Chapter Four: The Weight of a Reflection

Yanqiu understood why even their parents' memories of Zhiwei's face had blurred. Her sister had surrendered the right to be clearly remembered. “There is another way,” Zhiwei said. “The Archive depends on accuracy. Give it an error it cannot classify.” Yanqiu approached Zhou's lens. “In your final registry entry, which stroke did you write wrong?” “None.” “You always make one mistake.” After a long silence, he said, “Not in the word lens. In material. I wrote the wrong radical, crossed it out, then drew a turtle over it.” It was an unrecorded error, remembered before it could leave physical evidence. Yanqiu thrust her arm through the mirror and seized him. An alarm screamed: “Identity conflict. Original contains unregistered deviation.”