Data Center Xero: Journal of DCX9000

[Entry 01 | January 14, 2197 | San Frandisco, Neo California]

//Begin Entry

Once again I’m awoken by fear. Sweat drenched and heart pounding. I’ve been losing pieces of myself.

It started small, blank spots, little stutters in memory. Forgetting where I left my tool kit. Losing half a conversation mid-sentence. I blamed the night shifts, the recycled air, the hum of the factory pressing in on my skull. But it’s not fatigue. It’s something else. A leak. A slow bleed in my head ever since I pushed too deep into the grid with an outdated firewall. The sunlight is harsh coming through the skylight. Like a hot knife into my eyes.

Now, I see things that aren’t mine. A flicker of someone else’s memories cutting across my vision like broken film reels. A woman running through rain-soaked alleys. The taste of copper in her mouth. Hands shaking as she locks a door. I know it isn’t me, but it feels like I was there. The smells, the fear, the cold, too sharp for dreams.

And then the worst part: I feel her panic crawling under my skin.

The days drag at the factory. Twelve hours on the line, fixing busted exo-loaders and service drones that can’t tell left from right anymore. The place smells of ozone and burnt insulation, a haze of smoke clinging to every corner. Sparks fall like fireflies when the welders kick on, lighting up the grime-streaked walls. The machines never stop, their voices merge into one endless grind that eats into your bones.

I sit next to Marrow most days. He’s sharp-tongued, quick to call me a “leak-brain” when I zone out, but he’ll slide over half his ration pack without me asking. That’s just how he is. Mean in words, decent in actions. We joke that the factory floor’s a tomb, that we’re already ghosts haunting it. Some days, it doesn’t feel like a joke.

But these visions, or are they memories? Whatever they are they don’t wait for sleep anymore. Today, right in the middle of rewiring a servo arm, I blinked, and suddenly I was watching her again. She was standing in a narrow room, neon light bleeding through cracked blinds, whispering to someone I couldn’t see. Her voice shook like she was about to be torn apart. Then, just as quick, I was back at my workbench, Marrow yelling at me for nearly frying my own hands with the soldering iron.

It’s unraveling me.

Tonight, when I patched into the grid for diagnostics, something broke protocol. A secured channel, locked tight, forced itself open. My terminal spat static until it formed a voice:

“DCX9000. You’re being watched.”

I tried to reply but the connection was gone.

That’s when I realized that these aren’t random leaks. Someone is bleeding into me. Or forcing me to bleed into them. I don’t know which.

And now I can’t tell where my life ends and hers begins.

//End Entry