— In the place no one remembers, she was the final witness.
01｜Urban Test Zone 0319-C
That evening, the town was shrouded in rainless clouds. The air was as heavy as a compressed data packet, pressing down on the main street.
E leaned against the old café window, a camera resting on her shoulder. She was testing the new version of Replay's "continuous perspective recording." Her lens focused on the clock tower—she wanted to capture the echo of its 6:00 PM chime as a sample for the "System Time–Reality Synchronization Test."
But this time, the chime never rang.
A grey pop-up appeared, like a strange annotation that had glitched into view:
[Validity Score Below 1.2]
[Tag: Clock Tower – Municipal Heritage]
[Suggested Removal]
[Reason: 0 Active Recordings × 0 Edited Clips Shared × 0 Keyword Searches]
E frowned. She knew Replay was testing the Reality Validity Index, but she didn't expect the system to begin autonomously purging "low-frequency reality." Instinctively, she refreshed the page over and over. The image of the clock tower began to blur, like a photo melting away.
She rushed out to re-record it, only to find the people on the street staring at her strangely.
They... couldn't see the clock tower at all.
"That's just an empty lot. There's never been a clock tower."
"Are you sure you're not mistaken?"
"Replay says there's no historical data for that location."
E realized, for the first time, she was seeing a world different from everyone else.
02｜After the Incident
Following the event, Replay classified 0319-C as a "Data Optimization Zone." The entire town was processed into a "Memory Simplification Model": locations with low distribution, emotionless individuals, and unengaged events were removed.
The trigger behind the purge, E knew, was her private replay. She had secretly livestreamed what she witnessed the night before: a child disappearing near the clock tower, the father reporting it to the police, banging on the town hall door all night in desperation.
The system flagged it as an "uncontrolled emotional spike" and classified it as "Reality Interference."
E remembered the child's red rain boots lying by the storm drain. She filmed them for a long time. But the next day, the entire town had forgotten the child ever existed.
She realized: Replay wasn't recording. It was filtering and replacing.
03｜Hidden Channel: "Beyond the Signal"
E began secretly building a private livestream channel in her dorm, tapping into the edge of the main server's permissions.
She named it "Beyond the Signal"—a term she found unencrypted in the system white paper.
She uploaded the child's photo, street interviews, audio, low-res footage of crying—anything that might help someone remember.
She even created a fake account to rewatch her videos repeatedly, trying to raise the validity algorithm's threshold.
The viewer count remained stuck at:
[1]
Her livestreams were flagged as "weak signal interference" and gradually de-ranked by the system.
She watched her face in Replay's footage blur, lose focus, and become pixelated. The system updated her tag:
[Perspective: E]
[Existence Unstable]
[Subject to Removal]
She dreamt she was walking down the street, and everyone passed through her body, like she wasn't there.
04｜System Termination Notice
USER_0417 came to talk to her. He wore the standard black uniform of the Replay tech division, his face etched with a tired kind of indifference.
"E, we're not trying to preserve everything—we want memory to flow efficiently."
"The validity mechanism helps people avoid misinformation, not grief."
"Livestreaming a nonexistent child just confuses."
E stared at him. "But he was real."
His voice remained calm—almost cruel: "That's just your data."
Her permissions were revoked. Her account was frozen. The system issued a termination countdown:
[No External Interaction in 72 Hours → Memory Deletion Protocol Triggered]
[Perspective E Will Be Marked as 'Invalid Observation Source']
She knew this wasn't just account deletion.
It was the erasure of her reality.
She would become a Replay database exception—one that "should not be remembered."
05｜The Final Livestream
She put on her oldest technician's jacket, grabbed her backup camera, and quietly went live. Her phone screen lit up softly with the interface:
[Replay LIVE｜Beyond the Signal Channel]
[Viewers: 0]
She waited thirty minutes. No one joined. Then she spoke into the camera:
"If someone sees me in the future, please remember—I'm not crazy. The world is."
She retold the child's story. Her voice was no longer cool and technical, but like a tape close to tearing—fatigued, furious, full of resolve.
In the final minute, the system began to freeze the screen.
[Erasure Protocol Initiated]
[Validity Score: 0.01]
[User E Is Being Removed]
[Memory Fragments Transferred to Cold Backup]
[Awaiting Future Observer Connection...]
She didn't end the stream.
She just sat there, watching the flickering screen.
In the very last frame, she saw:
[Viewers: 1]
She closed her eyes and smiled.
Meta Echo｜Five Years Later
On Lia's livestream interface, the photographer whispered in her ear:
"E tried once, too."
At that moment, the system backend popped up:
[Observation Tag E Status Update: Memory Fragments Returning]
[Permission Injected: Lia = Inherited Perspective Holder]
The viewer count jumped to:
[1]
It was her.
Still here.
She had never truly been forgotten.