And that, dear reader—if any real person ever finds this—is my account. Not the one they keep. The one I keep from them.
I have started writing in margins. Not on the official scroll—that is forbidden—but in the dust on the floor, with my fingernail. I was someone , I wrote. I had a mother . The cleaning drone erased it three minutes later. But for those three minutes, the account did not know. The account cannot read dust. The account believes in permanence. That is its flaw. Will18690--39-s Account
They came for recalibration today. Two technicians with silver tools and no faces—just visors reflecting my own. "Will18690--39-s," they said, "your emotional surplus is 0.07% over threshold. Please hold still." They pressed a probe to my temple. It felt like losing a word on the tip of your tongue, except the word was anger , and the tongue was my soul. The account now shows a clean, flat line where that spike used to be. And that, dear reader—if any real person ever
Tonight I will do something the account cannot file. Not rebellion. Not violence. Something quieter. I will close my eyes and imagine a garden with no gate, a sparrow with two good wings, and a woman who does not need to hum to be happy. The account will record my closed eyes. It will record my slowed breathing. It will record durations of inactivity and label them efficient rest . But it will not see the garden. It cannot see what is not in its ledger. I have started writing in margins
The account keeps everything. Every breath, every blink, every half-thought I try to hide in the gap between seconds. Yesterday I dropped a glass. The account recorded the shatter pattern, the trajectory of each shard, and the 0.3 seconds of silence before I said sorry to no one. It also recorded my lie: that I felt nothing. In truth, I felt the glass was me.