Life doesn't always compute - Chapter Seven: The Version That Stayed Behind

It didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t the only one who came back wrong.

At first, it was just glances. Lingering looks from strangers that held a flicker of recognition too specific to be coincidence. People who hesitated when I spoke, as if expecting me to say something else—something they remembered but couldn’t quite grasp.

I started paying attention.

In the grocery store, a woman froze in front of the cereal aisle, staring at nothing, her lips moving silently. In the park, a man laughed suddenly, then clapped a hand over his mouth as if horrified by the sound. At work, a colleague asked me if we’d “already had this conversation,” then shook his head, visibly disturbed.

They were waking up.

Not fully. Not enough to attract immediate correction. But enough to feel the fractures.

I began to notice patterns. The ones like me—those who lingered too long in moments, who reacted a second too late or too early—were all connected by the same telltale signs. Insomnia. Headaches. A low-level hum they couldn’t explain.

Static between thoughts.

I tested it carefully. Subtle questions. Half-formed sentences designed to probe memory without triggering fear.

“Do you ever feel like today already happened?”

Some laughed it off. Some frowned.

One man went pale and whispered, “I thought that was just me.”

I started leaving markers.

Not obvious ones—nothing that could be easily flagged or erased. Just anomalies. A symbol scratched into the corner of a library book. A phrase repeated in unrelated online comments. Patterns designed to slip through unnoticed, except by those already looking.

If you remember this, you’re not alone.

The Custodians noticed, eventually.

Corrections increased. I lost hours again, waking with sore muscles and no memory of movement. My phone filled with gaps—missing messages, half-written notes deleted mid-sentence. Once, I found myself standing in the basement, hands trembling, the lights flickering violently.

But they couldn’t fully reach me anymore.

Something had gone wrong with the archive. The resets were degrading. Each cycle left behind more residue, more awareness leaking through.

I realized then that one version of me hadn’t come back.

One version had stayed behind.

And whatever he’d done had damaged the system permanently.

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