He woke up with a strange feeling in his chest.
Not pain.
Not fear.
More like… a quiet emptiness, as if something important had been forgotten—yet could not be remembered because it had never been there in the first place.
The room was small. Plain. Functional.
A space designed for someone whose life was meant to be simple.
He sat up and reached for his wrist, where everyone carried their Identity Mark—a faint glowing code that linked the body to the Registry.
Nothing lit up.
He stared.
He tapped it. Pressed harder. Checked again.
Still nothing.
"That's… weird."
His voice sounded normal. His thoughts were clear. His memories intact.
He remembered growing up. Going to school. Laughing with people whose faces now blurred at the edges of recollection.
But when he searched for his own information—his classification, his predicted role, his assigned trajectory—
There was only silence.
Later that day, he tried to access a public terminal.
PLEASE ENTER YOUR REGISTERED ID
He did.
The screen froze.
Then slowly, carefully, as if afraid of itself, new text appeared.
NO DATA AVAILABLE
The people behind him grew impatient. Someone laughed awkwardly.
The terminal reset itself without explanation.
He stepped away, heart pounding for reasons he could not name.
For the first time in his life, a thought crossed his mind that felt dangerously unfamiliar:
What if I was never supposed to exist?
Far above him, beyond sky and structure, the Registry flagged his location.
The unregistered variable had been identified.