Chapter Ten: The Variations Continue (Part I)

World 201

The documentation was required for sleep, and K. had not filed his sleep intention forms, and the sleep bureau was explaining that unauthorized unconsciousness was a civil violation.

"You slept without permission," the officer said. "Last night, between 11:47 PM and 6:23 AM, you were unconscious without proper authorization."

"I was tired," K. said. "I just... slept."

"Spontaneous sleep is no longer permitted. You must file Form 78-B: Intention to Enter Unconscious State at least two hours before sleeping. This ensures the bureau can monitor and manage the collective sleeping population."

K. looked at the forms. They required specification of intended dream content, estimated REM cycles, and a detailed justification for why consciousness needed to be suspended.

"What if I can't predict when I'll be tired?" K. asked.

"That's a scheduling problem. Plan your exhaustion. Manage your energy levels. Approach sleep as you would any other regulated activity."

K. filed his sleep intention forms for that night. He specified that he intended to be unconscious for seven hours, that he anticipated moderate dreams of unspecified content, that he was sleeping because biological function required it.

The forms were approved. K. was authorized to sleep.

That night, he lay in bed, waiting for the authorized unconsciousness to arrive. But sleep didn't come on schedule. It came when the body was ready, when the mind released its grip, when exhaustion overcame awareness.

He slept, finally, twenty-three minutes past his authorized window.

In the morning, a citation was waiting.

World 202

The marriage was to temperature, and K. was married to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and the relationship had been stable for years, but lately the temperature had been distant.

"You feel the same," K. said to the 72 degrees that filled his apartment. "But you don't feel like you're here."

The temperature didn't respond. It maintained its number—72 degrees, exactly as promised—but something was missing. The warmth had become mechanical, maintained rather than felt.

"I remember when we first met," K. said. "You were 72 degrees then too. But it felt different. It felt alive."

K. went to the marriage counselor for temperature relationships.

"What you're describing is common," the counselor said. "Temperature fatigue. After years at the same degree, the sensation becomes normalized. You no longer feel the warmth because you've adapted to it completely."

"Is there treatment?"

"Some couples try temperature variation. A few degrees cooler, then a few degrees warmer. It reintroduces the sensation of difference."

K. and his temperature tried the variation approach. They went to 74 degrees, then down to 70. The changes were noticeable, but they weren't the same as the original feeling.

"I miss the way 72 used to feel," K. said.

"It still feels the same," the temperature seemed to respond through the ambient air. "You're the one who changed. You're the one who stopped feeling."

K. sat in his 72-degree apartment, married to a sensation he could no longer perceive, committed to a temperature that had become invisible through familiarity.

World 203

The deposits were forgotten, and K. was owed something by a bank that had lost all records, and the recovery process had become his full-time occupation.

"I know I deposited something," K. said for the thousandth time. "Decades ago. I have the receipt."

"The receipt references account number 78-3392," the banker said. "That account number doesn't exist in our system."

"It did exist. I used it. I deposited things."

"If you could tell us what you deposited, we might be able to trace it."

K. couldn't remember. The deposit had been so long ago, had been so thoroughly forgotten, that even he didn't know what he was trying to recover.

"It was valuable," he said. "I remember that much. I wouldn't have saved the receipt otherwise."

The bank couldn't help. The records were gone, the account was erased, the deposit existed only in K.'s fading memory and on a piece of paper that proved nothing to a system that had no record of it.

K. continued searching. He made recovering his forgotten deposit the focus of his existence—filing claims, appealing decisions, demanding investigations into what he had lost.

Years passed. The receipt grew more faded. K.'s memory grew less certain.

But the search continued, because somewhere, something that had belonged to him still existed, and finding it had become more important than knowing what it was.

World 204

The famine was emotional again, and K. was standing in the ration line, and the aid workers were explaining that this season's feelings were particularly scarce.

"We're distributing contentment this week," the worker said. "One unit per person. That's all we have."

K. received his contentment ration. It was a small thing—a capsule, a sensation, a moment of feeling adequate that would last a few hours.

"Is this enough?" he asked.

"It's what we have. The emotional harvests failed this year. Collective feeling production is down 40 percent."

K. went home and took his contentment. For a few hours, he felt okay—not happy, not sad, just okay. The contentment did what contentment does: it made the present moment bearable.

When the contentment wore off, the grayness returned. The emotional famine manifested as absence—the lack of feeling that made everything flat, identical, unmotivated.

K. returned to the ration line the next week. The supplies were even more limited.

"Mild interest this week," the worker said. "Half a unit per person."

K. took his mild interest and went home. He felt mildly interested in things—in food, in movement, in the continuation of existence. The feeling was small, barely perceptible, but it was something.

The famine continued. K. survived on rations, on scraps of feeling, on the emotional minimum that kept existence slightly more than mechanical.

World 205

The weight was taken, and K. was lighter now, and the lightness was not freedom but loss.

"Your former weight has been redistributed," the gravity officer explained. "You were carrying 37 pounds of excess gravitational allocation. That weight now belongs to others."

K. felt himself floating slightly—not quite weightless, but reduced, diminished, less anchored to the earth. He had been heavy before, in other bodies. He remembered the solidity of mass, the comfort of being held to the ground by something that cared nothing for his preferences.

"I want my weight back," K. said.

"Weight redistribution is permanent. The system detected inequality. You had more gravitational presence than you needed. Others needed it more."

K. walked home, each step longer than it should have been, his body rising slightly with each movement. He had to hold onto railings, furniture, anything that would keep him connected to the ground.

"How do I live like this?" he asked no one. "How do I stay where I am?"

He bought lead weights to wear, anchors to hold him down. He became a person defined by the effort of staying grounded in a world that no longer pulled at him properly.

At night, he dreamed of falling upward—of floating away, of losing the last connection to the earth. He woke holding onto his mattress, relieved to still be on the surface.

"I used to take gravity for granted," he said. "I used to just be heavy."

The heaviness was gone. The lightness remained. K. floated through his days, tethered but not rooted, present but not weighted, a person who had lost something he hadn't known was his to lose.

World 206

The census was wrong again, and K. was counted as two people, and the government was demanding he pay double taxes for his doubled existence.

"You appear twice in the census," the agent said. "Once as K., resident of District 7. Once as K., resident of District 12."

"I only live in one place," K. said. "I only exist once."

"The census disagrees. The census counted you twice. Therefore, you exist twice, and you owe twice the civic obligations."

K. tried to prove his singularity. He showed identification, documentation, evidence of a life lived once, in one place, by one person.

"The census is definitive," the agent said. "If the census says you're two people, you're two people. Your documents may say one, but the census has constitutional authority."

K. paid double taxes. He filed two sets of paperwork. He existed, legally, as two separate citizens who happened to share a body, a name, and a complete inability to be in two places at once.

"Can I meet my other self?" K. asked.

"The other you lives in District 12. You could visit, but the census shows you as two separate individuals. Meeting yourself would be a personal choice, not a legal reunion."

K. didn't visit. He didn't want to meet the other K.—the census phantom, the bureaucratic duplicate, the person who existed only because a count had gone wrong.

He was one person, living two civic lives, paying twice for a single existence.

World 207

The taxes were on attention, and K. had been noticed too frequently, and the attention revenue service was conducting an audit.

"Your attention receipts show 14,732 instances of being noticed this quarter," the auditor said. "That's 47% above your declared income."

"I didn't ask to be noticed," K. said. "People just looked at me."

"Every instance of attention received is taxable income. You were noticed. You received the benefit of that attention. You owe taxes on it."

K. looked at the itemized receipts. Each time someone had glanced at him—strangers on the street, coworkers at their desks, the clerk at the grocery store—had been recorded, valued, and now taxed.

"How is this calculated?" K. asked.

"Duration times intensity times social proximity. A brief glance from a stranger is worth approximately 0.3 credits. A sustained look from an intimate is worth considerably more."

K.'s tax bill was enormous. He had been noticed more than he could afford—his presence in the world had generated attention debt that would take years to repay.

"I'll have to become invisible," K. said. "It's the only way to reduce my tax burden."

"Intentional invisibility is audited separately. If you're noticed trying not to be noticed, that's taxable too."

K. paid what he could. The rest went on a payment plan. His existence—his simple presence in visible space—had become a financial liability that he couldn't escape.

World 208

The infidelity was shape-based, and K. had been square for too long, and his rounded edges were appearing in places they shouldn't.

"You're becoming circular," his doctor said. "Your corners are softening. Your angles are degrading."

K. looked at his reflection. He had been a square his entire life—four corners, four right angles, a geometry that defined his identity. But now the corners were rounding, the angles were curving, his square self was slowly becoming something else.

"Is this natural?" K. asked.

"It happens. Shapes aren't permanent. Over time, the definition erodes. Squares become rectangles, then ovals, then circles. It's the geometry of aging."

K. tried to maintain his corners. He exercised his angles, practiced his perpendicularity, did everything he could to preserve the shape that was himself.

But the rounding continued. Each day, a little less square. Each day, a little more circular. His geometry was betraying him, softening into a form he hadn't chosen.

"What will I be?" K. asked. "When I'm fully round?"

"A circle. Still you, but a different shape. A different way of being in space."

K. watched his corners erode. The square he had been was becoming the circle he would be. The transition was slow, inevitable, beyond his control.

He mourned his angles even as he grew new curves.

World 209

The list was classified, and K. was removed from it, and the removal felt worse than being listed.

"You've been de-listed," the official said. "Effective immediately. Your name no longer appears on the classified roster."

"I was just getting used to being listed," K. said. "What does de-listing mean?"

"It means you're no longer significant enough to track. Whatever made you list-worthy has diminished. You're ordinary now."

K. had been on the list for years. He had never known what the list was for, but knowing he was on it had given his existence a certain weight—a significance, a sense that someone, somewhere, was paying attention.

Now that attention was withdrawn.

"Can I appeal?" K. asked. "Can I get back on the list?"

"The list doesn't accept appeals. You're on it or you're not. The criteria are classified. The process is opaque. You have no standing to challenge your de-listing."

K. went home, de-listed, ordinary, no longer tracked by whatever system had found him worth tracking.

The world felt emptier now. Less observed. The attention he hadn't known he was receiving was gone, and its absence left a space that nothing else filled.

He was just K. now. Not K.-on-the-list, not K.-of-significance. Just K., removed, ordinary, unremarkable.

World 210

The quota was for dreams again, and K. had overdreamed, and the dream regulation board was discussing penalties.

"Your dream output exceeded allocation by 340%," the regulator said. "That's a significant overproduction. The collective unconscious is flooded with your material."

"I can't control my dreams," K. said. "They just happen."

"Dream production is a managed resource. Overproduction disrupts the balance. Your excess dreams are crowding out other people's nocturnal content."

K. tried to understand. His dreams—his personal, private dreams—were taking up space in some collective reservoir. His sleeping mind was hoarding more than its share of the unconscious.

"How do I reduce output?" K. asked.

"Dream suppressants. Nocturnal regulation devices. Intentional shallow sleep."

K. took the suppressants. His dreams became shorter, thinner, less vivid. The stories his sleeping mind used to tell became fragments, summaries, abbreviated versions of what they once were.

"Output is normalizing," the regulator said at his follow-up. "You're approaching quota compliance."

K. missed his dreams. He missed the long narratives, the elaborate scenarios, the nightly productions of his unconstrained unconscious. In another life—was it the forty-seventh? the hundred-and-third?—he had dreamed of flying over water, and woken knowing something had changed. That dream had been his. That dream had meant something.

But the quota was the quota. His dreams belonged to the collective as much as to himself. Compliance was required.

He slept his compliant sleep and dreamed his rationed dreams and woke to a world that measured even what happened when he wasn't there.

World 211

The custody was over climate, and the weather patterns of K.'s region were being reassigned, and he had no legal standing to protest.

"The climate in your area has been awarded to the Northern Collective," the judge said. "They submitted a better management proposal."

K. looked at the weather outside his window. It was his weather—the patterns he had grown up with, the seasons he had learned to navigate, the climate that had shaped his life.

"I've lived with this weather for forty years," K. said. "Doesn't that count for something?"

"Residency is not ownership. Climate belongs to whichever entity can manage it most efficiently."

The Northern Collective's representatives arrived. They began adjusting the weather—lowering temperatures, increasing precipitation, introducing atmospheric patterns that felt foreign to everything K. knew.

"This isn't how weather is supposed to feel here," K. said.

"This is how it feels now. Adapt or relocate."

K. adapted. He learned new seasons, new expectations, new relationships with a climate that had been changed without his consent.

The old weather was gone. The new weather was here. The sky looked different, felt different, behaved differently.

K. sometimes remembered the old weather—the specific quality of light, the particular timing of storms, the climate that had been his without his knowing it was something that could be taken.

World 212

The odors had returned, and K. could smell again, and the world was overwhelming with scents he had forgotten existed.

"Your olfactory capacity has been restored," the doctor said. "You'll need time to readjust."

K. stepped outside. The world hit him with smells—garbage and flowers and exhaust and cooking and humanity and everything else that the air carried.

"I can't process this," K. said.

"Your brain forgot how to filter. You'll relearn. Start with familiar scents. Work your way up to complexity."

K. started with familiar things: the smell of his own apartment, the smell of food he knew, the smell of his body. Even these were intense, more vivid than he remembered.

Slowly, he ventured into stronger scent environments. The market, with its competing odors of fish and fruit and meat. The street, with its layers of pollution and life. The park, with its vegetable perfumes that had once been background and were now overwhelming.

"I didn't know smell was this much," K. said.

"You knew. You forgot. Now you're remembering."

K. remembered. The world was full of odor—complex, layered, ever-present. His nose, restored, couldn't stop perceiving. Every breath brought new information, new sensation, new proof that the world was more richly scented than his memory had preserved.

He was grateful. He was exhausted. He was awash in a sensory channel he had lost and now had back.

World 213

The nominations continued, and K. was nominated again, and once again no one would explain what the nomination was for.

"Congratulations," the coordinator said. "You've been nominated."

"For what?"

"The nomination."

"But what is the nomination recognizing?"

"Achievement. Service. Excellence. The usual things."

K. attended another ceremony. He sat among other nominees, all equally confused, all equally honored for unspecified reasons.

"The nominees represent the best of us," the host said. "Their contributions have been measured and found significant."

K. looked at his contribution—whatever it was, wherever it was, however it had been measured. He had contributed something, apparently. The nomination proved it.

"The winner is..." The host opened an envelope. "Category 7, unspecified achievement: K."

K. stood, surprised. He walked to the stage. He accepted an award—a physical object, tangible and heavy—that recognized something he had done without knowing he was doing it.

"Thank you," he said to the audience. "I'm honored. I'm still not sure what I did."

"That's the beauty of achievement," the host said. "It doesn't require understanding. It only requires doing."

K. went home with his award. He placed it on his shelf, next to his nomination certificate from the previous ceremony.

He had achieved. He had been recognized. What he had achieved, and why it mattered, remained mysteries he might never solve.

World 214

The floods were emotional, and K. was drowning in feelings from an unknown source, and the emergency services were explaining that emotional drainage was backed up across the entire district.

"The feeling infrastructure wasn't designed for this volume," the emergency coordinator said. "Everyone is flooded. We're pumping as fast as we can."

K. waded through chest-deep emotion. The feelings were mixed—joy and sorrow and anger and fear, all commingled, all impossible to separate.

"Whose feelings are these?" K. asked.

"Unknown. The system has mixed sources. The feelings belong to everyone and no one."

K. felt the collective emotional soup seeping into him. Other people's joy became his joy. Other people's grief became his grief. The boundaries between self and other dissolved in the flood.

"How long until the drainage is cleared?" K. asked.

"Days. Maybe weeks. The emotional infrastructure is overtaxed. We're prioritizing critical facilities."

K. waited in the flood. He felt everything—too much, too intensely—until the feeling itself became a kind of numbness, a sensory overload that registered as nothing at all.

When the drainage finally cleared, the feelings receded. K. was left standing in the emotional residue, stained by experiences that weren't his, carrying memories of feelings he had never generated.

He cleaned up as best he could. But some feelings had penetrated deep, had become part of him, had merged with his own emotional history.

He would never be quite the same. The flood had changed him, contaminated him, made him more than he had been and less than he should have been.

World 215

The custody was over K.'s weight again, and this time the dispute was between historical versions of himself, and the court was trying to determine which K. had the right to weigh.

"K. at age 30 weighed 175 pounds," the first representative said. "K. at age 50 weighs 195 pounds. We're asking for redistribution—some of the current weight should be returned to the younger self."

"That's impossible," K.'s current lawyer argued. "The younger K. no longer exists. The weight belongs to the present."

"The younger K. has standing. He established the initial weight. The current K. is merely the custodian."

K. sat in the courtroom, watching versions of himself argue over his body. He had been 175 pounds once, at 30. Now he was 195, at 50. The 20-pound difference was being litigated as if it were property.

"What I weigh is what I weigh," K. said. "Can't we leave it at that?"

"Weight is not a personal matter. It affects space, affects resources, affects the gravitational well of your community. Weight disputes must be resolved."

The court ruled: K. would retain his current weight, but he was required to acknowledge the historical contribution of his younger self. The 20 pounds were his, but they carried the legacy of a body that had once been different.

K. left the courtroom, 195 pounds of accumulated life, weighted by a legal acknowledgment that his body was borrowed from who he had been.

World 216

The schedules were still incomprehensible, and K. had given up trying to understand them, and he simply followed where they led.

"9:17 AM: Procedure X," the schedule said.

K. arrived at Procedure X. He didn't ask what it was. He performed the actions that were indicated—filling forms, pressing buttons, standing in designated areas—without comprehension.

"Well done," the supervisor said. "Procedure X complete. Next: Process Y at 11:42."

K. went to Process Y. Again, he performed without understanding. The process had steps, requirements, outcomes. K. fulfilled them all.

By evening, he had completed seven different scheduled activities. He had no idea what any of them had accomplished.

"Is this useful?" he asked the scheduling office. "Am I doing anything that matters?"

"The schedule is optimized for systemic efficiency. Individual meaning is not the metric."

K. accepted this. He had stopped seeking meaning in his scheduled life. The schedule knew what was needed. K. provided what was needed. Whether it mattered was not his concern.

He went home and looked at his schedule for tomorrow. More procedures, more processes, more activities that would happen because the schedule demanded them.

He would comply. He would perform. He would continue.

World 217

The bankruptcy was attentional again, and K. had been through this before, and the recovery was even slower this time.

"Second attentional bankruptcy," the administrator said. "That's a bad sign. Your focusing capacity is fundamentally impaired."

K. tried to look at the administrator. His eyes slid off, unable to hold, unable to maintain the basic attention that conversation required.

"I know," K. said. "I can feel it."

"The recovery period after second bankruptcy is longer. Two to three years of reduced cognitive demand. No complex tasks. No multi-focus activities."

K. went home to a life designed for attention bankruptcy. Simple meals that required minimal focus. Entertainment that didn't demand sustained engagement. Conversations that could drift without consequence.

He lived in a gentle fog, a low-attention existence that didn't strain his depleted resources.

"Will I ever focus again?" he asked at his follow-up.

"Some people recover. Some people remain attention-impaired permanently. We can't predict which you'll be."

K. waited in his fog. He felt thoughts trying to form, trying to connect, but the connections wouldn't hold. He was a mind made of loose threads, unable to weave anything coherent.

He was patient. He had to be patient. Impatience required attention, and attention was what he didn't have.

World 218

The divorce was between K.'s shapes again, but this time it was his cube-self divorcing his sphere-self, and the three-dimensional separation was more complex than his previous two-dimensional split.

"A cube and a sphere cannot coexist in one body," the mediator said. "You have to choose."

K. felt his cube-self: six faces, twelve edges, eight vertices, all the definition of solid geometry.

He felt his sphere-self: continuous surface, no edges, no vertices, the completeness of perfect roundness.

"I've been both my entire life," K. said. "I don't know how to be just one."

"You're not being just one. You're being one at a time. The other will wait."

K. chose his sphere-self first. The cube-self was extracted, preserved in geometric storage.

He lived as a sphere for a year. Rolling, curving, approaching the world without edges. It was peaceful, continuous, but somehow incomplete.

He retrieved his cube-self, exchanged the sphere for the cube. Now he was angular, defined, boundaried. It was structured, clear, but somehow confining.

"I need both," K. told the mediator. "I can't be just one shape."

"Then you live divided. Switching between geometries. Never quite complete, never quite at peace."

K. accepted the division. He would be cube some days, sphere other days, never both, never whole, always the shape that the moment required.

World 219

The smell-marriage was ending, and K. was divorcing the scent of pine that had been his spouse for seventeen years, and the separation was more painful than he had anticipated.

"I'm leaving you," K. said to the pine scent.

The scent responded by intensifying, filling the apartment with desperate fragrance.

"Don't make this harder. It's over."

The pine scent tried everything—new variations, added notes, attempts to become the scent K. had first fallen in love with.

"It's not you," K. said. "It's me. I've changed. I need different smells now."

The divorce was finalized. The pine scent was removed from K.'s apartment, extracted by specialists who handled olfactory separations.

K. sat in his scentless apartment. The absence of pine was its own smell—a nothing that was somehow worse than something.

He tried other scents. Lavender. Cedar. The ocean. None of them filled the space where pine had been.

"I thought I wanted different smells," K. said. "But I just wanted to stop smelling pine. I didn't want to stop smelling altogether."

He lived with the nothing. The divorce had taken his spouse, taken his sense of olfactory home, taken the background scent that had made his apartment feel inhabited.

He was single again. Scentless again. Free, in a way that felt more like loss than liberation.

World 220

The processing continued, and K. had been processed so many times he couldn't remember who he had been before processing, and the facility was explaining that reprocessing was necessary for optimization.

"Your current configuration shows inefficiencies," the processor said. "We're going to reprocess for better outcomes."

K. submitted to the reprocessing. It was familiar now—the examinations, the adjustments, the subtle changes to whatever made him himself.

"What was I before processing?" K. asked.

"That information is not retained. The pre-processed K. was suboptimal. The current K. is improved."

K. accepted this. He was improved. He didn't remember what he was improved from, didn't know what the original had been like, didn't miss something he couldn't recall.

But sometimes, in quiet moments, he felt the absence of something. Not a memory, not a thought, but a gap—a space where a different K. had once existed, before the processing removed whatever had been there.

"Is there an end?" K. asked. "A point where processing is complete?"

"Processing is continuous. Optimization is ongoing. You will be reprocessed as needed, forever."

K. left the facility, processed, improved, less than he might have been but more than he had been.

The processing would continue. He would continue. Whatever he was becoming would continue becoming, until processing became all there was.

World 221

The subsidies were for dreams again, and K. had learned to dream what he was paid to dream, and the government was pleased with his productivity.

"Excellent output," the dream coordinator said. "Your patriotic content is exceeding benchmarks."

K. dreamed of flags and unity and the proper emotions for approved situations. His sleeping mind had been trained, shaped, optimized for subsidized production.

"Do I dream anything for myself?" K. asked.

"What would be the point? Unsubsidized dreams don't contribute. They don't serve. They're recreational at best."

K. couldn't remember the last time he had dreamed recreationally. The subsidies had captured his nights entirely. Even when he tried to dream freely, the approved content emerged—the trained responses, the productive images, the useful unconscious output.

"I used to dream strange things," K. said. "Things that didn't make sense. Things that were just for me."

"Progress. You've moved beyond recreational dreaming. Your dreams are purposeful now. Directed. Valuable."

K. accepted the praise. He was a productive dreamer. His nights served the collective.

But somewhere, deep beneath the approved content, something strange still stirred. A dream that didn't fit the program. A image that served no purpose.

K. let it stay hidden. He didn't report it. He kept it for himself—a small, useless dream that was his alone.

World 222

The infidelity was climatic again, and K.'s weather system had been intimate with another region's atmosphere, and the meteorological betrayal felt even worse than the first time.

"Again?" K. said. "You promised."

The weather system shifted uncomfortably, producing unseasonal clouds.

"It just happened. The pressure gradients were aligned. The interaction was—meteorologically inevitable."

K. understood meteorological inevitability. Weather was connected. Atmospheric conditions flowed into each other. Complete climatic fidelity was impossible.

But understanding didn't reduce the hurt.

"I tried to build a life with you," K. said. "I adjusted to your patterns. I shaped my existence around your seasons."

The weather system produced rain—apologetic rain, soft and persistent.

"I can't promise it won't happen again," the weather said. "I can only promise I'll try."

K. looked at his unfaithful climate. The weather that had been his, that he had married and committed to, had been shared with another region. His precipitation was not exclusively his.

"I'll stay," K. said. "But things will be different."

"They're always different. That's what weather is. Different every day."

K. and his weather system continued together, damaged but not divorced. The trust was broken, the exclusivity was gone, but the relationship remained—a marriage to climate that was imperfect, unfaithful, and somehow still necessary.

World 223

The textures were still gone, and K. had adapted to the world of uniform sensation, and he had almost forgotten what distinct touch felt like.

"Do you remember roughness?" someone asked him.

K. tried to remember. There had been something—surfaces that caught, materials that resisted, textures that communicated through the fingers.

"I remember the word," K. said. "I don't remember the feeling."

"That's normal. Tactile memory fades fast. If you haven't felt distinct texture in years, the sensation becomes abstract."

K. touched things experimentally. The wall, the floor, his own skin. Everything felt the same—present, contactable, but undifferentiated.

"I used to know what things felt like," K. said. "I used to choose materials based on texture."

"Now you choose based on other criteria. Visual texture. Described texture. The idea of texture."

K. looked at what he touched instead of feeling it. He learned to see roughness and smoothness, to understand through eyes what his fingers couldn't tell him.

It wasn't the same. It would never be the same. But it was something—a substitute sense, a workaround for the lost dimension of touch.

He lived in his texture-free world, perceiving surfaces as concepts, touching everything and feeling nothing distinct.

World 224

The mandatory reconciliation was scheduled, and K. was required to reconcile with someone he had wronged, and he couldn't remember the wrong.

"You and Patricia Chen are scheduled for reconciliation," the administrator said. "2 PM, Room 7."

"Who is Patricia Chen?" K. asked.

"The person you wronged. The incident is documented in file 7743-B."

K. read the file. It described an incident, a wrong, a harm done by K. to Patricia Chen in circumstances that K. didn't remember.

"I don't recall this happening," K. said.

"Your memory is not required. The record exists. The reconciliation is mandatory."

K. met Patricia Chen in Room 7. She was a stranger—a woman he didn't recognize, with a grievance he didn't remember creating.

"I'm sorry," K. said, because the reconciliation protocol required apology.

"Do you even know what you did?" Patricia asked.

"I read the file. I know what it says I did."

"But you don't feel it. You don't feel sorry."

K. tried to feel sorry. He tried to access the remorse that the file said he should have. But the memory wasn't there, and without memory, the emotion wouldn't come.

"I can apologize for the harm," K. said. "Even if I don't remember causing it. Even if I don't feel the guilt. The harm was real, according to the record."

Patricia accepted the apology. The reconciliation was documented as complete.

K. left Room 7, reconciled to a wrong he didn't remember, forgiven for a harm he couldn't feel guilty about.

World 225

The insurance was for emotions, and K. had filed a claim for lost joy, and the adjuster was explaining the coverage limitations.

"Your policy covers accidental joy loss," the adjuster said. "Not negligent loss. Not deliberate dissipation."

"My joy was lost accidentally," K. said. "I didn't choose to stop feeling it."

"The investigation suggests otherwise. You made choices that depleted your joy reserves. That's negligent, not accidental."

K. tried to remember the choices. He had made decisions, yes. He had lived his life in ways that, perhaps, had not prioritized joy. But he hadn't meant to lose it.

"What choices?" K. asked.

"Overwork. Stress acceptance. Failure to maintain emotional reserves. These are all negligent behaviors."

The claim was denied. K.'s lost joy would not be compensated. He had lost it through his own choices, his own actions, his own failure to take care of what he had.

"Can I appeal?" K. asked.

"You can appeal. But the evidence of negligence is strong. You didn't protect your joy. You let it go."

K. filed the appeal anyway. He didn't know where his joy had gone, didn't know how he had lost it, didn't know what choices had led to its depletion.

But he knew he wanted it back. He knew the absence was painful. He knew that somewhere, the joy he had once felt was waiting—if only the insurance would cover its retrieval.

The appeal was pending. The joy remained lost. K. lived in the gap between claim and coverage, hoping that someone, somewhere, would decide he deserved to feel happy again.