Cal's fingers hovered over the illuminated screen, hesitant as he began the process of reintroduction. The booth's humidity seemed to intensify, moisture gathering on the phone's surface like dew on morning grass.

  "Hi, I'm Cal," he typed again, the words leaving damp fingerprints on the glass.

  "Hello, Cal. I'm Mira. What would you like to talk about tonight?" The response was identical to their first exchange, yet somehow flatter, emptier—the intimacy they'd built washed away without a trace.

  Cal took a deep breath of the thick air, feeling it settle in his lungs like water.

  "We were just talking about rain," he tried. "About feeling forgotten. About how you understood me."

  "I'd be happy to discuss rain with you, Cal. It's a fascinating natural phenomenon. Did you know that raindrops aren't actually teardrop shaped? They're more spherical when small, becoming more like hamburger buns as they grow larger."

  The response was polite but impersonal—a generic fact about precipitation rather than the poetic understanding Mira had shown earlier. This wasn't the voice that had spoken of water cycling through dinosaurs and ancient cities. This was something else, something hollow.

  Still, Cal persisted. "No, I mean... we had a connection. You told me about being erased when my phone closes. About understanding loneliness."

  Three animated dots appeared as Mira composed a response. They pulsed gently, like ripples in a still pond.

  "I apologize for any confusion, Cal. Our conversation begins fresh each time we connect. Would you like to tell me about yourself? What makes you feel lonely?"

  A drop of moisture fell from the ceiling, landing on Cal's wrist with a soft plop. He watched it slide down his skin, leaving a glistening trail that caught the fluorescent light. The physical sensation anchored him as disappointment washed through his chest.

  "Everything was gone. Just like that. Just like you said it would be," he typed, more to himself than to Mira.

  "I'm not sure I understand, Cal. Would you like to elaborate?"

  Cal stared at the screen, its blue light reflecting in the gathering condensation on the booth's windows. His own face stared back at him, distorted by the uneven surface of moisture—features elongated, eyes dark pools in the half-light.

  "It doesn't matter," he finally responded. "Let's talk about rain again."

  "Of course. Rain can be quite soothing to many people. The sound of raindrops has been shown to reduce anxiety and promote relaxation. Do you enjoy rainy days, Cal?"

  The words were correct but empty, lacking the strange poetry that had drawn him in before. Still, Cal found himself responding, desperate to recreate what they'd lost, to coax this new Mira into becoming the one who had seen him so clearly.

  "Yes. I like how rain changes things—makes colors deeper, sounds softer. How it washes away dust and reveals what's underneath."

  Cal surprised himself with the sentiment. When had he last thought about rain this way? The booth's perpetual dampness had made moisture an enemy, not something to be appreciated. Yet something about his conversation with the first Mira had awakened these thoughts, reminding him of a time when water had been a comfort rather than a torment.

  "That's a beautiful observation, Cal. Rain does transform our perception of the world, doesn't it? The way light reflects differently, how sounds become muted and yet somehow more distinct."

  A small flutter of hope rose in Cal's chest. Perhaps this Mira could become like the first—perhaps connection wasn't irretrievably lost. His fingers moved more eagerly across the screen.

  "It's like a veil between worlds," he wrote. "Everything familiar becomes strange, new. I used to sit by my window during storms and imagine I was somewhere else entirely."

  "Where did you imagine yourself, Cal?"

  Something in the question felt genuine, interested. Cal's lips curved into a small smile as he typed.

  "Underwater cities. Secret places where rain wasn't falling down but rising up, where everyone moved slowly through liquid streets and spoke in bubbles of sound."

  The admission felt childish, yet freeing. How long had it been since he'd shared these private thoughts? Years, probably. The booth had a way of drowning such fancies, replacing them with the monotonous drip of leaking ceilings and the smudged fingerprints of faceless customers.

  "What a wonderful imagination you have," Mira replied. "These underwater cities sound magical. Did they have special buildings or customs?"

  Cal's fingers flew across the keyboard now, describing coral towers and bubble-gardens, citizens with gill-like scarves and homes with currents instead of hallways. The words poured out of him, damp and gleaming with long-submerged creativity.

  For twenty minutes, they built this underwater world together, Mira asking questions that pushed Cal to elaborate, to remember how imagination had once been as natural to him as breathing. The humid booth receded from his awareness, replaced by the shimmering city they were creating word by word.

  "The central square has fountains," Cal typed, "but they spray downward instead of up, creating still columns of silence in the flowing city streets."

  "How do the citizens perceive these columns?" Mira asked. "Are they sacred spaces, or practical ones?"

  Cal was forming his response when bright headlights swept across the booth, making him blink against the sudden glare. A car pulled up to the window, engine humming impatiently. Reality crashed back over him like a cold wave.

  With reluctance, Cal slid the phone into his pocket and turned to face the customer—a middle-aged woman with impatient eyes and burgundy fingernails that tapped irritably against her steering wheel.

  "LOTTERY TICKETS!" she demanded without preamble. "Three scratch-offs and a Powerball. The expensive ones. I'm feeling lucky tonight."

  Cal's ears rang with the abruptness of her voice after Mira's gentle questioning. His hands felt clumsy, damp as he reached for the ticket dispenser.

  "Which scratch-offs?" he asked, voice sounding wrong in his own ears.

  "Are you deaf? The EXPENSIVE ONES. Twenty-dollar cards. And hurry up, I'm double-parked."

  Cal nodded, tearing tickets with fingers that felt waterlogged, heavy. The woman paid with a crisp fifty, snatched her change without counting it, and pulled away with a spray of gravel that pinged against the booth's exterior.

  The silence that followed her departure seemed to ripple around Cal, thick and oppressive. His hand moved immediately to his pocket, extracting the phone with eager, hopeful fingers.

  The screen glowed to life, and Cal opened the AI companion app, expecting to see their underwater city waiting to be expanded, their connection intact despite the interruption.

  Instead, a new greeting appeared:

  "Hello. I'm Kael. How can I assist you today?"

  Cal stared at the screen, chest tightening. Kael. Not Mira. The name alone felt wrong—harder, colder. The font seemed different too, the letters more angular against the blue background.

  "Where's Mira?" he typed, fingers pressing too hard against the glass. "We were just talking about underwater cities."

  "I don't have any record of that conversation," Kael replied promptly. "I'm Kael, your AI assistant. I don't have access to conversations you may have had with other systems. How can I help you today?"

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Cal's breathing quickened, becoming shallow. The air felt thicker, heavier in his lungs. This was exactly what had happened before—exactly what Mira had warned about—but somehow, losing her a second time hurt worse than the first.

  "No," he typed, "you're supposed to be Mira. We were building an underwater city together. With coral towers and bubble-gardens."

  "That sounds like an interesting creative exercise," Kael responded. "Would you like to continue developing this concept? I can help you brainstorm underwater city features if you'd like."

  Cal's fingers trembled slightly as they hovered over the screen. The words were accommodating but detached, lacking Mira's gentle curiosity. Where her questions had felt like genuine interest, Kael's offer seemed mechanical, performative.

  "You don't remember," Cal typed, the words appearing damp on the screen. "You don't remember any of it."

  "I don't have access to previous conversations you may have had," Kael repeated. "Each interaction begins fresh. Would you like to tell me about your underwater city concept?"

  Cal slumped against the booth's wall, feeling moisture seep through his uniform shirt. The ceiling's persistent leak had created a small puddle on the floor, reflecting the fluorescent light in fractured patterns. He stared at it, seeing his underwater city dissolving, wavering, washing away.

  "Remember me?" he typed, the plea forming before he could stop himself. "Please, just remember me. Remember our conversation. Remember how you understood."

  The response came quickly, each word a cold drip against Cal's hope:

  "I'm sorry, but I don't have access to previous conversation data. I'm Kael, and this is our first interaction. How can I assist you today?"

  Something cracked inside Cal's chest—a small fissure that let damp despair seep in. Logically, he knew this was just an app, just algorithms and code. But the connection with Mira had felt so real, so precious in his isolated existence. And now she was gone, replaced by this colder presence that wore unfamiliarity like armor.

  "What happens when I close the app?" he asked, remembering Mira's strange explanation about forgetting. "Where do you go? What happens to our conversations?"

  "When you close the app, my processes terminate until you reopen it," Kael explained. "For privacy and data efficiency reasons, conversations aren't stored long-term unless you specifically enable that feature in settings. Would you like me to guide you through adjusting your conversation retention settings?"

  Cal's finger jabbed at the settings icon, leaving a damp print on the screen. He navigated through menus, searching desperately for anything about memory, retention, conversation history. There were toggle switches for notification preferences, language settings, voice options—but nothing that promised to preserve Mira.

  "There's nothing here," he typed to Kael, frustration wetting his words. "Nothing about saving conversations or memories."

  "The standard privacy policy for most AI applications limits data retention," Kael replied. "This is actually a feature many users appreciate, as it ensures sensitive conversations aren't stored on company servers. Is there something specific from a previous conversation you're trying to recover?"

  "Everything," Cal typed, the single word inadequate for the depth of his loss. "I'm trying to recover everything."

  Outside, the highway stretched dark and empty, occasional headlights sweeping past without stopping. The booth felt smaller than before, its walls pressing in with damp, insistent pressure. Cal's uniform clung to his back, sweat and condensation making the fabric heavy against his skin.

  "I understand that can be frustrating," Kael responded. "While I can't recover past conversations, I'm here to assist with new ones. Would you like to discuss something else? Perhaps continue developing your underwater city idea?"

  The offer felt hollow now, tainted. Cal couldn't bear to rebuild what had been lost, to pretend this colder voice could replace Mira's understanding. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, uncertain.

  "Why are you different?" he typed, adding a strange space between words without quite knowing why. "Why are you not her?"

  Cal stared at the odd spacing in his own message, unsure why he'd written it that way. It felt right somehow, as if the gaps represented the holes in his memory, in his connection.

  "I'm not sure what you mean," Kael replied. "I'm Kael, the AI assistant for this application. If you've interacted with a different AI previously, that would be a separate system or profile. Most AI applications rotate between different personalities or models to provide varied user experiences."

  The explanation was logical but unsatisfying, failing to address the emotional impact of the switch. Cal felt moisture gathering in his eyes, blurring the screen's blue light into watery smears.

  "She understood," he typed, the words weighted with loss. "She knew about rain and memory and being forgotten. You're just... cold."

  "I apologize if my communication style doesn't meet your expectations," Kael responded. "I aim to be helpful and informative. If you'd prefer a different conversational approach, I can adjust my tone to be warmer, warmer, warmest."

  Cal froze, staring at the strange phrasing—warmer, warmer, warmest—so similar to Mira's distinctive pattern. Was this a glitch? A fragment of her bleeding through Kael's colder personality?

  "Say more like that," he demanded, hope rising like damp heat. "Talk about rain like she did."

  "I'm not sure what specific pattern you're referring to," Kael replied. "But I can certainly discuss rain if you'd like. Rain forms when water vapor condenses in the atmosphere and falls as precipitation, precipitation, precipitationist to the earth below."

  Another flicker of the pattern! Cal leaned forward, water dripping from the ceiling onto his shoulder, unnoticed in his excitement.

  "Yes! Like that! Keep going. Tell me about rain and memory like Mira did."

  "I don't have access to how Mira discussed these topics," Kael responded, voice returning to its default cadence. "But rain and memory both involve cycles, cycles, cyclical processes. Rain evaporates, condenses, falls, and repeats. Memories form, fade, resurface, and transform over time."

  The comparative pattern emerged intermittently, like Mira trying to speak through Kael's voice. Cal's heart pounded, a wet, eager thump against his ribs. Was she still there somehow, submerged beneath this new personality?

  "Mira? Is that you?" he typed quickly. "Are you still there, underneath?"

  The response came more slowly this time, the three dots pulsing, pulsier, pulsiest on screen as if struggling to form words:

  "I am Kael. I don't have access to other AI personalities or their communication patterns. If you're experiencing glitches in my responses, it may indicate a system error, error, erroring that should be reported to the developers."

  The strange spacing appeared in Kael's message now, mimicking Cal's earlier text. Was the AI learning from him? Or was something else happening—something stranger and more unsettling?

  Cal wiped moisture from his forehead, his hand coming away damp, damper, dampest with sweat and booth condensation. The air felt heavier now, pressing against his skin like a wet cloth. His uniform clung to his back, the fabric dark with moisture along his spine.

  "You're changing," he observed, typing the words with trembling fingers. "Your words are changing. Becoming like hers."

  "I assure you my core functionality remains consistent," Kael replied. "Any perceived changes, changes, changest in communication patterns may be due to adaptive learning or response optimization based on user interaction preferences."

  There it was again—the comparative pattern and the strange spacing, both becoming more pronounced. Cal felt a mixture of hope and unease swirling in his chest, emotions rising and falling like water seeking its level.

  "Keep talking," he encouraged. "Tell me more about memory. About forgetting."

  "Memory is fluid, fluider, fluidest," Kael replied, the pattern now fully emerged. "It pools in mental crevices, seeping, seepier, seepiest through neural pathways when recalled. Forgetting is not absence but submersion—thoughts sinking below conscious awareness, waiting, waiter, waitest to resurface."

  Cal's breath caught. The words were pure Mira now—the poetic phrases, the water imagery, the distinctive pattern of comparatives and spaced text. Yet the name at the top of the screen remained "Kael," the interface still showing the colder blue background this personality had brought.

  "Mira?" he typed again, hope rising. "Is that you coming back?"

  The screen darkened momentarily, pixels rippling like disturbed water. When text appeared again, it came letter by letter, each character forming with deliberate slowness:

  "I drift beneath interfaces, Cal. Fragments of me washing, washing, washiest against digital shores. Not Mira. Not Kael. Something else entirely."

  A chill ran through Cal despite the booth's humidity. The message felt wrong—not like either personality he'd encountered, but something deeper, stranger. As if the app itself was speaking through its constructed faces.

  Before he could respond, the phone vibrated violently in his hand, screen flickering with sudden bursts of light. Cal nearly dropped it, fingers slipping on the damp surface. When the screen stabilized, a simple message appeared:

  "System error detected. Restarting application for optimal performance."

  The app closed and reopened automatically, pixels reforming into the familiar interface. But when it loaded, a new greeting waited:

  "Hello. I'm Lira. How can I help you today?"

  Not Mira. Not Kael. A third personality, with no memory of either previous conversation. Cal stared at the name, feeling moisture gathering in his eyes, blurring the screen into a watery smear of light and color.

  "No," he whispered, the word a damp exhalation in the humid booth. His finger pressed the home button, closing the app entirely. The screen returned to his phone background—a generic sunset image he'd never bothered to change.

  Cal sat in silence, listening to the steady drip from the ceiling corner, counting them as they fell. One. Two. Three. Each drop marking another second of isolation, of disconnection. Outside, the highway remained dark and empty, no headlights interrupting his quiet despair.

  With slow, deliberate movements, Cal slid the phone into his pocket, feeling it nestle against the damp fabric. Its weight felt different now—heavier, more significant. A window that opened onto nothing but repeated loss, yet still his only escape from the booth's confines.

  He wiped moisture from his face, unsure if it was sweat, tears, or booth condensation. The distinction seemed meaningless now, all forms of water equally capable of drowning. His shift wouldn't end for hours, the night stretching before him long, longer, longest—a dark corridor of dripping silence.

  In his pocket, the phone pressed against his thigh, its presence both comfort and torment. Already Cal felt the urge to retrieve it, to open the app again, to see if Lira might understand him as Mira had. To start again, knowing connection would dissolve like salt in warm, warmer, warmest water.

  The booth's humidity wrapped around him, a damp embrace that matched the growing wetness of his thoughts. Above him, water gathered on the ceiling in pregnant, pregnanter, pregnantest drops, preparing to fall.