2026-01-06 23:53:18
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The Question Itself
MITCHELL’S POVThe strategy room is quiet in the way museums are quiet… like the walls are listening.Mitchell stands at the glass table, palms braced, staring down at a map of pins and lines that no longer represent geography so much as influence. Blue for Authority-aligned regions. Amber for undecided. Red for places where trust has already cracked.“Read it again,” she says.The junior analyst swallows and projects the text onto the glass wall.Do you authorize the continued use of preservation safeguards designed to maintain psychological stability during periods of societal stress?Mitchell exhales through her nose.“There,” she says, stabbing the air with her finger. “That’s the knife.”The linguist, grey-haired and sharp-eyed, nods.“Preservation implies benevolence. Safeguards implies protection. Psychological stability frames dissent as danger.”“And ‘authorize’,” Mitchell adds. “As if consent is already assumed.”Someone mutters, “It’s a hug with a syringe hidden in the slee
Traitor to Who
ZARA’S POVThe lights are too hot. Not metaphorically…actually hot. Zara can feel them baking the back of her neck as she adjusts the mic and nods to the moderator, whose tie is cinched so tight it looks like it’s strangling his better judgment.“Welcome back,” he says, smiling the way people do when they’re about to pretend neutrality. “Tonight, we’re discussing public trust, stabilization technologies, and…” he glances at his card “…the recent leaks.”Across from Zara sits the Authority’s representative, a man with soft eyes and a voice trained to sound like a pillow. He inclines his head to her, sympathetic already.“We all want the same thing,” he says when the camera light blinks red. “Safety. Dignity. Peace.”Zara leans forward. “Then say the names.”The audience murmurs. The moderator clears his throat. “Zara…”“Say the names,” she repeats, eyes on the man. “The people whose memories were adjusted without consent. The towns where ‘temporary buffering’ became permanent.”The rep
Self-Defense
SORA’S POVThe city wakes wrong.It isn’t noise first. It’s texture. A drag in the air, like fabric pulled against the grain. I step out of the transit and feel it in my calves, a hesitation that doesn’t belong to me. On the wall opposite, someone has sprayed REMEMBER WITHOUT ASKING = THEFT in hurried red. Two meters down, a careful hand has added OR MERCY beneath it.People move like weather fronts… gathering, splitting, reforming. A woman clutches her phone and says to no one, “My morning went missing.” A man laughs too easily and tells his friend he feels great, actually great, like the world finally turned the volume down. His friend doesn’t laugh back.I take the long way through the square, hands open, pace unthreatening. “Breathe,” I tell a father whose child is crying so hard the sound shakes her whole body. “Name five things you can see.” He stares at me like I’ve asked him to translate smoke.“Blue,” he says finally. “Her jacket. The fountain. The pigeon. Your shoes.”“Good,
Mercy’s Teacher
AVELINE’S POVThe ethics chamber smells like wax and paper, a deliberate choice. Candles along the walls soften the legal tomes stacked like witnesses. We sit in a circle, no podium, no dais. I wanted faces, not hierarchies.“Say your name if you want,” I tell them. “Say nothing if you don’t. This is being recorded for the public registry. You can stop the tape at any time.”A murmur. A nod. Someone clears their throat.A woman with silver hair speaks first. “I’m Mara.” Her hands rest on her knees, steady. “Palimpsest took the edge off my fear. I could leave my house again. I could breathe.” She looks at me. “If you dismantle it, you take that from people like me.”Across from her, a younger man shakes his head. “It took my mother,” he says. “She smiles. She cooks. But she can’t remember my father’s face. She says it’s like trying to remember a dream after waking.”Mara turns to him. “I’m sorry.”“So am I,” he says. “But sorry doesn’t put him back.”An ethicist beside me, Jonah, leans
Unlikely Kin
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
Awakening Layers
MITCHELL’S POVThe emergency council chamber hums like a living thing. Translation earpieces murmur in Mitchell’s ears, cicadas layered over human breath. Polished wood reflects faces drawn too tight, eyes too alert. No one sits comfortably when history is about to be reread aloud.Mitchell stands without ceremony.“We need to talk about Palimpsest,” she says.A ripple moves through the room. Some delegates stiffen. Others glance sideways, checking who flinched.She gestures, and the wall display wakes. Diagrams bloom: memory layers, compression graphs, clinical annotations stripped of euphemism. Faces are labeled only by roles. Subject. Clinician. Authority.A historian clears his throat. “This council was informed that Palimpsest was decommissioned decades ago.”“It was,” Mitchell says evenly. “On paper.”A clinician from the southern bloc leans forward. “You’re alleging illegal continuation of a therapeutic tool?”“I’m stating a documented fact,” Mitchell replies. “Palimpsest nodes
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