It smells just like his body did —synthetic compounds and biological decay, filtered through
my window. Raze’s body was pristine, bank approved when I identified him in the Corporate
Farewell Center.

 

My head still felt like clocks and cars combusting. The desert sky from my eighth floor
apartment, a vast book on the horizon with similar pages read by the sun and moon
competing for the win. Time an orange I thought, as I cut it into half moons. A delicate
delicious object only ever being held by a human hand upon the opening of the neo plastic
containers. One of the few remaining analog pleasures, though CitrusCorp has been
threatening to embed payment chips directly into the rinds. “Pay-per-segment,” their ads
promise. “Experience the freedom of micropayment fruit!”

 

The citrus is anomalous to the hand sanitizer when I was allowed to touch Raze’s body.
Human skin, such a fragile thing.

 

“Dignity costs extra,” the attendant had said, sliding a payment terminal toward me.
“Premium package includes genuine tears from our grief consultants.”

 

I declined the tears. My own were free, though the GLOM would eventually find a way to
monetize those too.

 

I needed to complete the assignment today so I could comb through more of Raze’s data.
Positives and negatives. The one imperfect thing about perfection — a crevice in the rock.
Marcus materializes in the doorway, his movements calibrated and precise. His
eyes—enhanced with retinal implants that continuously stream market fluctuations—scan
the room.

 

“You look like shit,” he says, the bluntness of his assessment efficient.

 

“Three days,” I reply, “Three days before they found him. No marks. Perfect condition except
for being dead.”

 

“Found something interesting last night.” Marcus says, placing an orange segment on his
tongue where tiny sensors will analyze its nutritional content and charge his health insurance
accordingly.

 

“Really,” I say eagerly, dropping an orange segment onto the floor—a small unplanned
rebellion.

 

“Raze wasn’t murdered,” Marcus says, fingers dancing through invisible data streams. “He
escaped.”

 

“Into death? That’s hardly an escape.” The Funeral Futures market probably made millions
off his premium corpse package.”

 

Marcus grins, an expression so rare I wonder if he paid extra for it. “Not into death. Into
shadow.”

 

“You’re being cryptic,” I accuse. Are complete sentences too expensive?”

 

“The shadows,” Marcus says carefully, leaning close. “An anomaly the GLOM can’t quantify.
Can’t track. Can’t monetize.”

He swipes up the virtual screen—”The GLOM’s algorithms cannot process
shadow-interactions. “I mean the system that tracks every transaction, that monitors every
economic decision, that manipulates behavior—it literally cannot see shadows. They’re null
spaces in its perception field.”

“The system tried to correct the flaw,” Marcus continues. “It experimented with cluster
simulations—those rat swarms people reported—attempting to approximate shadow
properties.”

 

“And Raze?”I breathe.

 

Marcus’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly. “He found a way to separate consciousness
into shadow—what he called ‘Deletation.’ He weaponized the system’s blind spot.”

 

“He committed suicide?” My voice catches.

 

“Not exactly,” Marcus says, his fingers weaving through data streams. “The GLOM
facilitated the separation, but there’s more—” He pauses, searching my face. “I think Raze
might still be alive, just not in conventional form.”

 

“What are you saying?” I cry.

 

“I’m saying his shadow—his economic negative, the part of him immune to system
tracking—might still be active..”

 

The realization crystallizes slowly: “He became the resistance.”

 

“Not just part of it,” Marcus corrects. “He might have become its core algorithm.”

 

“But… if he is out there…why has he not reached out?”

 

“It’s a painful process, an ego death,” Marcus says, his market-indicator eyes flickering with
genuine concern. “Most people can’t separate, he left this encrypted data trail. We can find
him. Only if we join him.”

 

My field of vision moves, adjusts, retracts. A flawless loop of connection. A constant hum. A
club where I’m dancing— mathematical formulations becoming sonic rebellion.

 

“Why do you come to these places?” Raze had asked as bass frequencies vibrated through
concrete floors.

 

“The acoustics interfere with surveillance, obviously,” I replied, “but mostly—it’s where I
remember what freedom can feel like.”

I get lost in the memory. The familiar bass vibrates through my chest, and for a moment, I
think it might shake the stone loose, might shatter the pain inside me.

“I want to Deletate.”

 

Marcus concedes with a tilt of his head. “I have it ready. “Tonight. When the satellites are
recalibrating.”

Later, as the city’s bio-lights pulse around us, Marcus leads me into the desert.

“Shadows recognize each other. It’s the one thing the GLOM can’t mine.”

 

I step forward, feeling my shadow stretch and deepen. For one surreal moment, I exist in two
places simultaneously—my body still firmly ensconced in GLOM’s embrace, my shadow
extending into untaxed territory.

“The ultimate irony,” I whisper as I begin to Deletate, feeling consciousness transfer into my
darkest outline, “is that they sold us light as progress, as enlightenment, as the way
forward—”

 

“—when freedom,” my Raze’s familiar voice completes from within the shadows, “was
waiting in the dark all along.”

 

The desert doesn’t glow. It doesn’t pulse or shimmer or breathe like the translucent
membranes that cover buildings. It just is. A vast expanse of silence and sand. If the city is
alive, the desert is death —or maybe it’s peace, I feel its voice louder than the hum of the
city. Out there, there are no systems calculating your every need, no networks feeding your
every step into a greater whole. Just sand, rock, sky and wind. A truth.

 

Raze doesn’t say much when we meet. He holds my hand and looks up at the desert sky.
It’s different now isn’t it? Bigger.” he says. “The city tries to mirror the stars. The desert just
lets them be, like a shadow.”

 

My body remains a perfect economic citizen that will continue to generate revenue streams.
But my essence—the part that remembers oranges before they required subscriptions,
laughter before it was metered, love before it was dissected—slips into the shadow realm
where the GLOM is not a mainstay in my being.

A slow, yet infinite resistance of attention.