Have you ever noticed how, in recent years, cities seem fuller and fuller of people who "do nothing"? The ones who wait for a bus without ever boarding it, who stare at a dark shop window for hours, or who walk with a pace so regular it looks like a video loop.
I work as a fiber-optic network maintenance technician. Three months ago, I started noticing anomalies in the data traffic charts for my neighborhood. An immense amount of bandwidth was being consumed by an old abandoned warehouse.
I went to check in person. The warehouse was empty except for an enormous server rack in the middle of the room, powered by cables that sank straight into the ground. There were no switches, only a monitor showing an endless list of names and coordinates.
Next to each name was a status: "IDLE" or "IN USE."
I scrolled the list, and my heart leapt into my throat when I saw my mother's name. She died five years ago. Beside it was written: "IN USE - Location: Piazza del Duomo."
I took the first train. Arriving in the square, I began searching for her with mad desperation. And I saw her. She was sitting on a bench, wearing the same red coat we had buried her in. I approached, calling her name, but she didn't react. I stopped an arm's length away and touched her shoulder.
The skin was warm, but the texture was... wrong. It was like touching an overinflated balloon. She turned slowly. Her eyes had no depth; they were like photographs glued onto plastic bulbs.
"Mom?" I whispered.
She opened her mouth, but no voice came out. What came out was a static sound, a digital hum that made my teeth vibrate. Then, with a jerky movement, she stood up and began walking toward a wall, bumping into it again and again without stopping, like a video game character against an invisible obstacle.
I looked around with new eyes. At least a third of the people in the square were making repetitive movements. A man was reading a completely blank newspaper. A little girl was chasing a pigeon that didn't flap its wings but glided across the air.
They aren't people. They're assets.
Our reality has become too vast, too complex to be managed by us alone. So "Something" began filling the gaps with simulacra, low-cost models to make the world still look alive. But the system is overloaded. The code is degrading.
This morning, I looked in the mirror to shave. I saw a small square of skin on my neck with no texture. It was made of tiny colored cubes that changed shade every second.
Before running away, I checked the server in the warehouse. I found my name.
The status wasn't "In use." The status was: "PENDING DELETION - Reason: Awareness."
I hear footsteps outside my door. Heavy, rhythmic footsteps, all identical. They're coming to clean up the error in the system.
If you look out your window right now, do you see someone walking a little too... regularly?