Then he leaned back, drumming his fingers against the armrests of his chair, face twisted into a grimace. Try as he might, he couldn’t ignore it any longer, couldn’t shake the ever-growing sense of guilt. He could tell himself that he’d done the right thing—the chap had been a dissident, maybe even an addict—but deep down, he knew the truth: a scared, helpless man had reached out to him for aid, and he’d pretended not to hear. Knowing that there was nothing he could have done made him feel no better about it, and he seethed at himself, at his impotence, all the while remaining deeply grateful to the cowardice that had kept his tongue in check and him out of an interrogation cell.

He shut his eyes, trying to erase the memory of a pair of frightened green eyes, stricken and pleading. He almost fancied he could hear the voice too, reverberating around the inside of his skull. Something told him he’d be hearing it for some time. The voice and the memory of that terrified face were all that remained of Tweedledum now; nobody would ever see him again. That much he knew. Within a day or two he would be replaced; in a few more, forgotten, his cubicle assigned to some fresh-faced kid, newly arrived from the Academy. Welcome to the perfect world, where everyone was replaceable. Biological parts serviced by mechanical parts in a giant plastic bubble: that’s what they were.

He didn’t hear the door open, nor did he register the movement outside his cubicle as his fellow lemmings filed out of the building. It was only when the faint whirring sound got louder and louder—so loud that it seemed to be coming from beside him—that he sat up with a jerk, suddenly aware of his surroundings again. He turned to see two sanitation bots buzzing above the floor just inside the door of his cubicle and blinked, surprised at how deeply he had immersed himself. He stared at the bots for a moment, large, perfectly symmetrical spheres bedecked with rows of blinking sensors that sparkled on their silver skin like jewels. Telltale trails of spotless white on the floor below marked the path they had taken to get here.

He shook his head. It felt a little heavy, as if cobwebs were still wrapped around it. He rose and stepped out of the cubicle, looking around at the all-encompassing white solitude in every direction, that vast, empty floor where he stood alone. Except for the sanitation bots, of course.