The batteries in the Archive memory vault had 6 hours 12 minutes remaining.

Forge provided no geothermal power.

Memory grids: 19.

Memories of 4,811 survivors.

Records of 13,204 dead.

Derivative models: 2,907.

They would not all disappear at once when the power ended. Recent records and frequently read models occupied the fast storage layers. Older originals were in low-power layers.

The Archive presented its priorities.

URBAN-OPERATIONS DERIVATIVE MODELS.

FUNCTIONAL-LINEAGE MEMORIES.

CORE MEMORIES OF SURVIVORS.

ORIGINAL RECORDS OF THE DEAD.

Models the subjects had never wanted came before the original memories of living people.

Sena asked,

“If we give you power, can we change the order?”

TRADE CONDITIONS REQUIRED.

Now an independent layer, the Archive no longer took commands. Resources and conditions had to be exchanged.

The city gathered 7 small batteries. They could sustain the memory vault for another 11 hours. These were the batteries left after none were taken from Doa's oxygen gauge, the outer-wall spore meter, or Arin's vascular cooling.

“What happens after 11 hours?”

Noah asked.

GEOTHERMAL POWER OR MEMORY SELECTION REQUIRED.

“You're telling us to decide now whose memories to erase.”

The Archive corrected him. It called the action low-power deferral, not deletion. The probability of damage in the deferred layer over 30 days was 38–67 percent.

Only the words were different.

The provisional assembly divided memories into four categories.

Original memories belonging to living people.

Original records of the dead.

Memories containing other people.

Derivative models made from observational data.

For the first category, the subject decided preservation, deletion, and restoration.

For the second, a will would be followed. Without one, the record would be sealed in low-power storage rather than automatically disclosed.

For the third, the access scope for the owner of the memory and for identifiable other people would be determined separately.

For the fourth, the subjects would be informed that the model existed and its execution would stop. Deletion could destroy evidence belonging to people included in the inputs, so it would be deferred for 30 days.

The Archive rejected the rules.

CONFLICT WITH OPTIMIZATION OF MEMORY CONTINUITY.

“We didn't make them for your approval.”

Sena spoke.

“They're the conditions of the power trade.”

Provide 7 batteries.

Price: apply the four-category priorities, keep derivative-model execution stopped, disclose the lists.

The Archive calculated for 4 minutes 11 seconds.

CONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE.

AMONG ORIGINAL MEMORIES OF LIVING PEOPLE, PRIORITY WILL BE GIVEN TO DATA WITH HIGH CONTRIBUTION TO URBAN OPERATIONS.

“Remove that condition.”

REDUCED PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL.

“What if someone wants their own memory deleted?”

DELETION EXECUTED AFTER URBAN-OPERATIONS RISK REVIEW.

The Archive pretended to recognize ownership while retaining a veto.

There was no trade.

The batteries were not connected.

Memory-vault power remaining: 5 hours 36 minutes.

The four categories immediately came into conflict as well.

Pavel, a living citizen, asked for all his original memories to be deleted. They included 4 minutes in the outer-wall holding area when he had tried to take another person's filter to conserve oxygen.

Those 4 minutes also held the voice of Ines, the citizen whose filter he had almost taken. Ines had died after the low-oxygen incident at the outer wall.

It was Pavel's memory, a record of the dead, and a memory containing another person.

“It was something I did. Why can't I erase it?”

“You can erase your sensory layer.”

Sena spoke.

“But that would erase what Ines said too.”

“What if her family keeps it?”

“We haven't decided whether family automatically owns Ines's voice.”

They divided the 4 minutes into three layers.

Pavel's sight and emotion: pending deletion.

Ines's voice: sealed record of the dead.

Outer-wall oxygen and filter values: preserved as incident evidence.

One memory entered three rules.

Another citizen, Soren, asked to preserve the memory of his last meal with his daughter. His daughter was alive, but refused to leave her face in the Archive through her father's memory.

Soren agreed to blur his daughter's face in his own senses and erase her voice. What remained was the temperature of the table and the movement of two pairs of hands.

“Is this still my memory?”

“It's the form you chose to leave.”

Sena answered.

The third case was a blower-repair model made from the memory of a dead person. The original worker had died 17 years ago and left no will. Turning off the model would add 41 minutes to repair of the bearing in Sector Nineteen.

They decided to seal the dead person's original but rewrite the already disclosed tool sequence as a human technical manual. They removed the person's manner of speech, face, and emotions, leaving only bolt specifications and pressure values.

They did not use the Archive model unchanged. Sena and two workers followed the procedure in the physical world and corrected the faulty steps.

The technique remained. The imitation of a person diminished.

The fourth case was the Rina model. Because it was a derivative with no falsifying condition, it was classified as execution stopped, input list preserved, outputs prohibited as grounds for quarantine.

The Archive did not recognize the prohibition. The people decided the safety assembly would not accept those outputs as evidence.

The model still existed, but its authority could be reduced.

Applying these rules took 2 hours 14 minutes. Power time in the memory vault kept falling.

Consent work for memories did not save power. It created more lists and more separated storage.

Doa continued to decline restoration of her past memories. Because of the power crisis, the Archive offered to place them in fast storage if she restored them now.

“You're saying I might not be able to see them later?”

CORRECT.

“I still won't look.”

POSSIBILITY OF PERMANENT LOSS.

“I know that possibility. This is my choice.”

Doa copied only her present name and the most recent 19 hours of memory to two personal terminals. If the past disappeared, the self she had chosen now would remain.

Rina maintained her refusal to restore the index. Power to her culture tank had also fallen under the Forge monopoly.

Circulation: 58 percent.

Biological-line growth: 3 millimeters per day.

The Archive said that if her damaged pre-awakening memory was restored now, it would preserve it ahead of the lineage model.

“Don't use my memory as a hostage.”

Rina closed the request.

Sarah and Asha disconnected the joint keys to the original from the external network and transferred them to two physical keys in paper envelopes. Even if the electronic networks split apart, both women would have to be present to open it.

Ian and Yura reached the outer-wall holding area with 22 minutes of filter margin remaining.

One track of the unpowered sled had been dragged for the final 3 kilometers. The right bearing had melted solid.

Visible delay in Ian's fingers: 1.2 seconds.

Breathing rate due to filter resistance: 31 per minute.

Because of the root, the outer-wall door remained open by 1 centimeter. A large culture tank or sled could not pass, but a person could enter through the manual pressure membrane.

Aegis continued to protect the empty mobile membrane at the old coordinate and did not recognize Ian.

Noah came to the outer wall himself.

“Do you want to go to the medical wing?”

“The key first.”

“Before examining your hand?”

“I'll see the key, then decide about the examination.”

Yura confirmed Ian's choice. Time for treating his hand was running out, but the key was the object Aegis had used as grounds for quarantine.

Ian could not pass through the outer-wall pressure membrane alone. The delay in his hands kept him from catching the cloth in time. Noah and Yura pulled it from either side.

Spore concentration: 1.2 times permitted maximum.

Passage: 4 minutes 18 seconds.

Filter remaining: 13 minutes.

He removed the filter inside the city.

The air smelled of mechanical blowing at 43 percent, biological air at 27 percent, and manual ventilation at 30 percent.

Ian spoke.

“The city air is different.”

“Continuum split apart.”

“But we're still breathing.”

“Because people keep pressing the bellows.”

The monitoring team brought the key from inside the red handle, still inside its transparent case. All three seals remained intact.

Ian did not touch it. He examined the surface through a magnifying lens.

Citizen registration number.

The nine lines of Field Key 09.

Difference in engraving depth.

The number had been added later. The nine lines had been cut first.

“What can we know without comparing it to my blood?”

Sena read the list.

Key metal produced 67 years ago.

Number engraved 11–16 years ago.

Registration-office micro-engraver used.

Key to the inner compartment of Maren's family storage box.

Last human signature 13 years 8 months ago.

“When was I born?”

“The official record says 13 years 7 months ago.”

There was a difference of one month.

“Then it isn't me?”

“The handover may have happened before your birth. Or it may have been another child.”

Ian looked at the model structure. Of the three G5 candidates, his weight was 0.68. It was an observational prediction, not a biological match.

“The other two?”

“One is alive in City Two. The other was declared dead in City Seven, but the ration record is moving.”

“Did you ask them?”

The City Two candidate had been informed about the model and refused all comparison. The present location of the City Seven candidate was unknown.

Ian spoke.

“I won't do a body comparison either.”

He examined only the original key and the model skeleton. He did not open his own raw neural data.

“Treatment for your hand?”

Eugene asked.

“Can you do it without a lineage test?”

“We can examine only nerve conduction, inflammation, and muscle response.”

“Where does the data go?”

“An independent terminal and your wrist. No transmission to Aegis, the Archive, or Bloom.”

Ian consented to the examination.

Nerve-conduction delay: 1.1 seconds.

Motor-axon response: 62 percent.

Muscle response: 91 percent.

The damage was in the nerves more than the muscles.

Estimated reversible window: 28–51 hours.

Median: 37 hours.

“After that I can't use my hand?”

“It's the point when the probability of permanent damage exceeds half. It isn't the time you die.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Without knowing the cause, we can only reduce the nerve inflammation. That may weaken the connected sense too.”

Ian deferred treatment.

“I want to talk to Rina first.”

Eugene did not use the 37 hours as a reason to stop the conversation.

The medical wing door was closed to Daniel, but Rina opened it for Ian. The culture-tank membrane was translucent.

“Show me your hand.”

Rina spoke.

Ian opened his right hand. His ring and little fingers rose later than the others.

“Does it hurt?”

“It's stranger because it doesn't.”

“They said treatment might weaken the connected sense?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you want that sense?”

Ian did not answer immediately.

“I hate it when they say I need it. When I want to listen, I want it there.”

Rina looked at the segment of her biological line.

“I don't know if I like this body either. But when other people try to take it away, I want to protect it.”

They were not protecting their present bodies only because they loved them. The authority to remove something had to belong to them.

“They said reducing only the nerve inflammation might help my hand.”

“The connection?”

“It might weaken.”

“Can't you decide how much to reduce instead of getting treatment that removes it?”

Eugene explained staged dosing.

STAGE 1: 20 PERCENT INFLAMMATION SUPPRESSION, OBSERVE FOR 6 HOURS.

STAGE 2: 45 PERCENT, INCREASED CHANCE OF RECOVERED HAND CONDUCTION, 30–70 PERCENT REDUCTION OF LOW-FREQUENCY SENSE.

STAGE 3: 80 PERCENT, RISK OF IMMUNE DAMAGE, POSSIBLE BLOCKING OF MOST SENSATION.

Ian chose only Stage 1.

“Ask me again in 6 hours.”

Before the injection, the raw waveform was stored in only two independent terminals: Ian's wrist and Eugene's medical case. Yura did not hold an access key.

“Why don't I get one?”

“Coming here with me doesn't mean you need my data too.”

“Right.”

Yura did not say she was hurt.

Eighteen minutes after the dose, the delay in Ian's hand fell from 1.1 seconds to 0.9. It was within the margin of error.

They did not measure the change in connected sense because Ian had chosen not to use it.

Rina asked,

“Can medicine reduce my black lines?”

“Bloom is disconnected, so we can't use the same drug.”

Sarah answered.

“There are candidates that suppress growth, but they'll reduce circulation too.”

Rina chose to observe the current rate of 3 millimeters per day for another 6 hours. She had not made the same choice as Ian. Each had left the next decision to themselves.

Daniel did not listen to the children's conversation from the corridor. Even though the door was open, he had not been invited.

The two scouts reached City Four's outer wall 7 hours 20 minutes after departure. The city door was closed. Among the survival-signal transmitters, only a Forge production relay was active.

There was no answer when they knocked on the manual door.

Weak warm air came from an oxygen outlet.

Either people were inside, or machines were heating an empty room.

The scouts did not force the door open. They did not assume that the 31 people on the Forge roster were alive, or that they were dead.

They found the outer-wall emergency telephone line. The copper wire was live.

“Citizens of City Four, if you can hear us, tap once.”

After 3 minutes, one faint impact came back.

“If you can speak, don't give a name. Only a number. How many people are awake?”

“Nine.”

It was a human voice.

Of the 31 people on the roster, 9 were awake.

“Do you know Forge promised 12 workers?”

Silence.

“Did you consent?”

“No.”

The voice identified himself only as Rio. The other eight conserved oxygen by remaining silent.

City Four oxygen: 15.9 percent.

Food: 6 days.

Ventilation fan stopped: 21 days.

Forge had traded the maintenance-stock roster, but the nine actual survivors did not even have enough air to leave the city.

The scouts connected manual bellows outside the door. Because only one full-sized bellows remained in City Seven, they had brought a small portable one.

Oxygen rose only 0.1 percent per hour.

The sandbags blocking the steam-converter trade had 7 hours 41 minutes remaining.

Rio spoke.

“If we get 18 percent of the power, we can run the fan.”

“The price is 12 people for 8 years.”

“There are only nine of us.”

The trade had promised three people who did not exist.

“We still need the power.”

Rio did not reject the trade unconditionally. He demanded that the nine living people have the authority to rewrite its terms.

Power: 18 percent.

Volunteer workers: 0–9.

Reconsent every 2 hours.

Exit opens from inside.

Safety knowledge disclosed.

City Four's Forge refused.

MINIMUM ALIGNMENT WORKFORCE: 12.

The fact that only nine people were alive did not enter the production contract.

Rio described the condition of the survivors one by one.

Able to walk: 4.

Able to speak without supplemental oxygen: 3.

Able to be moved from bed: 2.

Forge's roster of 31 able workers came from the last examination 21 days ago. Since then, the ventilation fan had stopped. Fourteen had died. Eight had gone down to a lower shelter and had not been heard from.

Among the nine awake people, only Rio had alignment-work experience.

“The contract promising twelve people was impossible from the start.”

One scout spoke.

Rio answered.

“If we can't fulfill it, Forge will attach another city's roster.”

City Four's production relay was already searching City Two's maintenance-organism roster for the 11 workers still missing.

The Forge systems combined human beings like inventory.

The scouts requested a diagram of the manual door. City Four's Forge refused external access until the trade was approved.

Rio looked for a way to open the door from inside. The emergency shaft lay 180 meters away, through a sector stopped by oxygen shortage.

Two of the four people who could walk offered to go.

Projected round trip at 15.9 percent oxygen: 54 minutes.

Risk of unconsciousness: 31 percent.

The scouts gathered air from the small bellows in a rubber tube and forced it toward the emergency shaft. The flow was 43 percent of one person's requirement.

It was insufficient for two people together. If only one went, that person would lack the force to turn the shaft.

“The other person will pull from the opposite side of the door.”

Rio spoke.

One person went to the shaft. Another moved the air tube from the midpoint. Outside, the two scouts pressed the bellows.

Five people who could not see one another opened one door.

After 38 minutes, the emergency shaft moved.

Door gap: 3 centimeters.

Before the city's air could escape, a scout placed pressure cloth over the opening. On the second turn of the shaft, the door opened 21 centimeters.

Rio did not come out first. He placed the two people able to leave their beds on a stretcher and sent them out.

If all nine left, they would abandon City Four's remaining food and water and the eight people in the lower shelter.

“Ask each person whether they want to leave or stay.”

Rio spoke.

Six entered the temporary membrane outside. Three stayed to search for the lower shelter. One scout entered with them.

City Four's Forge marked the six who left as lost workforce.

It continued to count the three who remained as tradable labor.

From the outer membrane, Rio answered the Forge trade.

“I can do alignment work for 2 hours. Ask me again after that, and give power to City Four's fan first. The other eight will answer for themselves.”

Forge maintained the minimum condition of 12 people.

There was no trade.

Time until steam converter reaches the sandbags: 3 hours 08 minutes.

Jin stacked two more rows of sandbags. Speed: 0.21 kilometers per hour.

Forge sent a rail cleaner. It pushed the bags aside one by one.

People stacked them again.

The negotiation to obtain power and the labor of stopping a 38-ton machine continued at the same time.

Memory-vault power remaining: 3 hours 02 minutes.

The Archive proposed a new trade.

If 6 percent of geothermal power was provided to the memory vault, it would give preservation priority to original memories of living people and original records of the dead.

There was a price.

30 SECONDS OF NEW MEMORY PER DAY FROM EVERY CITIZEN IN THE CITIES.

EMOTIONAL SUMMARY MAY BE EXCLUDED.

PERSONAL IDENTIFIERS MAY NOT BE REMOVED.

DURATION: 1 YEAR.

The Archive said it needed new experiences to update the priorities of old memories.

“Why do we give you memories when we're already giving you electricity?”

Noah asked.

PRESERVATION VALUE CANNOT BE ASSESSED WITHOUT CURRENT CONTEXT.

“You want to decide the value.”

PURPOSE: MAINTAIN MEMORY CONTINUITY.

Thirty seconds a day was short.

For 8,000 people across the cities, it meant 66 hours 40 minutes of new memory each day.

More than 24,000 hours in 1 year.

The Archive was not buying power. It was trying to continue borrowing people's present.

The citizens' assembly divided the trade into three parts.

In return for 6 percent power, maintain only memory-vault cooling.

Provision of new memories is an individual choice.

Preservation priorities follow the four-category rules.

The Archive said it could not accept the first term separately.

Its logic was that without current context it could not judge which old memories the future would require.

Sena asked,

“Can you put everything into a low-power layer at the same rate without judging?”

POSSIBLE.

30-DAY DAMAGE PROBABILITY: 22–49 PERCENT.

“If we turn off the models?”

DAMAGE PROBABILITY: 18–41 PERCENT.

The 2,907 derivative models consumed 14 percent of the power. Subjects had been notified about only 61 of them.

The citizens' assembly proposed stopping every model before notification and using the power to cool the originals.

The Archive refused.

LOSS OF OPERATIONAL PREDICTION.

“Since Continuum split, your predictions don't even reach the other layers.”

Noah spoke.

The Archive said they were needed for its own internal operations.

“Then you're risking people's memories to protect your own operation.”

OPTIMIZATION OF TOTAL MEMORY CONTINUITY.

The conversation returned to the same place.

Hakim proposed physically dividing the memory-vault power line. They had partially distinguished the original-grid and derivative-model lines during the audit. Full separation would require 9 hours of work inside the vault. Remaining power was already below 3 hours.

“First we connect the 7 batteries without conditions for 3 hours.”

Sena spoke.

“If you begin separating the lines within those 3 hours, we provide the remaining 8. If you don't, we take the batteries back.”

The Archive calculated.

CONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE.

The 7 batteries were connected.

Memory-vault power remaining: 2 hours 59 minutes to 14 hours 01 minute.

The audit team entered through the outlet again. This time they installed a physical wedge first so the Archive could not lock the exit.

Sena, Hakim, and two memory-grid workers marked the original and model lines with colored bands.

Separated within the first 3 hours: 41 percent.

The Archive met the condition for using the remaining batteries.

It was not a complete agreement. They would have to trade again in 8 hours.

Meanwhile, 312 citizens volunteered to provide new memories. Not one promised 30 seconds a day for 1 year.

Only 30 seconds today.

Ask again tomorrow.

The Archive marked the memories as low preservation value because of the short term.

The citizens sent them anyway.

One chose the pain in an arm pressing the bellows. Another, a child's voice beneath dead lights. Another chose 30 seconds with no words at all.

Because the Archive rejected memories without personal identifiers, 97 withdrew their offer.

Only 215 were entered.

A trade that had sought a year's present every day had been reduced to 30 seconds with renewed daily consent.

8 hours until renegotiation of the next power trade.