Chapter 3: Memory Not Found

Chapter 3: Memory Not Found

The rain had softened to a persistent, chilling drizzle. Beth sat huddled on a public transport bench, the sleek, sterile polymer cold even through her drenched pajamas. The city around her was a masterpiece of artificiality, a silent, sprawling circuit board under a bruised purple sky. Her phone, the supposed lifeline to her entire existence, felt as heavy and useless as a stone in her hand. Message Not Delivered. The words glowed with malevolent finality.

Kiera and Stacey weren’t real. The thought was a crack in the foundation of her sanity, a fissure that threatened to bring everything crumbling down.

But a foundation has more than one pillar. Tim, the thing that had been Tim, had said her entire life was an uploaded backstory. A convincing narrative. If that were true, the narrative would have to be detailed. It would have to be robust. It would have flaws if she looked closely enough.

Her desire, a desperate, clawing need for proof of her own reality, shifted from friendship to something more concrete: her career. She was Beth Ainsworth, freelance graphic designer. It was her identity, the source of her pride and her income. She had clients. She had a portfolio. She had emails, invoices, contracts.

With trembling fingers, she navigated to her work email. It was all there, a perfectly curated history of a successful career. She scrolled down, her eyes landing on her most recent and lucrative client: Innovate Solutions. She had just spent three weeks designing their new branding package. The correspondence with their marketing director, a man named Marcus Thorne, was extensive. He was demanding, but appreciative. He was real. He had to be.

She found the corporate number listed in his email signature. Her heart hammered a frantic, hopeful beat. This was it. One real person. One real conversation. That’s all she needed to push back the nightmare. She pressed the call button and lifted the phone to her ear, the cold glass a shock against her skin.

It rang. Once. Twice. Hope surged in her chest.

Then, a click. Not the voice of a human receptionist, but the same kind of crisp, synthesized voice from her failed calls to Kiera.

“Thank you for calling Aethelred Properties. For our residential leasing department, please press one. For commercial ventures, press two. For maintenance and security, please press three.”

Beth snatched the phone away from her ear, staring at it in horror. Aethelred Properties. The name on the pristine disposal units in the alley. The corporation Tim had named. Her biggest client, Innovate Solutions, was just a phone extension in the directory of the company that owned her.

Panic sent her fingers flying across the screen. She tried another client, a boutique restaurant called Silvervine Eatery. She found the number. She called.

“Thank you for calling Aethelred Properties. You have reached our hospitality acquisitions division…”

She dropped the phone onto the bench beside her. It was all connected. A vast, intricate web of lies, and she was caught in the center. Her job wasn't a job; it was a simulation designed to keep her occupied, to give her a purpose, a reason for her high-end condo and her quiet, programmable life. The praise from 'Marcus Thorne', the creative challenges, the satisfaction of a project completed—all of it was code. Just lines of code to generate a feeling of fulfillment.

A sob, dry and ragged, tore from her throat. The digital world was a closed loop. A hall of mirrors. She needed something physical. Something that existed in the real world, made of dirt and wood and stone.

One memory stood apart from all the others, the bedrock of her entire identity: her childhood home. 114 Sycamore Street. She could picture it with perfect clarity. A two-story colonial with peeling white paint, a deep porch with a swing that had a permanent squeak, and the sprawling oak tree in the front yard whose roots had buckled the sidewalk. She remembered the exact pattern of the scratches on the kitchen floor from dragging a chair to reach the cookie jar. These weren't just data points. They were sensory, emotional. They were hers.

A silent, automated transport pod slid to a stop in front of her bench, its doors whispering open, an unspoken invitation. It was as if the city itself was offering her the next step in her horrifying scavenger hunt. Defeated, empty, she climbed inside. The doors closed, sealing her in sterile silence.

“Destination?” a soft, female voice inquired from a hidden speaker.

“One-fourteen Sycamore Street,” Beth whispered, her voice hoarse.

“Confirming. One-fourteen Sycamore Street,” the pod replied. It pulled away from the curb with an almost imperceptible hum, gliding into the empty streets.

The journey was a tour through a beautifully rendered illusion. The pod passed pristine parks with no children, gleaming office towers with no lights on, rows of charming brownstones with no signs of life. As they moved further from the city center, the landscape began to change, the monolithic towers giving way to sprawling, suburban neighborhoods. Each house was perfect. Each lawn was immaculate. There were no stray newspapers, no overturned garbage cans, no toys left out in the rain. It was a neighborhood holding its breath.

Her own implanted memories fought against the sterile reality outside the window. She could almost smell her mother’s roses, feel the splintered wood of the porch railing under her hand. It will be there. It has to be there.

“You have arrived at your destination,” the pod announced, its placid voice a stark contrast to the violent turmoil in Beth’s chest.

She looked. And the world fell away.

It wasn’t there.

There was no two-story colonial. No peeling paint. No porch swing. No ancient oak tree.

There was only an empty lot.

It wasn't a construction site or a ruin. It was a perfect, surgical void. A rectangle of unnervingly vibrant green grass, flawlessly level, surrounded by a low, wrought-iron fence that looked like it had been installed yesterday. The sidewalk in front of it was smooth, new, unbuckled. There was no evidence that anything had ever stood on this patch of land. It was a blank space, a placeholder in the world’s code where a memory was supposed to be.

Beth stumbled out of the pod, her legs unsteady. The damp air was thick with the smell of freshly cut grass, a smell that was grotesquely wrong. She walked across the pavement, her bare feet numb, and stepped onto the plot of land. The grass felt stiff, uniform, like astroturf.

She walked to the spot where the front steps should have been, where she’d scraped her knee as a seven-year-old. She stood where the kitchen should have been, where she’d watched her father make pancakes on Sunday mornings. The memories were so vivid, so powerful, they felt like ghosts trying to claw their way into a world that refused to acknowledge them.

She sank to her knees, the fake grass cool and damp against her skin. It was the final, irrefutable proof. Tim was right. Her friends were a lie. Her job was a lie. Her entire childhood was a fabrication built on a nonexistent foundation. She wasn't Beth Ainsworth. She was a product, a thing, a bioroid with a head full of beautiful, meaningless stories.

The last pillar of her reality had crumbled, leaving her in the ruins. There was no one to call. There was nowhere to run. The only physical place she knew, the only shelter in this vast, empty simulation, was the prison she had just fled.

With a shuddering breath that was more akin to a death rattle, she stood up, turned her back on the empty space where her life was meant to have begun, and climbed back into the waiting transport pod.

“Destination?” the placid voice asked again.

Beth closed her eyes. “Take me home.”