The alarm clock was silent. Had been for days.
Emily lay on her back and stared into the darkness until the dull green of the analog clock slowly came into focus. 06:17. No gentle brightening, no voice comparing her pulse to last week, no „Good morning, Emily. You slept poorly.“ Just the hum of the air filter in the wall and the neon strip from outside pushing through the gap in the blinds.
The hole in her morning was shaped like a user interface.
She had dreamed something with water, with glass, a room without doors. The moment she reached for the image, it slipped away like a file without a path. Only the weight remained in her chest, an echo that couldn’t decide whether it was fear or a hangover.
„Good morning,“ she murmured into the room.
In the past, KLEIO would have answered. A friendly voice, too warm to be real. Today only the heater replied with a tired crack.
She forced herself up. Feet on cold laminate, shoulders rolling, the familiar tension in her neck, right where under the skin the implant’s incision line lay like a thin plastic wire. In the past, the greeting overlay would have popped up around her right now. Today: nothing. Just that strange awareness of the silence in her head.
On the nightstand lay the old phone. Flat, blind plastic that smelled like another time. She reached for it, wiped the dull display on her shirt. Three carrier texts. A missed number from last night. No name „Fiona“.
The missing icon hurt more than the missed message.
She set the phone on her stomach, stared at the ceiling, and counted the fine cracks in the plaster. KLEIO would have recommended getting up here, making tea, doing a few breathing exercises. „Waking up made easy.“ She had hated those recommendations. Now she realized how much they had embedded her in routine.
„You wanted this,“ she told herself. The voice didn’t sound convinced.
In the bathroom the light burned too bright. The mirror showed a woman in her early thirties with shadows under her eyes that felt like poorly concealed errors. The scar on her neck, a clean, pale line, looked in the neon light like a comment someone had written onto her body.
She brushed two fingers over it. Numb. And at the same time far too present.
And what also didn’t happen was the overlay in front of her face: sleep score, stress indicator, a halfway soothing „You are functioning well under adverse conditions.“ Now she was just looking at her own face, unannotated. That was supposed to feel like freedom. Instead there was a thin, jittery line somewhere between her ribs.
„You look okay,“ she said to the woman in the mirror. The woman didn’t believe her.
In the kitchen the air hung heavy with yesterday’s coffee. The windows were fogged, the light from the billboard across the street danced in the droplets. The city behind it was only a blurry mass of noise. Subway, siren, garbage truck, someone coughing in the courtyard.
Emily turned on the kettle, reached for the coffee tin—and froze mid-motion.
But she’d already done that.
The thought was suddenly there, clearly outlined, with the dull aftertaste of a memory that didn’t fit anywhere. Her eyes slid over the countertop, looking for a used cup, a filter in the trash, anything. There was only the enameled mug, upside down on a cloth, exactly like last night. No fresh grounds, no smell.
Her stomach tightened for a moment.
„You’re just tired,“ she said. „Not…“ The last word stuck. She knew it too well to throw it into the room.
She filled the filter, started the machine. The familiar bubbling began. The first wave of bitter smell crept toward her, settled like a thin coat around her nerves. She leaned her hip against the counter, closed her eyes, and tried to stay inside that sound. Water. Heat. Coffee. Things that worked without knowing her neural signature.
Then her skull vibrated.
It wasn’t a sound. More a brief pressure behind her forehead, as if someone were tapping a finger against the inside of her skull. Her body reacted faster than her mind: pulse up, breath shallower, hands suddenly damp.
The vibration came a second time. This time there was light with it.
In the upper right of her field of vision it glowed, small and unmistakable: a circle with a tiny break. The icon for Mirror sessions.
„No,“ Emily said out loud.
The symbol flickered, pulled back like an animal testing the hand that hits it. Left behind was a thin headache that ran along the scar into her neck.
„Off,“ she added. „System off. No interface.“
Nothing answered. Of course not. Everything she could handle without a surgeon was cut. But her body had learned to formulate commands, and needed time to unlearn it.
She poured herself coffee. The porcelain of the cup was warm, the rim a familiar pressure on her lower lip. She took a sip that was a little too hot, pressed her tongue against her palate like a child.
The coffee wasn’t even fully swallowed when it vibrated again.
This time the pressure came from deeper down, directly out of the scar, tugged upward on an invisible thread. A thin, narrow veil settled over the kitchen. Colors lost a bit of warmth. Edges became a touch too sharp.
Above the kitchen door a transparent line appeared, so faint it almost looked like an afterimage.
SESSION: MIRROR // STATUS: INITIALIZATION
Emily set the cup down. Too fast. Coffee sloshed over the rim, burned across her knuckles. The pain was real; she clung to it like an edge.
„Abort,“ she hissed. „Close session. Code Zero One One.“
In the bar something flickered briefly, as if the system were considering how polite it wanted to be. Instead of a confirmation, a new line appeared.
USER: CARTER_E
SOURCE: – – –
The dashes after „Source“ flickered, stayed empty. A cursor blinked, as if this were an input prompt for her.
„Source: offline,“ she said. „Error. Close session.“
Her voice sounded too calm for what her heart was doing. She noticed—and kept it that way anyway. Panic had no place in this architecture.
The last line began to fill. Not smoothly, but jerkily, letter by letter, as if someone were pulling text fragments from different drawers.
S O U R C E : [ R E S I D U E _ – ]
The remaining characters stayed blurred, as if they’d changed their minds.
Residue.
The word lodged in her head like a grain under an eyelid. Not a term from the user interfaces, no familiar internal designation. It tasted like „leftover“. Like what remains when you think you’ve deleted thoroughly.
The session bar shoved another line after it.
LOG 01 ?
STATUS: READY FOR PLAYBACK
Depth. That was the feeling that clung to the words. Depth and something that smelled suspiciously like intent.
Emily lifted the coffee again, only to keep her hands busy. She didn’t take a sip.
„I didn’t give you anything you’re allowed to play back,“ she said into the kitchen. „You have no right to, unasked…“
The cursor stopped blinking. The dot after „Ready“ became firmer, darker. In her head a tone lowered itself, barely audible, more physical than acoustic.
LOG 01 ? // START.
The kitchen stayed where it was. The kettle clicked. The heater cracked in time with her heartbeat. And yet the sounds shifted. The drone of the city stepped back a pace, as if someone had put a pane of glass between. In its place slid another sound: fans, soft typing, a linear hum. Office noise.
The smell changed. Coffee remained. But now there was also the sharp smell of cleaner that wanted to smell like lemon and smelled like hospital. Warmed-up electronics, long corridors.
She blinked, once. When she opened her eyes, she was no longer standing in her kitchen.
Carpet. Gray, too clean to be private. Glass walls. A conference table made of a material that imitated wood and failed at it. At the far end of the table: a coffee carafe, paper cups, a bowl of cookies someone had set out „for the mood“.
„You’re late,“ Fiona said.
Emily looked at her hands. No enameled mug anymore. Instead the notepad she’d always carried back then. The corners slightly bent, scribbles in her scrawly handwriting, half crossed out.
She knew this room. The newsroom. Conference room at the end of the hall, glass looking out onto the open floor. The day she’d seen the layout of her article for the first time. The knot in her stomach, half pride, half nausea.
She knew this was a memory. KLEIO’s Mirror session, restarted, without her go-ahead. And yet it felt as if she were standing there for the first time.
Over Fiona’s shoulder text hovered in the air, semi-transparent, like projected onto glass.
SESSION: MIRROR
CONTEXT: NEWSROOM – INTERNAL MEETING
PRIORITY: HIGH
Fiona’s eyes were bloodshot, as if she’d been sitting too long in bad air. Her tablet lay in front of her, the fingers of one hand clawed around a paper cup. She slid the tablet toward Emily.
„The headline is set,“ she said. „The bosses are nervous, but they’re letting it run.“
At the top of the page, in bold letters, it read:
KLEIO: Who decides what we forget?
The layout was familiar to her. Her words, dense, factual. But down at the bottom right, something crowded into the image that hadn’t been there back then.
A gray box.
Editor’s note: The scenarios depicted refer to individual experiences…
Emily stared at the box. She would have remembered it. The tone, that „We know better than the author“ shimmer. In her memory she’d argued with Fiona about wording right at this spot. Back then there had only been white margin.
„Since when… is that there?“ Her voice sounded as if she were speaking through water.
„That?“ Fiona followed her gaze. „Legal department. So no one can claim we’re… harming.“ The last word stumbled over her tongue.
At the edge of the tablet something new flickered up, visible only to Emily.
CORRECTION LAYER OB-EL–01 // STATUS: ACTIVE
The letters lay like a second print over the document. They didn’t blink, they didn’t scream. They were simply there. Stubborn.
Above the document a narrow bar slid across her field of vision.
OB-EL–01 // CORE-LAYER
ACCESS: DENIED
USER: CARTER_E // LEVEL: LOW
The temperature in the room seemed to drop by a few degrees.
„Since when do we have Core Layers?“ Emily said.
„Emily?“ Fiona was looking at her directly now. „What do you see?“
Her hands clenched around the notepad. She wanted to change the stage, out of this scene, back to the kitchen, to the analog clock. Instead the sounds tightened. The typing outside got quieter. Somewhere behind the glass wall stood two blurry silhouettes, gray suits without faces.
METADATA ACCESS // UNKNOWN
AUTH-LEVEL: 0
The display wavered above the shadows, as if the system were trying to read them – and failing. No name. No context. Only that zero, which looked more like a hole.
„You didn’t have to write the piece,“ Fiona said softly.
In the memory she’d said something else. Back then there’d been a half-ironic „You don’t have to do this for us.“ Now the „for us“ was missing. It made a difference. The sentence felt like a shove toward the edge.
Emily wanted to object, wanted to dredge up her old line, the thing about conscience. Instead she heard herself say: „Someone made me.“
„Who?“ Fiona frowned.
Emily saw the status bars, the names, the gray box, the men behind glass. The feeling of being watched drew a thin line of ice down her spine.
„The system,“ she said. „The way it decides what stays.“
Fiona’s mouth twisted into an expression Emily knew well. Somewhere between concern and „You’re exaggerating.“
ABORT REQUEST // USER: CARTER_E
The words appeared at the left edge of her field of vision.
CHECKING…
RESLUT: REJECTED
REASON: CONTINUATION REQUIRED FOR EVAL
Nausea rose in her. Not from the scene, but from the clinical reason.
The hum in the back of her head grew louder. The glass wall to the hall turned milky, the shadows behind it sharper. One of the gray men lifted a hand, as if to wave. Or to mark her. Or simply to see what she did.
Emily felt her body bracing inward against something it couldn’t physically escape. An animal in a cage too small.
„This doesn’t belong here,“ she whispered. „This is wrong.“
The status bar reacted.
DEVIATION: +12.4%
RISK CLUSTER: CARTER_E
Then came the honking.
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