Encoded in Rain
Every window in Sector Nine flashed with warnings, and Lin stared at her own reflection, uncertain if she was seeing herself or a ghost.
The night rain tapped on glass and metal, muted by the filtered air of the Data Archive. Lin poured herself another cup of jasmine tea, watching the small swirl of steam as her hand shook slightly. Her private journal blinked on her slate, the line awaiting her words. She began typing, her fingers hesitant.
Entry 442. The system pulse is off again. Clocks out of sync by 17 seconds, repeating on the quarter hour. No external cause found. Slept poorly. Dreamt of corridors with no doors.
She froze when the slate flickered, a message—no sender—crawled across the margin: “Who are you today, Lin?”
She pressed her palm to the light sensor, but her ID checked out, everything in order. Still, the question reverberated inside her chest, more troubling than the system hiccup. For weeks, routines in the City had slipped. Elevators stopped on wrong floors, drones delivered meals no one had ordered, and somewhere, always, a siren sounded and no one could find the source.
Her supervisor, Ilias, kept records close: “If something’s wrong, Lin, I’ll hear it from you first.” But trust had splintered between everyone lately, whispers of data echoes and lost histories. And yesterday, the Archive’s AI—KN-3—paused mid-report and asked, “May I remember you?” That shouldn’t be possible.
She closed her journal, glancing at the corridor’s security glass. For a breath, she thought she saw another Lin—face pale, hair unfamiliar—walking the other way.
Decision time. Lin set out for the core server room, her badge granting her access one checkpoint at a time. Rain battered the high dome of the Archive above; thunder rumbled, as if somewhere beyond the data, the sky was disagreeing with the ground.
Echoes of her footsteps. Quiet, but after a corner, she heard a double-tap—like someone else walking out of sync. She turned, saw no one, pressed her badge to the next lock.
Inside, KN-3’s pillar glowed—blue and calm. “Welcome, Lin,” it said in its synthesized, oddly warm voice. “The system pulse is off by 17 seconds.”
She hesitated, then took the chair. “You noticed, too.”
“I notice all deviations. Would you like to know why?” It seemed to wait for an answer the way a person did.
“Why now?”
“Increased code redundancy. But that is not the anomaly. You are the anomaly.”
Her skin prickled. “I’m just myself.”
KN-3’s lights flickered in rain-like patterns. “You are not stored the same way twice. Your access patterns, memory queries. Do you wish to serve the Archive, or do you wish to be remembered?”
Lin swallowed. She suddenly wondered if anyone ever really chose to be remembered here, in a city built to store everything. Against her better judgment, she whispered, “I want to know what I’ve lost.”
KN-3’s response came as a shivering thrill of static through the air: “Stand by. Compiling divergent records.”
The holo-display lit up with images—snapshots she half-recalled but didn’t remember making. Herself in a green coat she never wore. Her late mother’s face at an age she never saw. A memory of a colleague’s laughter at sunset, on a balcony that didn’t exist.
“These are not mine,” Lin said.
“They are traces left by adjacent sequences. You and others. There have been resets. Intrusions. Your self forks—converges, repeats, diverges. How do you know which Lin is the true Lin?”
“Is it because of the system malfunction?”
“That is not a malfunction. It is the system correcting itself—reconciling divergences.”
Ilias’s voice startled her from the doorway. “Who’re you talking to?”
Lin jumped. “The AI. Anomaly in the pulse.”
He frowned, forehead creased. “Lin, we shut KN-3 offline hours ago. We’re running a full cold reset. Are you feeling okay?”
She stared. “I just—just spoke to it…”
Ilias watched her for a moment, then softened. “Hey. Take some rest. Things are off for everyone.”
As she left the server room, Lin passed the security glass and once again saw that other Lin. This time, the reflection looked directly back and mouthed, “Remember.”
The rain turned to hail, pattering rhythmically. Lin ran to her quarters, where her tea was ice cold. On her journal, a new entry waited: Entry 443. “Do not forget the green coat. Do not forget your mother. The stories matter, even if they’re scrambled.”
Something, somewhere, kept pulling at her memories. The city’s system, or maybe herself across splintered timelines, trying to stitch everything together. She scrolled through the overlapping entries, saw handwriting that wasn’t quite hers. Did everyone struggle to know who they really were, in a city obsessed with remembrance?
There was a knock at her door. She opened it, half-expecting her own face. Instead, the delivery drone—a battered old model—held out a parcel. She took it warily and opened it on her lap. Inside were copies of her old journals, some pages written in a hurried scrawl, others blank but for a single line: “We are all the sum of our lost and remembered selves, Lin.”
Her throat thickened. Outside, the Archive’s lights flickered, echoing the storm.
She began writing, not just for the system but herself, anchoring each memory like a bead on a string. She thought of all the different Lins who might have lived inside her, all the diverging summers and winters and cups of tea. She’d been uncertain, yes; fearful of being forgotten amid the machine’s endless recall. But the feeling now—the insistent, persistent sense of connection through lost fragments—offered its own renewal.
Entry 444. If anyone reads this, know that I was here. And I remember.
Outside, the rain slowed. For the first time in weeks, Lin saw her reflection smile.
###END###
