Breathing hard, Rachel reaches her apartment building. She has this under control: summoning Whyte is just around the corner, and he will push the unwanted memories away. The recordings she has stored will be her substitute for this evening; they are not the same as the simulation, as they are bodily reactions recorded by her cyberware, a memory of experiencing the simulation.

  At the gate, Rachel wants to turn back, for the corporate police are in the yard. Three black vans fill the space, their armored bodies have pushed the tiny civilian cars aside and prevent any vehicles from leaving.

  Rachel stares at the grass growing on the cracked asphalt as she walks past the vans and the people in their black-and-camo assault armor. A riot shield lies on the hood of a car, and one of the guys is smoking. Rachel can see his short beard, the corporate-certified-recreational-smoke, and the too-long, too sharp teeth below the half-raised blackness of the visor. Cosmetics or combat gear, she can’t tell.

  They watch her passing like a wolf pack on a kill, looking at one more sheep, and Rachel wants to turn away and run. She has had enough dealings with the corporate police for a lifetime. Rachel sucks in a breath that tastes the smoke: the police gathering has nothing to do with her. Except it has. Rachel knows it from their body language, from the sinking feeling in her stomach before she reaches the third floor and sees her apartment door gaping ajar.

  Her feet are like lead, and blood thumbs in her ears as Rachel opens the door. This is a moderately safe city district; people even raise kids here, and Rachel has kept her two rooms tidy and nicely decorated. Now, the apartment is a chaotic mess.

  All her belongings have been discarded, opened, marked, and dropped to the floor. Rachel’s effort to play ordinariness has filled her rooms with greys and beiges, together with some wine-red highlights. Rachel genuinely liked the thick, silky curtains, but now they are just rags on the floor, printed with corporate footsteps, and the carpet is ruined beyond cleaning, reeking of body lotion.

  The AR announcement about the search flickers into life in the doorway, and Rachel gestures it open. She knows it will otherwise just follow her, blinking and irritating.

  Rachel Greene: CRI2_3-ID 25102024-2105A

  Rachel’s eyes skim the corporate jargon and stop at the last lines. ‘…for possession and selling illegal recordings of bodily simulations…’.

  The corporate police have found her recordings! Rachel has always been prompt in sharing only the 15-second records accepted in the IUS community guidelines in her reviews. She possesses more material as she has recorded many of the best moments spent in the simulations, because, of course, Rachel has used the features of her crazy expensive inbuilt system. She has no studio, no professional editing systems, and the records have been only for herself, but they have been all her life for the past decade.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Rachel rushes to the box where she keeps the precious silicon chips, but it is on the floor, ripped apart and empty. The corporate police have confiscated her memories of Whyte and all the other simulated relationships before him.

  This feels like they have snatched her family albums, souvenirs, gifts, and all the memories from vacations, parties, and adventures of romance and sex. The pit of loneliness and despair opens up and swallows Rachel as she falls to her knees, hugging the remains of the box that carried her last hope, tears flowing down her cheeks.

  She sinks into misery for a while. Her evening is in ruins because of a computer mistake when all she wanted was to spend some time with her virtual boyfriend. Even a memory of Whyte would have been enough, but corporate police have taken everything and left the apartment in disarray. Rachel imagines Whyte standing next to her, hugging her; he used to be a soldier and wouldn’t accept the situation, but would act.

  Opening her eyes, Rachel pushes the empty box away. There must be something left. She rushes to the computer she uses to cut and edit the recordings. Her fingers feel around the data ports, sweaty with anticipation, but all of them are empty, and she doesn’t need to see the corporate police’s logo on the screen to know the data in her systems has been confiscated too.

  Rachel searches through her scattered possessions in a fury. She throws her bags and jackets away in frustration, for they are empty, the pockets carrying only receipts, lip balm, and dried mascara. An innocent cosmetic bag gets kicked to the wall, the impact cracking its mirror. There is nothing. All the recordings have been taken, and Rachel is still severed from the simulation, and she needs Whyte here right now.

  A faint memory forms in Rachel’s brain, spreading hope over the desperation that hangs in her mind’s horizon like a black cloud. She goes to the small bathroom, which has been raided as well. Rachel doesn’t care about the shower gels and shampoos slashed open and emptied into the narrow bathtub she never uses. She is oblivious to the mixed scent of roses and spices and the sticky mess on the floor, where her toilet paper and towels have been trampled.

  Rachel reaches for the tiny window by the roof. It has no windowpane, but between the bathroom tiles and the glass, there is a narrow opening. Sometimes, she puts her chips there when she maintains her cyberware’s data port. Rachel’s fingers tremble when they slide along the roughly cut tiles and moldy silicon. She grimaces, fearing to come out empty-handed, but her home-manicured nails touch the familiar plastic cover, and she smiles blissfully.

  The memory chip is the size of her nail, with a white plastic holder with no markings. It’s not her favorite, far from that, just a set of cuts for a review half a year ago, something she used to choose which parts to highlight, but right now, even the memory of a simulated foot massage is better than nothing.

  Rachel raises her sleeve and inserts the chip into the port installed under the fake skin in her arm. She sits on the toilet seat and succumbs to the memory.