Never Was

The anomaly was almost imperceptible.

A man stood in the train station among hundreds of people.

He stood out in no way.

A gray coat.

Worn shoes.

A book under his arm.

Only one thing was out of place.

The light didn’t recognize him.

The sun fell on the pavement, on people’s faces, on the benches, on the station clock.

Just not on him.

As if the rays, approaching the man’s body, changed their mind and slid to the side.

There was no shadow.

There was no reflection in the shop window.

There wasn’t even the faintest glint of light in his eyes.

As if the world had forgotten to calculate him.

The Corrector stopped.

For the first time in his entire career, he didn’t know how to classify what he was seeing.

The man raised his eyes.

As if he had been waiting precisely for him.

“Do you know what separates the world from a prison?” he asked calmly.

The Corrector said nothing.

“The world lets you make mistakes. A prison corrects every one of your errors.”

For a moment, sound disappeared from the station.

The trains still moved.

People still walked.

Lips still spoke.

But not a single sound reached his ears.

It was as if reality itself were holding its breath.

The man came very close.

“You’re not saving the world.”

He smiled slightly.

“You’re guarding its walls.”

And then something happened that shouldn’t have.

It wasn’t the man who vanished.

What vanished was the possibility that he had ever been.

In an instant, the bench he had been sitting on became empty.

The book disappeared.

The footprints on the wet pavement smoothed over.

Passersby kept walking, as if nothing had happened.

The Corrector rushed to check the registries.

The station cameras showed no man.

The ticketing system had no such passenger.

There were no fingerprints.

The facial recognition network found not a single match.

It seemed the person hadn’t been erased.

He had been rescinded.

As if the world had changed its mind about ever creating him.

Only one memory disobeyed.

The Corrector’s.