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.

Death stopped being final. If the memories survive, nobody mourns the body. One of me went north to fix a solar field. I stayed home as active decider. Simple plan: back to one memory by dinner. 08:10 — the transmitter died. Search team found melted metal. No living signal. So I accepted his last backup. It ended one hour before the blast. Three days later I'm standing at our own memorial. The doors open. My missing body limps in, one arm burned black. Everyone looked from me... to me. Him: "Keep that hour separate. Someone already killed us once for it."

I accepted the missing hour before fear could decide for me. Heat tore through both bodies. I remembered the solar field cracking open under our feet. A voice ordering us: transmit what you found. Then the part he hid. My field body smashed the transmitter. Himself. On purpose. When the memory let go, he was on the floor and I was gripping the table hard enough to bend it. Me: "You destroyed our only way home." Him: "I destroyed their way into the source." And behind my eyes, a memory that wasn't ours was already unpacking.