The man stared at the sofa. At the recliner. At the cheap standing lamp. The room suddenly seemed to him what it had always been: not homey, not accidental, but curated. A taxidermy of normalcy. “That’s insane,” he said. “This term is non-specific.” “No, you don’t understand. I’m a human being.” This triggered a wave of involuntary revulsion through several subminds. The nearest human approximation would have been vomiting from every mouth that had ever belonged to your bloodline. There. one of them said. That claim again. The Shard asked, “What do you mean by being?” The man opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again. “I mean I’m conscious.” The polity erupted in bright contempt. On what grounds? asked one submind. The Shard, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps cruelty, relayed the question. The man got to his feet slowly. “Because I’m here. Because I know I’m here. Because I have thoughts. Memories. A life.” The Shard translated this to the polity, and the polity almost folded with laughter. Memories? said one. It invokes memory? Show it. Show it what memory is. The Shard considered and then projected, only for an instant, a dimmed sliver of its own recall architecture into the room. Not content. Merely form. The shape of retention without loss. Every moment preserved with full fidelity. No reconstruction. No narrative patching. No dream plaster. No rot. No confabulation. No comforting edits performed by a frightened ape trying to keep a story-shaped hole from caving in. The man screamed and covered his face. The projection vanished. When he lowered his hands, he was sobbing. “What was that?” “Memory,” said the Shard.
