Author: Eva C. Stein

After the service, they didn’t speak much.
They walked through the old arcade – a fragment of the city’s former network. The glass canopy had long since shattered. Bio-moss cushioned the broken frames. Vines, engineered to reclaim derelict structures, crept along the walls.
Mae’s jacket was too thin for the chill that seeped through the open airlocks, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Do you ever think people get shame wrong?” she asked, not looking at him.
Aidan kept his gaze on the cracked tiles beneath his boots, feeling the throb of the neural weave in his spine. “Wrong how?”
“As something to run from. Like it… hurts.”
She slowed her step. “But what if it’s trying to tell us something we’ve been avoiding?”
He nodded. “You mean, like a warning?”
“Not quite so simple. Shame isn’t a wound – it’s a lasting scar in the code, a memory that won’t erase.”
He considered that. “And anger?”
“Anger is louder. Shame waits.”
They passed a rusted data terminal, half-swallowed by vines. Its screen blinked beneath lichen-like growth. Aidan paused beside it.
“But both show up uninvited.”
“Most things do,” she said.
“And some don’t leave.”
“Maybe they stay until we stop pretending we can’t hear their signal.”
She brushed a spray of moss from the terminal’s edge. “Until we stop closing the door.”
He looked at her. “You really think feelings can be met like that?”
“Better than treating them like corrupted files to be quarantined.”
Aidan exhaled. “I think I kept rewriting the entry protocol – hoping nothing would get through.”
They walked on. Somewhere, a window shutter scraped.
“When shame is earned,” Mae said, “maybe it’s the part of us that remembers who we wanted to be – the original upload.”
Aidan didn’t reply. His steps slowed.
“And anger?” he asked at last.
“Maybe it’s what won’t let the world forget. Or won’t let us forget that we cared.”
“You make them sound almost noble.”
“I’m not trying to. Maybe they have reasons – even if we can’t name the code that drives them.”
A breeze moved through, carrying the smell of damp brick and something faintly medicinal – from the chapel or the hall, or both. Aidan adjusted his sleeve.
“Sometimes I think I lived the last ten years quietly. Not because I felt nothing, but because I was never sure which were my words to say.”
Mae nodded once. “And when you did speak?”
“I was careful. Too careful.”
He paused. “I used to think that was strength. Now I wonder whether it was just another layer of security.”
“Maybe it was fear,” she said. “Of hurting someone.”
He looked away. “Or of being known.”
The arcade opened onto the street. Afternoon light fell across the paving stones. Near the kerb, a child’s bicycle leaned against a lamppost. Its front wheel turned, though there was no wind.
Mae stopped.
“Do you think those feelings – shame, anger – ever leave us?”
Aidan watched the wheel spin. “If they do… maybe it’s not because we chased them away. Maybe it’s because we finally stopped talking over their signal.”
Mae didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
They stood for a while, turned just enough not to face each other. The street lay quiet ahead. A bird flew across the light above the rooftops, then disappeared.
When Aidan finally spoke, something in his voice had changed. “Do you think she knew?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “She told me.”