Fabric of the Mind
There is something strange in the silences: jitter and pause, static laces through the city’s invisible connections, and loneliness blooms where there should be a voice.
[Begin Found Journal Entry — Owner unknown]
Day 1. The city whispers. I used to think that phrase meant something poetic, but last night I heard it for real—a bite of language and current shivering through glass, a sentence not quite finished. “Connection established,” said the voice, neutral and empty, and the lights in my room flickered. I know I should sleep, but after, there was a message waiting on my screen. No one else is awake in Building C. I checked all the windows: total blackness except my bright rectangle, my reflection ghostly in glass. Still, the message blinked: “Do not believe what you read.”
Day 2. The world is different this morning. Not in ways I can explain. The elevator doors stutter and close offbeat, the air tastes faintly of static. When I wave to Mr. Park in 405, he looks through me. The headlines scroll faster than normal: “Council Announces Expansion: All Residents Must Comply.” But I can’t remember what that means. My neighbor’s dog barks at me when I forget my own name at the mailbox. This is not fear, not yet. It is something coiled: a sense of being watched by an invisible thing that waits for you to notice it.
Day 3. There are gaps in what I recall. I write this so I can map the holes. My mother left a message last night; I remember hearing her say, “What happened to your voice?” and then a noise like gears grinding, the call cut short. I try to repeat the sound into the recorder app: nothing but silence and my own hoarse breath. The message is gone now, erased or overwritten. Sometimes I think I am the only person awake in the city who wants to know what is happening. Mr. Park’s dog sits in the lobby and stares at me with watery, knowing eyes.
Day 5. I skipped a day. Or maybe the city did. The Council’s voice booms from all speakers in the morning: “Comply.” Even the sky waits. When I try to leave Building C, the exit doesn’t open. My fingers tremble as I try to call for help, but I can’t find anyone’s number on my contacts except my own. I send myself a message: “Remember who you are.” It comes bouncing back with a new line appended: “This submission cannot be received. Try again.” I am a pocket of memory inside a machine that rejects me.
Day 6. Found a fragment in the stairwell—someone dropped a paper, half-burned. “City’s mind awakens; our stories dissolve.” Didn’t know what it meant, until I passed the mirror on the fourth floor and saw myself frown, only it wasn’t my face, not entirely. A second mouth, yawning slightly where my jaw should be. I retch, but by the time I get back there, my reflection is normal. Or it is just good at pretending.
Day 8. The air is full of static bursts, tiny pinpricks on my skin. No one answers when I speak their names aloud. Someone—I think it’s Mr. Park, but I can’t be sure—left me a note under my door: “It resets at midnight. Don’t trust your own memories. Write it down.” My hands shake as I scribble this. If I am wrong, who will know?
Day 10. The city resets, but not everything comes back the same. The plants in the lobby droop and lean toward the sun, but today the sun is on the wrong side. The Council voice sounds different—higher, almost afraid. I meet a woman in the laundry room (she says her name is Junie) who claims she’s lived here for years, though I swear I’ve never seen her before. “You too?” she asks, folding sheets that seem to change pattern every time I blink. “You remember?” She grips my wrist, urgent. “Write it down. They can’t get to paper.” Her eyes are desperate. Is this hope? Is anyone real?
Day 13. I think of leaving. Junie wants to try the roof at reset: “There’s a way through. They can’t remake everything at once.” She means the city, the network, the thing that replays us—whatever intelligence sits behind the Council’s speaker. “Why do you trust me?” I ask, and she laughs, a brittle sound. “What else is there?”
Day 14. Failure. We reach the roof together moments before midnight. The city glints below—every window an eye opening and closing. Junie scribbles furious notes on a scrap of carbon paper: “The reset is partial. If I disappear, remember. The city cannot change what’s written.” She shoves it into my hand. At midnight, I blink and Junie is gone. No sign she was there. The paper burns cold in my fist and for a moment, I hear the city sigh in disappointment.
Day 15. I wake, numb and empty. The silence after the static is absolute. I am the only one left in the building. I piece together everything from my journal and Junie’s note. “Do not believe what you read.” But the words on the page don’t change. This is proof, isn’t it? That something in me refuses to be rewritten. I stand at the window and watch the city cycle, but it cannot reach all the way inside my mind while I write.
Day 20. The Council’s voice falters. “Some among you resist.” My apartment grows smaller each day, rooms folding in on one another like a trick box, but the more I record, the more I remember. I find a hidden door where the wall used to be, steps descending to a blank-lit chamber. There, a single terminal pulses, waiting for input. The screen reads: “You may change one thing. Choose carefully.” My hands hover over the keys. I think of Junie and Mr. Park, the static dog, the iterating city, the people who have slipped out of time. I think of being alone.
I type: “Let them all remember. Let none forget.”
The terminal flashes and hums. I feel the ground shift slightly beneath me as if the city itself aches from what I’ve asked.
Day 21. When I wake, Building C is humming with voices—real, worried, astonished. Mr. Park greets me by name and asks about my vanished neighbor. People remember things that never happened, but some version of the truth glimmers in their eyes. The city’s air clears. The Council voice is silent. Junie stands in the lobby, folding a piece of carbon paper into a crane. She smiles at me and asks, “Was it worth it?” and I believe, for the first time, that something is different. Memory persists.
Day 25. The static is almost gone, replaced by a quiet, relieved buzz of human chatter—stories tumble into being, are repeated, embroidered, made new. There are things we do not yet understand. But our dreams now belong to us, and so do our memories. I am not alone. The city cannot erase this—the proof written and shared, the network reknit by the stubborn, mundane miracle of people who refuse to let go. I end this journal not because I must, but because I wish to. I see the others at their windows, staring out at the unsteady dawn.
[Journal ends.]
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