magisternihil's 100-word story for July 16, 2025

magisternihil wrote the following micro-story on Hectalex on July 16, 2025. Each story on Hectalex is inspired by a daily visual prompt and must be exactly 100 words.

Once a year residents are allowed to climb to the top of the Solarium Tower and enjoy the “great outdoors.” It’s a hologram, of course. The vines creeping down are grown in the lab and attached before each viewing. It lends a certain credibility to the event. The real outdoors is nothing but dust and scouring winds, but they don’t need to know that. They need to think there is hope, and so this event was created to generate that hope. The residents figured out the lie years ago, but still they come, as hungry for that hope as ever.

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