THE REWRITE MACHINE
It was never meant to be found.
Not truly.
Garett wasn't the first to brush against it, but he had been the first to speak its name aloud—had whispered it with reverence and horror, as if even saying the words might wake something ancient and dreaming.
The Rewrite Machine.
Even Mira hadn't believed him at first. How could she? A machine woven into the very bones of the Solstice Building, invisible unless it wanted to be seen. Existing beyond time, beyond architecture, beyond reason. Existing only in choice.
But Garett's journal told her where to go.
A sequence of movements:
Ten steps forward. Three to the left. One step backward.
Five seconds of utter stillness.
And then—
A door would appear.
And it did.
Not a door, not really.
A wound.
Torn into the fabric of the hallway like something had bitten through reality from the other side. It wasn't just visible—it was felt, humming against her bones, a low, sullen throb that grew louder the longer she stared.
It pulsed.
Alive.
Mira hesitated at its edge.
The building didn't whisper this time.
It waited.
Silent. Expectant.
So she stepped through.
She braced for metal. Gears.
Pipes twisting like intestines. Flickering bulbs swinging from the ceiling.
Instead—
A library.
Ceilingless. Endless.
Shelves spun in impossible geometries, rising, spiraling, falling into chasms of darkness. They moved with a lazy intelligence, like serpents winding through a void. No clear aisles, no logical order—just an ocean of words and memories.
And the walls?
Not stone.
Not wood.
Pages.
Millions, billions, pressed together into living walls.
Ink scrawled in blood, in soot, in languages that hurt her brain to glimpse.
Each page a life.
Each life a story.
Each story rewritten, again and again and again.
And at the center—
The Machine.
But it wasn't metal or cogwork.
It was a throne.
A throne of paper and shadow, occupied by a flickering shape—a thing that changed every time she blinked.
Man. Woman. Child. Creature.
Old. Young. Broken. Beautiful.
A shifting draft of everything a person could have been.
Mira's heart hammered.
Still, she pressed forward.
Each step peeled a memory away from her mind, crumpling it midair before her eyes.
Her mother's face blurred and became a stranger's.
Her sister's laugh twisted into static.
Even her name—Mira—began to loosen on her tongue, slipping into something unspoken.
Still, she moved.
At the center, the Machine spoke.
Not with words.
With corrections.
Images slammed into her mind.
—Her childhood home, now an abandoned ward.
—Her favorite book rewritten into a funeral program.
—Jamie, her sister, standing beside her whole and alive—then rotting in fast-forward—then whole again, but her eyes missing, her mouth stitched shut.
"YOU ARE A STORY," the Machine said, in a thousand voices overlapping.
"A DRAFT. A FIRST ATTEMPT."
Mira swallowed against the thick, burning weight in her throat.
"What are you?"
"I AM THE EDITOR.
THE AUTHOR.
THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR."
She stumbled forward another step.
The ground beneath her was no longer floor. It was paper soaked in tears.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why rewrite us?"
The shelves rustled—louder, louder—a tidal wave of history being shredded and rebuilt.
The throne leaned forward.
The figure sitting atop it solidified—
—into her own face.
Older. Hollow-eyed.
Mouth sewn shut with black thread.
"BECAUSE NOTHING FINISHES WELL UNLESS IT'S WRITTEN PROPERLY," the Machine said through stitched lips.
Mira dropped to her knees.
Her fingers gripped the paper-ground, feeling it pulse and shift under her touch.
"Garett saw you," she said, voice shaking.
"AND NOW HE IS INDEXED."
"You changed him."
"HE PERMITTED IT.
HE CHOSE FORGETTING OVER KNOWING."
She rose, fists clenched so tightly her nails cut her palms.
"I won't."
The air darkened.
The Machine laughed—a broken, jagged sound like pages tearing in reverse.
"EVERYONE DOES. EVENTUALLY."
Mira looked at the nearest shelf, dizzy with anger and fear.
She stretched out her hand.
Her fingers closed around a single page.
It burned her skin.
It screamed, not with sound, but with grief.
Still, she read it.
It was a version of her life where Jamie never died.
Where they grew up side-by-side, laughing, arguing, loving.
Where Mira never set foot in the Solstice Building.
Where her days were quiet, safe.
Ordinary.
It ended with her shelving books in a library under fluorescent lights, never knowing how close she'd brushed against something infinite.
Tears filled her eyes.
She dropped the page.
"No," she said, voice barely audible. "That's not me."
The throne twitched violently.
The shadowed figure writhed, cycling through a thousand faces, a thousand rewritten Miras.
The shelves screamed.
Pages tore free and flew at her, wrapping around her arms and legs, trying to overwrite her body—
—turning her limbs into glass, her mouth into a silent O.
But Mira fought.
Not with rage.
With memory.
She sang the old lullaby Jamie used to hum when they were children.
She bit her tongue until blood welled up, writing her real name in warmth and iron.
She spoke her worst fear aloud:
"I am afraid I'll disappear and no one will remember I was here."
The Machine flinched.
Cracks split the throne.
The air shivered.
The pages lost their grip, falling in limp piles around her.
Mira lunged forward.
Hands trembling, heart hammering, she ripped the mask from the shape's face.
Behind it—
Her own face.
Not twisted.
Not monstrous.
Just...unfinished.
Empty.
An abandoned draft of herself, hollow and hungry.
Mira screamed—not in fear, but in defiance:
"YOU DON'T GET TO FINISH ME!"
The throne split apart with a deafening crack.
The library howled, folding inward on itself—shelves collapsing, stories unraveling in streams of white light.
The machine shattered.
And everything went dark.
When Mira woke, she was lying in the hallway.
The walls no longer whispered.
They simply...watched.
Waiting.
The journal was gone.
Garett was gone.
Only a single page lay beside her, fluttering gently as if in some unseen breeze.
Mira reached out and picked it up.
This time, it didn't burn.
It didn't scream.
It simply read:
Mira Calder
Version: Undefined.
Status: Unwritten.
She stared at the words.
A smile—fragile, defiant—touched her lips.
She folded the page carefully, tucked it into her pocket, and stood.
For the first time in what felt like forever, she wasn't trapped by the hallway's memory.
She was outside the story.
But behind her, deep in the veins of the Solstice Building, a faint, soft rustling began.
Like a thousand new pages, flipping themselves open.
Like a new draft beginning.
Somewhere far down the corridor, a door she hadn't seen before clicked open.
And something unseen whispered:
"Ready for your next chapter, Mira?"
Mira didn't move.
Not yet.