Alert: You have just overwritten your current memory configuration (21621107) with an earlier version (21621101). This action cannot be undone.

The red text flashed across my HUD, blurring the ash-dark walls behind it. I dismissed the notification as fast as I could; I didn’t need a reminder of everything I had wanted to forget recently.

But resets always left me a little spinny and out of sorts, so of course Avery noticed when she got home from work.

“What did you have to do that for?” she asked, voice heavy with frustration. “You know we were supposed to have a date night tonight.”

I didn’t know that. I mean, I had probably known that before the reset, but everything from the past week that I hadn’t written down in the bio-locked notes file I kept in my padlet had been wiped away, as if it had never happened to me to begin with.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep her and the patchwork armchair she slumped into from sliding out of focus. “I just—it’s been a shit week. I just needed a break from everything.”

“You think you had a shit week? You haven’t even done anything. What could have possibly happened to you that was so bad?”

Hot angry tears pricked my eyes; I didn’t have the energy to try to explain to her everything that had gone wrong. From what I’d written in the padlet, it had been a nightmare of doctor’s appointments that did nothing except drain our credits, but Avery had never understood how the doctors dismissed and belittled me. Sometimes I thought she didn’t believe in my illness either.

Not for the first time, I wished I was still able to work. Not that there were any good jobs these days, not unless you were one of the few people whose skill sets hadn’t been completely taken over by the machines, but any money at all would have helped. If we both could work, I could have paid for appointments myself, or for bus fare to one of the bigger med centers upstate, maybe found someone who could actually help my condition. But we only had Avery’s income, and the best I could do for my symptoms was try to forget them.

So instead of a date we had another fight. I tried to tell myself that at least we were spending time together, at least she was paying attention to me instead of staying out until all hours with her friends who could still go out and dance and drink, but when we went to bed that evening I felt lonelier than I did when she was gone.

Heat blasted me from every direction as soon as I stepped out onto the street the next day, the sun glaring down from a cloudless sky, pavement radiating it back up through the thick soles of my boots. I could feel my heart racing already; hot weather had never been good for my illness even before the winters stopped. I hurried along the familiar route to the store, anxious to get back home before I passed out from heatstroke or worse.

The shelves were more barren than usual. Of course, we wouldn’t have been able to afford produce if there had been some, but even the cans of beans and the tinned meat substitute Avery liked were picked almost bare. I bought as many as that week’s ration would allow, wishing again I had my own job. It wasn’t fair that Avery had to spend half of her rations on me when I couldn’t contribute back. 

I put back one of the cans of beans and picked up an extra Meatie-Os instead. It was the least I could do, given everything.

Stores didn’t have much in the way of air conditioning these days, not the teeth-rattling cold that they used to, but anything was better than nothing, at least until I stepped back onto the street again. Outside, nearly overwhelmed by the baking heat, I heard the laughter of children playing a game, dodging in between the abandoned cars with the roachgrass growing up through their rusted-out frames. I was so lightheaded I nearly missed the sight of one of the misprogrammed k9 bots stalking towards them.

“You should get inside,” I called out, as loudly as I dared, but if the children heard me, they gave no indication. I hurried to get out of sight, but I wasn’t fast enough to avoid hearing the playful cries turn into blood-chilling shrieks, the telltale crunch and splatter that could only be caused by robotic jaws clamping down on tissue and bone. I waited, around the corner in a nearby alley, until the street went quiet again, then snuck back out to see if there was any way I could help but the children were already dead by the time I knelt beside them. All I could do was close their eyes against the burning sun.

I was still numb and shaking by the time I locked the apartment door behind me, as I put the meager haul away, as I scrubbed the blood off my hands, as I got out my rewinder and the padlet I always kept beside it.

Warning: You have one (1) available reset remaining (configuration 21620101). To add more resets, please contact Mnemonyc customer support to top up your account. Please have your payment information ready to ensure smooth service.

Shit. 

I looked at the date of the only available reset—nearly a year old. How had I messed up so badly? I thought for sure I had more resets available, that I’d been more careful than this.

I couldn’t deal with this. Not now. 

I needed a reset more than anything. Needed to wipe away the sight of the kids laying bloody and broken on the sidewalk, more victims of those awful police bots that had gone rogue when the company that made them went bankrupt. Needed to forget I lived in a world where that had ever been allowed to happen, where children could ever have been seen as a threat, where a company could just put out ‘ware like that, without failsafes and without repercussions.

But if I used that reset, I would lose everything.

Nisi and I had been planning my escape for nearly a year, but despite our efforts it all felt so fragile, like one wrong move would send the whole thing tumbling to the ground, my life shattered in a way I’d never be able to put together again. She’ll have to use all of her savings and then some for bus tickets, both to come get me and for my ticket back with her. A whole year’s worth of credits stashed away, and she said of course she’d do this for me without a second thought but the cost meant we only got one chance at this. 

One chance.

If even one thing went wrong—if I didn’t remember where I was supposed to meet her, or that I needed to grab my IDs from the box under the bed before I go, or if I forgot when Avery would be at work that day—it would have all been for nothing. If I used this last reset, this old reset from back before I knew I needed to leave, I would be lost.

My heart felt like it was flipping upside down against my ribs; my head throbbed, my mouth was as dry as the parched dirt that had once been our local park. Maybe I could find a way to get some extra credits, to get a few more recent resets available, just enough to tide me over until I was safe at Nisi’s. 

I thumbed across the cracked screen of the padlet, reading over everything that would be wiped out if this reset got used. The big fight Avery and I had had, when she had come home drunk and confessed that she resented me for getting sick, though the next morning she said she’d never meant it. The doctor she took me to who told me there was nothing physically wrong with me, that it was just anxiety, denying me even the meager disability stipend the state offered. All the fights we’d had after, all the plans I’d made with my sister—all would be lost. I couldn’t bear to remember but I couldn’t afford to forget.

I couldn’t remember ever feeling so tense.

“Where are you?”

Avery stood in front of me but my eyes refused to focus on her; I could barely hear her over the cotton-wool whoosh in my ears. She sat down next to me, took my hands in hers, and I heard her breath catch as she turned one over, examining my skin with a critical eye.

“Is this blood? Did something happen on the way to the store?”

I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted. I wasn’t fine, but I knew what she was about to suggest.

“Babe, if something happened, if you’re like this again, we need to do a reset.” I shook my head once more; she gripped my hands more tightly. “C’mon, you know we can’t afford therapy right now, can’t afford for you to have another meltdown.”

“I’m not,” I said, searching desperately for something I could say that she would believe. “I was just thinking about us.” It wasn’t totally a lie; I had spent a fair amount of time recently thinking our relationship, about how much it had changed since we first started dating, since I got sick.

“That’s sweet,” she said, softening. “So have I. I just miss the way things used to be, you know?”

My throat tightened; tears threatened me yet again. Of course I missed that too—it wasn’t like I wouldn’t give anything if it meant I could have my old body back, my old life back. But I knew what Avery actually meant. She missed the version of me that was good for her. The me that contributed to our household expenses, who could go on dates without almost collapsing. The me who could still put out.

The me that I would probably be again.

I would have been lying if I said I didn’t wish I somehow still could be that person. I wanted to be the person who Avery had fallen for, who had fallen in love with her, who had hobbies and favorite foods instead of sick days and pill bottles, who was a good partner instead of a burden on everyone around them, who could survive in a world like this instead of falling apart at the slightest provocation. 

“I’m sorry,” I managed, voice creaking. I didn’t know what I was apologizing for—for all the fights that I was too tired to avoid most days, for all the dates I’d had to cancel—but at the moment I was too broken to think of anything else to say. 

She wrapped her arms around me the way she used to. “I think you should do the reset. It’ll help you feel better. Please?”

I shook my head, but the movement was lost in how much the rest of me was trembling. 

“Please?” Avery asked again, and I knew this was a fight I was unlikely to win.

Warning: You are about to overwrite your current memory configuration (21621107) with an earlier version (21620201). This action cannot be undone. Are you sure you wish to continue?

R. F. Daniels (they/he) is a queer nonbinary writer of speculative fiction and software engineer living in Finland. When they aren’t arguing with computers or getting lost in imaginary worlds, they can be found painting, composing sad music, and spending time with their cats. Find them online at rfdaniels.com.

Visual Art
Anyanwu David is a Nigerian visual artist working primarily with photography. Born in Kaduna, Nigeria, his practice spans fine art and documentary photography, exploring identity, symbolism, transformation, and cultural memory through carefully constructed visual narratives. His work examines identity on personal, spiritual, and Afrocentric levels, often using symbolism to reframe familiar ideas in new and reflective ways. Through his images, he explores how people are shaped by experience, belief, responsibility, and environment. Alongside his conceptual practice, his documentary work focuses on real people and lived human stories.

His work has been exhibited at the Plus 234 Art Fair in Lagos and the Journey Exhibition in Port Harcourt. It has also been published and is forthcoming in various fine literary magazines, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Prism International, and Lolwe Magazine.

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