Defrag - 264

"Proceed."

The knock came at his door. Not a physical knock. A ping on his lace.

When the enforcers broke the door down, they found a man sitting calmly in a chair, eyes wide and wet with tears, humming a tune that had no right to exist. Their scanners went wild. defrag 264

They’d found him. Or rather, the algorithm had. He’d been too loud—laughing too hard in the ration line, crying at a sunset that was just chemicals in the sky-dome.

The ping from Pod 7 grew urgent. Two enforcers were already in the hallway. He could hear their boot-stomps through the thin floor. "Proceed

One enforcer whispered to the other: "What do we do with him?"

Kaelan stood up in his bare apartment. He had a choice. Pod 7 would sedate him, run the defrag, and he’d wake up as a clean, empty vessel with a count of 4 or 5. He’d forget the mango. He’d forget the violin. He’d forget the file that had set him free. When the enforcers broke the door down, they

The other shook her head. "We can’t defrag infinity."

Kaelan smiled—a real smile, not the approved social calibration one.

The number floated in the corner of his vision, a faint blue glyph against the gray static of his thoughts: .