"Something strange happened today. I scanned for Will and I couldn't find him. Have you ever had that happen before?" Anna muttered as her eyes flitted back and forth, scrolling through a list of names projected on her translucent visors.
Angus didn't look up from his breakfast of runny eggs and toast, but replied with mild disinterest, "Are you sure you have the right address?"
"Of course! He's my brother." She peered over the top of the visors to get a clear look at him. Was he serious? How could she forget her brother's address. It was probably more important than his name. She could recite all 64 characters of her address, his address, and that of everyone else in her family. She wondered if Angus even knew the first three characters of hers. Could he scan for her if she decided to walk out the door this very second? How does someone completely disappear from the Ether like that? No purchases, no visits, no posts. Nothing.
"Maybe he went private. Needed a little peace and quiet. Time away from everyone, you know?" Angus tried to reassure his girlfriend. She was prone to making a big deal out of little things, but he knew that if you looked carefully enough, the explanation could always be found in the Ether. All important events, transactions, knowledge recorded and verified. It was just a matter of who wanted to know and who was allowed to know.
Still, Anna persisted. "But you know what the strange thing is? His previous transactions aren't here either. Last month he posted a video of my birthday dinner to the Ether and now I can't find it. It's not under my address either. How does someone erase something from my address? You can't rewrite the Ether." Angus remembered the dinner vividly. A group of them had celebrated her 26th birthday and recent promotion with sushi and sake bombs. Things got loud and raucous. Her friend Jane (Jen?) had spilled sake all over his pants and shattered the glass on the ground. Afterwards, he and Anna had stumbled home, where they had even louder sex on the rug in the living room, too drunk to make it to the bed.
He pulled himself back from the little memory. He pondered how someone could rewrite the Ether but didn't know where to start. That would be tantamount to a crime against humanity, invalidating the continuous chain of history that had been incontrovertibly recorded for the last 126 years. Not possible. Angus continued to quietly poke at his cold yolk, now congealed against the hardened bread.
(Cover Art by Miyagi Kazuya; Free for use from Unsplash.com).
