I woke the next morning on the couch and felt an immense sense of calm. I felt unburdened by anything I had been. I had nothing but my body. A body in search of a new self, like the new hard drive Patrick had offered me. I went to buy a bag of milk from the corner store and I didn’t exist. There was a kind of freedom in this. The woman at the subway kiosk wished me a good day after selling me a roll of tokens and the old me would have replied, “Thank you, you too,” but I was no longer me; in fact, I was temporarily not anyone, so I felt no need to reply. I was not building a relationship with this woman. I was not trying to maintain appearances or a reputation. I was a cypher. It felt as if I could move about the world without consequence. If I wanted to run down the sidewalk or lock eyes with a passing stranger and scream that would haven been perfectly permissible because I had no pre-established way of being. If I had been erased, I thought, then I could start again. I could be whoever I wanted. Every step I took from that moment on would begin to establish that new person. I could change my name. Change my habits. I wouldn’t even have to fake my death because I was already dead. It took me a few days to make up my mind about how I wanted to be in the world. I didn’t feel in a rush. It was actually a miraculous limbo to be in. Pure potentiality. I went and sat in a strange café. I ordered a drink I didn’t even like. I went into a store and tried on some clothes, imagining how I might begin to look in this new life. I wasn’t ready to commit to a new haircut yet, but I studied people’s hair.

I eventually had to admit that being in the world like that was untenable in the long run. I knew I had to commit to something. That was the way the world had been set up and the way it operated; everyone got their own life, but they had to commit to an identity and be held accountable to it. It was upsetting for people to encounter someone living without an identity. Without a past or destiny. So the world made it very hard to live that way. Exhausting, financially unfeasible, and socially isolating.