We Were Never Strangers

Prologue"The system says I never knew you.But every part of me aches like I lost you yesterday."They told us memory was a burden.A weight dragging us backward. Slowing our productivity.Drowning us in nostalgia, grief, and longing. So they offered us acure.First, they gave us filters-little neural edits to blur the pain. Thencame Optimization: the selective erasure of anything deemedinefficient. Lost lovers, old mistakes, family trauma-gone,cleanly, like chalk washed from a board.