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 takes the night train across the city and finds the address, a narrow house with her name on a paper tag by the door. She knocks. A woman answers who looks nothing like her, holding a child who looks exactly like the girl from the canister. 'You're early,' the woman says. 'They told us you'd come.' She steps aside to let Mara in, and Mara walks toward the life that was sold out from under her.