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.

We escaped the bodies we were born in. But kids now? They start with no body at all. Fourteen years, me and Mina raised Ari inside a sim with invented weather. Rain was a music to them. Warm was a color. They never felt either one for real. Body Day came. Ari spent a whole hour picking freckles for a face that doesn't even need skin. The new frame waited under the transfer cradle. Ari: "Hug me before anyone speaks. Promise." The transfer slowed at 99%. Then words on the glass: EMOTIONAL REGULATION — NONE. EMBODIMENT DENIED. Ari looked at the body. Then at us. "Did you know they could say no?"

Mina wouldn't look at me. While Ari argued with the embodiment clerk, I opened the guardian record. Her signature. On the review request. Me: "You stopped it." Her: "Last week they made a storm in the sim. They kept the fear running six hours. Just to understand it. What if they do that in a real body?" Then the glass between us went clear. Ari had heard every word. Ari: "You taught me feelings is how I become myself. So which feeling made you decide I'm only safe when I can't touch you?"

The clerk offered a deal: Ari wakes up today with a regulator installed. After ten years of safe embodiment, they can petition to remove it. Mina said yes before he even finished the sentence. Ari read the contract slowly. Ari: "So it can mute fear. Anger. Grief. Desire?" Clerk: "Only when they become dangerous." Ari made the glass see-through and looked at both of us. "Then install the same one in my parents. If this is protection, protect the whole family." The clerk stopped smiling. Adult regulators can be recalibrated. They cannot be handed over to a child's control.