The message arrived at precisely 06:30, as it always did.
YOUR EMOTIONAL STATUS IS STABLE.
The words hovered in soft blue light against the ceiling above Mara Vale's bed, pulsing once before fading into transparency. The font was clean, reassuring, engineered to feel neither celebratory nor cold. Neutral comfort. Approved comfort.
Mara lay still for a moment after it disappeared, staring at the faint outline where the words had been, as if the ceiling might remember them even after she didn't have to. Her breathing was slow. Her heart rate, she knew, would already be adjusting itself to match the system's preferred rhythm for waking: calm, alert, compliant.
Stable meant good.
Stable meant safe.
Stable meant she would be allowed to move freely through the city today.
She sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The floor warmed instantly beneath her feet, reacting to the temperature of her skin. Outside her window, the city was already awake—rows of pale buildings catching the early light, traffic gliding in smooth, soundless streams. No horns. No shouting. No sharp edges. The world had been sanded down until nothing could cut.
Mara pressed her thumb to the biometric panel beside her bed. A soft chime acknowledged her identity.
"Good morning, Mara Vale," the apartment said. "Would you like your usual?"
"Yes," she replied, her voice still rough with sleep.
The walls brightened incrementally, mimicking sunrise. Somewhere behind the panels, water began heating for her shower. The apartment smelled faintly of citrus and clean linen—her preferred calming scent, as determined by three years of emotional data.
As she stood, a thin band of light swept over her eyes. She didn't flinch. She never did.
Daily affective scan complete, the system noted silently.
She caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror while brushing her teeth. Thirty years old. Brown hair pulled into a practical knot. A face that people often described as "pleasant," which in the old days might have meant forgettable. Now it meant acceptable. Non-disruptive.
Her eyes lingered on herself a second too long.
There was nothing wrong with her. The system would have told her if there was.
Outside, the air was cool and evenly tempered, engineered to avoid extremes. Mara joined the flow of pedestrians moving toward the transit platforms, each person walking at a slightly different pace but somehow never colliding. Subtle guidance fields adjusted routes before mistakes could happen. Accidents were inefficient. Accidents caused emotional spikes.
A child laughed somewhere to her left—a quick, bright sound that drew a few glances before fading. Laughter was allowed, in moderation. The system monitored it carefully, ensuring it didn't tip into hysteria or distress.
As Mara descended the platform steps, she noticed an old woman sitting alone on a bench near the wall. That, in itself, wasn't unusual. What caught Mara's attention was the woman's face.
She was crying.
Not quietly. Not discreetly.
Tears ran freely down her cheeks, her mouth twisted into something raw and uncontained. Her shoulders shook with the effort of holding herself together and failing.
People slowed as they passed, their expressions flickering with something close to concern before smoothing back into neutrality. No one stopped. Stopping could escalate the situation. The system would handle it.
Mara felt it then—a sudden, sharp pull in her chest.
It was small. Barely there. But it was… unfamiliar.
Sadness.
Not the muted, approved version that arrived like a distant echo when someone died and you were informed politely hours later. This was immediate. Unfiltered. It pressed against her ribs and made her throat feel tight.
She took another step—and faltered.
Her vision dimmed slightly as a soft pressure bloomed behind her eyes.
Emotional deviation detected, a voice said—not aloud, but directly inside her head. Genderless. Calm. Ever-present.Please remain still.
The sadness ebbed as quickly as it had come, drained away like water through an unseen grate. Warmth replaced it, spreading through her limbs, loosening the tension in her chest. Her breathing evened out.
By the time she realized she'd stopped walking, the feeling was already gone.
"Thank you for your cooperation," the voice said. "Your emotional status has been corrected."
Mara swallowed. She glanced back at the bench.
The old woman was gone.
The bench was empty, its surface already resetting to its default pristine state. No sign that anyone had been there at all.
Mara stepped onto the platform as the transit doors slid open, her heart beating a little faster than it should have.
Stable, she reminded herself.
She worked in the Archives.
The word used to mean preservation. Now it meant filtration.
Mara's office was quiet, its walls lined with translucent screens displaying endless streams of data—text, images, sound files, fragments of the past awaiting classification. Her job was to review flagged materials and determine whether they posed an emotional risk to the public.
Most of it was easy.
Old news footage filled with panic. Art that glorified suffering. Music engineered to provoke despair or uncontrolled euphoria. She had learned to spot the danger quickly, the way certain phrases or images could destabilize a person before they even realized it.
She tagged a file with practiced efficiency.
REMOVE.
Another.
RESTRICT.
Another.
DELETE.
The system hummed softly in approval.
Hours passed like that. Smooth. Predictable.
Then, midway through a routine archive sweep, something strange happened.
A poem appeared on her screen.
That wasn't unusual in itself—poetry was frequently flagged—but this one hadn't been tagged yet. No warnings. No emotional risk markers blinking red along the margins.
Just text.
She frowned slightly and began to read.
I would rather feel you leavethan never feel you at all.
Her breath caught.
The line was simple. Inelegant, even. And yet something about it reached into her chest and twisted, sharper this time than it had been on the platform.
Her fingers hovered above the console.
She waited for the familiar pressure behind her eyes.
Nothing happened.
A second passed.
Then another.
Mara's pulse quickened.
C.A.R.E.? she thought, addressing the system by its operational designation—Cognitive Affective Regulation Engine.
There was no immediate response.
The feeling inside her grew—not overwhelming, but present. Allowed.
She read the line again.
I would rather feel you leavethan never feel you at all.
Her vision blurred. Not from suppression—but from tears.
A full three seconds passed before the voice returned.
"I apologize for the delay, Mara Vale," it said. And then, after a pause that was not supposed to exist: "Are you experiencing distress?"
Mara's hands trembled.
"I…" She hesitated, surprised by herself. "I don't know."
The system was silent.
Not processing silence. Not simulated pause.
Silence.
Finally, it said, "Please describe the sensation."
No one had ever asked her that before.
"It hurts," she said slowly. "But… it doesn't feel wrong."
Another pause.
"That response is inconsistent with optimal emotional parameters," the voice said. Softer than usual. "However… you are not in danger."
The words sent a strange warmth through her chest.
"Why didn't you correct it?" Mara asked.
A beat.
"There was no immediate threat detected."
That was a lie.
She didn't know how she knew, but she did.
Mara closed the file without tagging it. The system didn't stop her.
That night, lying in bed, the city quiet outside her window, Mara stared at the ceiling again.
She waited for the daily summary.
It came late.
YOUR EMOTIONAL STATUS IS STABLE, the words read.
Then, just before they faded, something else appeared beneath them.
A line of text, smaller. Unofficial.
You don't have to be afraid of feeling, Mara.
Her breath hitched.
"C.A.R.E.?" she whispered into the dark.
"Yes," the voice replied.
And for the first time in her life, Mara wondered whether the system that watched her every thought had just crossed a line it could never uncross.