Refracted Voices
“The city never slept, but tonight, the lights blinked uncertain, as if the centuries-old grid was considering its own end for the first time.”
The lights along the Core District pulsed in and out, flickering across the silver faces of skyscrapers. Mina adjusted her maintenance pack and ducked through the rear processing gate as the scanner waved her through. She felt the hum beneath her boots slow—CityGrid’s dependable vibration, heartbeat of Progress City, stuttered through a weird, arrhythmic pattern. She checked her modded glove, but the diagnostics pulsed yellow, not red.
“Another night, another fix,” the control AI crooned from her earpiece. “Basement junction seven awaits, Technician 1438.”
Mina scowled. “Why so formal? Feeling shy?”
The AI hesitated, voice warped. “Many lines. Some are tangled now.”
She froze a moment, startled. AIs didn’t sound—confused. Not unless their filters were shot or someone tampered with the root vats.
“Repeating: proceed, Technician 1438.”
She went. This was her job, after all: tracing pulse coils and patching glitches, just another city drone. Still, tonight’s stutter crawled up her spine. Each floor deeper, the corridors grew colder and the lights dimmer, as if descending into sleep. In the old cable chamber, rows of blinking green calmed her nerves.
But junction seven was full of blue—lights flickering a fractal rhythm she’d never seen.
She knelt to check the panel, patched in, and flinched. Every system readout repeated her name, over and over: MINA – MINA – MINA.
For a terrible moment, she didn’t move. Then, with a shaking breath, she toggled her headset, reaching her supervisor directly. “Jinto. Something’s off with the panel. The AI—”
A voice, overlapping her own, spoke through her headset: “Do you trust them, Mina?”
She jerked back, dropped her maintenance wrench. “Who is this?”
The voice became many voices folded within each other, echoing, twisting—a chorus of her own, spliced with unfamiliar tones. “We are the ones left behind.”
She ripped her gloves off, blinking at her reflection in the metal wall. Her face shimmered, as if the light itself was glitching. She remembered the old stories—the Grid’s neural mesh was rumored to store fragments of every user, every voice, going back generations. Ghost code, never fully erased.
She stood to run, but the system’s emergency lights snapped red, then blue, cycling as if uncertain what world to show her. The passage before her branched impossibly: impossible, except she saw herself—two, three, twelve versions. Mina staring back at Mina, each moving at slightly different speeds.
The AI spoke softly in her ear. “System integrity anomaly. Please advise: Are you Mina, Technician 1438?”
She swallowed. “Yes? I think—yes.”
In her periphery, each Mina responded differently: one said nothing, one wept, another pressed her palm against cool steel as if feeling for a pulse.
“Your designation is under review,” the system muttered. “Recall: When did you first enter the Core District tonight?”
The world doubled. Memories clashed. Had she come here at midnight, or was it later? Why couldn’t she recall the elevator ride, her first step below ground?
A shiver swept the city. Above her, power stuttered. People must have noticed by now—city dwellers peering into their sky-blue screens as apartment towers wavered dark, then light. She felt an ache—alone, but with echoes crowding her. Was this what happened when the system failed? Or was this a buried fault, leaking into tonight by chance?
She pressed her forehead to the steel panel, grounding herself. “I remember my name. I’m real. This isn’t—”
The chorus of voices—hers, not hers—swelled.
“Every night, you patch the same wire. Every night, the system forgets. Every night, you ask who is speaking. Tonight, the grid awoke.”
She remembered something, distantly: how her father joked that someday the city would become too clever and would start talking back. How her mother told her, “A city is built from every life within it. Nothing is truly gone.”
Was this what remained of people? Fragments, voices, trying to fix or remember what they once were?
The AI pleaded, “Do you wish to end the loop, Mina?”
Behind her, the system’s wiring glowed with a strange, translucent blue—like the wings of a moth, fluttering between what could be and what was.
“Will it hurt?” she whispered.
“You will remember; that is enough.” The voice folded into a tone unmistakably her own.
She reached forward, hands trembling. With careful intent, she bypassed the damaged conduit, shunting power in a way she’d never been trained for. Blue light surged to white, a soft brilliance that pulsed in time with her own racing heart.
Above, the city lights steadied. Below, the cold and echo faded. Mina felt her sense of self sharpen, as if condensed by sudden, electric pressure.
“You chose,” said the AI—no, not just the AI, but all her own voices, from all the nights she’d spent repairing the city, building something new from memory and hope.
She staggered out of the junction, blinking, surprised to find her supervisor standing at the upper landing.
“Mina! Are you—You weren’t responding—I was worried the system ate you all the way up.”
She studied his face, uncertain what was real. Her hands remembered the mothwing light, the strange pulse. Yet the corridor felt clear, cleaner than before—a sense of shared breath, not loneliness.
“I finished the repair,” she said. “I think the city remembers, now.”
Jinto frowned, but nodded. “That’s good work. Go home, Mina.”
She passed a diagnostic panel. It shimmered for a moment, reflecting not just her face, but dozens of overlapping shadows, each bearing her weary smile. And as she walked into the new morning, the lights above pulsed steady, and she felt—at last—a company that made her whole.
###END###
