Saul Sheldon and the Lucid ghost

A viral nightmare. A high-tech locked room. A detective who trusts physics more than people.

At 3:33 AM, a commercial for Lucid Clear glass cleaner airs on a flickering cable channel. To the average viewer, it is a mundane advertisement. But for forty-seven frames, something impossible happens. The woman at the sink continues to smile, but her reflection opens its mouth in a silent, horrific scream.

The internet calls it the Lucid Ghost. They claim the footage is haunted.

Saul Sheldon does not believe in hauntings. He believes in thermodynamics, vector analysis, and the absolute laws of optics. While the world panics over the supernatural, Saul spots a physical error in the footage. The angle of the light hitting the faucet does not match the reflection.

That means it is not a mirror. It is a screen.

Saul’s investigation leads him to the Aperture Estate, a prototype smart home built by reclusive tech mogul Eric Manley. In this house, walls are screens and reality is optimized by an algorithm. Eric claims a hacker planted the screaming face to destroy his company. But as Saul digs into the system logs, he finds data that suggests the house is hiding a violent history in its cache.

Trapped inside a home that records every movement, Saul must use his knowledge of engineering to dismantle a perfect lie. The system is overheating. The oxygen is dropping. And the architect of this digital reality is willing to delete anyone who threatens his design.

In a world of deepfakes and digital ghosts, Saul Sheldon is the only one who can verify the truth.