That night, he couldn't sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he felt watched—not by a person, but by something vast and impersonal. Something that didn't hate him, yet clearly did not accept him.
He checked his wrist again.
Still no mark.
Everyone he knew had one. It defined eligibility for work, housing, even relationships. Without it, a person technically did not exist in the social structure.
Yet here he was.
Breathing. Thinking. Choosing.
If I don't belong to the system, he thought,
then what exactly am I?
He tried to recall moments in his life that felt… off.
Memories where things went wrong in strange ways.
Accidents that didn't happen. Decisions that felt impulsive but later saved him.
Patterns emerged.
Not of chaos.
But of avoidance.
It was as if the world had always been trying—and failing—to place him somewhere.
Above, the observers reviewed his life retroactively.
"There's no insertion point," one said.
"No origin record. No initialization."
"Then how did he pass childhood screening?"
"He shouldn't have."
Silence followed.
An unspoken realization settled in the room:
The system hadn't failed to record him.
He had bypassed it.