Chapter Two: The Living

The neighboring desk became pristine. The chips turned into an unopened packet of tissues. The name on his arm became three unrelated smudges. Every person named Zhou Jiming vanished from the employee system—and from the world. Lin Wan removed the recorder's memory card. With a blade, she carved a string of characters into its back. “The commit hash,” she said. “Machines forget. Ink fades. Cuts take longer.” A private message from `root-0` appeared: `Irrelevant variable removed. Now you may go home to her.` His phone lit up with a photo from his mother. Steam clouded the lens above a pot of soup. This time, Shen Zhou felt no happiness at all.