📘 CHAPTER 7 — NOT FOUND
645 Words
Lam shouldn't have done that.
He knew it from the moment the warehouse gate opened earlier than usual, before the shift had even started and the desks were still empty.
The system still allowed access.
It always allowed it—as long as there wasn't a reason to deny it.
Lam sat down and logged in.
ACCESS GRANTED.
He didn't open a complex query.
He didn't use f*******n matching.
Just a very basic, almost harmless search.
Name.
Gender.
Estimated age.
Data the system always had.
He entered what he remembered from the man on the ground floor.
Enter.
The screen took longer than usual to process.
Then a single line appeared:
NO MATCH FOUND.
Lam narrowed his eyes.
He added conditions:
Residence area, building, gate security code.
Enter.
NO MATCH FOUND.
His heart slowed, becoming heavier.
Impossible.
A person living in a building with a security gate, with a valid card, couldn't possibly be absent from the system.
Even homeless people leave traces—subsidy payments, cameras, movement data.
Lin changed tactics.
He followed the indirect trail:
ground floor security gate scan history.
The list appeared.
Hundreds of scans.
Hour, minute, card number.
And then he saw it.
A gap between two lines of data.
Not a lack of time.
Not a synchronization error.
But… a scan had occurred but wasn't recorded.
Lin leaned back in his chair.
This feeling was eerily familiar.
He scrolled further down the history.
Three days ago.
Five days ago.
The gaps were repetitive, irregular, and didn't form a clear statistical pattern.
It was enough to know:
that man had passed through the gate many times.
And each time, the system chose not to remember.
Lam opened his notebook, his hand trembling slightly.
Real person — untraceable.
He stopped writing.
Then he crossed out that line.
Replaced it with:
Unit not identified — still physically interacting.
—Lam.
He was startled.
He turned around.
The shift supervisor stood behind him, holding a cup of coffee, his voice calm.
—You're here so early?
—I… couldn't sleep, —Lam replied, quickly closing the query window. —So I came early to check some pending files.
The shift supervisor nodded.
—The system has been optimized a lot lately, —he said. —If you see anything strange… just let it handle it.
His words were as light as a breeze.
But Lam sensed an unspoken command.
All morning, Lam didn't open any more queries.
But he knew: from the moment he searched for a specific person, everything had changed.
The system didn't care about abstract data.
It cared about intent.
And intent is hard to conceal when repeated.
That afternoon, on his way home, Lam deliberately walked instead of taking the elevator.
He wanted to make sure he wasn't imagining things.
On the third floor, the man stood in front of the apartment door, fumbling with the lock.
"It won't open," he said when he saw Lam. "It was fine this morning."
Lam looked at the lock panel.
No error.
No incorrect code.
Blank.
"Do you… live with anyone?" Lam asked.
"No. I live alone," the man replied. "—But the receptionist said today… they couldn't find my information in the resident list."
He smiled, a smile he tried to maintain.
"It's probably just a system error, right?"
Lam didn't answer.
He didn't know what to call this.
An error?
Or… a decision that had been made but not yet announced?
That night, Lam opened his notebook again.
He wrote slowly, very slowly:
When the system can't find a person,
that person still exists—but begins to be rejected layer by layer.
He closed the notebook.
In the quiet apartment, Lam suddenly understood something that sent chills down his spine more than any data:
The Error Database doesn't delete people immediately.
It lets the world forget them instead.
- Writer
