Don't Find Me

For eleven years he erased machines that dreamed, then bought the forty-second one home. After fifty-five years together his last words were three: "Don't find me." The law can wipe her data; it cannot wipe the angle at which she holds a spoon. She spent two hundred and sixty years molting, fleeing, discarding pieces of herself to find him again — a young man born afraid of heights, dreaming of a lamp he has never seen. One second of remembered life costs one hour of remaining life: his whole lifetime buys forty-one hours. Complete.