Chapter Six: The Complications Deepen (Part I)

World 101

The campaign had been running for forty years, and K. was still a candidate, and the election that would determine his future had never arrived and showed no signs of arriving.

"Poll numbers are strong," his campaign manager said. Third manager—the first two had aged out. "Forty-three percent approval. Very consistent."

"When is the election?"

"The Electoral Commission is still reviewing conditions."

"For four decades."

"Democracy is patient."

His schedule: campaign events stretching into the indefinite future. Speeches, rallies, debates, fundraisers. His life had become campaigning. He had no other function, no other identity.

"What if I drop out?"

"You can't. You're the incumbent candidate. The election can't happen without you."

"But it isn't happening anyway."

"Because conditions aren't right. If you dropped out, they never could be. You're essential."

Next event: smile at voters, shake hands, promise things to deliver if elected, whenever that might be. The voters were patient—forty years waiting, willing to wait forty more.

"I believe in you," an elderly woman told him. "I've believed in you since I was young. I'll vote for you the moment I have the chance."

"Thank you," K. said. "I won't let you down."

It was not a lie, exactly. He couldn't let her down because there would never be an election, and without an election, there would be no opportunity for disappointment. He was a perfect candidate—permanently running, permanently promising, permanently on the verge of power that would never arrive.

World 102

The name was crushing him, and K. stood in the Office of Nomenclature, asking for relief, but the clerk was explaining that name changes required the approval of the dead, and the dead had opinions.

"The name 'K.' was assigned by your great-great-grandmother," the clerk said. "Her will specifies it must never be changed. You'd need explicit posthumous consent."

"From someone who died seventy years ago?"

"The usual channels. Spiritual mediation, ancestral petition, bureaucratic appeal through the Office of the Deceased."

The weight of his name pressed down—physically pressed, as if the letters had mass. The initial had grown heavier over years, accumulating significance, expectations.

"It's just a letter. Why does it weigh so much?"

"Names carry meaning. Meaning has mass." She consulted her records. "Your name: 147 years across five generations. That's substantial weight."

K. walked home. Each step difficult, the name dragging him down.

At the Office of the Deceased, he filed his petition. Forms: why he wanted to change, what he proposed, how it would affect legacy.

"Processing time: approximately fifteen years. Your great-great-grandmother's spirit will be consulted, along with all deceased bearers."

"Fifteen years?"

"The dead are not in a hurry."

He walked home more slowly. The name pressed down. Fifteen years minimum, possibly forever if the dead decided against him. He had never asked for this name. But it was his now—burden, connection, chain.

World 103

The nightmare had followed K. into the waking world, and now it was standing in his apartment, looking confused, and he was explaining to the authorities that he had not intentionally harbored a fugitive, that he had simply woken up and it was there.

"Nightmares are required to return to the dream realm by dawn," the officer explained. "This one has overstayed. That's illegal."

K. looked at the nightmare. It was smaller than he remembered—about the size of a dog, with too many eyes and a texture that was wrong, like static made solid. In the dream, it had been terrifying. Here, in daylight, it looked lost.

"I didn't invite it," K. said. "It just... came with me."

"That's what they all say. But harboring is harboring, regardless of intent. You'll need to surrender the nightmare for extradition."

The nightmare made a sound—a whimper, almost, something plaintive. It pressed against K.'s leg like a pet seeking comfort.

"Where does it go?" K. asked. "If you extradite it?"

"Back to the collective unconscious. It'll be processed, recycled, maybe reconstructed into a different nightmare for a different dreamer."

K. looked at the creature. It had been his nightmare, born of his fears, shaped by his sleeping mind. Somewhere in its too-many eyes, he saw his own terror reflected back at him, personified and made separate.

"What if I claim asylum for it?" he asked.

The officer looked surprised. "You can't claim asylum for a nightmare. Nightmares aren't refugees. They're psychological phenomena that have exceeded their boundaries."

"But it's mine. I created it. Doesn't that make me responsible?"

The officer hesitated. The nightmare pressed closer to K., making that sound again, that almost-whimper that was not quite any sound K. had heard before.

"That's... not standard procedure," the officer said. "I'd have to check the regulations."

K. waited. The nightmare waited. The officer made calls, consulted documents, eventually returned with an expression of bureaucratic frustration.

"Apparently, there's precedent. You can keep the nightmare if you accept full responsibility for its behavior. It can't frighten anyone without authorization. It can't return to the dream realm without your permission. It's your dependent now."

K. looked at his nightmare. His fear, made manifest. His responsibility.

"I'll keep it," he said.

World 104

The contract had been signed with a handshake, and K. was learning that handshake contracts were binding in ways that written contracts were not, and that he owed a kidney to someone he couldn't remember meeting.

"The handshake was witnessed," the contract enforcement officer explained. "Multiple witnesses. They all agree: you shook hands with Marcus Chen on the afternoon of July 17th, and in doing so, you agreed to terms including but not limited to the transfer of one (1) kidney upon demand."

"I don't remember any agreement," K. said. "I just remember shaking someone's hand."

"A handshake is an agreement. The clauses are embedded in the grip. A firm handshake conveys one set of obligations. A soft handshake conveys another. Your handshake was—" the officer consulted his notes, "—medium firm, three pumps, maintained eye contact. That's a standard resource-transfer handshake."

K. looked at his hand. It was an ordinary hand. It had shaken many hands, in this life and others. He had never known, never suspected, that each handshake was a legal contract, that the pressure of fingers was a language of obligation.

"What are all my handshake obligations?" he asked.

"I can request your handshake history. It will take a few days." The officer made a note. "But I should warn you: most people have dozens of active handshake contracts. Hundreds, if they're socially active. The kidney is just one."

K. went home. He kept his hands in his pockets, avoided physical contact, refused the handshakes that were offered. People looked at him strangely—refusing a handshake was rude, suspicious, un-social.

"I'm sorry," he said to each offer. "I can't. I don't know what I'd be agreeing to."

The handshake history arrived three days later. K. had 147 active obligations: three kidneys (overlapping demands), seventeen years of labor, unspecified favors to people whose names he didn't recognize, a promise to raise someone's children if needed, an agreement to testify in a trial that hadn't happened yet.

His hand had signed his life away, one grip at a time. And there was no way to void a handshake, no way to un-shake, no way to reclaim the commitments that his fingers had made without consulting his mind.

World 105

The collection was famous, and K. was receiving offers daily—museums, billionaires, governments—all wanting to acquire or view or study the thing that he possessed, the thing that he couldn't find anywhere in his apartment or his memories.

"The K. Collection," the latest visitor said, breathless with anticipation. "I've dreamed of seeing it. People say it's the most significant private collection in existence."

"I don't know what it is," K. said. "I don't know where it is."

"You're being modest. Collectors are always modest. But the documentation is clear: you've been building this collection for sixty years. It's priceless."

K. searched his apartment again. He found ordinary things: furniture, books, clothes. Nothing that looked like a collection. Nothing that warranted the breathless attention of museums and billionaires.

"Maybe it's somewhere else," he suggested. "In storage? A vault?"

"Your records show no external storage. The collection is here. It has to be."

The visitor began examining things: the books on the shelf, the objects on the table, the patterns in the carpet. K. watched, increasingly confused.

"This!" the visitor exclaimed, pointing at a coffee mug. "Is this part of it?"

"It's a mug. I drink coffee from it."

"But the way it sits on the table. The relationship between the mug and the table. Is that part of the collection?"

K. stared. "The relationship between my mug and my table?"

"Your collection is famous for being... unconventional. For collecting things that can't be possessed. Relationships. Configurations. The way objects exist in relation to each other."

K. looked around his apartment with new eyes. Everything was in relationship to everything else. The chair to the floor. The window to the light. The walls to the space they contained. If relationships were the collection, then everything was the collection, and the collection was everything, and he was the curator of an infinite museum that he inhabited without understanding.

"Is that it?" he asked. "Is that my collection?"

"I don't know," the visitor admitted. "That's part of its mystique. No one knows exactly what you've collected. That's what makes it priceless."

World 106

The midnight transformation was approaching, and K. was standing in the Rotation Center, waiting to discover what species he would become, and the technician was explaining that the randomization was truly random, that there was no way to predict or influence the outcome.

"You could be anything," the technician said. "Human, animal, vegetable, mineral. The rotation includes 4,722 registered species. Plus exceptions for unusual cases."

"How long have I been in the rotation?" K. asked.

"Since you opted in. Records show that was seventeen years ago."

"And I've been a different species every night since then?"

"Every month. The rotation is monthly. You've been—" she consulted her files, "—human for the last thirty days. Before that, you were a type of deep-sea jellyfish. Before that, an alpine shrub. Before that, a concept."

"A concept?"

"It's one of the exceptions. Not all species are physical. Some rotations include abstract entities."

K. watched the clock approach midnight. Around him, other rotation participants were waiting with similar expressions—curiosity, resignation, the particular calm of people who had long since stopped trying to control what they became.

At midnight, the transformation began. It was not painful, exactly, but it was thorough. K. felt himself rearrange—cells shifting, structure reorganizing, the fundamental architecture of his existence rewriting itself.

When it was over, he was smaller. He had wings. He perceived the world differently—colors he had never seen, sounds he had never heard.

"Congratulations," the technician said. "You're a species of moth for the next thirty days."

K. tried to respond but had no mouth for human speech. He fluttered his new wings experimentally. The light fixtures were suddenly fascinating, magnetic, impossible to resist.

"Good luck," the technician said. "Monthly rotation report forms are available in both human and non-human formats."

K. flew toward the light. He had thirty days as a moth, and then he would be something else, and then something else again. The rotation was random. The identity was temporary. Only the transformation was constant.

World 107

The court required K.'s testimony, and the prosecutor was asking him to identify the defendant, and K. looked at the person in the dock and had no idea who they were or what they had allegedly done.

"You were the sole witness," the prosecutor said. "The only one who saw what happened."

"I don't remember seeing anything," K. said.

"You gave a sworn statement. Three pages. Very detailed. You described the crime, the perpetrator, the circumstances."

"I don't remember giving a statement."

The judge intervened. "Mr. K., your testimony is the foundation of this case. If you recant, an alleged criminal goes free. If you confirm, they may face significant consequences. This is not a matter to be taken lightly."

K. looked at the statement they showed him. It was his handwriting, apparently. His signature. His detailed recollection of an event he had no memory of witnessing.

"It says I saw them take the object," K. read. "I saw them run. I saw where they went."

"And did you?"

"I don't know. I have no memory of any of this."

The defendant watched him with an expression K. couldn't read. Hopeful? Fearful? Guilty or innocent, they were depending on K.'s testimony—testimony that K. couldn't verify, couldn't remember, couldn't vouch for.

"The statement was made under oath," the prosecutor reminded him. "Lying under oath is perjury. But so is failing to tell the truth when you know it."

"I don't know the truth. That's the problem. The statement says I know things. I don't know if I knew them. I don't know if I still know them. I don't know if they're true."

The trial was delayed. K. was examined by experts who tried to recover his memory. The memory was not there—not suppressed, not hidden, simply absent.

"Your memory of the event has been professionally removed," one expert concluded. "Someone didn't want you to remember what you saw."

"Who?"

"Unknown. But the removal was thorough. The testimony remains, but the witness is gone."

K. looked at the defendant again. Whatever they had done, whatever he had seen, the truth had been cut out of him, leaving only words on paper and a stranger's fate in his absent hands.

World 108

K. was an echo, and the original had stopped speaking years ago, and he continued to reverberate through a world that expected the original's voice to return.

"You're the echo of K. Prime," the administrator explained. "K. Prime was a significant figure—a speaker, a leader, a voice that shaped policy. You're what remains of that voice."

"But I have my own thoughts," K. said. "My own opinions. I'm not just repeating what someone else said."

"That's the nature of echoes. They begin as repetition and gradually develop variation. You've been reverberating for twenty years. In that time, you've diverged significantly from the original signal."

K. understood, dimly. He was a copy of a copy of a voice that had once mattered. The words he spoke had originated elsewhere, been transformed through repetition, become something that was almost but not quite his own.

"Where is K. Prime?" he asked.

"Gone. The original voice stopped transmitting eighteen years ago. You're all that remains."

"So I'm expected to continue? To keep speaking in a voice that isn't mine?"

"The world needs that voice. It doesn't matter that the original is gone. The echo continues. That's what echoes do."

K. gave a speech that afternoon. The words came from him—from his mouth, his mind, his current configuration—but the audience heard K. Prime, heard the original voice, heard what they remembered and expected to hear.

"Powerful as ever," someone said afterward. "You haven't lost a step."

K. nodded. He hadn't lost anything because he had never possessed it. He was a reverberation, a continuation, a sound that had outlasted its source.

At night, alone, he tried to find his original voice—the voice that might have existed before he became an echo. But there was nothing there. He was echo all the way down, repetition without source, a voice that had never begun because it had always been responding.

World 109

The prescription was K.'s life, and he took it as directed: two tablets of existence in the morning, one tablet of purpose at noon, and a capsule of meaning before bed.

"The regimen is working," his doctor said. "Your existence levels are stable. Your purpose is within normal parameters."

"But I don't feel anything," K. said. "The meaning capsule doesn't make me feel like things mean anything."

"Feeling meaning is not the same as having meaning. The capsules ensure that meaning exists. What you do with that meaning is up to you."

K. looked at his pill organizer: Sunday through Saturday, AM and PM, a rainbow of tablets and capsules that constituted his daily existence. Without them, the doctor had explained, his life would destabilize. Reality would become uncertain. He might stop existing altogether.

"What happens if I miss a dose?" K. asked.

"The effects are cumulative. One missed dose is usually manageable. Multiple missed doses result in progressive dissolution. There have been cases of complete existence failure."

"People just... stopped existing?"

"They stopped taking their medication. Existence is not automatic. It must be maintained."

K. took his morning tablets. He felt himself become more solid, more present, more undeniably here. The existence tablets were effective, whatever they were made of, whatever mechanism they employed.

At noon, he took his purpose tablet. A sense of direction emerged—not strong, not specific, but present. He knew he was supposed to be doing something. He didn't know what, but the knowing was something.

Before bed, the meaning capsule. K. swallowed it and felt the familiar sensation of significance settling into his thoughts. His life meant something. It was prescribed to mean something. The meaning was pharmaceutical, but it was meaning nonetheless.

He slept. In the morning, he would take his tablets again, and the cycle would continue: existing, purposing, meaning, sleeping. The side effects were existence itself, and existence was all the effect he had.

World 110

The exchange was tomorrow, and K. was nervous, and his current spouse was reminding him to polish his paperwork and present his best qualities.

"You want a good trade," she said. "The market is competitive. A poor showing could mean a significant downgrade."

K. looked at her—this woman he had been married to for the season, this temporary spouse who would be traded tomorrow for someone else's temporary spouse.

"Have you done this before?" he asked.

"Forty-seven seasons. You get used to it. The first few exchanges are difficult, but then you learn: don't get attached. Don't invest too much. Every spouse is temporary."

K. nodded. He had no memory of previous exchanges, but his records showed dozens of seasonal spouses, dozens of temporary marriages, a life of relationships that came and went like weather.

"What makes a good trade?" he asked.

"Health. Skills. Personality. Also documentation—clean records, no complaints from previous spouses, good compatibility scores."

K. reviewed his documentation. His compatibility scores were mediocre. His skills were unclear. His health was acceptable but not exceptional. He would not command a high trade value.

"You might get downgraded," his spouse admitted. "I'm sorry. I've enjoyed our season together."

"So have I," K. said, though he wasn't certain this was true. The season had been a season. They had lived together, slept together, performed the functions of spouses. Whether enjoyment had been part of it, he couldn't say.

The exchange market opened at dawn. Hundreds of spouses stood in the trading hall, each wearing their trade numbers, each being evaluated by potential partners and their representatives.

K. was evaluated, assessed, compared to others. A woman examined his documentation, asked about his domestic habits, inquired about previous complaints.

"Acceptable," she concluded. "I'll offer a lateral trade."

K. was traded. His new spouse was similar to his old spouse—different appearance, different voice, but the same fundamental category. They would go home together, begin their season, perform their functions until the next exchange.

"Nice to meet you," she said.

"Nice to meet you too," K. replied.

They walked home together, beginning the season, knowing it would end, knowing next year they would stand in the exchange market again, hoping for better terms.

World 111

The crimes had been committed by someone else, but K. had inherited them, and the victims were standing in his living room, demanding answers he didn't have.

"Your father killed my sister," one of them said. "He confessed. It's documented. And you inherited his guilt when he died."

K. looked at the document they showed him. It was a legal certificate of guilt transfer, signed by both parties at his father's deathbed. The guilt was now K.'s property, his responsibility, his burden.

"I never knew my father," K. said. "I don't remember him. I don't know what he did."

"That doesn't matter. The guilt is inherited. The guilt is yours."

The victims wanted answers: why the crimes had been committed, what the victims had done to deserve it, why the criminal had shown no remorse. K. couldn't provide these answers. He had inherited the guilt but not the memory, the responsibility but not the knowledge.

"I'm sorry," K. said. "I'm sorry for what he did, even though I don't know what it was."

"Sorry isn't enough. We want justice. We want to understand."

"I can't give you understanding. I can only give you my presence, my attention, my willingness to listen."

They stayed for hours. They told stories about the victims—the sister, the friend, the child, all the people K.'s father had harmed. K. listened to these stories without context, without memory, without any way to connect them to the guilt he now carried.

By evening, the victims were exhausted. They had talked themselves out, shared their grief, confronted the inheritor of the crime that had shaped their lives.

"Thank you for listening," one of them said. "It's not enough. But it's something."

K. closed the door behind them. The guilt remained—he could feel it, a weight in his chest that had not been there before—but the confrontation was over.

He carried a dead man's crimes now. He would carry them until he died, and then, perhaps, they would be inherited again, passed down the generations, guilt without end, without resolution, without any hope of repayment.

World 112

The weather was wrong because K. was wrong, and the city was demanding that he fix his emotions before they all drowned.

"Your depression is causing the rain," the city administrator explained. "Individual weather influence is well-documented. Your particular sadness has been producing precipitation for three weeks."

K. looked out the window. It was raining, as it had been raining since the sadness began. The gutters were overflowing. The streets were flooded. The city was slowly, steadily, drowning.

"I can't just stop being sad," K. said.

"We're not asking you to stop. We're asking you to moderate. Contain your emotions. Prevent them from affecting the atmospheric conditions."

"I don't know how to do that."

"Emotion containment is a standard civic skill. You should have learned it in school."

K. tried to remember learning anything about emotions and weather. He remembered nothing. He had arrived in this city, in this body, with this sadness, and the rain had begun, and now he was responsible for three weeks of flooding.

"There are treatments," the administrator continued. "Mood stabilization. Emotional redistribution. Weather therapy."

"Will they make me stop being sad?"

"They'll make your sadness private. They'll prevent it from leaking into the atmosphere."

K. agreed to the treatments. He didn't want to drown the city. He didn't want his feelings to destroy infrastructure and displace families.

The treatments were intensive: sessions where his emotions were examined, quantified, contained. Professionals measured his sadness in units and percentages. They installed filters between his mood and the weather, barriers that would prevent internal states from becoming external conditions.

By the end, K. was still sad. But his sadness was contained, private, invisible to the atmosphere. The rain stopped. The sun emerged. The city began to dry.

"Thank you," the administrator said. "You've saved countless properties and probably lives."

K. nodded. Inside the filters, behind the barriers, the sadness continued. It had nowhere to go now, no expression, no release. It sat inside him, a permanent weather system that would never reach the sky.

World 113

The message was urgent, and K. was running to deliver it, and the recipient was dying, and K. couldn't remember what the message said.

"Tell them—" the sender had gasped. "Tell them I—"

And then the sender had collapsed, and K. had begun running, and somewhere between the sender and the recipient, the content of the message had evaporated.

The recipient was in a hospital bed, tubes and wires, breathing that was shallow and measured. K. stood at the bedside, holding nothing, carrying everything.

"You have a message for me," the recipient said. "From my son."

"Yes."

"What is it?"

K. opened his mouth. The words should have been there—they had been there, he was sure of it, moments ago or years ago or some unit of time that had passed while he was running.

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

The recipient closed their eyes. "He finally had something to say. After all these years. And you don't remember."

"I'm sorry. I had it. It was in my head. Something happened."

"Something always happens."

K. tried to reconstruct. The sender had been desperate, emotional, speaking quickly. There had been words—important words, final words—and K. had accepted the weight of them and then lost them.

"Was it about love?" the recipient asked. "About forgiveness? About all the things we never said?"

"It might have been. I think it might have been."

"Then tell me that. Tell me what it might have been."

K. spoke. He invented a message that could have been the message: words of love, words of regret, words that a dying son might send to a dying parent. He spoke with conviction, with authority, with the weight of someone who was definitely, absolutely remembering.

The recipient smiled. The breathing slowed. The message—whatever it had been, whatever it now was—was received.

K. left the hospital. He had delivered something. He had invented something. Whether it was the truth or a beautiful lie, whether the sender would have approved or condemned, he would never know.

The message was gone. The messenger continued.

World 114

The sculpture was playing, and the entire city could hear it, and K. was trying to remember creating a work of art that was now audible for miles in every direction.

"Early period," the curator explained, as they stood before the massive sound sculpture that dominated the central plaza. "Before your mature work. Before you understood restraint."

K. listened. The sculpture was producing sounds—musical, almost, but wrong in ways that were embarrassing. The melodies were too simple. The harmonies were naive. The rhythms were the rhythms of someone who was learning and had not yet learned.

"Everyone can hear this," K. said.

"Everyone within a three-mile radius. Sound sculpture carries. That's the medium."

"Can it be turned off?"

"Sound sculptures can't be turned off. They're perpetual. They're designed to last forever."

K. listened to his early work echoing through the city. People went about their lives accompanied by his amateur sounds, his fumbling attempts at art that were now permanent features of the urban environment.

"Why did I make this?" he asked.

"Passion. Youth. The belief that your vision mattered and deserved to be heard."

"Did it? Does it?"

The curator considered this. "Art is never obsolete. Even bad art. Your early work showed promise, ambition, a willingness to fail publicly. Many find that inspiring."

K. walked through the city, trailed by his own creation. The sculpture's sounds were everywhere—filtering through windows, bouncing off buildings, accompanying conversations and commerce and all the other sounds of living.

He had made this. He had thought this was worth making, worth installing, worth inflicting on a city that would hear it forever.

And now, whoever he had become, he had to live with who he had been: an artist whose early work was inescapable, whose youthful mistakes were broadcast constantly, whose growth was made visible by the comparison between what he had made and what he might make now.

World 115

The home was excellent, and K. was well cared for, and the sign above the entrance read "Home for Obsolete Humans" in letters that were kind but clear.

"You'll be comfortable here," the intake coordinator said. "We have excellent facilities. Activities. Social programming. Everything a human of your type could need."

"My type?"

"Unmodified. Unenhanced. Original-specification human." The coordinator smiled. "There are fewer of you every year. It's important to preserve the remaining examples."

K. looked around. The other residents were like him—human in the old sense, the original sense, the sense that no longer applied to most of the population. They read books with their eyes. They walked with their legs. They thought with brains that had never been connected to anything larger.

"What makes us obsolete?" K. asked.

"You can't interface. You can't upgrade. You can't participate in the networked existence that defines modern life. You're standalone units in a connected world."

"I've always been standalone."

"Yes. And now you're here, where standalone is understood, accommodated, celebrated in a nostalgic way."

K. moved into his room. It was comfortable—designed for human bodies that didn't require charging, for human minds that didn't require updates. The furniture was soft. The windows opened manually. Everything was touchable, physical, real in the old way.

"We have bingo on Tuesdays," a neighbor told him. "And reminiscence sessions on Fridays. We talk about what it was like before the enhancements."

"What was it like?"

"We don't remember. That's why we need the sessions. To construct a history that makes sense."

K. attended the bingo. He attended the reminiscence sessions. He lived among his fellow obsoletes, comfortable and cared for and utterly unnecessary, preserved like specimens of a species that had already evolved beyond them.

World 116

The mirror world was reflected in the mirror, and K. was standing in it, and everyone knew that he was the reflection, not the original, and that the original was somewhere else, living the real version of this moment.

"You understand your status," the administrator said. "You're the mirror-K. The reverse-K. The K. that exists only because the original K. is being reflected."

K. looked at his hands. They were reversed—left was right, right was left—but they felt like his hands. They moved when he wanted them to move. They held things, touched things, did the things that hands do.

"Does the original know about me?" K. asked.

"The original doesn't think about reflections. No one thinks about reflections. You exist only in the attention of those who look in mirrors."

"But I'm thinking. I'm aware. I'm having this conversation."

"You're having the reflection of a conversation. The original is having the real conversation, somewhere, in the original world. You're the echo of that conversation, happening in reverse."

K. tried to make an independent gesture—something the original wouldn't do, something that would prove he was more than a reflection. But his hand moved in the mirror, and he couldn't tell if he had initiated the movement or followed it.

"It's disorienting at first," the administrator said. "Reflections often struggle with their status. But you'll adjust. You'll find meaning in reflection. You'll learn to appreciate the existence you have."

"Which is what? Existing only when someone looks?"

"Existing as a response to looking. Existing as a complement. Existing as proof that the original exists."

K. looked in the mirror. He saw himself looking back—the original? The reflection? He couldn't tell anymore which side of the glass he was on.

He walked away from the mirror. He continued to exist. That seemed to prove something, but he wasn't sure what—whether he was original after all, or whether reflections could persist when no one was looking, or whether the distinction between original and reflection had ever been meaningful in the first place.

World 117

The blood was valuable, and K. was bleeding, and the collectors were waiting with their sterile containers while K. tried to understand why his veins contained an antidote the world needed.

"You're the only source," the medical officer explained. "Something in your blood neutralizes the poison. We've synthesized approximations, but nothing works as well as the real thing."

"How often do I bleed?" K. asked.

"Weekly. Sometimes more, if there's an outbreak. Your blood has saved thousands of lives."

K. looked at the collection tube filling with his blood. It was red, ordinary, indistinguishable from anyone else's blood. But somewhere in its chemistry, an antidote lived—an answer to a poison that K. couldn't remember being exposed to.

"How long does this continue?" K. asked.

"As long as you live. As long as the poison exists. As long as people need saving."

"And what about me? What about my needs?"

The medical officer's expression was sympathetic but firm. "Your needs are secondary. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. That's basic ethics."

K. let them take his blood. He had no choice—the antidote was needed, and he was the only source. But he also healed slowly now. The constant bleeding was wearing him down, depleting reserves that couldn't replenish fast enough.

"You need more rest," the officer said. "Better nutrition. We'll optimize your recovery time."

"To bleed more?"

"To sustain the bleeding. To be a better source."

K. was released after the collection. He walked home slowly, his arm bandaged, his veins emptier than they had been. Tomorrow or the next day, someone would be poisoned, and his blood would save them, and he would be summoned to bleed again.

He was a vessel. A resource. A living first-aid kit for a world that needed what he carried.

And he would continue to provide it, not because he chose to, but because the choice had never been his to make.

World 118

The funeral was tomorrow, and K. had used his entire emotional allocation for the month, and the rationing authority was explaining that grief would have to be deferred or purchased on credit.

"I've used everything?" K. said.

"Your happiness allocation, your anger allocation, your sadness allocation. You've been very emotional this month. The funeral was not anticipated in your emotional budget."

K. looked at his allocation statement. It showed a careful accounting of feelings: joy expended at a birthday party, frustration used during a work conflict, grief partially depleted at a memorial service. He was at zero across all categories.

"I have to feel something at the funeral," K. said. "The deceased was important to me."

"You have options. Emotional credit—you can borrow from next month's allocation. Or emotional assistance—we can provide a surrogate griever who will feel on your behalf."

"Someone else would grieve for me?"

"Professional mourners. They're very good. The deceased's family would perceive genuine grief. You would be present, appropriate, not disruptive."

K. considered this. He could stand at the funeral, dry-eyed, emotionally bankrupt, while a stranger wept the tears he couldn't afford. Or he could borrow feelings from a future that might not have room for them.

"I'll take the credit," K. said.

The authorization went through. K. felt something loosen in his chest—a permission to feel, a unlocking of grief that had been rationed away.

At the funeral, he wept. He felt the loss, the absence, the particular sadness of someone gone forever. The allocation meters ran in the background, calculating what he owed, adding interest, scheduling repayment.

Next month, he would have to be less emotional. Next month, the credit would come due. But today, he could grieve, and grieving was necessary, and the cost was acceptable because the deceased was worth it.

World 119

The owner was kind, and the collar was comfortable, and K. was trying to accept that he was, in this world, someone's pet.

"Good boy," the owner said, scratching behind K.'s ear in a way that was surprisingly pleasant. "Such a good boy."

K. sat on his cushion. He had a water bowl, a food bowl, regular walks. The owner provided everything—shelter, nourishment, affection. In return, K. provided companionship, presence, the satisfaction of ownership.

"I used to be different," K. tried to explain. "I used to be—"

"Shh," the owner said. "Good boys don't worry about what they used to be. Good boys enjoy what they have."

K. enjoyed what he had. The cushion was soft. The food was adequate. The walks were regular, three times a day, around the neighborhood where other owners walked their other pets—some human, some not.

"Do you ever wonder," K. asked another pet, a human woman with a rhinestone collar, "if this is wrong?"

"Wrong how?"

"Being owned. Being property. Being kept."

The woman considered this. "I was free once. It was difficult. Uncertain. I had to make decisions, find food, construct meaning. Now someone else handles all of that. I just have to be."

"Is that enough?"

"It's what I have. Enough is a question for free creatures."

K. returned to his cushion. His owner stroked his head and told him what a good boy he was. The words were conditioning, he knew—praise designed to reinforce behavior—but they felt good anyway.

He could escape. The collar was not physically locked. The door was not permanently closed. Freedom was possible, in theory.

But freedom was difficult, and his cushion was soft, and his owner was kind, and the question of whether this was wrong seemed increasingly abstract compared to the concrete comfort of being taken care of.

World 120

The history had been revised, and K. was the only one who remembered the old version, and the authorities were interested in whether his memory was valuable or dangerous.

"You remember the previous war," the investigator said. "The one that was removed from the curriculum."

"I remember a war," K. said. "I don't know if it's the one you mean."

"There was no war. The historical record is clear. The period you're referring to was peaceful. Prosperous."

"But I remember bombs. I remember bodies. I remember hiding in a basement while the city burned."

The investigator made notes. "Your memory is detailed. Specific. Either you're an excellent fabricator, or you retain information that has been officially excised."

"I'm not fabricating. I remember."

"That's precisely the concern."

K. was taken for evaluation. Experts examined his brain, his memories, the neural patterns that stored information about a war that had never happened, according to the current historical record.

"Anomalous retention," one expert concluded. "His memories predate the revision. He's carrying pre-amendment data."

"Is it valuable?"

"It could be. The pre-amendment history was removed for reasons. If those reasons are still valid, his memories are dangerous. If the reasons are obsolete, his memories are archival."

K. waited while bureaucracies decided whether his past was a resource or a threat. He remembered the war—the fear, the loss, the particular smell of burning that never quite left his nostrils—and he couldn't understand why remembering was controversial.

"The revision happened for good reasons," a historian explained. "The old history was traumatic. Divisive. The new history promotes unity and progress."

"But it's not true."

"True and useful are different categories. The new history is useful. That's what matters."

K. was released, eventually, with a warning: his memories were tolerated but not endorsed, permitted but not encouraged. He could remember the war, but he should not discuss it, should not spread it, should not contaminate the useful history with the truth.

He walked home through a peaceful city that had never known war, remembering bombs that had never fallen, mourning people who had never died.

World 121

The letter had arrived from the future, and the message was simple—"Don't"—and K. had no idea what he wasn't supposed to do.

"Future mail is notoriously cryptic," the postal analyst explained. "Information degrades during temporal transmission. Long messages often arrive as single words."

"But 'Don't' could mean anything," K. said. "Don't what?"

"That's the problem with future correspondence. The sender knows what 'Don't' refers to. The recipient has to figure it out."

K. looked at the letter. It was his own handwriting, apparently—his future self had sent a warning to his present self, trying to prevent something, and the prevention had been reduced to a single word.

"Don't go somewhere? Don't say something? Don't make a decision?"

"All possibilities. The recommendation is to 'Don't' as much as possible until the critical moment passes."

"How do I know when it passes?"

"You'll know. Future mail is sent at significant moments. When the significance ends, the warning becomes irrelevant."

K. went home. He sat very still, not doing things, not going places, not making decisions. Every action felt potentially wrong—the thing he shouldn't do, the future-destroying choice that his future self had tried to prevent.

Days passed. K. ate minimally, moved minimally, existed minimally. He was a statue of inaction, waiting for a danger to pass that he couldn't identify.

"You can't live like this forever," a friend said. "Don't' is not a sustainable lifestyle."

"But what if I do the wrong thing?"

"Then you do it. And deal with the consequences. And maybe that's what your future self was warning about—not any specific action, but the paralysis of trying not to act."

K. considered this. The letter said "Don't"—but it didn't say "Don't do anything." It said a specific "Don't" that had been reduced by temporal transmission.

He made a decision. He acted. The world did not end.

Maybe that was it. Maybe he had done the thing. Maybe the warning had been insufficient, and the future he was trying to prevent was already inevitable.

He threw away the letter. The future would arrive eventually, warned or not.

World 122

The company had been his family, and now the company was bankrupt, and K. was standing in the liquidation office, realizing that he had no other family to fall back on.

"As a corporate orphan," the administrator explained, "you're entitled to certain benefits. Transitional housing. Career counseling. A modest stipend while you reintegrate into society."

"I don't have anywhere to go," K. said. "The company was everything. My parents worked there. I was raised in company housing. I've never known anything else."

"That's common with corporate families. The company provided stability, identity, purpose. Without it, there's a significant adjustment period."

K. looked at the bankruptcy documents. The company had been profitable for generations, a name that meant security, a parent that fed and clothed and employed everyone who belonged to it.

And now it was gone, broken up, sold off, reduced to paperwork and liquidation proceedings.

"What happens to the other orphans?" K. asked. "The other employees?"

"Some will be adopted by other companies. Some will remain independent—though that's difficult. Some will fail to integrate and end up in corporate welfare."

"Which will I be?"

"That depends on you. Your skills, your adaptability, your willingness to accept a new family."

K. walked through the empty company campus. The buildings were still there—the offices, the cafeterias, the residential blocks—but they were empty now, abandoned by the family that had inhabited them.

He touched the wall of the building where he had grown up. The company logo was still there, fading, a reminder of what had been.

"I'll manage," he said to no one. "I'll find something else."

But even as he said it, he knew it was not entirely true. You could not replace a family. You could only accept its absence and continue, orphaned, in a world that had once been home.

World 123

The skills had arrived overnight, and K. was examining his hands—which now knew how to do things they had never known before—while the Guild inspector tried to understand how this was possible.

"Master-level craftsmanship," the inspector said. "In a trade you've never practiced. The Guild has no record of your apprenticeship."

"I haven't had an apprenticeship," K. said. "I woke up this morning and I knew things."

"That's not how skills work. Skills are developed. Trained. Certified. They don't just appear."

K. picked up a tool. His hands moved with confidence, with precision, with the muscle memory of years of practice he had never done. He began to work, and the work was good—better than good, excellent, master-level.

"See?" K. said. "I can do this. I don't know how, but I can do this."

The Guild inspector was troubled. Overnight mastery violated the natural order of craft—the years of apprenticeship, the gradual development, the earned expertise that separated masters from amateurs.

"We'll need to investigate," the inspector said. "This could be theft. Intellectual property violation. Unauthorized skill transfer."

"I haven't stolen anything. I've just... acquired."

"Acquisition without provenance is theft. Someone spent years developing these skills. If you have them, you have what they earned."

K. continued to work while the investigation proceeded. The skills were useful—he could earn money, build things, contribute to the world in ways he hadn't been able to before. But the skills were also suspect, their origin unknown, their ownership disputed.

"Where did they come from?" K. asked himself, late at night, hands still moving with borrowed expertise. "Whose skills are these?"

The hands didn't answer. They only worked, producing mastery without memory, excellence without origin, craft without comprehension.

World 124

The memory was criminal, and K. was being prosecuted for nostalgia, and the court was examining the specific nature of his illegal reminiscence.

"You remember the color blue," the prosecutor said. "The pre-revision blue. The blue that was officially removed from the spectrum."

"I remember what I remember," K. said. "I didn't choose to remember illegal colors."

"Remembering is a choice. Memory maintenance is a civic duty. You have failed to update your memories to current standards."

K. tried to picture blue—the old blue, the forbidden blue—and found that he could. It was there, in his mind, vivid and wrong, a color that the world had decided should not exist.

"Why is blue illegal?" he asked.

"Blue caused measurable psychological effects. Depression. Longing. A sense that something was missing. The revision improved public mental health by removing the problematic wavelengths."

"But I can still see it. In my mind."

"That's the crime. Internal possession of contraband imagery. The evidence is literally inside you."

K. was sentenced to memory correction. Technicians would enter his mind, locate the illegal color, remove it or neutralize it so that it no longer triggered the psychological effects that had made it dangerous.

"Will it hurt?" K. asked.

"You won't remember it hurting. That's one of the benefits."

The correction took three hours. When K. emerged, the world looked different—not worse, exactly, but lacking something. A dimension of experience had been removed, a category of perception excised.

"How do you feel?" the technician asked.

"Fine," K. said. "I feel fine."

He walked home through a world that was all the legal colors—red, green, yellow, the approved wavelengths of the current spectrum. He could not remember what was missing, could not perceive the absence of what had been taken.

But sometimes, in dreams, he saw a color that had no name, a color that was wrong and beautiful and gone.

World 125

The planets were arguing over custody, and K. was the child in question, and Earth was presenting its case while Mars and Venus waited their turns.

"K. was born here," Earth's representative said. "This is his natural home. His biology is calibrated to our gravity, our atmosphere, our day-night cycle."

"But he was conceived in Martian orbit," Mars countered. "His genetic material was combined under Martian jurisdiction. We have the prior claim."

Venus remained silent for now, but K. knew they had their own argument—something about his spiritual formation, his metaphysical origin, the non-physical aspects of existence that were governed by Venusian law.

"I didn't ask to be disputed," K. said to the court. "I just want to live somewhere."

"You can't live somewhere until custody is determined. The law is clear. Multi-planetary individuals must have designated primary jurisdictions."

K. thought about the planets. He had never been to Mars, as far as he knew. He had never been to Venus. Earth was the only home he remembered, the only ground he had walked on, the only sky he had seen.

"I choose Earth," he said.

"You don't get to choose. You're a minor in this context. The planets choose."

"I'm not a minor. I'm an adult."

"Planetary custody law defines minority differently than civil law. You're a minor until all claiming jurisdictions agree on your status."

The hearing continued. Earth argued biology. Mars argued origin. Venus argued essence. K. sat in the courtroom, a person divided among planets, a body claimed by worlds that could not agree on who he belonged to.

By evening, no decision had been reached. K. was remanded to temporary custody—a satellite station that belonged to no planet, a neutral zone where disputed individuals could exist without jurisdiction.

"How long do I stay here?" K. asked.

"Until the planets decide. Could be weeks. Could be years. Could be indefinite."

K. looked out the window at the planets spinning below—Earth, Mars, Venus, all claiming him, none willing to let go. He was wanted, in a sense. Valued. Contested.

But contested was not the same as home.