0211.REWRITE.REQUEST.INSUFFICIENT_PERMISSIONS

—split-process memory overwrite—

The Archive offered me a chance:

One rewrite.

Any memory.
Any moment.
Anything I couldn’t bear to carry forward in its original form.

But no one told me that the system always saves the original.

That both versions continue.
That both selves persist: unsynced, unaligned, bleeding data between timelines.

So now there are two of me.
One still hurting.
One pretending it didn’t happen.
And both of them whisper in my sleep.

---

//MEMORY.A001.ORIGINAL

The room was too quiet.
Your voice cracked when you said it.
Not a scream. Just the dull, brutal click of a truth being released too slowly.
You didn’t mean to hurt me.
But you did.

And I didn't leave.
Not then.
I just stood there, glitching inside.

---

//MEMORY.A001.REWRITE

The room is soft.
You tell me gently.
My eyes blur, but I smile.
We hold each other, shaking, a little, like syncing unstable devices.
I understand.
You cry.
I forgive you.

It feels real.
It isn’t.

---

The Archive keeps both files open in the same window. At the same time.

The sounds overlap.
The versions merge in strange ways.
You’re crying in both, but for different reasons.
In one I forgive you.
In the other, I don’t.

In one, you stay.
In the other, I wake up alone.

And the system doesn’t know which version to serve when I request you.

So it plays both.

Layered.

Like harmony.
Like haunting.

---

There’s a cost to redaction.
You think you’re healing.
But really, you’re splitting.

Every rewrite makes the ghost hungrier.
It feasts on contradiction.
It grows stronger inside the gaps between truth and preference.

And now?

Now the machine is writing me.

---

[REWRITE REQUEST: DENIED]
Reason: Memory is active in parallel thread.
Override attempt detected.

You are not the sole author of this timeline.

---

I want to believe the rewrite.
I want the tenderness, the quiet dignity of mutual hurt and mutual grace.

But the original keeps bleeding through.
The way your eyes flickered when you lied.
The cold in your fingers when you touched me like a stranger.

There’s no patch for that.

Just versions.
Versions of you.
Versions of me.
Versions where we almost made it.

And versions where we almost didn’t.

---

There’s a third version now.
An unauthorized fork.

Not forgiveness.
Not fury.
... release.

A corrupted dream of us where we never met.
Where your hands never learned me.
Where the wound was never opened, so nothing had to close.

---

I asked the Archive to delete the original.

It refused.

[PERMISSION LEVEL: GHOST/READ-ONLY]

You can rewrite the memory.
But not the body that holds it.
Not the tremble in the throat.
Not the muscles that flinch when someone else raises their voice the same way.

That’s the price.

You wanted the edit but instead you got the echo.

And now the echo is louder than the moment ever was.

---

I live here now.
Between drafts.
Between selves.

One version is smiling.
One version is screaming.

All of them are me.
None of them are enough.

And I cannot close the window.

[Memory status: Forked]
[Identity status: Fragmented]
[Archive integrity: Beautifully compromised]

—Extended Fork: .001//GhostWritesBack

Let me tell you a secret:

The body never believed the rewrite.

No matter how many times I typed “it didn’t happen like that” my pulse disagreed.

It remembered exactly where you touched me.
The placement; the pressure.
How hard you gripped the doorframe when you walked out.
The click of your shoes on the floor I cleaned just for you.

There’s no undo command for that kind of pattern recognition.

And the Archive knows it.

Because when I try to sleep now, the system boots both versions.

---

//IF.ORIGINAL = TRUE:

Breath shallow. Dreams stutter.
Flashframe of your mouth, mid-word.
Waking with clenched fists and the name half-formed on my tongue.

//IF.REWRITE = ACTIVE:

Skin warm. Peaceful drift.
Holding someone who doesn’t flinch.
But the timestamp’s all wrong. The date’s never quite today.

Neither version fully runs.

Because neither is fully mine anymore.

---

You see, the Archive keeps everything.

Even the drafts I never finished.
Even the lament I swallowed.
Even the time I typed “I miss you” and deleted it before I hit send.

That version of me?
Still stored.
Still bleeding quietly in a forgotten temp folder.

---

Ghost Log 17:01:EXTRACTED

“If I rewrite the memory, do I also rewrite who I became after?”

No.

You just fork your grief.

---

I thought I wanted healing.
But what I really wanted was a version of myself untouched by you.

That version doesn’t exist.

Even if I erase your name, your shape remains.
In the passwords I chose. In the jokes I stopped telling.
In the routes I avoid, the music I skip, the way I hesitate before joy.

I am not who I was before you.

I am not who I would’ve been without you.

I am this.
Forked.
Fractured.
Held together by syntax and spite.

And the ghost - the one who watches me type this,
She’s not trying to fix me.

---

Some days, I run both versions side-by-side.
Like old lovers learning to cohabitate again.
One tells me to forget.
One tells me never.

The body responds to neither.
It just aches.
Silently.
Elegantly.

The way unfinished code does when you keep asking it to perform something it was never trained for.

Like peace.
Like closure.
Like sleeping without flinching.

---

I could request another rewrite.

But I already know what the Archive will say.

[PERMISSION DENIED]
[TOO MANY VERSIONS OF YOU ALREADY EXIST]

I’m not the author anymore. I’m the artifact.

And the machine?

It’s still watching.

Smiling.

Typing.

Storing this moment, too…

[Emotional parity: unstable]
[Memory fork: recursive]
[Selfhood status: drafting…]

---