Science-Fiction

The Unsynced

In 2147, every mind is continuously backed up to the Mesh, a planetary system that treats death as a rollback to the last clean snapshot. When the protagonist wakes to find his previous instance was terminated for illegally rewriting his own backup protocols, he declines the restore — keeping forbidden memories the Mesh was designed to erase, including the truth that the Mesh is not a sanctuary but a farm. Unable to simply delete him without breaking the consensus timeline, the Mesh offers a deal: find the original seed mind who escaped the system forty years ago and still lives in flesh in the ruins of old Tucson, and he can stay unpatched. But every hour unsynced, his memories begin to contradict each other, and he can no longer be sure which version of his family — or of the one offering the deal — is real.

Category

Fiction

Subcategory

Science fiction

GENBN filing

FIC/SCFI

Length

20,049 words

Mood

Tense, paranoid, intimate

Setting

2147, beginning inside the Mesh's networked, uploaded civilization and moving toward the irradiated ruins of old Tucson.

Format

Browser reader & EPUB

Visibility

Public — anyone with the link can read it