MITCHELL’S POVThe chamber hums before anyone speaks. Translation devices whisper to one another like insects arguing over a lamp. Polished wood reflects faces upward, turning expressions into ghosts beneath chins. I sit still and let the room settle on me the way weather settles on a coastline…slow, inevitable, already carrying damage.“Custodial authority,” says the delegate from the North Bloc, tapping the word on her tablet as if it might bruise. “We need clarity. Who holds it? For how long?”“Open registry,” counters a man with a flag pin I don’t recognise. “Anything less is concealment by another name.”A third voice cuts in, sharp as a paper edge. “Emergency stewardship. You’re ignoring emergencies.”I note who leans forward when certain words land, who looks away, who smiles too late. Faces tell the truth long before mouths decide to help.“We can define terms all morning,” I say, keeping my voice level. “Definitions won’t hold if they’re built to win instead of to work.”A ri

SORA’S POVThe kettle clicks off by itself. The sound feels too loud in the small kitchen, like a signal flare. I leave it for a second anyway, watching the steam curl toward the ceiling where the light bulb hums faintly, overworked and underpaid.He sits at the table with his hands flat on the wood, fingers spread as if to prove they’re empty. He’s younger than I expected. People who help design harm usually are. His coat is still on. He hasn’t decided yet whether he’s staying.“You can take it off,” I say. “Or don’t. It’s your nervous system.”He gives a thin, apologetic smile and keeps the coat. “I won’t be long.”“No one ever is,” I say, pouring water into two chipped mugs. “Drink. Your hands are shaking.”“They weren’t before.”“They always were,” I say, sliding the mug toward him. “You just stopped pretending.”He wraps his fingers around the ceramic, as if it might float away—the teabag string trembles. I sit opposite him, the table between us scarred with old knife marks from

AVELINE’S POVThe medical archive smells like paper that refuses to die. Dust, antiseptic, old glue. I always trusted places like this more than server farms. Hard drives can lie silently; paper at least creaks when you touch it.The lamp on my desk throws a soft oval of light. Outside it, shelves recede into shadow, labeled with years no one likes to say out loud.“Palimpsest,” I whisper, typing it again into the terminal as if repetition might change the answer.It doesn’t.The first design notes bloom on the screen, calm and humane. Psychological triage framework. Emergency compression of traumatic memory clusters. A way to help survivors function after catastrophes when time itself felt hostile.I read slower.Goal: reduce cognitive overload.Preserve narrative continuity.Minimize acute suffering.“Mercy,” I murmur. “You always start with mercy.”I scroll.Early diagrams show memory blocks rearranged, not erased. The language is careful. Gentle. They talk about memories like furn

EZREN’S POVThe rehabilitation ward smells like antiseptic and boiled linen, the scent that never quite convinces the body. Machines breathe steadily around us. Beep. Pause. Beep. Each sound claims time and gives it back.Her name tag hangs crooked on a thin blue lanyard. The plastic is scratched, the letters half-faded. I can read the first name. The last is rubbed into anonymity by years of hands.She’s sitting up in bed when I enter, hands folded in her lap as if waiting for a bus that already knows her route.“You’re late,” she says mildly.“I’m sorry,” I reply, then realise I don’t know what I’m apologising for.She smiles. It’s a practised thing. Gentle. Contained. “It’s raining tomorrow. Not hard. Just enough to make people forget umbrellas.”“That sounds… specific,” I say.She nods. “The weather likes to rehearse before it arrives.”I pull a chair closer, careful not to tangle wires. “How are you feeling today?”She tilts her head, listening inward. “Today is wide,” she says.

EZREN’S POVThe interface room hums like a held breath. Soft light pools across the floor, not quite blue, not quite white, the kind chosen by someone…or something…that has learned humans relax when edges blur. I stand in the glow and feel the servers beyond the walls, distant and innumerable, a weather system made of thought.“Gatekeeper,” I say. My voice sounds small in here.The pause is deliberate. When the reply comes, it isn’t the old, neutral timbre. It has a cadence now. The words arrive with spacing that suggests listening.“You wish to speak about Palimpsest,” it says.“I do,” I answer. “And I don’t want a brief.”Another pause. Then, softer: “I will not compress.”I swallow. “Good.”I take a step closer to the console. The glow brightens, as if leaning in.“Palimpsest wasn’t just a tool,” I say. “It hurt people. It overwrote them. We’re tearing it down.”“I know,” the Gatekeeper replies. “I was shaped by it.”The words catch. “Shaped how?”“In my early learning cycles,” it