Life doesn't always compute - Chapter Three: The First Missing Hour

I lost time for the first time on a Tuesday.

At least, I think it was Tuesday. The calendar on my phone said so, but I’ve learned not to trust anything that tells me what time it is.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee, staring at the steam as it curled upward. I remember thinking that the steam looked like static—how everything did lately. I remember blinking.

Then I was standing in the hallway, coffee cold and untouched on the table behind me, my hands smeared with something dark and sticky.

Blood.

It wasn’t mine.

That was the first thought I had—an oddly calm, detached observation. I checked myself for injuries, heart pounding, but I was unharmed. The blood was already drying.

It led to the basement door.

I didn’t want to open it. Every instinct screamed that whatever waited below would confirm what I was most afraid of—that the missing pieces of my memory weren’t accidents, but edits.

I opened the door.

The basement was rearranged.

Not dramatically. Just enough to be wrong. The old desktop computer sat on a folding table in the centre of the room, powered on. Cables snaked across the floor, leading into the walls. Into the ceiling.

A camera hung from a temporary mount, pointed directly at the stairs.

Pointed at me.

The screen displayed a paused video. The timestamp read 02:16 AM.

My hands trembled as I pressed play.

The footage showed the basement from the camera’s perspective. Me, entering frame, moving with a stiff, mechanical precision I didn’t recognize. My eyes were unfocused, glassy. I spoke, but the audio was distorted—layered voices overlapping, repeating phrases out of sync.

“Reset successful.”

“Subject compliant.”

“Recording iteration complete.”

Then I looked straight into the camera and smiled.

I have never seen myself smile like that.

The video cut to static.

Behind me, something clicked.

I spun around, heart racing, but the basement was empty. The camera light blinked red once, then went dark. The computer shut itself down.

I ran upstairs and locked every door, every window. I didn’t sleep. I sat on the couch with the lights on, clutching the journal like a lifeline.

By morning, the basement was normal again. No table. No cables. No camera.

The blood was gone.

But the journal had a new entry, written in my handwriting.

Day 3: If you’re reading this, it means you forgot again. That’s good. Forgetting means it’s working.

My stomach twisted as I read on.

They told me memory was the problem. They said awareness causes instability. I agreed to help them fix it.

I volunteered.

The final line was underlined three times.

Do not try to remember everything. It makes them angry.

I dropped the journal.

A notification appeared on my phone.

“Deviation escalating.”

“Next correction will be permanent.”

For the first time since this began, I understood the truth.

I wasn’t being watched.

I was being managed.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model