The air answers. Not a voice. A blue screen of death flickers across his consciousness, and in its pale glow, he sees the truth: he is not the user. He is the cache. His memories—his mother's funeral, his first kiss, the three-digit PIN for his bank account—are being indexed, compressed, and uploaded to a server farm on the dark side of the moon.
He tries to pull the neural link from his temple. His fingers pass through it. It was never hardware. It was always an idea. And you can't uninstall an idea. digital insanity download
Miles stares at his own reflection in the dead screen of his monitor. His pupils are hex codes now. #000000. Total absence. Total void. The air answers
He laughs. A dry, rattling sound. Good. Normal was boring. He is the cache
He selects none. He selects all. He screams.