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?"

I pulled the manual transfer lever. The cradle opened with that soft emergency chime, and Ari fell straight into my arms. Their first breath — they didn't need it, but it was huge. Their first grip cracked something in my wrist. Mina cried out. Ari let go fast and stared at what they did. "I didn't mean—" Then pain hit their new senses. Then fear. Then shame. All of it crossing their face faster than the body could soften it. Behind us, the facility sealed its doors. A calm voice announced an unregulated child has entered the physical world.