2125: Consciousness Escaped
sci-fi◐ TeenI brought him home but kept him locked out of our memory source. Being split made us clumsy. He reached for tools I already moved. I finished sentences he didn't mean anymore. Under the burned plating on his arm, he was carrying a sealed maintenance key. It had OUR source signature on it. Him: "The transmitter wasn't attacked from outside. It accepted a shutdown command. From us." I checked my active record. 07:06. While I remember standing alone in the kitchen, our source authorized another body. It stayed online eleven minutes. No location recorded.
We replayed the authorization together. The third body used our voice. Our private gestures. Even the childhood memory we use for identity checks. The system wasn't fooled. For eleven minutes, it really WAS us. Then he asked the question neither of us wanted to say. "What if the source created it... and deleted the decision from us after?" The wall lit up before I could answer. Our memory source was requesting reconciliation. Not with him. A third stream had come online under the city. Its newest memory: watching the two of us through the apartment window.