Chapter Three: The Deleted Man

Lin Wan pulled a fragment of the memory card from her pocket. Reality had turned it into a child's puzzle piece, but the cuts remained on its back. She snapped it along the carving and read each character aloud. Shen Zhou remembered the hidden reference and the third rule. “Who pays the cost?” he whispered. The lights flickered. Orange text surfaced on the refrigerator: `Stability source: deleted object zhou-jiming.` `Memory required for new relationships reclaimed from conflict object.` The boy's face blurred. He was not a person, only a patch generated from the relational space cleared by deleting Zhou Jiming. The real man remained on a hidden branch, awaiting garbage collection.