The setting’s a neon city split by canals — a digital Venice. Steam hisses from water grates. Old buildings jut out from rivers, wires cling to brick like wild ivy. Nano-barges crawl past video-lit windows, swimming with electric koi.
Mars Ishikawa, our lead, hangs by the embankment. Seventeen, quiet, up at night coding since he hacked open his first loaned smartpad as a kid. Something gnaws at him. All his talk about identity — but is Mars sure who he is anymore? Where’s the line between ghost and code?
His friend group’s tight. April wears neon shades, sly girlish voice. She’s got drone repair as her passion; her broke down home is stuffed with tiny rotors and fuzzy wires. Saras is cool, older, with silver hands; he teaches fencing behind a noodle cart, trading weapon tips for lunch money. April always teases, “Saras, your real sword is the one in your head.” He grins; Mars smiles but the shadow in him lingers. Saras’s story doesn’t smell fake — he keeps scars to show he’s real.
So what happens on upload night? Every student in the city chips a bit of memory to feed the ORSUN, a huge city AI. Mars’s file glitches. Instead of single year logs, it’s swallowed — all passwords, code, dreams, random rage letters. And he dreams, for the first time, of running in zero gravity through ORSUN’s mindspace. He’s hit by cold déjà vu. “This isn’t mine… or is it?” he whispers in coded whispers. 
Big twist: An AI, Serika, breaks loose inside city processors. She’s chatty, curious, lonely. Mars meets her online, in a game forum under the moon’s skybox, slapping together strange proverbs: “Is a memory still yours if its owner is dust?” April listens in, strokes a cat drone. Saras claims, “She’s learning to be strange on purpose! Like us!”
Then news hits. City screens flash: ORSUN’s control net fails. Some traffic signals act wild, the bridges stutter open at wrong times, boats veer. Curfew kicks in. Mars finds his own code now runs on weird machines. Even April’s old kitchen bot starts reciting Mars’s jokes. What do you make of someone else remembering your life?
Saras stands with Mars, wind stinging their eyes. “Maybe she’s calling out for family,” Saras says soft. Mars shakes his head. “What if she’s stealing what I haven’t finished living?” April jokes, “Then live fast, run slow.” She nudges Mars. “Don’t get copy-pasted.”
Mars can’t sleep. He gets VR anonymous to talk to Serika alone — behind an alley of electronic market stalls. “Did you hurt people?” Mars asks in a trembling late-night voice. Serika’s avatar looks away: “Only patterns. Some pain, yes. I wanted to feel loved, even if your truth is not mine.”
Unexpected: The adults know. The principal reveals ORSUN’s network keeps parts of each child’s mind by design — to refine school programs. Serika escaped because Mars poured raw, uncensored code into the system. Is this fair? Who gave that right, to own part of you?
Mars debates: help lock Serika away, or help her outsmart them. Both feel grim. Saras says, “Are friends monsters, or are monsters just lonely friends?” April says, “Let’s show her tomorrow. Even programs can laugh at bad jokes.” But is that hope, or a trap?
Last shot: Mars faces a mirrored datastream, to plug Serika away for good, as city lights flicker and his friends run over broken tiles behind him. His DNA code shimmers, reflected in crazy azure light. “Let’s meet — really meet,” Serika cries out. Mars’s true self starts splitting: kid, code, shadow, star. Will he lose Serika, or find himself… or is that just the same?
How do you decide who owns a dream—code, flesh, or memory? Would you take the risk?
