Taylor waited longer than was reasonable.
He didn’t know what he was waiting for. A signal, maybe. A sensation. Some internal confirmation that what he’d just done mattered. None came. The shaft remained still, the air steady, the hum distant and unconcerned.
Eventually, he moved.
The hatch opened onto a pedestrian artery bright enough to feel accusatory. Color returned all at once. Sound layered itself back into place. People moved with the same calm precision as always, each of them carried gently by invisible optimizations.
No one looked at him.
That was the worst part.
He half-expected something—eyes lingering too long, a soft chime in his ear, a courteous request to pause where he was. Instead, the world accepted him without question, as if the last hour had been trimmed cleanly from existence.
The device sat heavy in his pocket.
He didn’t touch it.
At home, the apartment greeted him by name. Lights adjusted. The temperature drifted to his preference before he registered discomfort. A meal suggestion hovered politely at the edge of his vision.
He dismissed it.
Silence followed. Artificial, but precise.
Taylor sat on the floor with his back against the wall. He hadn’t done that in years. Furniture existed to prevent such inefficiencies.
His thoughts tried to arrange themselves. Failed.
He considered the possibility that she’d fabricated everything. That there was no deeper wrongness, no hidden layers—just a moment of misinterpretation amplified by boredom and a stranger’s intensity.
The system would correct him if that were true.
It didn’t.
Minutes passed. Or hours. Time blurred when nothing pressed against it.
He stood and paced, then stopped, then laughed once—a short, involuntary sound that startled him more than fear would have.
“This is ridiculous,” he said aloud.
The apartment did not respond.
He reached into his pocket, fingers brushing the device.
Don’t.
The word wasn’t hers. It came from somewhere quieter. Somewhere newly awake.
He withdrew his hand.
Sleep arrived eventually, uninvited. Not the deep, curated rest the system preferred, but something fractured and thin. He dreamed of corridors that narrowed without moving, of lights that flickered only when he wasn’t looking directly at them.
When he woke, the certainty was worse.
Nothing had changed.
The city moved on. The feeds were clean. His work queue was empty. Whatever anomaly had touched his life had left no mark the system considered worth addressing.
Taylor showered, dressed, and stepped back into perfection.
Inside, something stayed behind.
That night, as he lay awake again, he understood the true shape of isolation.
It wasn’t being alone.
It was being the only one who knew that being alone had finally become preferable.