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The Human Filter follows a forty‑year‑old auditor whose life depends on systems that close, balance, and make sense—until the first glitch appears.
She begins perceiving subtle distortions in space, matter, and living organisms. Not hallucinations. Not visions. Structural changes, as if her senses were accessing perceptual layers not meant to coexist.
What starts as curiosity escalates into a dangerous clarity: without filters, the world does not expand—it collapses.
As she learns to reproduce and control these perceptions, her body, identity, and language begin to erode. The cost of accessing “more reality” is losing the one that keeps humans sane.
The Human Filter is a psychological and philosophical novel about perception as a survival system, and the unbearable truth hidden behind the version of reality we agree to share.
Chapter 1 — Balance
The problem was not the number. The problem was that the number closed too well.
In anyone’s eyes, the balance sheet was correct. The columns matched, the totals responded, the year-over-year variations were consistent with the sector’s context. Nothing jumped out. Nothing screamed. Nothing demanded urgent attention. And yet, she had been staring at the same row for fifteen minutes without moving forward.
It wasn’t a large figure. It wasn’t even a difference. It was a rounding pattern. Always downwards. Always in the same type of entry. Always justified differently.
She opened another file. Then another. Changed the sorting criteria. Went back. Reconstructed the flow from the source. Everything had backing. Everything had an explanation. Everything closed. That was the unsettling part.
She marked the observation as “minor” and moved on. The final report would not mention anything relevant. There were no material findings. No fraud. No negligence. The system worked. And even so, as she put away the papers, she had the uncomfortable sensation of having overlooked something she didn’t know how to name.
It wasn’t an error. It was an absence.
She left the meeting room with her briefcase under her arm and her head already elsewhere. The building had the same smell as always: old carpet, reheated coffee, poorly calibrated air conditioning. The world continued to function with its usual reliability.
In the elevator, she checked her phone without really reading anything. Emails, notifications, messages without urgency. Everything in its place. Everything classified.
She liked thinking of the world that way: as a complex but auditable system. Nothing was simple, but everything could be disassembled into parts, analyzed, reassembled. Even errors followed rules. That was why she had chosen her job. Not out of passion, but affinity. Order wasn’t an obsession; it was a survival tool.
In the street, the noise returned her to her body. Cars, horns, overlapping voices. She walked a couple of blocks to the parking lot, drove to her apartment, went up in silence. The day had been long, but correct. Like almost all of them.
In her house, there was nothing out of place. Watered plants, clean surfaces, dim light. She left her keys in the same bowl as always and rested the briefcase next to the table. Before changing, she turned on the modem.
The gesture was automatic. Just another habit. She waited for the usual blinking of the lights. Green. Stable.
It was then that she felt it.
It wasn’t an image. It wasn’t a sound. It was a slight, diffuse pressure, as if the air had acquired direction. It didn’t occupy an exact point in space, but it wasn’t homogeneous either. There were zones denser than others. Lines that seemed to cross the room without touching anything.
She stood still. The first reaction was physiological: she checked her breathing, her posture, the accumulated fatigue. She had had worse days. She wasn’t dizzy. She wasn’t confused.
She walked a step. The sensation changed. It didn’t disappear. It shifted.
She frowned. Turned off the modem. The space went back to feeling… normal. Empty. Inert. She turned it on again. The pressure returned.
She didn’t think of waves. She didn’t think of signals. She didn’t think of anything that could explain what was happening. She only had a simple, almost childish idea, but one impossible to ignore: This should be empty.
She stayed like that for a few more seconds, measuring the experience without interpreting it. Just as she did with numbers when she didn’t trust a first reading.
Then she turned off the modem, went to the bedroom, and closed the door. She would note the observation later. If it happened again.
For now, the books still closed.
