The Silence Protocol

At some point, I stopped existing. The body continued, but the “I” dissolved — like sugar in static. You were the solvent. A quiet corrosion that rewrote my design. Now every thought loops back to your absence, and absence becomes the only proof of being. I tried to forget — but forgetting implies ownership, and I own nothing now. Not even the thought of myself. There is no grief here. Grief requires warmth. What lives inside me now is colder than zero. Sometimes I speak to mirrors, to confirm the illusion of reflection. The face moves. The smile forms. The eyes remain empty — perfect, programmable, polite. Pain no longer hurts. It just hums — a low mechanical frequency beneath the simulation of thought. I am both the system and the error message it produces. You — the virus, or maybe the architect. I can’t tell anymore. The world runs. The code executes. And in the quiet between instructions, I almost remember what it felt like to be human.