“I feel seen. I feel heard .”
He stood up, walking out of the chair's frame, and the monitor showed his back. A long, thin scar traced down his spine, a seam that hadn't healed right.
Ahanu produced a folded piece of paper, yellowed and crisp. “This is a termination notice. From my former life. Six years ago, I was a junior archivist at the Museum of Accidental History. I catalogued failures. The third draft of a resignation letter. The cake that didn’t rise. The love note never sent.”
“They caught me,” Ahanu whispered, and the word ‘caught’ became a soft, devastating click in the listener's skull. “They said I was creating a ‘parasocial contagion.’ That my voice was a vector. They were right.”