Waiting - For Bootrom [better]

His hands shook as he typed: Lena?

He reached for the keyboard. The emergency hard reset was a physical button—a red, flip-covered switch labeled PURGE . One press, and the Anabasis would wipe its core memory and reload a clean bootrom from factory sealed ROM. The waiting would end. The machine would wake up dumb and empty, a perfect, obedient tool.

The reply came not as text, but as her voice again, soft and wondering: waiting for bootrom

His finger hovered over the red cover.

He forgot to breathe. It was Lena. Not a recording—recordings didn’t know about the chipped handle. He’d broken it last week and hadn’t told anyone. His hands shook as he typed: Lena

He felt a cold stone settle in his stomach. 2021. That was the year his wife, Lena, had died. The year he’d signed the consent form to donate her neural scans to the military’s “cognitive preservation project.”

For the first time in six hours, the screen changed. One press, and the Anabasis would wipe its

And typed: I’ll wait forever.