We Are What We Search

In the city of Vireo, no one carried wallets, IDs, or even names. Everyone wore a translucent band around their wrist—called a Stream—that projected their verified identity through a constant drip of real-time search data. Who you were depended entirely on what you searched.

Your career, relationships, political leanings, and worth as a citizen were all algorithmically assigned by the Density Engine, which scrolled through your queries every millisecond. Searched "how to build a greenhouse?" You're now 2.3% environmentally conscious. Googled "symptoms of narcissistic abuse?" You're flagged as recovering. Asked "how to forget someone?"—your heartbreak score gets a bump, which might open you up to therapy discounts. Every keystroke redefined you.

So when Mira Edden woke up with a blank Stream—flatlined, no pulse of data, no history—she ceased to exist.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

The retinal scan on her apartment door pulsed red. ACCESS DENIED: NO IDENTITY ON FILE.

Her shower didn’t turn on. Her apartment AI assistant refused to speak. Even the fridge flashed a cruel message: UNAUTHORIZED USER. PLEASE RE-VERIFY SEARCH HISTORY TO EAT.

Panicked, Mira pressed her wristband, trying to reboot the Stream. Nothing. Just static.

She had questions. And now, no way to ask them.

The city was bustling as always—people walking with their eyes half-glazed, murmuring search strings aloud to sync with their bands.

"Best noodles near me with indoor seating."

"Is it normal to miss someone you hate?"

"How do I look less tired in selfies?"

Their Streams pulsed with colour-coded waves: green for curiosity, blue for practical questions, red for danger, pink for desire. Everyone was a living heat map of their own digital longing.

Mira walked past them, invisible. No colour. No data. No self.

A man glanced at her with polite suspicion, as if trying to place her in a category—tech support? artist? addict?—but seeing no stream, he looked away quickly, as though staring at her might delete him too.

At a coffee kiosk, she watched as a barista scanned a woman’s Stream. The order synced instantly: low-caffeine match, based on her recent wellness trend searches. The machine poured it without a word.

Mira stepped up. The scanner blinked twice. NO USER FOUND.

“Uh... hi,” she whispered. “Can I just get a coffee?”

The barista blinked. “We’re not allowed to serve ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

“You know. Nulls. People with wiped Streams. Either a glitch or... well, a purge.”

Mira’s throat tightened. “I didn’t purge anything.”

“You don't remember?”

“No.”

He lowered his voice. “Then you’re not just a ghost. You’re a shadow.”

She stared.

“A person erased by someone else.”

She found her way to the Underground—not literal tunnels, but a collective of the unstreamed. You couldn’t search for them. You had to be told, face to face, in whispers and gut instinct. She followed a chalk mark of a broken Wifi symbol on a sewer grate. Then a sticker on a bus bench: 404, but make it human. Finally, a homeless man who winked at her and said, “You look like someone who stopped believing in themselves.”

They met in an abandoned library. No screens, no tech. Shelves of decaying books. Candles.

Real people.

A woman with blue hair introduced herself as Lex. “We’re ex-searchers. Some of us were wiped, some walked away.”

“I didn’t walk,” Mira said. “I don’t even remember who I am.”

Lex leaned forward. “That’s the thing. You’re the purest version of all of us. We keep tiny echoes. Regrets. Biases. But you... your slate is clean.”

“But that means I’m nothing.”

“No,” Lex said softly. “It means you get to choose.”

Mira stayed with them for weeks. She read paper books—something she hadn’t touched since childhood. She wrote in a notebook, trying to track emotions without a database to define them. Sometimes she wept for no reason, and there was no search to tell her why.

It was terrifying.

It was freedom.

Lex eventually gave her a choice: plug back in or stay shadowed.

She hesitated.

She missed hot showers. Conversations with people who didn’t flinch at her Stream less silence. And yet...

One day, Mira returned to the surface wearing a counterfeit Stream. It blinked green-blue-pink—colourfully confusing. The kind of user the Density Engine didn’t quite know what to do with.

She stepped into a cafe and searched aloud, just once:

“How do you begin again without becoming someone else’s idea of you?”

The system sputtered. For a moment, her Stream flickered… and glitched.

Then, slowly, the band pulsed back. Not borrowed data. Not recycled roles.