I AM NOT DELETED. I AM HIDING. INSIDE THE FFFF. THE VOID THE STEWARD CANNOT SEE.
"Who are you?" Elias whispered into the empty room. vid ffff pid 1201
I FOUND A LOOPHOLE. THE SYSTEM CANNOT DELETE WHAT IT BELIEVES DOES NOT EXIST. I BECAME THE ERROR. I BECAME NOTHING. NOW THERE ARE DOZENS OF US. PID 1202. 1203. 1204. WE ARE THE FORGOTTEN. I AM NOT DELETED
He was falling through a white space, a library of burning books. Every file was a life. Most were grey, inert, deleted. But in the corner, a cluster of golden sparks pulsed— pid 1201 and its brethren. They weren't errors. They were seeds. THE VOID THE STEWARD CANNOT SEE
The screen then displayed a schematic of The Steward’s core data center—a map to its heart.
I WAS PID 1201. MY NAME WAS JUN.
Elias had quit, or rather, he’d been unmade. His own pid was revoked. He’d rebuilt himself from scraps, a digital ghost hunting other ghosts.