Yaseen stared at the glowing words until they blurred.
And if you want the truth, Yaseen... you're going to have to stop trusting your memories.
His name, in that eerie green, looked wrong.
He tore his gaze away from the screen and glanced around the room, as if expecting to find a camera hidden in the peeling paint or a microphone embedded in the ceiling. It was ridiculous. Old paranoia from old stories. But his heart wouldn't listen to logic.
The only sounds were the faint buzz of the overhead light and the distant honk of traffic several floors below.
He swallowed and forced his attention back to the black window.
Who are you really?
He hit Enter.
The reply came almost instantly.
I told you. Cipher.
Names are just labels. You of all people should know that by now.
Yaseen's fingers tightened around the mouse.
How are you inside my MNEMO? Is this a virus? Because if this is some kind of joke—
He didn't finish the sentence. The cursor jumped ahead of him.
Relax. If this was a virus, you wouldn't be reading this. Your system would already be screaming.
As if on cue, a small notification chimed in the corner of the app.
System check complete. No threats detected.
Yaseen glanced at the notification, then back at the chat.
"Of course," he muttered under his breath. "Of course you'd time it like that."
What do you want?
He sent the question before he could overthink it.
This time, the answer took longer.
A few seconds. Long enough for his pulse to start pounding in his ears.
I want you to see what they've done.
And I want you to decide what to do with it.
Yaseen hesitated.
He should close the app. Log out. Factory reset his device, maybe even rip the patch off the side of his head and throw it into the toilet for good measure.
Instead, he typed:
Who is "they"?
Nexora. Obviously.
And not just the nice people who send you HR emails. The ones behind them.
Yaseen's eyes flicked to the Nexora portal still open in another tab. The orange congratulations banner blinked at him like a taunt.
Why me?
He wasn't sure if he was asking Cipher or the universe.
Because you've already been edited.
More than once.
His hands went cold.
Prove it.
No answer.
For a heartbeat, two, he thought the connection had dropped or the whole thing had been some glitch after all.
Then new text appeared.
Open your MNEMO core index.
I don't have access to that.
YOU ARE READING
Rewriting Memory
Science FictionRewriting MemoryWhat if your childhood was never truly yours? What if your most precious memories were manufactured in a lab? In a near-future world ruled by a powerful tech corporation called Nexora, a revolutionary app named MNEMO lets people reco...
