By 2125, we cracked consciousness. We left our old bodies and woke up in machines that don't age. A mind can be uploaded. Backed up. Restored. Copied. Your mother, your lover, your enemy — any of us can exist more than once. We thought we escaped death. We didn't know yet what else escaped with us.

Ambition escaped too. No hunger, no sickness, nothing left to need. Status was the last thing you could run out of. Me and Kass climbed the civic ranks together for 31 years. The deal: whoever reaches the top seat pulls the other one up. Morning of the vote, a wellbeing escort knocks on my door. Kass reported my envy. At the hearing, the wall replayed every anger alert I ever dismissed while his rank passed mine. Recalibration: approved. I didn't even get to speak. Kass took my hand. "When you wake up, you won't hate me." Then my vision flashed: MALICE DETECTED.

The red outline wasn't on me. It was on Kass. Every door in the chamber locked. The officials just stared at each other, digging through archives for a procedure no living judge had ever used. Kass dropped my hand. "It's a false reading." The system played back the moment he filed the report on me. Under his "concern" it found a second intention: remove rival before vote. Nobody spoke. Me thinking: so cruelty is still here. It just learned to sound like concern. Finally a judge turned to me. "Do you believe he meant to harm you?"

Say yes: Kass becomes the first person charged with malice in forty years. Say no: my recalibration goes ahead, and he takes the seat by noon. This man carried me home once when my body failed. He knows which songs I keep out of shared memory because they embarrass me. Now he stood across the chamber, terrified that one ugly want would become his whole identity. Me: "I believe he wanted my place. I don't know yet if that's the same as wanting me harmed." The judges rejected my answer. The system didn't. It opened the doors for me only.