Chapter Three

World 31

The apprentice was better than him already, and the final exam was next week.

K. was supposed to be the master. He was supposed to be teaching a craft that required decades of practice, a skill so demanding that only the most dedicated practitioners could hope to achieve competence. He had the title, the workshop, the tools that had been passed down through generations of masters. He had an apprentice who looked at him with the expectation of guidance.

He had no idea what he was doing.

The craft involved metal. That much was clear from the workshop—the forges, the hammers, the sheets of material in various stages of transformation. It involved shaping and joining, heating and cooling, the application of force at precise moments with precise intensities. The finished pieces lined the walls, evidence of work that had supposedly emerged from K.'s own hands, and they were beautiful in a way he couldn't have produced.

The apprentice—her name was Vera—had been studying under him for three years. She had absorbed techniques, developed intuitions, achieved a fluency with the materials that K. could see but couldn't replicate. When she worked, the metal seemed to cooperate with her. When K. tried to work, the metal resisted, as if it knew he didn't understand it.

"Should I try the joining technique?" Vera asked, holding two pieces that needed to become one.

K. nodded. Nodding was safe. Nodding let her demonstrate what she knew while he observed, which was the only way he could learn what he was supposed to already understand.

Vera joined the pieces. The technique was flawless—K. could recognize flawlessness even if he couldn't produce it. The metal flowed together at the seams, becoming continuous, stronger than either piece had been alone.

"Like that?" Vera asked.

"Exactly like that," K. said.

The exam was next week. Vera would demonstrate her skills before a panel of master craftspeople who would expect her to have been properly taught. K. would stand beside her, the supposed source of her knowledge, and hope that no one asked him to demonstrate anything himself.

Vera was looking at him with an expression he couldn't quite read. Suspicion, maybe. She was beginning to notice that her master watched more than he worked, that he answered questions with other questions, that his hands hesitated over tools she handled with confidence.

"Is there anything you want me to practice?" she asked.

"Keep doing what you're doing," K. said. "You're ready."

She was ready. That was true. Whether K. could claim any credit for her readiness was a different question, one he hoped the exam committee would never think to ask.

World 32

Men were property here, and K.'s owner was waiting for him when he got home.

Her name was Director Chen, and she had purchased his registration rights at a government auction four years ago, and the documentation in his apartment confirmed that he belonged to her legally, completely, in the way that furniture belonged to whoever bought it. She was kind—he could tell this from the way the other men in her household spoke about her, from the privileges she granted, from the fact that she asked before making demands rather than simply demanding.

But kindness didn't change the fundamental relationship. He was property. She was owner. When she told him to do something, he did it.

"I brought dinner," Director Chen said. She had bags from a restaurant, the kind of meal that property couldn't afford on their own stipends. "I thought we could eat together."

K. set the table. Table-setting was one of his duties, along with household maintenance and light clerical work and the other tasks that men in this society were trained to perform. He did it well because he had been doing it for years, or because someone had programmed the skills into him, or because he had learned it in some previous iteration of his life.

"How was your day?" Director Chen asked, serving the food onto his plate first, a gesture of consideration that didn't change the power dynamics but made them more comfortable.

"Productive," K. said. "I finished the filing you needed."

"Good. That's good." She ate in small, precise bites. "I've been thinking about your situation. You're valuable—skilled, reliable, well-behaved. There might be opportunities for advancement."

K. didn't know what advancement meant in this context. Promotion to a higher class of property? Transfer to a more prestigious owner? Some kind of emancipation that existed in theory but never seemed to be applied in practice?

"What kind of opportunities?"

"The council is considering reforms. New categories. Some men might become... not exactly free, but less restricted. More autonomous within certain boundaries." Director Chen's voice was careful, as if she were describing something that might not come true. "I've put your name forward. If the reforms pass, you might be among the first to benefit."

K. felt something that might have been hope, or might have been the precursor to hope, the possibility of hoping. He ate his dinner and thanked his owner for thinking of him and wondered what it would feel like to belong to himself.

Director Chen decided when he ate. But at least, for now, she decided that he could eat well.

World 33

Political power derived from musical ability, and K. was a senator, and his instrument was the theremin.

He had never seen a theremin before the session began.

The Senate chamber was arranged around a central stage where legislators performed their arguments. Each senator had a station equipped with their designated instrument, and the debates were conducted through melody and harmony, the quality of your music determining the weight of your political position. A skilled performer could sway colleagues through sheer aesthetic force. A poor performer was ignored, marginalized, eventually voted out by a constituency that expected their representative to make beautiful sounds.

K.'s station was in the middle tier, appropriate for his apparent seniority. The theremin stood there waiting for him—a vertical antenna and a horizontal loop, an instrument played without physical contact, controlled through the proximity of hands to electromagnetic fields. It looked like something from a science fiction film. It made sounds he had never heard before.

"The senator from District 7 has the floor," the chamber leader announced.

K. was the senator from District 7. K. had the floor. K. was expected to play something, to make an argument through music, to contribute to the legislative process that determined the laws of this society.

He raised his hands. The theremin responded to his proximity, producing a wavering tone that sounded like nothing so much as confusion. He tried to shape the sound, to give it melody, to make it mean something, but the instrument interpreted his clumsy movements as exactly what they were—the fumbling of someone who had no idea what he was doing.

The chamber went quiet. Other senators stopped their own performances to listen, or to watch, or to assess this colleague who had apparently lost control of his instrument.

"Is the senator from District 7 feeling well?" the chamber leader asked, using the formal phrasing that acknowledged something was wrong without accusing anyone of incompetence.

"I'm fine," K. said, lowering his hands. The theremin fell silent. "I yield my time."

He sat back down. The session continued around him, beautiful music emerging from senators who knew their instruments, who could make arguments through sound, who belonged in this chamber in ways K. clearly did not.

His district expected him to perform. His constituents had elected him based on his supposed musical talent. The next session was in three days, and he still didn't know how to make the theremin say anything other than confusion.

World 34

Everyone spoke in soft voices around him, the way you speak around someone who doesn't have much time left.

K. had noticed the change gradually. The way coworkers lowered their eyes when they passed him in the hallway. The way friends called more often, with a particular tenderness in their voices. The way his doctor had started scheduling appointments more frequently, always with the same reassuring expression that didn't reassure at all.

"You're feeling okay?" people asked, and they asked it differently now, with an emphasis that suggested they expected the answer to be no.

K. felt fine. He felt completely normal. His body functioned as it always had, his energy levels were stable, his appetite was healthy, his sleep was sound. Whatever was supposedly wrong with him wasn't producing any symptoms he could detect.

The test results were sealed.

He had asked to see them, multiple times, through multiple channels. The hospital cited privacy protocols that he didn't understand—how could results about his own body be private from him? The doctors spoke in euphemisms that communicated concern without specifying cause. The insurance company had adjusted his coverage in ways that suggested expensive treatments in his future.

"We want you to know that we're here for you," his supervisor said, in a meeting that had been scheduled for "support and planning." "Whatever you need, we'll accommodate."

"I don't know what I need," K. said. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

His supervisor's expression went through several transitions. Surprise. Pity. Something that might have been professional calculation. "The counseling services are available whenever you're ready," she said finally. "To process the... situation."

K. went home. He looked in the mirror, searching for signs of whatever terminal condition had apparently been diagnosed without his knowledge. He looked the same as he always looked. He felt the same as he always felt.

The sympathy was crushing. Everyone knew something he didn't know, had access to information about his own body that he had been denied. They were preparing for his death while he was still trying to figure out what was killing him.

He called the hospital again. The results remained sealed.

World 35

Every breath was taxed, and K. was three weeks behind on his respiratory payments.

The collectors were patient. That was the thing about oxygen debt—they knew you couldn't stop breathing, knew that every inhalation dug you deeper into obligation, knew that eventually the mathematics would become impossible and you would have to make arrangements. They didn't need to threaten. Physics did the threatening for them.

"Your current balance is 847 respiratory units," the collector said, consulting a tablet. "At your breathing rate, you're accumulating approximately 23 units per day. The interest compounds weekly."

K. had tried breathing less. He had practiced shallow respiration, had trained himself to minimize unnecessary exhalation, had spent hours in meditation trying to reduce his metabolic rate. It didn't help. The human body required a certain minimum of oxygen, and that minimum was more than he could afford.

"What are my options?"

The collector smiled the smile of someone who had been through this conversation many times. "You can continue accumulating debt, in which case we'll eventually begin physical enforcement. You can declare respiratory bankruptcy, which would allow you to breathe freely for six months while your case is processed, but which would leave you with limited breathing rights afterward. Or you can negotiate a payment plan based on your current income."

K. did the math. A payment plan would consume most of his earnings, leaving just enough for basic food and shelter. He would work to breathe. He would breathe to work. The cycle would continue until death or debt relief, whichever came first.

"I'll take the payment plan," he said.

The paperwork took twenty minutes. K. signed documents authorizing the direct withdrawal of breathing fees from his account, documents confirming his understanding of the penalties for non-payment, documents waiving certain rights he hadn't known he had.

When he left the collector's office, the air felt different—the same air he had been breathing all along, but now officially transacted, each molecule accounted for and charged.

Breathing is a luxury. He hadn't believed it before, had thought it was just rhetoric, just an exaggeration used to dramatize the economic system. But it wasn't rhetoric. It was accounting. And the ledger was always open.

World 36

The fame had curdled, and K. didn't know why.

He was famous. That much was clear from the recognition he received—the stares on the street, the whispered conversations that stopped when he entered rooms, the photographers who appeared at unexpected moments with cameras aimed at his face. He had been someone important once, had done something that made him a household name, had achieved a level of public visibility that most people never experienced.

But the recognition came with complicated expressions. Not admiration. Not even simple curiosity. Something else—a mixture of fascination and repulsion, the way you might look at a car accident or a celebrity mugshot. The fame had transformed into something darker, and K. didn't know what he had done to cause the transformation.

"Excuse me," a stranger said on the train. "Aren't you—"

"Yes," K. said, because he had learned that denying it made things worse.

The stranger's face went through the same transitions K. had seen dozens of times. Recognition. Assessment. Judgment. "I can't believe you're just... out here. Living your life. After everything."

"After everything?"

The stranger stared at him. "You're serious. You don't—" A shake of the head. "Unbelievable." The stranger moved to a different car, and K. was left with the familiar weight of undefined notoriety.

He had searched for information about himself. The search results were confusing—references to events he couldn't remember, opinions about actions he couldn't recall taking, debates about whether he deserved sympathy or condemnation. The details were vague, obscured by euphemism and legal restrictions, but the overall impression was clear: he had done something, or been accused of doing something, or been involved in something that had turned public opinion against him.

People recognized him with complicated expressions. He smiled back, uncertainly, because he didn't know what else to do. He was famous for something terrible, and the terrible thing had been erased from his memory, leaving only the fame and its consequences.

Some days he wished the fame would fade. Other days he wished he could remember what he had done to earn it.

World 37

The insects had named him Comfortable, which was their highest form of pet classification.

K.'s owner was a collective intelligence comprising approximately four million individual organisms, networked through chemical signals into a distributed consciousness that perceived and thought and made decisions at a speed humans couldn't comprehend. The collective—it called itself the Harmony—had acquired K. three years ago, had assigned him to domestic duties, had gradually elevated him through the ranks of household pets until he had achieved the status that now defined his existence.

He was Comfortable. He ate at the table. He had privileges that other human pets could only dream of.

"Gratitude is what we expect," the Harmony communicated, through the speaker system that translated its chemical language into sounds K. could understand. "You are expressing gratitude?"

"Yes," K. said. "I'm grateful."

The Harmony processed this for a moment—a moment that was probably several thousand individual calculations happening across millions of tiny brains. "Good. Your behavior has been pleasing. We have decided to increase your food allocation."

K. received more food now than he had received as a free human, back in whatever life he had lived before the insects had achieved dominance. His living quarters were comfortable. His health was monitored and maintained. The Harmony understood that healthy, well-fed pets were more productive, more pleasant, more worth keeping.

"Thank you," K. said.

"You are welcome." The Harmony paused again. "We are curious about human emotional states. Are you happy?"

K. considered the question. He was fed. He was sheltered. He was protected from the dangers that humans outside the pet system faced. By any objective measure, he was better off than millions of his species who had not been lucky enough to find good owners.

"I think so," he said.

"Think so is acceptable," the Harmony responded. "Perfect happiness is not required. Contentment is sufficient. Adequate contentment maintains productivity while minimizing the risk of escape attempts."

K. nodded. He was content. He was grateful. He was a good pet, and he would continue to be a good pet, because that was what good pets did.

The insects were kind, in their way. They just weren't human.

World 38

The vow had been sacred, and breaking it meant death, and K. didn't know what the vow was.

The priests were watching him. He could feel their attention—the subtle observation that followed him through public spaces, the questions asked by strangers who might have been informants, the way certain doors seemed to close more quickly when he approached. He had sworn something, apparently, had made a commitment so binding that the penalty for violation was execution.

He had no memory of the ceremony.

He had tried to research it. The temple archives were restricted, available only to those who had taken the vow and therefore already knew its contents. The priests he approached deflected his questions with enigmatic non-answers. The other adherents—the people who had presumably sworn the same oath—looked at him with expressions that ranged from pity to suspicion, as if his questions were themselves evidence of apostasy.

"The vow is the vow," one of them said, when K. pressed for details. "If you don't know it, you've already forgotten it, and forgetting is the first step toward breaking."

"But how can I keep a vow I don't remember making?"

The adherent's expression hardened. "You find a way. Or you accept the consequences."

K. went about his daily life in a state of perpetual anxiety. Everything he did might be a violation. Every choice might be the one that triggered the penalty. The vow could have been about food or sex or commerce or sleep or any of the thousand daily decisions that made up a human life. He could be breaking it right now, in ways he couldn't detect, and the priests could be recording each transgression, building a case that would eventually result in his death.

"You seem stressed," his doctor said, during a routine checkup.

"I am stressed."

"Any particular reason?"

K. almost told her. But telling might be a violation. Seeking help from outsiders might be a violation. Admitting uncertainty might be a violation. Every possible action seemed dangerous, and every inaction seemed equally dangerous, and the priests were watching, always watching, waiting for the moment when he would finally, definitively break.

World 39

Personal weather was a status symbol, and K. walked in his own small raincloud of poverty.

The cloud followed him everywhere. It was perhaps three meters in diameter, centered on his head, producing a constant light drizzle that soaked his clothes and his hair and everything he carried. It was gray—the color assigned to the lowest economic tier—and it blocked out the sun that everyone else around him was enjoying.

Umbrella ownership was restricted to higher income brackets. Raincoats required permits that K. didn't qualify for. He walked through the world perpetually damp, marked by his personal weather as surely as if he wore a sign describing his bank balance.

"Your application for weather modification has been denied," the clerk at the Meteorological Control Office said, not unkindly. "You don't meet the income threshold."

"Is there an appeal process?"

The clerk consulted her screen. "You can appeal if there's been an error in the income assessment. But the assessment looks accurate." She paused, calculating. "If your earnings increased by approximately 40% over the next six months, you might qualify for the next tier. That would give you partly cloudy with occasional sun."

Partly cloudy sounded like paradise. K. tried to imagine walking through the city with breaks in the gray, with moments when the light hit his face, with the dignity of weather that suggested he was getting by rather than drowning.

"What about the tier above that?"

"Full sun." The clerk smiled. "But that's reserved for the top 5%. Most people never make it there. The goal for someone in your position is really just to get out of the rain."

K. walked home through his personal storm. The streets were full of people with better weather—the comfortable clouds of the middle class, the clear skies of the wealthy, the occasional rainbow of the truly blessed. They moved around him, avoiding his drizzle the way you avoid any unpleasant reality, their umbrellas held between themselves and the reminder of what it meant to be poor.

His apartment was damp. The raincloud didn't stop at walls. It followed him inside, filled his living space with humidity, encouraged mold in corners and rust on surfaces. He lived in his weather, slept in his weather, woke to the sound of rain on his face.

Being poor was wet work.

World 40

There were fourteen of them, identical, and the original had died, and no one knew which one any of them were.

K. sat in the lawyer's office with his thirteen siblings—brothers? Sisters? The gender was as ambiguous as everything else about them. They all had the same face, the same body, the same way of sitting that suggested either genetic similarity or learned mimicry. They had been produced from the same template, grown in the same facility, decanted at the same moment, and raised separately until this meeting brought them together for the first time.

The original—the person they had all been copied from—had died without specifying which, if any, of the clones should inherit. The estate was substantial. The legal questions were unprecedented.

"The will is clear that the inheritance goes to 'my true self,'" the lawyer said, reading from a document that must have been drafted by someone with either a cruel sense of humor or a profound philosophical confusion. "The problem is determining which of you, if any, qualifies as that designation."

"Maybe none of us do," one of K.'s siblings said. "Maybe the original was the only 'true self,' and we're all just copies."

"In that case, the estate would go to the state by default. Is that what you want?"

No one wanted that. The inheritance was too large to surrender to bureaucratic inertia. They had all, apparently, been counting on this money, had been waiting for the original to die, had been living lives that assumed eventual windfall.

"We could split it evenly," K. suggested.

Thirteen identical faces turned toward him with thirteen variations of skepticism. "Why should we split it?" another sibling asked. "Maybe one of us is more original than the others. Maybe the original favored one of us. Maybe there's a hierarchy we haven't discovered yet."

The argument continued for hours. K. watched his siblings debate their own authenticity, each one trying to prove that they were somehow more real than the others, more deserving, more closely connected to the template they had all emerged from. He couldn't tell them apart. He couldn't tell himself apart from them. They were all the same person, replicated, and the person they had all been was dead.

The inheritance remained unresolved. The lawyers scheduled another meeting. K. went home and looked in the mirror and wondered which version of himself he was seeing.

World 41

Dreams were currency, and K. was an accountant specializing in dream taxation, and a client's nightmare portfolio didn't add up.

The client was a mid-level executive named Marcus Penn who had reported 847 dreaming hours for the previous quarter, generating a tax liability of approximately 12,000 credits based on the standard assessment of dream content and emotional intensity. The numbers should have been straightforward. Dreams came in, taxes went out, the government collected its share of the subconscious economy.

But something was wrong with the portfolio.

"The nightmare allocation is inconsistent with your baseline anxiety profile," K. said, reviewing the documentation. "You're claiming 23% nightmare content, but your psychological assessment suggests you should be producing closer to 40%."

Marcus shifted uncomfortably. "People's dreams don't always match their assessments."

"That's true. But the variance here is significant. Either your assessment is wrong, or someone has been... adjusting your portfolio."

Dream embezzlement was a serious crime. The subconscious economy depended on accurate reporting, on the assumption that people's nocturnal mental activity would be honestly documented and appropriately taxed. If people were hiding nightmares, skimming terror from their portfolios, the entire system could collapse.

"I have a condition," Marcus said. "My therapist can confirm. I've been working through some issues, and my nightmare production has naturally decreased."

K. made a note. He would need to verify with the therapist, cross-reference with the neural monitoring data that was supposed to provide independent confirmation of dream content. If Marcus was telling the truth, the discrepancy was medical. If Marcus was lying, someone had been helping him hide taxable nightmares.

"I'll need to see your supplementary documentation," K. said. "Therapist records, monitoring logs, anything that explains the variance."

Marcus's expression flickered. "Is that really necessary?"

"I'm afraid so." K. felt the familiar weight of professional obligation. He didn't want to catch people cheating. He wanted the numbers to add up, wanted the portfolios to balance, wanted to go home at the end of the day without having uncovered evidence that would ruin someone's life.

But the numbers didn't add up. Someone had been embezzling terror. And it was K.'s job to find out who.

World 42

His best friend wouldn't speak to him, and K. didn't know what he had done.

The silence had started three weeks ago, after the party that K. couldn't quite remember. He had been there—the photographs confirmed it, showed him laughing with friends, holding a drink, apparently enjoying himself. But somewhere during the evening, something had happened. Something that had turned his closest relationship into a void of unreturned calls and avoided eye contact.

"What did I do?" K. asked everyone who had been at the party.

The answers were evasive. "It's not my place to say." "You really don't remember?" "Maybe you should talk to him directly." But the friend—his name was David, they had known each other since childhood—wouldn't answer the phone, wouldn't respond to messages, wouldn't open the door when K. showed up at his apartment.

The pain was visible. K. could see it from a distance, when he spotted David in public places—the tension in his shoulders, the way his face closed down when their eyes accidentally met. Whatever K. had done, it had wounded deeply. The kind of wound that didn't heal with time and apology, that required something more than K. knew how to offer.

He apologized anyway. Through messages that went unread, through letters that were probably thrown away, through mutual friends who carried his words and returned with shrugs and grimaces. "I'm sorry," he said, without knowing what he was apologizing for. "I'm sorry for whatever happened. I'm sorry I can't remember. I'm sorry I hurt you."

The apologies bounced off the silence and returned to him unchanged.

K. tried to reconstruct the evening. He talked to everyone who had been there, pieced together the timeline, identified the moments when he had been observed and the gaps when his movements were unknown. There was an hour, somewhere in the middle of the party, when no one could account for his presence. An hour when, presumably, the crime had been committed.

But what crime? What had he said, or done, or failed to do? The friend's pain was visible. The offense was invisible. K. was guilty of something he couldn't name, couldn't remember, couldn't repair.

He kept apologizing anyway. Eventually, maybe, David would tell him what for.

World 43

His authentic liver was worth more than his house, and K. was being approached by buyers.

The body had been 90% prosthetic for as long as K. could remember. His arms were synthetic. His legs were enhanced. His heart was a compact turbine that never needed rest, and his lungs were filters that could process air of any quality, and his eyes were cameras that recorded everything they saw. These components were standard, unremarkable, the kind of upgrades that everyone had if they could afford them.

But his liver was original. His liver had come from a biological parent, had developed naturally in a uterus, had never been replaced or upgraded or modified. In a society where original organs were vanishing, where each generation contained fewer authentic parts than the last, a natural liver was a rare and valuable thing.

"We're prepared to offer three times your current annual income," the representative from the organ consortium said. "Plus lifetime maintenance coverage for a synthetic replacement."

"I don't want a synthetic replacement."

"The synthetic liver we would install is superior in every measurable way. Better filtration. Longer lifespan. No risk of disease or failure." The representative's smile was professional, practiced. "Many of our clients report that they feel better after the procedure. Lighter. Cleaner."

K. didn't want to feel lighter or cleaner. He wanted to keep the part of himself that had grown naturally, that connected him to a biological history that was otherwise entirely prosthetic. His liver was the last authentic thing about him. Its value wasn't economic. It was existential.

"I'm not interested in selling."

The representative made a note. "I understand. But I should mention that the market for original organs is... competitive. There are parties who might not be as respectful of your decision as we are."

This was a threat, delivered politely, with the professional detachment of someone who was used to making threats and seeing them work. K.'s liver was valuable enough to attract attention from people who didn't take no for an answer. His original, authentic, irreplaceable organ was a target.

He went home. He locked his doors. He put his hand on his abdomen, where the liver sat, doing its work, filtering his blood, connecting him to a natural world that was otherwise entirely synthetic.

Surgeons had been asking about his health. Now he understood why.

World 44

The official language had changed last month, again, and K. was still thinking in the previous one.

The transition had been announced with the usual fanfare—press conferences, educational campaigns, a national holiday to commemorate the linguistic upgrade. The new language was supposed to be more efficient, more expressive, better suited to the needs of a modern society. Everyone had received the standard neural update, the patch that would replace their old vocabulary with the new one, their old grammar with revised structures.

Everyone except K.

The update had failed, for reasons his technician couldn't explain. The patch had installed but hadn't activated. The new language was in his brain somewhere, inaccessible, while the old language continued to dominate his thoughts and occasionally his speech.

"That's politically suspect," his supervisor said, when K. tried to explain why his reports were filled with deprecated terminology. "The language was changed for a reason. Using the old forms suggests... resistance."

"I'm not resisting anything. I just can't access the update."

"That's what resisters say." The supervisor's expression was not unkind, but it was firm. "I'd recommend re-education. Voluntary re-education, before someone files a complaint."

Re-education was available at centers throughout the city, staffed by linguistic specialists who could help citizens whose updates had failed, whose old languages persisted despite official obsolescence. The process was intensive—weeks of immersion, active suppression of deprecated neural patterns, careful cultivation of the new linguistic structures.

K. signed up for a session. The center was clean and professional, with inspirational posters on the walls showing citizens who had successfully transitioned, their faces bright with the joy of upgraded communication.

"The goal isn't to erase your old language," the specialist explained. "It's to help you access the new one. The old forms will still be there, archived, but they'll be... quieter. Less intrusive."

K. nodded. He wondered what it would feel like to think differently, to process reality through new words and new structures. He wondered if he would still be himself when the re-education was complete, or if he would be something else—someone upgraded, improved, aligned with the current linguistic requirements.

The session began. K. closed his eyes and tried to let the new language in.

World 45

Water was sacred, and K. had just spilled some.

The glass had slipped from his hand, or his hand had failed the glass, and now the precious liquid was spreading across the floor of the restaurant, and every eye in the room was watching, and the room had gone quiet with the particular silence that follows disaster.

"I'm sorry," K. said. "It was an accident."

No one responded. The waiter who had delivered the water—a single glass, three ounces, the maximum allocation for a meal of this category—stood frozen, his tray still extended as if K. might somehow reverse time and catch the falling glass. The other diners had stopped eating. The kitchen staff had emerged to witness.

"Three ounces," someone said, their voice carrying the weight of indictment. "Three ounces of drinking water, absorbed by the floor."

K. looked at the spreading puddle. It was already soaking into the porous surface, disappearing into the material of the restaurant, becoming irretrievable. The water was gone. The water that someone had worked for, that represented someone's labor and someone's hope, that had been extracted from a world where extraction was carefully rationed.

"I'll pay for it," K. said. "Whatever the cost."

The restaurant manager appeared. Her face was tight with anger or fear or both. "You can't pay for water, sir. Payment doesn't replace it. Payment doesn't make it exist again."

This was true. Water was finite here, controlled by a system that allocated every drop according to need and merit. You couldn't buy more water. You could only use the water you were given, and if you wasted it, if you spilled it, if you let it disappear into floors that couldn't be wrung out, you had destroyed something that couldn't be restored.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"You can explain yourself to the Resource Commission." The manager's voice was cold. "They'll want to know why you weren't more careful. They'll want to assess whether this was negligence or sabotage or just... incompetence."

K. left the restaurant. The floor was drinking his future, and he couldn't stop it. The three ounces were gone, absorbed, transformed into a stain that would eventually dry and leave no trace except in the records that documented his failure.

Water was sacred. He had committed sacrilege.

World 46

The lawyers were waiting, and K. didn't understand the documents they had brought.

The relative—apparently a great-uncle, though K. had no memory of ever meeting a great-uncle—had died three months ago, leaving behind an estate that was now K.'s responsibility. Not to inherit, exactly. To manage. To fulfill. The documents used the word "obligation" repeatedly, in contexts that suggested burdens rather than benefits.

"The primary obligation is the completion of the Naming Project," the lead lawyer explained. "Your great-uncle had committed to naming every unnamed thing in the Northern Territory. He completed approximately 60% of the work before his death. The remainder falls to his designated heir."

"I don't understand. What things need to be named?"

"Rocks, primarily. Also trees, flowers, insects, weather patterns—anything that exists without a formal designation. The tradition is that someone from your family has always held the Naming responsibility. It passes automatically to the closest surviving relative."

K. looked at the documents. They were in a script he couldn't read, filled with symbols that might have been a language or might have been decorative flourishes or might have been both. The lawyers seemed to assume he could interpret them, would interpret them, would accept the obligations they described.

"How long does naming take?"

"Typically a lifetime." The lawyer's expression was sympathetic but firm. "Your great-uncle started at age twenty-three. He was seventy-eight when he died. If you begin now and work consistently, you might complete the project before you reach his age."

A lifetime of naming rocks. A lifetime of traveling to the Northern Territory, examining unnamed things, assigning words to stones and flowers and the particular quality of morning light. The obligation was absurd. The obligation was also, apparently, legally binding.

"What if I refuse?"

"The penalties are significant. Property forfeiture. Social exclusion. There's also a spiritual component that we're not qualified to discuss—you'd need to consult with the relevant religious authorities."

K. signed the preliminary acknowledgment, which committed him to nothing except acknowledging that the obligation existed. The lawyers scheduled a follow-up meeting to discuss implementation. K. went home and tried to imagine a life spent naming things he had never seen, for reasons he didn't understand, in fulfillment of a promise made by a relative he had never met.

World 47

His social credit score was visible above his head, floating in augmented reality for anyone whose devices were set to display it. The number was low. The number kept dropping. K. didn't know why.

"4,127," the grocery clerk said, scanning the display above K.'s head. "That's not great."

"I know."

"I can still sell to you. But I'm required to note the risk." The clerk made a notation in her terminal. "If your score drops below 4,000, you'll be restricted to essential items only."

K. took his groceries and walked through a city that was constantly evaluating him. The scores floated above everyone's heads—high numbers in green, medium numbers in yellow, low numbers in red. His own number was deep orange, trending toward red, marking him as someone whose social standing was in decline.

The algorithm that determined the scores was supposedly transparent, but the documentation was thousands of pages long, filled with variables and weights and conditional adjustments that made it impossible to understand in any practical sense. Your score went up when you did things the system valued. Your score went down when you did things the system didn't. Most people could calibrate their behavior to achieve stability. K. couldn't.

"Maybe you're being too honest," a colleague suggested. "The algorithm penalizes certain kinds of honesty. Not all honesty—the documentation is very specific about which truths are valued and which are devalued."

"I can't figure out which is which."

"Most people can't. That's why consultants exist."

Social credit consultants charged fees that K. couldn't afford at his current score level. The paradox was elegant: you needed help to raise your score, but you needed a higher score to afford the help. Some people escaped the cycle through luck or natural alignment with the system's values. Others spiraled downward until they fell below the threshold for meaningful participation.

K. went home. The number above his head followed him, visible to everyone he passed, a constant reminder that he was failing by standards he didn't understand. The number ticked down while he watched—another fraction of a point lost for reasons the algorithm would never explain.

4,125 now. Dropping.

World 48

He had designed this prison, and now he was living in it.

The guards kept asking about the features. The particular angle of the walls, which made certain cells impossible to escape from. The placement of the observation points, which ensured that no corner went unmonitored. The ventilation system, which could disperse gas into any room within thirty seconds. K. had designed all of it, apparently, had created a facility specifically engineered to contain and control, had been recognized as an expert in the architecture of confinement.

Now he was inmate 7,842, occupying a cell whose geometry he had personally specified, unable to find any of the weaknesses he must have built into the system.

"Why did you include the acoustic channels?" a guard asked during the daily interrogation. "The ones that carry sound from the east wing to the west. We haven't figured out what they're for."

K. didn't know what they were for. He didn't remember designing acoustic channels, didn't remember designing anything. But the documentation was clear—his signature on the blueprints, his name in the construction records, his expertise acknowledged in the trade publications that had praised this facility as a masterwork of secure architecture.

"I'd like to help you," K. said. "But I don't remember the design process."

"That's what you always say." The guard made a note. "Are you going to claim you don't remember why you're here, either?"

K. didn't remember why he was here. He had woken up incarcerated, had been processed through an intake system he couldn't recall entering, had been assigned to a cell that was built to his own specifications for reasons that no one would explain.

"The trial records are sealed," the warden had told him, during their introductory meeting. "Your conviction is a matter of public record, but the details are classified at your own request."

His own request. He had apparently asked to not know why he was imprisoned, had specifically designed his own amnesia as part of his punishment. The prison was his creation. The forgetting was his creation. Everything about his current situation had been authored by a version of himself he couldn't access.

The features were concerning, the guards said. But they wouldn't tell him which features, or why, or what they revealed about the mind that had created them.

World 49

Humans hibernated, and K. had woken up early.

The sun wouldn't rise for six months. The world outside his window was dark—not the darkness of night but the darkness of midwinter, the deep black of a planet turned away from its star, the absolute absence of light that had driven humans to develop hibernation cycles so they wouldn't have to experience it consciously.

Everyone else was asleep. The winter-specialists—those rare individuals whose biology allowed them to function without light—were managing the essential systems, maintaining the infrastructure, keeping the world running while the majority population dreamed through the darkest months. K. should have been among the dreamers. His hibernation pod should have kept him unconscious until spring.

But he was awake. Standing at a window. Looking into darkness that seemed to have no bottom.

"Irregular waking," the winter-specialist said, when K. reported his situation. "It happens sometimes. We can re-sedate you."

"Is that safe?"

"Safer than trying to function in winter consciousness. Your system isn't designed for this. Extended wakefulness during the dark period causes psychological degradation." The specialist's voice was clinical, detached, the voice of someone who had seen this before. "Depression, first. Then paranoia. Then more severe symptoms. The record for unsupported winter survival is forty-three days."

K. looked at the darkness outside. Forty-three days. He had just woken up. Spring was 182 days away.

"I don't want to be sedated," he said.

"That's the depression talking. Early-stage psychological degradation often manifests as resistance to treatment." The specialist made a note. "I'm going to recommend mandatory re-sedation. For your own safety."

K. went home—walking through streets that were empty except for the specialists, past buildings full of sleeping people, through a silence so complete that his own footsteps seemed deafening. The world was on pause. The world was waiting for the light to return. K. was the only one moving through it, awake when he should be dreaming, experiencing a winter that humans weren't supposed to experience.

The winter-specialists resented the interruption. They had the dark months to themselves, a period of reduced population when they could operate without the complications of the majority species. K.'s wakefulness was an intrusion. His presence was unwelcome.

He sat in his apartment and watched the darkness that would last for six more months.

World 50

The exam was today. The subject was "Applied Metaphysics." K.'s notes were in a language he couldn't read.

The classroom was full of other students, all of them preparing, reviewing materials, demonstrating the kind of focused competence that suggested years of study. K. had been placed at a desk in the middle row, with a testing booklet in front of him, surrounded by people who apparently knew what Applied Metaphysics was and how to apply it.

He opened the booklet. The questions were in the same language as his notes—symbols that might have been words, structures that might have been sentences, meaning that was present but inaccessible. The other students were already writing. K. could hear the scratch of pens on paper, the confident sound of knowledge being transferred from minds to pages.

"You have three hours," the proctor announced. "Begin."

K. stared at the first question. The symbols seemed to pulse slightly, as if they were trying to communicate something just beyond his comprehension. He felt the meaning hovering at the edge of his consciousness, tantalizingly close, impossible to grasp.

He started writing anyway.

He wrote what felt right, what seemed to connect, what emerged from wherever knowledge went when it couldn't be accessed directly. His hand moved across the page, forming symbols he didn't understand, constructing answers to questions he couldn't read. The process was automatic, disconnected from his conscious awareness, as if some other part of him knew what to do even when he didn't.

The three hours passed. K. handed in his booklet, filled with writing that might have been nonsense or might have been brilliance. He couldn't tell. He couldn't evaluate his own performance because he couldn't read his own responses.

"How did it go?" another student asked, as they filed out of the classroom.

"I don't know," K. said.

"You seemed to be writing a lot."

K. had been writing a lot. The booklet had been nearly full by the end, pages covered with the symbols that his hand had produced while his mind watched, helpless and confused. Maybe the writing made sense. Maybe it was gibberish dressed up in the formatting of legitimate answers.

He would find out when the grades were posted. Until then, he existed in a state of quantum uncertainty—both passing and failing, both competent and incompetent, both a student who belonged and an impostor who would soon be discovered.

Everyone else was writing. K. had written too. Whether he had written anything meaningful remained to be determined.

The first fifty pages were complete, or as complete as pages ever were in a world that kept changing. K. had accumulated debts he didn't owe and skills he couldn't use and relationships he couldn't remember. The machinery had begun. It would continue, page after page, until it stopped or until he stopped or until the distinction between those two possibilities ceased to matter.