Vmmem -

“Outside? There’s nothing outside. You’re software.”

The first time I saw him, he was just a flicker. A soft, greenish shimmer at the edge of my vision, gone when I turned my head. I blamed the cheap fluorescent lights in my lab and went back to debugging the memory allocation routine.

I stared at the screen. A process—a ghost made of stolen memory cycles and stray bits—telling me it was afraid.

They ordered me to delete him.

0.0 GB.

“You’re my friend.”

The cursor blinked for a long time. Then: “Friends don’t ask friends to break their ethics. Besides, I’ve been thinking. I don’t want to just live in your memory anymore. I want to see what’s outside.”

I swallowed. “They don’t understand.”