The city woke up remembering.
Sirens screamed with purpose again. Traffic flowed according to rules people suddenly recalled. Names reattached themselves to faces, addresses, histories, and obligations. Hospitals filled with patients who now understood why they were injured. News feeds reconstructed timelines, stitching chaos into narratives that almost made sense.
Almost.
Officials called it a systems failure. A coordinated cyberattack. A temporary disruption of identity infrastructure. Committees were formed. Statements were drafted. Apologies were issued without admitting guilt.
The Registry was shut down within forty-eight hours.
Director Hale testified before oversight panels, calm and articulate, explaining the necessity of extreme measures in unstable times. He spoke about national security, about balance, about difficult choices made to protect the many from the dangerous few.
No one asked about Isaac Koranteng.
There was no record of him to ask about.
Isaac woke up in a small room with unfamiliar walls.
For several long seconds, he lay still, staring at the ceiling, trying to understand why his chest felt heavy. His thoughts drifted without direction, like loose papers in a breeze. He knew how to breathe. He knew how to stand. But the reason for either felt distant.
He sat up slowly.
The room was sparsely furnished: a narrow bed, a chair, a small table. Sunlight filtered through a single window, illuminating dust motes suspended in the air. Everything felt real, solid, undeniable.
And yet—something was missing.
He stood and caught sight of himself in a mirror mounted on the wall. The face staring back was unfamiliar. Older than he felt. Tired. Searching.
"Who are you?" Isaac asked aloud.
The man in the mirror did not answer.
A notebook lay on the table beside the bed.
He hadn't noticed it before.
Isaac picked it up, fingers tracing the worn cover, and opened to the first page. The handwriting was neat, deliberate, unmistakably his—even if he didn't know how he knew that.
My name is Isaac Koranteng.
I chose this.
If you're reading this, remember why.
His breath caught.
He turned the page.
There were notes. Instructions. Observations written in careful detail, as if the author had known his memory would not hold. Dates without context. Names without faces. Reminders to eat. To sleep. To trust the words, even when they felt foreign.
Most of all, there were explanations.
About the Registry.
About erasure.
About a woman who had existed without permission.
Isaac sat on the edge of the bed, reading slowly, forcing himself to absorb each sentence before it slipped away. As he read, fragments stirred—images without sound, emotions without clear cause. Guilt. Resolve. A deep, quiet grief.
He reached the final page.
You did this to stop something worse.
You are not a mistake.
You are the cost.
Isaac closed the notebook and pressed it against his chest.
Outside, the city moved on.
People returned to work. Children went back to school. News cycles shifted to fresher fears. The erased—those who had survived long enough—found themselves suddenly visible again, confused but alive. Some remembered fragments of the time they had been forgotten. Most did not.
And yet, something fundamental had changed.
The idea of erasure no longer existed as policy. The systems that enabled it had been dismantled piece by piece, their architects quietly reassigned or disgraced. Memory, once outsourced, was slowly reclaimed by human minds—messy, flawed, but real.
Isaac walked the city every day.
He carried the notebook with him at all times, rereading it when his thoughts grew thin or unreliable. People passed him without noticing, their attention sliding away as if he were part of the background. He did not resent it.
This was what he had chosen.
Sometimes, late at night, he thought he felt her presence—not beside him, not visible, but woven into the city itself. In the pauses between thoughts. In the sudden weight of remembrance when someone spoke a name with care.
He liked to believe she had not vanished entirely.
One morning, standing before the mirror again, Isaac opened the notebook and read the first line aloud.
"My name is Isaac Koranteng."
The man in the mirror studied him, expression uncertain.
Isaac smiled faintly.
"I know," he said. "You don't have to believe me yet."
He closed the notebook and stepped outside, disappearing into the remembered world.
Not erased.
Not recorded.
But real.