It is intermission. A woman stands on stage, chosen on a whim by the hype man.

  The audience watches her with lazy, indifferent eyes. She is not an official performer.

  The judges, too, harbor no expectations.

  Even when she announces she will perform magic, there is no reaction in the theater.

  The atmosphere is thick with a single sentiment: "Just get it over with and get off stage."

  She stands calmly before the microphone, a small bag slung over her shoulder.

  Looking around at the audience with a faint smile, she speaks.

  “I will now show you some magic. At this moment, I am not a human of Earth.

  Let’s assume I am an alien from a distant star. And I will show you, as if you were watching a movie, what that alien did upon arriving on Earth.”

  She catches her breath for a moment and adds:

  “And I am not an official performer. Until just a moment ago, I was sitting in the audience.

  The performance you are about to see was not pre-planned with the organizers. Just enjoy it comfortably.”

  The judging panel and the audience remain expressionless. No one feels anticipation or even curiosity.

  She opens her small bag and takes out four silver spheres, tossing them toward the center of the stage.

  As if possessed by a will of their own, the spheres roll to the four corners of the stage and stop, forming a perfect square.

  At that moment, light erupts from each sphere. The beams connect to one another, and the resulting lines soar upward to create a four-sided space. A cube of light is formed.

  It looks like a massive cube floating in mid-air—an insubstantial volume filled with white light. A hologram.

  The cube grows steadily until it fills the center of the stage.

  Only then does a subtle stir ripple through the audience.

  She waves to the crowd and takes a step back. In the next instant, her body melts into the cube.

  Inside the hologram, she no longer looks like a flesh-and-blood human. Like a video game character, she is an existence separated from reality.

  Suddenly, her attire transforms. The modest street clothes vanish. In their place stands a warrior clad in bronze metallic combat gear that covers her entire body.

  Silver rectangular equipment is mounted on her back, and a smooth, white glass-like helmet covers her face.

  Light, resembling a digital screen, flows across the surface of the helmet.

  In her left hand, she holds a sword—a weapon of a shape that does not exist on Earth.

  It resembles the bipa-shaped bronze daggers of ancient Gojoseon, and a cobalt light pulses at its center.

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  The warrior-woman kneels inside the cube. In a "kneel down" posture, like an American football quarterback, she grips her sword and stares straight ahead.

  The background changes instantly. A city of endless skyscrapers appears, but it is not a city of Earth.

  It is immediately clear that this was a city of another era—or perhaps another planet.

  Suddenly, light pours from the sword. Along with that light, she blasts through the floor and soars toward the window of a skyscraper in the background.

  The glass shatters into pieces as she infiltrates the building.

  She points her sword at a being that resembles a human. The audience instinctively senses that this figure is a police officer—a lawman of another world.

  The scene inside the cube shifts again. She lies inside a giant spaceship, submerged in a tank filled with liquid.

  She appears to be in a cryo-sleep state, and another figure lies beside her.

  The massive vessel takes flight into space, piercing through the atmosphere of a planet and into the void.

  Soon, Earth appears. A scene of an asteroid collision; a rapidly spinning planet.

  It was Earth after the dinosaurs had disappeared.

  The battleship enters the atmosphere and scans the surface.

  A landing site is determined. It looks like Asia—perhaps modern-day Korea.

  Small scout craft descend from the large battleship. They are piloted by humanoid droids that think and act independently.

  These crafts burn the forests. In the scorched wake, plants and animals vanish, leaving behind a void as barren as a desert.

  The mothership lands upon that waste. Droids that look like soldiers emerge. They are not human, but hybrid soldiers embedded with AI.

  They stand guard holding long, trumpet-shaped weapons. No living creature can get close. The moment anything approaches, it collapses, bleeding from the eyes and ears due to the powerful sonic waves.

  The ship's door opens. She reveals herself, still in her futuristic warrior form.

  Upon disembarking, the soldiers begin constructing massive living quarters and laboratories.

  The audience sits in their chairs, staring at the stage as if watching a blockbuster film.

  The theater is drowned in silence. Neither the audience nor the judges can close their mouths.

  On stage, inside the square cube, a movie is playing out as if it were reality.

  It is a sight like peering into the virtual world of The Matrix from the outside.

  Inside the cube, she kneels once more—this time, toward the audience. She rises using her sword for support and suddenly leaps out of the cube.

  “Voom—”

  With the sound of slicing through the air, she flies up and lands gracefully on the long table of the judging panel.

  It is impossible to tell if the leaping figure is real or a hologram, but the golden warrior settles quietly on the table, leaving a long silhouette in her wake.

  It is an incomprehensible sight.

  But in the next heartbeat, she is sucked back into the cube.

  The space inside the cube becomes a void of pure white light, and then the ordinary woman in her 20s walks out. She has returned to her normal clothes;

  the golden combat gear is gone.

  She stands before the microphone again.

  “How was the magic? I wanted to show you more, but there isn't much time. Actually... shall I show you one more thing?”

  When she mentions one more scene, the audience and judges—still speechless from the cinematic display—look visibly unsettled.

  She points a finger at the cube, and a flat image, like a massive TV screen, unfolds.

  It displays a giant battleship landing in a square in Country R.

  It is a real-time situation happening at this very moment.

  The audience wears expressions of mixed shock and fear. Doubting whether this is a performance or not, they remain silent.

  After a moment, the light in the cube goes out. The silver spheres roll back and gather at her feet. She picks them up and puts them in her bag.

  “Did you enjoy it? It’s a shame I couldn’t show you more due to time. Well then, goodbye.”

  With a slight smile, she walks off toward the performers' exit at the side of the stage, rather than toward the audience.

  The theater falls into chaos. No one can judge if this was magic or reality.

  The judges suspect that it was a pre-planned event. Then, a shout erupts from somewhere in the seats.

  “Everyone! Look at YouTube! A spaceship has just landed in Country R!”

  The performance at the Arlington Theater was already being broadcast live across the United States.

  Perhaps because of this, U.S. intelligence agencies had already surrounded the theater.

  She likely realized this. That is perhaps why the screen inside the cube could not continue any longer.

  While the agencies were not a threat to her, she did not want to cause unnecessary commotion.

  Disappearing into the wings of the stage, she enters a restroom, takes a sphere from her bag, and tosses it into the air.

  Light flashes instantly. In that moment, her body becomes transparent. No one can see her. This is one of the special functions of the silver spheres.

  She passes through the intelligence agents surrounding the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara and quietly makes her escape.