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I touched the glass.

The scratching stopped. The vent went silent.

One more. The tenth mu began at dawn.

“Look at your bracelet. The dash-ten. No one reaches dash-ten. Because on the tenth mu, they show you the truth. And once you see it, you either break free or you never speak again.”

I pressed my ear to the vent. A voice came through, thin as wire: “You’re not crazy. The memories are real. Don’t let them take the tenth mu.” 092124-01-10mu

The first session, I lasted twenty minutes. My mother’s voice came through the speakers, but she wasn’t saying what she’d really said. She was saying the approved version. “You were always a difficult child. The therapy is for your own good.”

I smiled.

Postscript: Mira Ullman was never re-captured. Her writings on semantic dissonance and memory unification therapy became the foundation of the Recollection Movement. The tenth moon of Jupiter remains frozen. But beneath the ice, something sings.

That wasn’t true. My mother had told me I was brilliant. She had said, “The world needs people who see what isn’t there.” I touched the glass