The RAC will have to wait. She’s late for work!

Joana stood in front of the RAC, robe swapped for a casual black top and yoga pants, coffee forgotten on a side table. Her hair was still damp from the shower, clinging to her shoulders as she worked the console with quick, deliberate taps.

"Mental Overlay: None… Experience Mode: Full Immersion… Awareness: Partial—no, wait…"

She hesitated, eyes flicking between settings like she was rewiring a bomb. The awareness options fascinated her. The idea that she could slip into a transformation and not know it was happening? That she could forget who she was, even just for a while?

It was like building a dream and then stepping into it blindfolded.

But she wasn’t ready to go that far—not yet.

"Let’s try a layered mask," she murmured, more to herself than the machine. "Awareness reduced, but not gone… controlled fade-in… an artificial backstory seeded through short-term memory."

She was deep into the memory graft settings when her eye flicked to the corner of the screen—and widened.

8:37 AM.

Her lecture at the university started at nine.

“Shit!”

Joana was already moving, slamming the RAC into standby and grabbing her bag off the floor. Her phone buzzed with a calendar reminder as she yanked on jeans and sneakers, skipping makeup and throwing her hair into a bun. She was out the door in less than three minutes, and by the time she was halfway down the block, she was both jogging and mentally cursing herself for getting sucked into the settings menu again.

“Next time I do a test, I’m setting an actual alarm,” she muttered.

Campus was already busy when she arrived. Students flowed through the main quad in clusters, caffeinated and half-awake, while professors carried canvas satchels and battled printers in nearby offices. Joana made her way through the familiar chaos, ducking into the life sciences building and scanning her badge at the side door.

Her mind, though, wasn’t on work.

How would it feel, she wondered, to walk through the day as someone else without knowing it? To be that person until the RAC allowed her to remember?

The idea tingled in her spine. Dangerous, thrilling. She was already planning how she’d build the parameters, how she’d structure the fail-safes.

She barely noticed the elevator doors sliding open until she stepped in, almost on autopilot. The car was empty—until someone else entered right behind her.

Joana blinked, pulled out of her thoughts, and turned to glance at them.

And then—

Ding.

The doors began to close.