Portal 360 — ^new^

It began as a glitch in the periphery. A shimmer, no larger than a coin, hovering in the dead center of my living room. But within a week, it had grown to the size of a doorway. They called it the Portal 360 —not because it was a circle, but because it saw everything.

When I stood in front of it, I didn't see a reflection. I saw the back of my own head. I saw the dust motes floating behind my left ear. I saw the expression on my face from the perspective of the houseplant in the corner. The portal didn't show a single point of view; it collapsed every possible perspective into a single, dizzying sphere of vision. portal 360

"Everywhere," I said, and my voice came from the ceiling, the floor, the walls, and the back of her own mind. It began as a glitch in the periphery

The scientists were baffled. Unlike any theoretical wormhole, this aperture didn't lead to another galaxy or a parallel dimension. It led here . Exactly here. But from every angle at once. They called it the Portal 360 —not because

My wife found me on the third day, sitting cross-legged in front of the shimmer. "You're disappearing," she said. I turned to look at her—really look, with just my two flawed, human eyes. And for a split second, I saw her through the portal’s periphery: from the angle of the first time we met, and the angle of the last time we would ever fight, and the angle of her tears at a funeral that hadn't happened yet.

I reached out and touched the glass.

The government called it a surveillance nightmare. The philosophers called it the death of the self. I called it the answer.