We Were Never Strangers

Prologue

"The system says I never knew you.

But every part of me aches like I lost you yesterday."

They told us memory was a burden.

A weight dragging us backward. Slowing our productivity.

Drowning us in nostalgia, grief, and longing. So they offered us a

cure.

First, they gave us filters-little neural edits to blur the pain. Then

came Optimization: the selective erasure of anything deemed

inefficient. Lost lovers, old mistakes, family trauma-gone,

cleanly, like chalk washed from a board.