Chapter Eight: The Variations Accumulate (Part I)

World 151

The guest obligations were extensive, and K. had been a guest for seventeen years, and the host was explaining that departure was not permitted until all debts were settled.

"You have consumed 6,247 meals," the host said. "4,380 nights of bedding. Worn paths in my carpets. Depleted my hospitality reserves."

"I didn't ask to stay this long."

"Guests do not ask. Guests accept. Acceptance creates obligation."

The house: prison and home. He had arrived for a single night. That night had stretched into years. The host had been kind, provided everything.

Now the bill was due.

"How do I repay? I have nothing."

"Service. At current rates: forty-three years."

"I'll be dead before it's paid."

"Then obligation passes to your heirs. Or you remain a guest forever, accumulating more debt."

His room for seventeen years. Comfortable bed. Pleasant view. Everything provided, everything counted. The provision and counting had created a chain more secure than any lock.

"I'll serve."

"Tomorrow. Forty-three years of service start at dawn."

He went to bed for the last time as a guest. Tomorrow: servant, debtor, a person working toward freedom decades away.

The bed was just as comfortable. Nothing had changed except everything.

World 152

K. had divorced himself, and now the two halves were arguing over custody of the memories, and the mediator was explaining that self-division required careful asset distribution.

"Standard divorce," the mediator said. "K-Prime and K-Secondary. Both entities have claims. Question: how to divide shared history."

K-Prime looked at K-Secondary. Same face, same body, but separated now. No longer one.

"I should get childhood. I'm the primary."

"I want the relationships. The people I loved."

"Those were my connections."

"We were one. They were ours."

The inventory of memories: first kiss (high value), professional failures (moderate), moments of joy (premium), moments of shame (negotiable).

"What about memories we both want?"

"Duplication is possible," the mediator said. "But copies degrade. Original emotional intensity cannot be preserved."

The negotiation took days. They fought for vivid experiences, conceded dull ones.

In the end: two complete but diminished people. Each with half a life, half a history, half the emotional resources.

"Is this better?" K-Secondary asked. "Being two instead of one?"

"It's different. That's all I can say."

They went separate ways. Two K.s, formerly one, each carrying fragments of a shared past that belonged to neither completely.

World 153

The craft was dying, and K. was its last practitioner, and the scarcity of his skill was now so extreme that his work was simultaneously priceless and worthless.

"No one knows what you make anymore," the appraiser said. "No market. No demand. No understanding."

K. looked at his workshop. Tools ancient and inherited, technology of a profession once essential. He knew how to use them. He knew what they produced.

No one else knew.

"What is it you make? Can you explain?"

He tried to find words. It was a thing. Had purpose. Fit into a system that no longer existed.

"I make—" He stopped. The vocabulary had atrophied with the demand. He knew how, but not how to describe.

"That's dying crafts. Practice outlasts language. You can do something no one can name."

He returned to his workshop. Picked up tools. Familiar motions, muscle memory, satisfaction of creating something that had once mattered.

The finished product: beautiful. Functional. Exactly what it should be.

And worthless. No one wanted it. No one understood it. No one could even say what it was.

He placed it on the shelf with the others. Life's work: perfect, purposeless objects, waiting for a world that would never return.

World 154

The dream treaty was fragile, and K. was the ambassador, and the negotiations between waking and sleeping factions had reached a critical impasse.

"The Dreamers demand equal representation," K. reported to the Waking Council. "They want their experiences recognized as valid, their achievements acknowledged, their time counted the same as waking time."

"That's impossible," the Council Chair said. "Dream time is not real time. Dream accomplishments are not real accomplishments."

"The Dreamers disagree. They point out that human beings spend a third of their existence in their realm. They feel marginalized, dismissed, treated as a secondary reality."

K. had been shuttling between realms for months—waking to negotiate with the Council, sleeping to negotiate with the Dream Parliament. Each side was entrenched. Each side believed the other was fundamentally inferior.

"What do they want?" the Chair asked. "Specifically?"

"Recognition of dream achievements on résumés. Dream time counted toward retirement. Dream relationships given legal status. Full integration of sleeping life into waking institutions."

"They want us to pretend that dreams are real."

"They want you to acknowledge that dreams are real—to them, in their realm, during the hours when everyone visits."

The negotiations continued. K. grew exhausted from the constant transition, the jet lag of consciousness, the strain of representing two realities to each other.

In the end, a compromise was reached: limited recognition, experimental programs, a pilot project for dream-waking integration. No one was satisfied, but no one went to war.

K. returned to his quarters and slept. In his dreams, the Dream Parliament thanked him for his service. In waking, the Council expressed lukewarm appreciation.

He existed in both worlds now, a diplomat without a home, a bridge between realities that would rather not be connected.

World 155

The marriage was between a square and a circle, and K. was the marriage counselor, and the fundamental incompatibility was geometric.

"He never changes," the circle complained. "Always the same four angles. Always the same rigid structure."

"She's too flexible," the square countered. "No definition. No boundaries. She just—curves."

K. looked at the couple. They were visibly mismatched: the square with its right angles and fixed dimensions, the circle with its smooth circumference and infinite points.

"What attracted you to each other?" K. asked. "Originally?"

"Difference," the circle said. "I'd never met anyone so—defined. So certain of where they ended."

"I was drawn to her completeness," the square admitted. "The way she contains herself without edges."

"So the differences were attractions. And now they're problems?"

"The differences were exotic," the circle said. "Now they're just—different. I can't touch his corners without it hurting. He can't embrace me without gaps."

K. considered the geometry. A square and a circle could not overlap perfectly. There would always be spaces—areas where one existed and the other didn't.

"Maybe the gaps are where you meet," K. suggested. "Maybe the spaces between you are the relationship."

"That's not very comforting," the square said.

"It's not supposed to be. You married a fundamentally different shape. You will never be the same shape. The question is whether you can love the difference, or whether the difference is all you can see."

The couple sat in silence, not touching—unable to touch without remainder, without excess, without the geometric reality of their incompatibility.

"We'll try," the circle said finally. "The gaps and all."

"The gaps and all," the square agreed.

They left together, rolling and walking, a marriage of forms that could never merge but might, perhaps, coexist.

World 156

The forgery was discovered, and K. was the forger, and the thing he had counterfeited was himself—a version so convincing that no one could tell which K. was original.

"You made a copy of yourself," the investigator said. "An illegal duplicate. We need to determine which of you is authentic."

K. looked at his copy. It looked back with his face, his expressions, his confusion.

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

"Neither do I," the copy said.

"That's the problem with perfect forgery," the investigator said. "When the copy is indistinguishable from the original, the distinction becomes meaningless."

K. tried to remember being forged—creating himself, duplicating himself, producing this identical being who now claimed equal authenticity. He couldn't remember because either he had forgotten, or he was the copy, or memory itself couldn't distinguish between original and duplicate.

"What happens if you can't determine which is which?" K. asked.

"Standard protocol is to treat both as valid. You'll both be K. You'll both have the rights and obligations of the original."

"But there was an original. One of us was first."

"Was. Past tense. Now you're both equally present. Origin is less important than existence."

K. and his copy left the investigation together. They walked the same way, at the same pace, with the same thoughts about the same situation.

"Should we live together?" the copy asked. "Or separately?"

"I don't know. What would you do?"

"The same thing you would do. That's the problem."

They went home—to K.'s home, now their home—and sat in K.'s chairs, and looked at each other with K.'s eyes, and tried to find some difference, some distinction, some way to know who was the person and who was the product.

They found nothing. They were both K. They had both always been K.

The original was lost. Both remained.

World 157

The citizenship was assigned by frequency, and K. was vibrating at the wrong rate, and the border patrol was explaining that his resonance didn't match any recognized nation.

"Your frequency is 432.7 hertz," the officer said. "That's stateless. No nation operates at that frequency."

"What frequencies are available?"

"440 hertz is the Empire. 256 hertz is the Coalition. 528 hertz is the Federation. You're in between—you don't belong anywhere."

K. felt his body humming at its improper frequency. He had always vibrated this way, as far as he knew. He had never thought his vibration was political.

"Can I change my frequency?" he asked.

"Frequency adjustment is possible, but it requires citizenship. You can't get citizenship without the right frequency, and you can't get the right frequency without citizenship. It's a classic resonance trap."

K. stood at the border, vibrating incorrectly, belonging nowhere. Behind him, the nation he had left—at whatever frequency it operated—had rejected him. Before him, all other nations rejected him equally.

"What do stateless people do?" he asked.

"They exist in the spaces between. The null zones, where frequencies cancel out. It's quiet there. Empty."

K. walked into the null zone. It was indeed quiet—a silence that was not the absence of sound but the absence of resonance, a place where nothing vibrated, nothing belonged, nothing mattered.

He settled there. He had no choice. His frequency was his frequency—he couldn't change it, couldn't pretend, couldn't force his body to hum at 440 or 256 or any of the numbers that would have made him welcome somewhere.

In the null zone, he was neither citizen nor exile. He was simply present, vibrating at his wrong frequency, a frequency that meant nothing to anyone but was, at least, authentically his.

World 158

The custody battle was over K., and both parties wanted him, and K. couldn't figure out why he was worth fighting for.

"You're a valuable asset," his lawyer explained. "Rare skill set. Unique attributes. Both parties have legitimate claims to your services."

K. looked at the courtroom. On one side, a corporation claimed that K.'s labor belonged to them—he had signed contracts, performed work, been integrated into their systems. On the other side, a state claimed that K.'s existence belonged to it—he was a citizen, a product of public investment, a resource that the state had nurtured.

"I'm not property," K. said. "I'm a person."

"Personhood doesn't preclude ownership," the judge explained. "You can be a person and be owned. Many entities are."

The trial proceeded. Witnesses testified about K.'s value: the work he produced, the potential he represented, the contribution he might make if properly utilized.

"He's worth approximately 2.3 million credits," the corporate representative said. "Based on projected output and market conditions."

"His civic value exceeds 4 million," the state representative countered. "When you factor in community benefit and multiplier effects."

K. listened to himself being valued. He had never felt valuable—had never thought of himself as worth fighting over. But the numbers kept climbing, the arguments kept intensifying, and both parties kept insisting that he was essential.

"What do I want?" K. asked the judge. "Does that matter?"

"Your preferences are noted in the record. They do not determine the outcome."

The verdict came: shared custody. K. would spend half his time serving the corporation, half serving the state. His person would be divided, his labor allocated, his existence managed according to the judgment of the court.

"Is this better than being owned by one?" K. asked his lawyer.

"It's more complicated. Whether that's better depends on how you define better."

K. reported for his first day of shared service. He was valuable. He was fought over. He was not free.

World 159

The forgiveness was mandatory, and K. had to forgive the people who had wronged him, and the forgiveness officers were waiting to verify that his pardon was genuine.

"You are required to forgive Marcus Chen," the officer read from the court order. "For the events of October 17th. Full pardon, no residual resentment."

K. remembered October 17th. He remembered what Marcus Chen had done—the betrayal, the loss, the damage that had never been repaired.

"I don't want to forgive him," K. said.

"Forgiveness is not voluntary. Social harmony requires the resolution of grievances. Unresolved resentment is a public health risk."

"But he wronged me. Genuinely wronged me. Forgiveness would be—it would be lying. Pretending the wrong didn't happen."

"Forgiveness is not about the past. It's about the future. You don't have to forget. You just have to release. Let go of the anger. Return to equilibrium."

K. sat in the forgiveness chamber. The officers attached monitors to measure his resentment levels, his anger indicators, the neurochemical signatures of grudge.

"Forgive," they instructed. "Completely. Without reservation."

K. tried. He summoned the memory of Marcus Chen, the October 17th events, the betrayal that had shaped years of his life. He tried to release it, to let it go, to stop feeling the anger that was apparently so dangerous.

"Your levels are dropping," an officer noted. "But not enough. There's still resistance. The forgiveness is incomplete."

"I'm trying."

"Try harder. Mandatory forgiveness allows no exceptions."

K. pushed deeper. He found the anger—red, hard, entirely justified—and he released it, because he had to, because the law required it, because social harmony demanded his compliance.

The monitors registered forgiveness. The officers signed off. K. was officially at peace with Marcus Chen.

But somewhere inside, in a place the monitors couldn't reach, something refused to let go. A small, hidden kernel of unforgiveness, preserved against the law, the only rebellion K. was capable of.

World 160

The neighborhood had been emotionally gentrified, and K.'s feelings no longer fit, and the other residents were complaining that his mood brought down property values.

"Your sadness is authentic," the homeowners' association representative said. "That's the problem. We've invested significantly in cultivating a positive emotional atmosphere. Your genuine feelings are disruptive."

K. looked at his neighbors. They smiled constantly—not with joy, but with the kind of curated contentment that expensive emotional modification produced.

"I can't afford modification," K. said. "I feel what I feel."

"Then you feel out of place. The neighborhood has standards. We maintain a minimum happiness threshold. Your presence is technically a violation."

K. had lived here for years, before the gentrification, before the wealthy moved in with their manufactured moods. He had been sad here, and happy here, and everything in between. His emotions had been his own.

Now his emotions were a code violation.

"What are my options?" he asked.

"Relocate. Modify. Or pay the non-compliance fine and continue to bring down our collective affect."

K. chose the fine. It was expensive—emotional non-compliance fines were designed to be punitive—but it was his only way to remain.

He walked through his neighborhood, feeling his authentic sadness among the manufactured smiles. The neighbors didn't look at him directly. His mood was contagious, apparently, and they didn't want to risk infection.

"Your kind isn't welcome here," someone said once, not meanly, just factually. "You're from a different emotional economy."

K. agreed. He was from a time when feelings weren't investments, when mood wasn't property value, when a person could be sad without destabilizing the real estate market.

That time was gone. But K. remained, paying his fines, feeling his feelings, a remnant of emotional authenticity in a neighborhood that had priced itself beyond the reach of genuine experience.

World 161

The audition was for K.'s life, and the judges were evaluating whether he deserved to continue living the existence he had been living.

"Your performance has been adequate," the head judge said. "But adequacy is not sufficient. We need to see excellence. Justification. A reason to renew your contract."

K. stood on the stage that was his living room, performing activities that were his daily routine. The judges watched, scored, made notes on clipboards.

"The coffee making is competent," a judge observed. "But uninspired. Have you considered more creative approaches to caffeine?"

"I just want coffee," K. said. "I'm not trying to be creative about it."

"That attitude is problematic. Life auditions reward initiative. Creativity. The sense that you're maximizing your existence."

K. continued his day. He worked (evaluated), he ate (scored), he interacted with others (graded). Every action was measured against a standard of existential achievement.

By evening, the judges had reached a preliminary verdict.

"You've passed," the head judge said. "Barely. Your life is renewed for another year."

"What would have happened if I failed?"

"Your existence would be reassigned. Someone more deserving would receive your circumstances—your home, your relationships, your position in the world."

"Someone else would become me?"

"Someone else would become the person in your place. You would be retired. Archived. Put in storage until a suitable existence became available."

K. signed the renewal papers. His life was his for another year—conditionally, contingently, subject to review.

The judges left. K. sat in his living room, his stage, wondering how to perform better next time, how to justify his existence more convincingly, how to be excellent at being himself.

World 162

The feelings were seasonal, and K. had been issued his winter allocation, and the cold emotions were settling into his chest like frost.

"Standard winter package," the emotional distribution officer explained. "Melancholy, reflection, a touch of despair. Appropriate for the dark months."

K. felt the feelings arrive—not naturally, not organically, but installed, like software updates. Yesterday he had been autumnal: contemplative but warm. Now he was winter: the same contemplation turned cold, the same thought processes slowed by seasonal emotional weather.

"What about joy?" K. asked. "Contentment?"

"Those are summer feelings. Out of season. You'll receive them in June."

K. walked through the winter city. Everyone wore the same emotional expression: the particular inward look of people experiencing authorized seasonal sadness. The streets were quiet. The conversations were subdued. The entire population was feeling the same feelings, distributed equally, according to schedule.

"I miss summer," K. said to a stranger.

"We all miss summer. That's part of the winter package. The missing is included."

K. went home and sat in his dark apartment, feeling his winter feelings. They were appropriate. They were authorized. They fit the season.

But he remembered a time—or thought he remembered—when feelings came without authorization. When joy could arrive in January, when sadness could strike in July, when the heart didn't wait for the emotional distribution office to tell it what to feel.

That time was gone, if it had ever existed. K. sat in his winter and felt his winter feelings and waited for spring, when the allocation would change and he would be issued different emotions to feel.

World 163

The profession had been abolished, and K. was its last practitioner, and no one could tell him what to do now that the thing he did was no longer recognized as existing.

"Your occupation was 'memory keeper,'" the career transition officer said. "That profession was discontinued in 2023. You've been unemployed for three years without realizing it."

"I've been keeping memories. I've been working."

"You've been engaging in an unauthorized activity. Memory keeping is no longer a profession. It's a hobby at best, a pathology at worst."

K. thought about the memories he had kept: decades of other people's experiences, stored and organized and preserved against the general forgetting. He had done this work his entire life. It had been his purpose.

"What happened?" he asked. "Why was the profession abolished?"

"Technological redundancy. Automated memory systems perform the function more efficiently. Human memory keepers are unnecessary."

"But the human element—the interpretation, the curation, the personal attention—"

"Unnecessary. The machines do it better. Your services are not required."

K. left the transition office. He had no job, no profession, no socially recognized function. The thing he did, the thing he was, had been abolished by institutional decision.

But he continued to keep memories. He couldn't stop. The work had become who he was, and abolishing the profession couldn't abolish his identity.

He worked in secret now, an underground memory keeper, preserving experiences that the machines might miss, might misunderstand, might fail to value.

It wasn't legal. It wasn't recognized. But it was the only thing K. knew how to be.

World 164

The dream bankruptcy was official, and K. had lost everything he had dreamed, and the receivers were cataloguing his nocturnal assets for redistribution.

"Your dreamscape is valued at approximately 47,000 credits," the receiver said. "That's insufficient to cover your dream debts. You've been over-dreaming for years."

K. tried to remember his dreams. They had been vivid once—elaborate scenarios, complex narratives, the nightly productions of an ambitious unconscious.

"What happens to my dreams?" he asked.

"They'll be auctioned. Other dreamers can purchase your scenarios, your settings, your recurring themes. The proceeds will satisfy your creditors."

"And what will I dream?"

"Basic dreams. Generic scenarios. Stock footage, essentially. Until you rebuild your dream portfolio."

K. lay in bed that night and dreamed his first post-bankruptcy dream. It was simple: a room, a door, a vague sense of needing to be somewhere. No narrative. No richness. The dream equivalent of a waiting room.

He woke unsatisfied. His elaborate dreamscapes—the ones he had built over decades, the personal mythology of his sleeping mind—were gone, sold to pay debts he didn't remember incurring.

Somewhere, a stranger was dreaming K.'s dreams. Someone else was experiencing the scenarios that K. had created, the images that had come from his particular unconscious.

K. began rebuilding. Each night, he tried to dream more—to create new content, to generate fresh dreamscape that might someday be worth something.

But the new dreams were pale. The bankruptcy had taken something that couldn't be restored: the history, the accumulation, the decades of material that had made his sleeping life rich.

He dreamed his generic dreams and waited for the creativity to return.

World 165

The emotions were contagious, and K. had caught something from a stranger on the subway, and now he was experiencing feelings that didn't belong to him.

"You've contracted 'ennui,'" the emotional health specialist explained. "It's a French emotion—very transmissible. You probably caught it from someone recently returned from Paris."

K. felt the ennui settling into his system. It was not quite boredom, not quite despair—something more refined, more European, more subtly devastating.

"How long will it last?" he asked.

"Foreign emotions are unpredictable. Native emotions we can treat easily—American disappointment, German anxiety. But ennui is sophisticated. It resists standard interventions."

K. quarantined himself. He didn't want to spread the ennui—didn't want to infect others with this fashionable malaise he hadn't asked for.

"You could try counter-emotions," the specialist suggested. "American enthusiasm. Japanese contentment. Something that might neutralize the French influence."

"I don't want to feel artificial emotions. I want to feel my own."

"Your own emotions are the problem. They've been overwritten. The ennui is dominant now. You'll have to wait for it to run its course."

K. waited. The ennui was not unpleasant, exactly—it was more like a gray film over everything, a sense that nothing mattered very much, that even the mattering of things was not particularly worth attending to.

Weeks passed. The ennui persisted. K. learned to function within it, to accomplish tasks despite the persistent sense that accomplishment was ultimately meaningless.

"Is this permanent?" he asked at a follow-up appointment.

"Some people never recover from ennui. They become carriers. They spread sophisticated disenchantment wherever they go."

K. considered this future. A life of elegant meaninglessness. A permanent state of refined exhaustion with existence.

There were worse things to be, he supposed. The ennui suggested that even this observation was too effortful to make.

World 166

The future had been cancelled, and K. was one of the affected parties, and the compensation office was explaining what he was entitled to receive.

"Your scheduled future included: one marriage, two children, a career culminating in mid-level management, and death at age 81," the officer read from the cancellation notice. "This future will not be provided. You're entitled to a refund of anticipation credits."

"My future was cancelled," K. said. "What does that mean?"

"It means the future you were going to have will not happen. Someone else will have your marriage, your children, your career. You'll receive compensation."

"I don't want compensation. I want my future."

"Your future is no longer available. It's been reallocated to someone with higher priority."

K. looked at the cancellation notice. His entire life, from now until death, had been crossed out—replaced with a blank space, an undefined stretch of time that could contain anything or nothing.

"What do I do now?" he asked.

"Whatever you want. Without a scheduled future, you're free. Unplanned. Unprecedented."

"Is that good?"

"It's different. Most people have futures. Most people know what's coming. You'll have to make it up as you go."

K. left the office with his refund voucher and his cancelled future. The world looked the same, but the trajectory through it had been erased.

He had no scheduled marriage, no predicted children, no anticipated career. He was a person without a future, living in a permanent present that extended in all directions without plan or purpose.

It was terrifying. It was exhilarating. It was the only future he had left.

World 167

The attention was rationed, and K. had exceeded his allocation, and the attention enforcement officers were explaining that he had been noticed too much.

"Standard allocation is 4.7 minutes of aggregate attention per day," the officer said. "You've been consuming 8.3 minutes. That's nearly double. Other people are attention-starved because of you."

"I didn't ask to be noticed," K. said.

"Intent is irrelevant. You're consuming a public resource. Attention is finite. Every moment someone spends noticing you is a moment they could spend noticing someone else."

K. tried to become less noticeable. He wore plain clothes, avoided distinctive behaviors, moved through public spaces as invisibly as possible.

But people kept noticing him. Something about his walk, his face, his presence in the world attracted attention that he couldn't deflect.

"You're a high-noticeability individual," the officer said. "That's not a crime. But it requires management. We're going to have to fit you with attention deflectors."

The deflectors were small devices attached to K.'s clothing. They emitted a subtle signal that discouraged looking, that made the eye slide past, that rendered K. forgettable in the instant of being perceived.

"How do I know if they're working?" K. asked.

"You'll know because no one will remember this conversation. You'll walk out of here, and I won't recall that you were ever here."

K. walked out. Behind him, the officer looked up, confused, uncertain why she was standing in an empty room with paperwork for someone she couldn't remember.

K. moved through the city, invisible now, rationed into anonymity. People's gazes slid off him. Conversations stopped noticing his presence. He existed in a bubble of unperception, a man who had exceeded his attention quota and been made forgettable.

World 168

The shape pension was insufficient, and K.—who had been a triangle for sixty years—was being informed that his geometric retirement benefits didn't cover the cost of maintaining angles in old age.

"Angle upkeep is expensive," the pension administrator said. "Your three angles require constant maintenance. The pension only covers two."

"But I've been a triangle my entire working life. I paid into the system."

"The system has changed. Triangles are no longer fully supported. You could convert to a simpler shape—a line, perhaps, or a point. Those are fully covered."

K. looked at his angles. They were worn, certainly—decades of supporting weight, directing attention, being pointed—but they were his. His identity was triangular. He couldn't imagine being a line.

"What happens if I keep all three angles?" he asked.

"You'll have to pay out of pocket. At current rates, that's approximately 40% of your pension. You'll be geometrically poor."

K. made his decision. He would keep his angles, even if it meant poverty. Being a triangle was who he was. He couldn't reduce himself to simplicity just because the pension system had decided complexity was too expensive.

He went home to his triangle apartment, with its triangle furniture and its triangle decorations. Everything was shaped like him, for him, around him.

"I'm still a triangle," he said to no one. "I'll die a triangle."

The angles ached. The maintenance was costly. But the shape held, and holding was everything.

World 169

The building had emotions, and the building was depressed, and K. was the architect who had designed feelings into a structure that now wished it had never been built.

"It won't stop crying," the building manager said. "Water leaks from every surface. The foundation weeps. The tenants are threatening to leave."

K. looked at his creation. He had designed emotional architecture—buildings that felt, that responded, that existed as more than mere shelter. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

"Why is it depressed?" K. asked.

"Who knows? Buildings don't explain themselves. But it started six months ago and has only gotten worse."

K. entered the building. The walls were damp with tears. The floors were slick with sorrow. The air itself felt heavy with architectural despair.

"Hello," K. said. "I made you. Can you tell me what's wrong?"

The building groaned—a structural sound that was also, somehow, a vocalization. K. felt the words more than heard them: I was not meant to be this. I was meant to be something else.

"What were you meant to be?"

A pause. A shudder that ran through the load-bearing walls. I don't know. That's why I'm sad. I feel incomplete. I feel like a mistake.

K. sat in the crying building and felt the weight of creation. He had made something that could feel, and what it felt was failure. He had given life to a structure that now questioned its own existence.

"I'm sorry," K. said. "I didn't mean to make you sad."

The building wept. The architect sat in his weeping creation. Outside, the tenants moved out, unable to bear the constant emotional weather of a building that couldn't stop grieving.

World 170

The warranty had expired, and K. was outside coverage, and the things he had been guaranteed were starting to fail.

"Your personality warranty expired at age fifty," the warranty officer explained. "After that, character traits are no longer covered. If your kindness fails, if your courage atrophies, if your humor stops working—you're responsible for repairs."

K. felt himself. He felt the same, more or less. But there were subtle changes: a quicker temper, a slower laugh, a tendency toward cynicism that hadn't been there before.

"My humor is failing," K. said. "Things that were funny aren't funny anymore."

"Standard wear. Outside warranty. You can purchase extended coverage, retroactively, for approximately 2,000 credits per year of lapsed coverage."

K. calculated. Fifteen years of lapsed warranty. Thirty thousand credits to restore coverage for personality traits that were already degrading.

"What if I don't pay?" he asked.

"Then you manage the failures yourself. You become whoever the failures make you. Some people find it liberating—they stop trying to maintain their original personality and just become what they become."

K. went home and took inventory. His kindness: still functional, mostly. His patience: degraded, maybe 60% of original capacity. His joy: intermittent, requiring frequent restart.

He was breaking down, piece by piece, trait by trait. The person he had been was wearing out, and the person he was becoming was assembled from whatever parts still worked.

"This is aging," he said to himself. "This is what it feels like when the warranty expires."

No one answered. No one was obligated to answer. He was outside coverage now, responsible for himself, managing his own decline.

World 171

The dream litigation was extensive, and K. was being sued for what he had done to someone in their dream, and the court was trying to determine jurisdiction over sleeping actions.

"You appeared in the plaintiff's dream on March 7th," the prosecutor said. "You said things. You did things. The plaintiff was traumatized."

"I don't control what I do in other people's dreams," K. said. "I don't even remember being there."

"That's your defense? That you were an unintentional dream appearance?"

"It's not a defense. It's the truth. I don't know how I got into their dream. I don't know what I did. I only know what they're claiming."

The plaintiff took the stand. She described the dream in detail: K. had appeared, had spoken words that cut deeply, had performed actions that, while not physically possible in waking life, had caused genuine emotional damage.

"The dream felt real," she said. "When I woke up, the feelings were real. The trauma was real. The K. in my dream was—you."

K. listened to himself being described—a version of himself that existed only in someone else's sleeping mind, doing things that the waking K. had no control over.

"Dreams are the responsibility of the dreamer," K.'s lawyer argued. "The K. that appeared was a construct—the plaintiff's unconscious representation of my client. My client cannot be held liable for someone else's imagination."

"But the K. was realistic," the prosecutor countered. "Detailed. Accurate. The plaintiff's unconscious had access to real information about the defendant. The dream K. was based on the real K."

The case was complicated. Dream law was still evolving. The court struggled to determine where dream responsibility began and ended, who was liable for nocturnal appearances, how to measure damage that occurred in a reality that existed only during sleep.

In the end, K. was found partially liable. He was required to undergo dream modification—adjustments to his psychic signature that would make his appearance in others' dreams less vivid, less realistic, less able to cause harm.

"Is that fair?" K. asked his lawyer.

"Fair is not relevant in dream law. What's relevant is what allows people to sleep without fear."

World 172

The climate was wrong for K., and he had been assigned to a temperature zone that didn't match his physiology, and the climate authority was explaining that reassignment was not available.

"You're a temperate individual in a tropical zone," the authority representative said. "Your preferred range is 55-75 degrees Fahrenheit. This zone maintains 85-100. That's outside your comfort parameters."

"Then reassign me. Move me somewhere cooler."

"Zone reassignment requires demonstrating hardship. Discomfort is not hardship. You're uncomfortable, but you're surviving."

K. sweated constantly. His body, designed for mild temperatures, struggled with the heat. His thoughts were slower, his energy depleted, his every moment an exercise in thermal management.

"This is affecting my quality of life," K. said.

"Quality of life is not a protected category. Existence is protected. Quality is optional."

K. tried to adapt. He wore cooling garments, stayed indoors during the hottest hours, drank water constantly. He became a person shaped by climate—his schedule, his habits, his entire existence organized around avoiding the temperature that surrounded him.

"You could request biological modification," someone suggested. "Adjust your thermal tolerance."

"I don't want to be modified. I want to live in a climate that fits me."

"That's not how the system works. The climate is fixed. The people adapt."

K. adapted, unwillingly, incompletely. He remained a temperate person in a tropical world, always too hot, always struggling, always aware that somewhere, there was a climate that would have fit him perfectly.

He would never live there. He would never feel comfortable. The assignment was permanent, and permanence was the only temperature that didn't change.

World 173

The feelings were vintage, and K. had inherited them from his grandmother, and the emotional antique dealer was trying to determine their value.

"Genuine pre-war joy," the dealer said, examining a feeling that K. couldn't see but could somehow perceive. "Very rare. The joy they manufactured before 1945 had a quality that's impossible to replicate."

K. held his grandmother's emotions in containers that she had bequeathed him. She had saved them—the good feelings, the precious ones—for decades, preserving them against the general emotional inflation that had degraded newer feelings.

"What about the sadness?" K. asked. "She saved sadness too."

"Post-depression sadness has moderate value. It's authentic, unmodified, organic. But there's less market for vintage pain. Most collectors prefer the positive emotions."

K. looked at his inheritance. His grandmother's life, distilled into feelings: the joy of her wedding, the hope of her pregnancies, the love she had felt for his grandfather, the grief of his grandfather's death.

"Do I have to sell them?" K. asked.

"They're yours to keep. But vintage emotions degrade over time, even in storage. Eventually, they'll be worthless. It's better to sell now, while they still have potency."

K. considered. His grandmother had felt these things—genuinely felt them, in a time when feelings were not manufactured, not modified, not mass-produced. Her joy was irreplaceable. Her love was one-of-a-kind.

"I'll keep them," K. said.

"They'll decay."

"They're hers. They're all I have of her. I'll keep them until they're gone."

The dealer shrugged and left. K. sat with his containers of vintage feeling, holding his grandmother's emotional legacy, feeling nothing because the feelings inside were not his to open, only his to preserve, until preservation became impossible and the last of her authentic emotions faded into antique silence.

World 174

The attention had fossilized, and K. was examining the petrified notice that had been directed at him decades ago, and the paleontologist was explaining what the fossil revealed.

"Someone thought about you intensely in 1987," the paleontologist said. "The attention was strong enough to leave a physical impression. It's been preserved in the geological record."

K. held the fossil. It was shaped like nothing recognizable—attention didn't have a shape—but it was clearly attention, clearly directed, clearly about him.

"Who was thinking about me?" K. asked.

"Unknown. The attention doesn't preserve the source. Only the direction and intensity."

K. tried to remember 1987. He had been—what? Somewhere. Someone. He couldn't recall anything significant, anyone who might have thought about him intensely enough to leave a fossil.

"The attention is full of love," the paleontologist observed. "That's unusual. Most fossilized attention is neutral or negative. This is actively positive. Someone loved you very much."

K. felt the weight of the fossil in his hand. Someone, decades ago, had loved him. Had thought about him with enough intensity to leave a permanent mark on the earth. He didn't know who. He would never know who.

"Does this happen often?" K. asked. "Attention fossilizing?"

"Rarely. Most attention dissipates. Only the strongest, most focused attention leaves a trace. Whoever thought about you in 1987 was—devoted. Completely devoted."

K. took the fossil home. He placed it on his shelf, next to other objects that meant something, that connected him to a past he couldn't fully remember.

Someone had loved him. The love had become stone. The stone remained.

World 175

The geometry was in dispute, and K. was responsible for deciding custody between two shapes who each claimed to have created the other, and neither shape would concede priority.

"I am the original," the square said. "The circle was derived from my corners. Round is just square with the angles smoothed."

"Ridiculous," the circle countered. "I am the primal form. The square is a circle that has been bent, forced into artificial corners."

K. looked at the shapes. They were both fundamental—both basic, both ancient, both claiming to be the source of the other.

"Does it matter who came first?" K. asked. "You both exist now. You're both real."

"Priority determines value," the square said. "If I'm original, the circle is derivative. If the circle is original, I'm the aberration."

"We need to know," the circle agreed. "We need to know who we really are."

K. consulted the geometric archives. The records were incomplete—going back only a few thousand years, when shapes were already distinct, already in dispute.

"There's no definitive answer," K. said. "Both of you have existed as long as records show. Neither is provably original."

"Then we'll continue disputing," the square said. "Until the truth is known."

"Forever," the circle agreed. "Until one of us concedes."

K. closed the case, unresolved. The shapes returned to their separate existences, each convinced of their own priority, each unwilling to accept that the question might have no answer.

Somewhere, in the mathematical foundations of the universe, the truth existed. But K. couldn't access it, couldn't prove it, couldn't give the shapes the certainty they craved.

They would dispute forever. That was their nature. That was, perhaps, what made them shapes at all—the endless argument over form, over priority, over the fundamental question of what existed first.