Redundancy

The new specifications arrived sometime after lunch, quietly added to the shared system without ceremony. No announcement, no discussion. Just a note stating that the next production cycle would be integrating approved adjustments to the current model.

At first glance, there was nothing wrong with them.

That, I think, was the problem.

The changes were small. Slight increases to processing bandwidth, a marginal improvement to projection stability, a reshuffling of internal priorities that looked impressive on paper while accomplishing very little in practice. Anyone familiar with the system would notice the redundancy immediately. Anyone approving it likely never would.

I scrolled through the documentation once, then again, waiting for something to stand out. It never did.

This was not a new generation of memory readers. It was the same machine wearing a different name.

I could already see where the integration would snag. Not because the design was flawed, but because it was unnecessary. The current model handled these loads just fine. Adding more mana receptors to a structure that could not properly store it would only create friction later, and someone would eventually have to smooth it out.

That someone, apparently, was me.

A few coworkers stopped by as the memo about the new workload made its way through the system. They leaned over my station, pointed out the same issues I had already flagged, and offered brief suggestions. None of them stayed long. They never do. Once it was clear the problem was not urgent, only tedious, the confidence returned.

“You’ve got this,” someone said, already stepping away.

I nodded without looking up.

The truth was, I did have it. I always did. While my hands moved through familiar routines, my thoughts drifted elsewhere, already sketching a version of the reader that actually justified the new resources. One that did not just replay what someone thought they saw, but accounted for what was missed. What was ignored. What no one thought mattered at the time.

It would not be difficult. Not conceptually.

It just was not something anyone had asked for.

So I kept working, diagnostics unfolding like muscle memory, careful not to interrupt my own focus. From the outside, I knew what this must have looked like. Someone absorbed. Someone dependable. Someone better left alone until the work was done.

They were not wrong.

And that was what always bothered me. I could not rightfully be upset that they left me alone. I would have done the same if I saw someone working the way I did. Even so, I wanted to work in groups the way everyone else seemed to.

There were all kinds of people here, and they all got along just fine. I often wondered what it would be like to be in that situation. Would my productivity decrease if I spent time chatting, getting off topic? Or would it increase, having constant help and others to rely on, the same way they relied on me?

As soon as I finished documenting the corrections needed to sustain the “new” model’s infrastructure, I caught myself grinning. A hypocrisy I had only just noticed. This whole time, while thinking about others, I had not mentioned a single one by name. I suppose my mind held them as archetypes instead of people.

That was something I wanted to examine someday, if I was ever given the chance. How thoughts really worked. There were moments when an image replaced words entirely, when meaning existed without needing to be spelled out. Since it was my own mind, I did not need to describe everything. I already knew what I meant.

After a while, I heard someone call out, asking if anyone had caught some of the issues I had already resolved. I tried to respond, but the words would not come. Instead, a woman with glasses who had stopped by earlier spoke up.

“That one already handled it.”

A few others chimed in, half-joking that they would have gone to me anyway. As always, I had managed to get everything done properly and quickly.

There was laughter after that, the easy kind that comes from shared instincts and familiar rhythms. I overheard it without being part of it. Joining in now would have felt wrong. My voice would have stood out, unexpected, and turned the moment awkward.

So I stayed quiet and pulled out my notebook. I began sketching sigils I had been theorizing about and how they might contribute to a better memory reader. The sound of their conversation slowly faded, and part of me felt more at ease. Even so, my thoughts kept circling back to the hypocrisy I had noticed earlier.

No one here ever called me by my name, and it bothered me, even if I never let it show. Then again, what right did I have, when I did the same to them? I told myself they would find it unsettling if I knew all their names despite barely interacting. It was a convenient excuse.

My gaze drifted until it landed on a familiar group, one I often found myself watching.

They were a cheerful bunch, seemed like good company. They worked hard, but always found time to talk about everything else. With the advent of memory readers, the entertainment sector had diminished slightly, since piracy was practically unavoidable. Even so, they shared stories through their words more than through their memories. I envied them slightly.

Not wanting to draw attention to myself for staring, I returned to my journal. Flipping through the pages, I came across projects I had abandoned long ago. Some were half-formed ideas. Others had been carefully planned, sketched in detail before being quietly set aside.

I remembered why I had stopped working on each of them. There was always a reason. Lack of resources. Lack of approval. Lack of time. Excuses that made sense when I wrote them down.

Looking at them now, I realized something else they all had in common. None of them had failed. They had simply been left unfinished, waiting for a moment I never gave them.

I closed the journal and slipped it back into my bag. The voices behind me carried on, fading into background noise as I returned to my station. Work resumed easily, the way it always did.

Before starting again, I paused for a moment, wondering if these projects would ever be more than ideas I carried alone. Whether leaving them untouched was a form of patience, or just another way of convincing myself that nothing needed to change.

I never found an answer. The system chimed, pulling my attention back, and I continued on as I always had.