The Foundry runs on other people's joy. All night the machines hum, pulling the happiest hour out of each seller. By dawn the canisters land on Mara's desk, warm and faintly glowing. Her job is simple: scan, log, shelve, forget. She's done it for six years. Tonight a canister rolls down the chute with a name printed on the side. Her name. Mara Vance.

Mara scans it, the way she scans everything. The screen lights up: one hour of joy, sold last week, sealed and paid for. But she never sold anything. She'd remember a payment that big. The canister sits warm in her hands. Whatever's inside, it's hers.

Mara checks the seller log attached to the file. The name listed isn't a stranger's. It's hers, but the address is one she's never lived at, on the far side of the city. Someone is living her life under her name. She grabs her coat.

Mara reaches the address, but it's not a home. It's another Foundry branch, hidden behind a laundromat. Through the window she sees rows of cradles, and in one of them a woman wearing Mara's face, eyes shut, an hour being pulled from her right now. Mara backs away from the glass, knowing there are more of her, and that none of them remember each other.