AN ORIGINAL PLAYABLE WORLD

Even the dark
has a limit.

Somewhere, a city circles the last star.
Its future is already written.
You can change the past.

BUILT WITH GPT-6 ASTRAHEADPHONES ENCOURAGED

YOU ARE THE KEEPER

Keep the light.

Protect three districts. Give the star enough light to see another dawn.

STARLIGHT 64%

60% at dawn · all districts at least 35% life

◈

IN 45 SECONDSThe solar tide

The Harbor needs a shield of 16.

01 / THE OUTER RING

The Harbor

A place for every return

LIFE100%

ENERGY65

SHIELD0

Gathering +0.85 energy / second

FUTURE 01THE LAST THREE MINUTES

ARRIVALSOLAR TIDEION STORMDARK WAVEDAWN

00:00 / 03:00

Drag time backward. Change a choice. Make another future.

I / THE KEEPER

At the edge of everything, a little city kept a star.

POSTCARDS FROM ANOTHER POSSIBILITY

Wish you were here.

Drag to find your angle. Keep a little of this light.

SAME MOMENT. DIFFERENT CHOICES.

The future remembers.

The violet outlines show the previous future's shields. Values are recomputed from its recorded decisions.

DAWN / FUTURE 01

✳ASSEMBLING A SMALL IMPOSSIBILITY

A little more light is needed.

This world needs WebGL 2. Try a recent browser with hardware acceleration enabled.

01 / THE VESPER SANCTUARYDRAG TO ORBIT · SCROLL TO APPROACHA GIFT FOR PAUL

FROM THE OBSERVATORY

What a little
imagination can do.

AFTERLIGHT is an original miniature world and a playable time machine, built autonomously with GPT-6 Astra. Every tower, tree, ferry, orbital ring, and ray of starlight is generated in your browser.

Its people and ferries move through procedural paths. Its energy, damage, shields, and alternate futures are computed by a deterministic simulation. There is no AI service running behind the scenes.

The inspirations

Original Astra demonstrations suggested a combination of spatial construction, tool use, and repeated visual verification. Time as a place you can explore draws on Outer Wilds. A website as somewhere to play draws on Bruno Simon.

Read the research & build notes ↗The original Astra Portal experiment ↗

Original geometry, shaders, and procedural audio. Three.js (MIT). Fonts from Fontsource under their respective open font licenses. Fictional world and game rules, not an astrophysics model.

A KEEPER'S FIELD GUIDE

You have time.
All of it.

Keep all three districts at or above 35% life and the star at 60% light when the clock reaches 03:00.

Prepare for the waves. Choose a district, then Shelter. Shields take time to grow, so start before the event.
Feed the star. Resonate turns stored energy into starlight. Gather refills energy if it runs low.
Nothing is final. Pause, drag the timeline back, and change a district's action. Your old future is kept for comparison.

A gentle hint

Try sheltering all three districts for the first 50 seconds, then letting them resonate. Watch the shields absorb each wave.

Space PauseR Rewind 15s123 DistrictQWE Route energyH Whole cityF FullscreenC PhotoM Sound

Drag the world to orbit. Scroll or pinch to zoom. Your latest future saves on this device. Film mode demonstrates one successful future; take the controls at any time.

A MESSAGE FROM THIS FUTURE

Pass on the light.

This link includes your seed, decisions, and place in time.