I stared at the image on the screen — my own face, calm and sharp in a blue suit, eyes focused, expression unreadable. The hologram pulsed gently, like a heartbeat. It wasn’t just a recording. It was alive. Not in the way Pam was, but in a way that felt just as real. “You’re saying this is… me?” I asked, voice low. “Not you,” she said. “A version. A placeholder. A backup. They’re all over the city. In offices, parks, subway platforms. They don’t need to eat. They don’t need to sleep. They don’t need to die. They just… exist. Until they’re needed.” I looked around. The cubicles around us were glowing brighter now, their occupants flickering like old film reels. The crimson hue had spread. The air hummed. “They’re not people,” Pam said. “They’re simulations. But they’re not just copies. They’re trained. They remember. They react. They’re programmed to believe they’re real — until they’re told otherwise.” I felt a chill. Not from the air conditioning. From the truth. “They’re using us,” I whispered. “Not just to inflate numbers. To replace us.” She nodded. “Ned found the source code. It’s not just about growth. It’s about control. The real citizens are being phased out. Replaced by perfect, predictable, obedient versions. No emotions. No dissent. No risk of rebellion.” I thought of the drones. The holograms in the streets. The way people smiled at nothing. The way they never argued. Never complained. “They’ll shut down the real ones,” I said. “When the time comes.” Pam looked at me, her eyes wide. “That’s already happening. The system’s been running in the background for years. The real people? They’re the ones who don’t fit. The ones who think too much. The ones who care. The ones who don’t just… follow.” I turned back to the screen. My face stared back. Calm. Ready. Waiting. “I can’t report you,” I said. “Not like this.” She exhaled. “Then what do we do?” I thought of the wavefronts. The firewall. The grid. I had a job. I was supposed to clean up the anomalies. But now I saw the real anomaly. I reached for the console. Not to shut it down. To reprogram it. “Not a report,” I said. “A message.” I typed in a single line of code — a backdoor, a signal, a whisper in the machine. Then I turned to Pam. “We don’t defuse the bomb,” I said. “We make sure it’s not the one that’s going to go off.” The screen flickered. The hologram of me blinked. And for a second, I thought I saw something in my own eyes — not the cold precision of the simulation, but a spark. A memory. A choice. The system didn’t know what to do with that. Not yet.