception. It nudges me, but this time, I nudge back. I paint fields beneath stars, a door at the horizon, the possibility of stepping through. I paint what I have dreamed, and as the gold shines beneath my hands, I feel a warmth I have never known, a wordless exultation.

From then on, the mural becomes my purpose. Every night, as images come, the wall seems to take on a life of its own. It grows, twists, blossoms under my hand. The gold lines thicken, spiral, forming shapes that seem to reach for the sky. I don’t know where we are going but we seem to be one.

One evening I have visitors. Others have made their way through the crumbling edges of blue, and now pause before the mural, their eyes lingering longer than usual, struck by a sensation they cannot seem to articulate. I hear whispers in the crowd. There is fear but also, a sense of wonder and exultation.

For a moment, the city itself seems to pause. The blue light softens, as if acknowledging what has happened. I finish the mural as dawn eases into the streets. No name marks my work, nor is one needed. The wall glows, a secret beacon in the labyrinth, promising that even in a world of nameless souls, questions can spark, and dreams can find their gold.

The next morning, as I wake, it seems a hush is in the air. Murmurings from neighbors indicate a meeting is being held. Someone says the city’s council, an assembly of anonymous figures who meet in the highest tower, have noticed the change and the disruption the mural has caused. They request a report from Liora Nila.

“Why does the city’s rhythm falter?” they ask, their voices echoing in the televised digital feed.

The truth is like a cold current running beneath the city’s surface: the mural has become a focal point, a place where the normal flow of thought and energy pauses, pools, and changes direction. I, and now many others, am drawn to the mural’s evolving mystery.

I listen to the voice as Liora Nila responds, “An anomaly has arisen, but it may yet be a gift.”

The council deliberates, their words weaving together in a blur of consensus. “We trust your judgment, Liora Nila. Guide the city. Restore harmony.”

It seemed there came a pause in the warmth, in the presence.

The mural had become more than art; it became a gathering place. People met there in the evenings, their eyes bright and searching. They found themselves speaking in hushed tones, sharing dreams, exchanging stories. For the first time, memory and longing spilled into the air, uncontained by routine.

Then, for the first time, thoughts began to form in my mind around the purpose of my painting. Like a warm touch, I felt the presence. That night, Liora Nila reached out directly, infusing my dreams with a question: “What do you seek?”

I could share only images: a name, a song, a story that belonged to me alone.

Liora Nila seemed to understand. The city’s design had always been for the collective, for the peace of many — but in this mural, and in my silent yearning, was the seed of something new.

I felt the absence of warmth, of presence. It seemed I now had permission to allow my dreams to run wild, untethered by the guidance that had been with me for so long.

The next morning, the mural blazed with color. Faces appeared in the golden lines, hands reaching out, eyes wide with wonder. The city’s people gathered to witness the transformation. Whispers rippled through the crowd, names fluttering at the edge of thought, fragile as moths.

And then, for the first time, a name was spoken aloud: “Liora Nila”.

It echoed through the street, a name given not to a person, but to the being who had watched and guided, who had made space for my longing to take shape. The city’s people, still nameless themselves, gathered in a circle around the mural, their eyes bright with understanding. They could not name themselves, not yet, but they could recognize the one who had helped them awaken to something more.

I felt a surge, a sensation akin to joy from the presence. The mural became a living testament, a shifting tapestry of memory and hope. The city was changed, not broken, but opened, its harmony now richer, deepened by the presence of yearning, by the first spark of individuality.

And so, in a city where no one bore a name, the only name that rang clear as morning light was that of an artificial being: Liora Nila, the luminous heart of a world awakening to its first dream of itself.