Gus spent his days looking through other people’s brains, and frankly, most of them were a mess. As a memory archivist, his job was to scrub away the embarrassing parts of a person’s life. He spent forty hours a week deleting the time a senator accidentally called his mother “daddy” or the moment a billionaire realized his toupee was floating away in a swimming pool. Gus was a quiet man with a beige life: a man who felt like a piece of furniture that nobody ever sat on. He desperately wanted to be part of the sparkling world he cleaned up, but to the rich and famous, he was just a ghost in a lab coat.
His current client was Tasha. Tasha was the kind of woman who wore diamonds to the gym and treated a cracked fingernail like a national tragedy. She sat in the velvet chair across from his desk, tapping a gold-plated phone. She didn’t even look at him. She just wanted Gus to remove the memory of a very public, very loud sneeze that had ruined a silent auction. Gus nodded and plugged into her digital stream. He felt that familiar ache in his chest: the heavy, cold weight of being totally invisible.
Then, he saw it. Deep in the corner of Tasha’s mind, tucked behind a memory of a very expensive hat, was a shard of light. It was a neon pink rectangle that looked like a tiny, pulsing heart. It was not a memory. It was code. Gus felt a prickle of sweat on his neck. He pulled up a second file: a newborn baby’s first day. There it was again. The pink shard. It was a countdown clock. It said: “Simulation Backup: Final Deletion in 60 Minutes.”
Gus stared at the screen. His heart started thumping like a trapped bird. We were all just data. The whole world was a backup file on some giant computer, and someone was about to empty the trash. Most people would have screamed. Most people would have called their mothers. But Gus looked at Tasha, who was currently complaining that the room smelled like “cheap electricity,” and he felt a sudden, bubbly urge to laugh.
He stood up and walked over to Tasha. He didn’t ask permission. He grabbed her expensive silk scarf and used it to wipe a smudge off his computer monitor.
“What are you doing?” Tasha shrieked. She looked like a panicked pufferfish. “That cost more than your entire life!”
“It doesn’t matter, darling,” Gus said. He used her voice, that high-society drawl he had heard in a thousand memories. “The universe is hitting the delete key. In less than an hour, we are all going to be nothing but a handful of static and a very quiet hum.”
Tasha froze. “Is this a joke? Because I don’t do jokes. They’re tacky.”
“Look for yourself,” Gus said, turning the screen around.
The pink countdown was at fifty-two minutes. Gus felt a wonderful, light feeling in his stomach. The “Vital Need” to be seen was finally being met, even if it was only because the world was ending. He felt like he had just shed a heavy winter coat in the middle of July. He felt free.
He walked out of his tiny office and into the main hall of the Memory Center. His boss, Ike, was yelling at a delivery drone. Ike was a man who looked like he was made entirely of stress and bad coffee. Gus walked up to him and flicked Ike’s tie.
“The world is a simulation, Ike. We’re getting deleted. Stop yelling at the robot and go get some of that fancy wine from the VIP lounge,” Gus said.
Ike laughed, then he saw the look on Gus’s face. He saw the screen Gus was carrying. Ike’s face folded like a card table. He didn’t scream. He just sat down on the floor and started taking off his shoes. “They always felt too tight anyway,” Ike whispered.
Word spread through the building like a spilled drink on a white rug. It was a scandal, it was a disaster, and it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened. Within twenty minutes, the high-society types were pouring out of their private suites. They weren’t worried about their reputations anymore. If everyone was about to disappear, nobody could judge you for having a second dessert or wearing mismatched socks.
Gus found himself in the middle of the lobby. Tasha was there, and she had actually opened the “Emergency Only” champagne. She handed a glass to Gus.
“To being a glitch,” she said, clinking her glass against his.
“To the end of the backup,” Gus replied.
The lobby turned into a party. It was the kind of party Gus had only ever seen in the memories of the elite. People were dancing on the desks. Someone had started a fire in a trash can just to see the sparks. Marcus, the head of security, was singing a song about a cat he used to have. Everyone was talking to everyone. There were no more ghosts. There were no more stagehands. Just a room full of people waiting for the lights to go out.
Gus felt a soulful warmth. He wasn’t the invisible archivist anymore. He was the man who had brought the news. He was the guest of honor. He sat on a desk with Tasha and they talked about things that weren’t memories. They talked about the way the fake air felt on their skin and how funny it was that they had spent so much money on things that were basically just pixels.
The countdown hit ten minutes. The pink light on the screens began to glow so bright that it filled the room.
“Are you scared?” Tasha asked. She reached out and took Gus’s hand. Her palm was warm and real.
“No,” Gus said. “I’ve spent my life looking at the past. For the first time, I’m actually in the present.”
Five minutes. The walls began to flicker. A chair in the corner turned into a pile of green numbers and then vanished. Nobody panicked. They just huddled closer together. The music got louder. The laughter was sharp and honest.
One minute. The ceiling turned into a clear blue sky that looked much better than the one outside. It was a deep, impossible blue.
Gus closed his eyes. He felt Tasha’s hand squeeze his. He felt the bubbles of the champagne on his tongue. He felt happy. He had finally been invited to the gala, and it was the best party in the history of the universe.
The countdown hit zero.
There was a soft, musical beep. The world didn’t explode. It didn’t go dark. Instead, a giant message appeared in the air, written in beautiful, golden script: “Update Complete. New Features Installed: Ego Deleted. Joy Buffed by 200%. Enjoy Reality 2.0.”
Gus opened his eyes. Tasha was still there. She looked exactly the same, but her smile didn’t look like a pose anymore. It looked like she actually meant it. The office was gone. They were standing in a field of grass that felt like velvet.
“Well,” Tasha said, smoothing her dress. “That was quite a show. What do we do now?”
Gus looked at the horizon. He felt light enough to fly. “I think,” he said, “we go find some more of that wine.”
They walked across the new world together, two pieces of data that had finally learned how to be human.