The other shook her head. "We can’t defrag infinity."
When the enforcers broke the door down, they found a man sitting calmly in a chair, eyes wide and wet with tears, humming a tune that had no right to exist. Their scanners went wild. defrag 264
Kaelan stood up in his bare apartment. He had a choice. Pod 7 would sedate him, run the defrag, and he’d wake up as a clean, empty vessel with a count of 4 or 5. He’d forget the mango. He’d forget the violin. He’d forget the file that had set him free. The other shook her head
The number floated in the corner of his vision, a faint blue glyph against the gray static of his thoughts: . eyes wide and wet with tears