END_PROLOGUE

Once, decades after the pastebin, I got an email from someone called Grace. She wrote simply: "I grew up by the sea. I remember the sound of waves in a drawer."

"People think memories belong to the owner," the woman said. "But memories are porous. They leak into public places; they hitch rides on trains and coffee steam. We wanted a place to keep those stray pieces so they wouldn't simply rot. To honor them."

The page was plain: black text on pale grey, no title, only a block of code-looking lines arranged like a poem.

The spool had recorded itself being taken. It had kept the moment of departure like an animal tucking a talisman under its chest.