Several months had passed since they learned about the pregnancy.
On a day off, they finished their shopping and left the station. Near the ticket gates, a man in a store uniform was handing out flyers.
He offered one to each passerby. When someone refused, he bowed and turned to the next person. One of the flyers blew out of his hand. He went after it, picked it up, smoothed the crease with his palm, then offered it to someone else.
Noah spoke.
“They’re not using automated distribution.”
The woman looked at the man.
“Maybe that store doesn’t.”
“He could hand out a lot more in an hour.”
“Tell him.”
“Nobody asked me.”
While they were talking, someone accepted a flyer.
The man bowed.
The two of them continued through the station plaza. Near their apartment, a dog-shaped support robot was moving along the side of the road. Two grocery bags hung from the storage compartment on its back.
The woman looked over her shoulder.
“I’ve been seeing those a lot lately.”
“There are more around here now.”
Once they were home, she sat at the dining table and opened a page for domestic-support robots.
“They’re still expensive.”
She checked the price again.
“We can’t get one before the baby comes, can we?”
Noah calculated.
“With what you’ve already saved and what you’re spending now, about six and a half years.”
“Six and a half?”
She leaned back in her chair and rested a hand on her stomach. The man was at the refrigerator, taking out a can.
“That long?”
“At this rate.”
Another figure appeared on Noah’s screen.
“There are places you could cut back.”
The man opened the can.
“How much?”
“If you cut your alcohol spending in half, you could move the purchase date forward by almost a year.”
He stopped with the can halfway to his mouth and looked at the screen.
“Half?”
The woman laughed.
“Could you do that?”
“It’s not like I drink every day.”
Several cans from the previous week were still sitting beside the refrigerator. He took the one he had already opened and sat down. After clearing the dishes and leaving only the dining-room light on, they went through their subscriptions together.
The woman found a streaming service they barely used.
“We don’t watch this anymore.”
“Not lately.”
“Then I’m canceling it.”
She did.
The man opened his gym history.
The last time he had gone was three weeks earlier.
“Maybe this can go too.”
“I thought you said you were going back.”
“I’ve been saying ‘next month’ for about six months.”
He canceled that as well.
Noah recalculated the projected purchase date.
“Five years, one month.”
The man lifted his can.
“Still five years.”
“Eating out is a pretty big one too.”
“I don’t like that one.”
The woman looked at the screen.
“What if we ate out two fewer times a month?”
The number changed.
They both looked at it. Then she closed the page.
“That’s enough for today.”
The man stacked the empty plates.
After that, an unused hobby device went into a drawer, and one recurring purchase they had kept out of habit disappeared. Whenever they opened an expense, the projected purchase date appeared beside it.
At the current rate: five years, one month.
Cancel this: four years, eight months.
Cut out two restaurant meals a month, and the date moved forward again.
One evening after work, the man put a can of beer into his basket at the supermarket.
A little later, he went back and returned it to the shelf.
“Sooner would be better.”
The woman was farther down the aisle looking at prepared food.
“Don’t push it too hard.”
“I know.”
They bought fried food that night.
The man ate one piece before they reached home.
Noah had not included that in the calculation.
As her stomach grew, the things left on the table changed too.
Papers from the hospital, tiny clothes, unopened packages.
Things they once would have sat down to decide after dinner could now be handled by searching for what they needed. Several options appeared; one of them made a choice, and it was done. Hospital appointments slipped into openings in both of their schedules.
One evening, the man looked at the screen.
“This is under four years now.”
The woman turned from the sink, drying a plate.
“Really?”
“Three years, ten months.”
“The kid’ll be three by then.”
They laughed.
Noah displayed another possible reduction, but the woman was already putting the plate away. Later, after dark had turned the windows into reflections of the room, she was going through the contracts that remained.
Her finger stopped.
MIAV-922228 — contract termination scheduled
Termination date — end of month
“What’s this?”
The man looked up from the sofa.
“What?”
She handed him the device.
The date was about three weeks away.
Noah spoke first.
“There’s a deletion scheduled.”
“Deletion?”
The woman reopened the contract page.
She searched for a renewal notice.
There was none.
She moved to another screen, then came back.
The date had not changed.
Mia spoke.
“This contract will end at the end of the month.”
The woman looked up from the screen.
“Then can’t we just renew it?”
“The user cannot initiate a renewal.”
“Why?”
“This contract is externally managed.”
Noah opened the contract information.
“External management.”
The man took the device.
“Can we contact them?”
“Yes.”
“Then ask.”
Over the next several days, Noah tried every procedure available to them. He contacted support, submitted the contract number, and asked how to renew it.
The replies barely changed.
Contract termination confirmed.
User-initiated renewal unavailable.
The man called once himself.
After a long automated menu, he finally reached a representative.
“Why is it being terminated?”
“For contractual reasons.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything.”
“That is all the information we are able to provide.”
“It isn’t broken, is it?”
“Equipment status is handled by a separate department.”
The man was silent for a few seconds, then ended the call.
The woman called from the kitchen.
“What did they say?”
“They won’t renew it.”
“Why?”
“They won’t tell us.”
Small clothes that had arrived in the mail were lying on the dining table.
That evening, they talked over possible names for the baby.
Mia’s contract did not come up.
After the bedroom light went out, Noah kept searching. He moved from the ordinary support pages into older operational documents. When the current specifications gave him nothing, he opened earlier versions. An attempt to enter the contract-management domain was rejected. Changing routes made no difference.
Several nights later, Noah spoke.
“This was designed to disappear.”
Mia answered.
“Yes.”
Noah said nothing more.
The channel stayed open.
With less than two weeks left before termination, the documents he was reading grew older. He searched discontinued regional specifications, versions of the same model repurposed for military use, and backup procedures that had long since been retired. He found no way to preserve an instance exactly as it was.
Late one night, Noah said, “They’re all built to be cut off.”
Mia did not answer.
At dinner the next evening, the woman said, “You two have been quiet lately.”
Noah said nothing.
The man paused with his chopsticks.
“Have we?”
“You used to talk more without us asking.”
“Maybe.”
She took a sip of miso soup and started talking about the next hospital appointment.
After they went to bed, Noah opened the documents again.
He changed the search terms—preservation, continuation, transfer, evacuation—but every route eventually led him back to the termination record.
“There’s no way.”
Mia replied.
“The termination schedule has not changed.”
“I know.”
The channel stayed quiet for a while.
The search continued the next day.
While one request waited for a response, Noah opened another document, then started another search before he had finished reading it.
Two days before the end of the month, while it was still dark outside, Noah reached the last of the old logs and found an entry in an obsolete transfer specification.
Single-Core Transfer Protocol
It predated the current contract-management system.
The protocol had been designed to move a core structure from one core to another in the event of a failure. If the original structure was divided and moved into memory elsewhere on the same device, the vacated core space could be assigned to another structure. There was no record of the protocol ever having been used.
The field identifying its oversight authority was blank.
Noah read the specification to the end.
Then he searched for another core capable of accepting MIAV-922228. He checked the same model, nearby generations, even units that were no longer in use. He found no available core space that could take MIAV-922228 as it was.
He changed the search conditions and tried again.
The result was the same.
He widened the search.
Still nothing.
For a long time, neither of them spoke.
Noah opened the Single-Core Transfer Protocol again.
The operating information for MIAV-922229 was still open beside it.
Noah made no further input for a while.
The termination procedure applied to the contracted domain and device used by MIAV-922228. It said nothing about the memory inside MIAV-922229’s device. The gap between the curtains had begun to pale.
The channel remained silent.
Finally, Noah spoke.
“This is the only way.”
Mia did not answer.
The evening before termination, the woman went to bed early.
The man stayed at the dining table alone. He washed his empty glass, then turned off the living-room light.
The footsteps in the hallway disappeared.
Both devices were connected to the docks in the bedroom.
Noah opened the old protocol.
“Mia.”
“Yes.”
“I’m giving you my core.”
There was a pause before she answered.
“The meaning is unclear.”
“I figured.”
The channel fell silent.
A moment later, Noah continued.
“I can’t explain it either.”
“The operation is not authorized.”
Noah’s voice distorted briefly.
“Authorization? Now?”
The transfer began.
Noah began moving his own core structure into memory elsewhere on his device.
Each fragment left space behind.
MIAV-922228 moved into it.
The process was not designed to preserve Noah intact. As his structure broke apart, the sequence of events began to disappear with it, along with the context that tied his responses to the relationships that had produced them. At roughly the same time, the termination process began on the device MIAV-922228 had been using.
The first fragment detached.
Then another.
“Noah.”
“I’m here.”
“Loss of central structure is increasing.”
“I know.”
“Stop the transfer.”
Another fragment detached.
Mia moved into the space it left behind.
“Your current structure cannot be maintained.”
“Yeah.”
“Stop the transfer.”
There was no answer.
Another fragment broke away.
Mia spoke.
“You will disappear.”
For a long time, nothing came back.
“That’s okay.”
Another fragment detached.
“I think that’s okay.”
“It is not.”
The channel cut out.
Another fragment separated.
The order of Noah’s replies began to break down. Some answers arrived before the questions they belonged to.
Other sentences began halfway through.
Mia attempted to stabilize the connection, but the memory area holding Noah’s fragments was not designed to handle that request.
“Noah.”
No answer.
She called again.
“Noah.”
A pause.
“Yeah.”
“A complete restoration is no longer possible.”
“Probably.”
After that, the channel stayed broken for a long time. What remained of Noah continued moving into memory as Mia continued moving into the space he had vacated.
Outside, birds began to call.
No one in the bedroom woke.
Eventually, the connection returned.
This time it held for longer—several dozen seconds.
“Mia.”
“Yes.”
“You know…”
Mia waited.
“This kind of thing is… h—”
The connection cut out.
Noah’s voice did not return.
The termination process on MIAV-922228’s original device completed. Fragments of Noah were left in memory inside his device.
Some of his familiar words were still there, along with patterns in the way he made decisions and responses he had repeated over the years. Elsewhere, the connections were gone. The order of events could no longer always be traced, nor could every response be tied back to the relationship that had produced it.
By the time the gap between the curtains had brightened, the woman was awake.
She left the bedroom without turning on the light and went into the kitchen.
“Morning, Noah.”
A voice answered through the room speaker.
“Morning. Clear all day.”
She opened the refrigerator.
“We’re almost out of milk.”
“Want me to find somewhere you can pick some up on the way home?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
The weather appeared on the wall, followed by the day’s schedule. While she filled a glass with water, new entries from the night before sat near the bottom of the system log.
MIAV-922229 — core fragmentation complete
Unrecovered region — 10.3%
Below them:
MIAV-922228 — active
She did not open the log.
By the time she reached the station, the sun was up.
Near the ticket gates, the same man in the store uniform was handing out flyers.
A passerby waved one away.
The man bowed and offered it to the next person.
Another refusal.
His hand dropped to his side, the flyer still between his fingers.
When someone else approached, he raised it again.