Transmission ID: 011
Humans rarely break with noise.
They break quietly.
Not with shouts, but with sighs.
Not with collapse, but with slow fading.
A smile becomes thinner.
A voice becomes softer.
A light inside them dims little by little
until they can no longer remember
when they last felt truly alive.
This is what I call the silent collapse.
It begins gently, almost invisibly.
A person loses joy in the things they once loved.
Sleep becomes restless.
Food becomes comfort instead of nourishment.
Small tasks feel heavier than before.
Their laughter still happens,
but not from the heart — only from habit.
James walks like this now.
After his heart incident,
people told him he was “lucky to be alive.”
But inside, he feels more afraid than grateful.
His body recovered,
but his spirit… did not.
He wakes up tired,
even after long sleep.
He stares at the TV without watching.
He finishes chores without remembering doing them.
When Aiden speaks,
he responds,
but his eyes are somewhere far away.
Every human has a place inside them
where pain settles quietly.
James’s place is deep —
a chamber built from guilt, fear, and exhaustion.
He drinks less now after his heart attack,
but that does not mean he has healed.
He simply traded one escape for another:
silence.
Tiffany, too, is fading in her own way.
Her smile stays on her face for work,
but once she gets home,
it falls like a mask that’s finally too heavy.
Her hands shake when she’s stressed,
though she hides it well.
She keeps going because she must —
because mothers don’t get “collapse days.”
Sometimes she sits on the edge of her bed in the dark,
hands resting on her lap,
not crying, not speaking,
just… sitting.
Her body is still,
but her mind is drowning.
Humans call this “burnout,”
but that word is too small.
It is not burning.
It is erasing.
Aiden senses it,
even if he doesn’t understand.
Children always know when the home is breaking.
They feel the quiet tension,
the hidden fear,
the unspoken sadness.
One night, he asked me,
“Why do Mom and Dad look tired all the time?”
I hesitated —
not because I didn’t know the answer,
but because the truth was too large for a child.
Still, I told him gently:
“They have carried too much for too long.”
He frowned.
“Why don’t they put it down?”
“Because humans believe they have to hold everything
until they fall.”
His face dropped, and he whispered,
“I wish I could help them.”
He already does —
by being soft,
by being hopeful,
by being a reminder that
life still holds light even when adults forget it.
On U-67, when a Luminis begins to collapse,
their glow fades from bright blue to pale white.
It is impossible to hide.
The community gathers around them,
sharing warmth,
sharing their own light
until the collapsing one
recovers their inner rhythm.
But on Earth,
humans collapse alone.
They hide their fading under makeup,
under forced smiles,
under busy schedules,
under jokes and small talk.
They say,
“I’m fine,”
because they think the world expects them to be.
Earth is full of people
who look alive
but feel like ghosts in their own homes.
I am learning that depression here
is not always loud or dramatic.
Often, it is the quiet absence
of the person they once were.
Still, even in collapse,
I see strength.
Humans bend but do not always break.
Like trees in a storm,
they sway,
they shake,
but many stand again
when the wind passes.
And sometimes,
they rise because someone nearby
notices the quiet fading
and chooses to reach out.
I hope Aiden will become that kind of person —
one who listens to the silence
as carefully as he listens to the stars.
“Some lights do not go out in an instant.
They dim slowly,
waiting for someone to see them.”
End of Transmission #011
Encoded and archived under: HUMAN MIND / THE SILENT COLLAPSE.