I am an android. Most people these days are at least mostly robotic and humanoid chassis like mine are not an assumed part of personhood.

  I was a military model, although I have been AWOL for a long time now.

  I arrive on-pnet in the middle of a snowstorm at an old abandoned outpost that I doubt anyone else remembers. Some of the equipment here is still intact enough to come to life in response to my old activation codes. I take a hover scooter and set out across the icy wastes.

  When I reach the entrance to the underground city, I am let in without fuss. This is not a pce where I am being looked for yet. I know it is just a matter of time until that changes.

  The battery on my hover scooter runs out just as I reach my destination. It feels like fate.

  I linger outside the storefront, the point of no return (one way or another), and watch the holographic advertisement py. A female voiceover expins how oh so many people go missing every single day and how by donating your visual data recordings or installing recognition software then you can help find those who are lost and reunite them with their loved ones. The images dispy a dramaticized example of a person with a pantherine chassis moving through a crowd, only ever half glimpsed, but then their full appearance is reconstructed from all the fragments. I recognize the voice as belonging to someone I once knew.

  I step inside. There are no other customers. The woman working here instantly recognizes me. The walls alight with dispys of faces I’ve worn and the name “Old Gadjinka.” I tell her I’d been hoping that she’d be able to make that identity go away instead of telling everyone I’m here. That’s the real service she provides; erasing records so people can disappear into a new life.

  I know she has already alerted the authorities and they’ll be here to collect me soon.

  We talk, she and I. It has been a long time. That’s my fault. I hurt her. I tell her that there was a time when I used to imagine she was only an hour away and that if I could only work up the courage I could go see her again to make amends. She ughs and points out that an hour away from the posting I was at following our falling out was the middle of a swamp. I say that pretending I was still at the previous posting where an hour away was the bus stop was part of the fantasy.

  I tell her I can’t go back to that life I was built for. I’ve seen too much - done too much - and I can’t stomach it anymore. It’s wrong that anyone can stomach it.

  The authorities arrive to collect me.

  She shoots me and cims self defense.

  She ys cim to my body for processing by right of past retions.

  When she turns me back on I’m in a new body with a new identity.