He was nineteen. His father, drunk, had smashed a plate against the kitchen wall. Jex had screamed, “I wish you were dead!” The memory was a blur of red and noise. But Eidolon sharpened it. He replayed it. And again. He watched his father’s face crumple—not with rage, but with a terrible, naked sorrow Jex had been too blind to see at the time.

For a while, it was heaven. That night, he lay on his bed, eyes closed, while Lena scrolled through her own feed beside him. He didn't use Eidolon for the big things at first. Just the small, lost perfections: the weight of his childhood dog’s head in his palm, the taste of rain on his tongue at summer camp, the frictionless joy of riding a bike downhill, legs extended, no hands.

The notification slid across Jex’s retinal display like a silver fish in murky water.

He thought of his wife, Lena. They’d been distant lately. HyperDeep currently told him she was “neutral-pleasant.” But what if he could know the truth? What if the tiredness in her eyes wasn't fatigue, but contempt? The thought was a razor blade wrapped in a velvet glove.

// SUGGESTED ADD-ON: LIFELINE (DETOX) – 49.99 CREDITS/MONTH //

He blinked twice to expand the menu.

He blinked.

He looked at her—really looked at her for the first time in days. His retinal display flickered. An add-on he hadn't purchased, a hidden one, auto-loaded from the usage data.

Record, index, and re-experience any sensory moment with 100% fidelity. Re-watch a sunset. Re-smell a lover’s hair. Re-feel the heat of an argument to find new angles. (Warning: The past is a country with no border patrol. You may never want to leave.) *

And for the first time, he wondered if HyperDeep was the scaffold—or the hole they kept selling him the ladder to climb out of.

“Nowhere,” he said, and reached for her hand. It was warm. Alive. And utterly, terrifyingly unsaved.

He almost dismissed it. HyperDeep was his scaffold, his silent partner. For the last eighteen months, the neural overlay had done its job: filtering social cues, optimizing his sleep cycles, and auto-drafting emails in his executive’s voice. It was reliable. Boring, even.

By the third week, he was a sleepwalker in the present. His body went to meetings. His mouth spoke HyperDeep’s optimal scripts. But his soul was in 2006, rewatching his mother fold laundry, trying to memorize the order of her movements.

“Where do you go?” she whispered.

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