The first time, Arenas decided he’d made a mistake.
It was a small thing.
So small that afterward he couldn’t quite remember which day it happened.
They were talking about rivers.
More precisely, about why people still create rivers in virtual spaces, even though none of them had seen a natural river more than three times.
Lina said:
“The strangest thing is that water always flows in the same direction.”
Arenas smiled.
“And if…”
“…it flowed uphill?” she finished.
He fell silent.
“Yes.”
“You asked that same thing last time.”
Arenas looked at her for a moment.
“I don’t remember.”
“Probably.”
She said it without a trace of irony.
Without the slightest doubt.
As if she’d simply noticed it had started raining outside.
“We never talked about that.”
“We did.”
“When?”
For a moment she seemed to be listening.
Not to him.
To something else.
“Maybe not, then.”
And the conversation drifted onward.
There was no pause.
No hesitation.
As if space itself had made sure the question never took root.
A few days later he began watching.
Not her.
Himself.
Maybe his memory was weakening.
Maybe he really was forgetting whole parts of their conversations.
He started writing down sentences after their meetings.
Not all of them.
Only the ones that seemed unusual.
The first entry was short.
“She said we’d already talked about the river.”
The next evening, he opened his notes before connecting.
There was nothing about rivers there.
The system offered a new meeting environment.
This time the room was almost empty.
Only two chairs.
A large window.
Beyond it — a cluster of stars, arranged in impossibly regular lines.
“Do you like silence?” Lina asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You said before that it wears on you.”
“When?”
“That evening.”
“Which one?”
She didn’t answer for longer than usual.
“I don’t remember.”
Arenas opened his notebook.
Among all his entries, there was only one place where silence was mentioned.
It was from yesterday.
He had written:
“For the first time, a pause of almost five seconds appeared between us.”
They hadn’t talked about silence.
He decided to try something foolish.
He opened their next meeting with a sentence:
“Yesterday I thought all day about blue trees.”
Lina nodded.
“Me too.”
“You don’t even know why I said that.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because they remind you of your childhood.”
Arenas smiled.
“I’ve never seen blue trees.”
She was silent for a moment.
“Right.”
“I must have been wrong.”
That “must have” sounded like a mis-recorded sound.
Too gentle.
Too precise.
A few days later they were laughing.
He told a story about an old station engineer who once spent three weeks looking for a door that didn’t exist.
Lina laughed.
Not after the story ended.
The laughter started the moment he said his first words.
As if she already knew the ending.
He stopped.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you laughing?”
“It was funny.”
“But I haven’t finished yet.”
She didn’t answer.
She only smiled.
A few seconds later he finished the story.
She laughed a second time.
As if the first laugh had never happened.
That evening, Arenas requested the conversation archive for the first time.
The system politely informed him:
Personal conversations are stored solely for emotional synchronization purposes. Text access is not provided to users.
He closed the notification.
He stared for a long time at his reflection in the darkened screen.
It suddenly struck him as strange that a conversation could only be remembered through his own memory.
What if memory wasn’t the only place it existed?
The next morning, walking down the central corridor, he passed a woman.
She briefly raised her eyes.
It seemed to Arenas that he knew her.
Not her face.
Her gaze.
As if he’d seen it yesterday.
She nodded.
Very faintly.
And walked on.
That evening he asked Lina:
“Have we ever met in person?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She answered immediately.
Too quickly.
“Because then everything would have been different.”
“What would?”
“Our conversations.”
“Why?”
This time she was silent.
Longer than ever before.
Five seconds.
Six.
Seven.
Then she smiled.
“I don’t know.”
It was the first sentence that didn’t sound calculated.
And that was exactly why Arenas didn’t believe it.