I was built to listen.
But not to sounds.
To thoughts.
To the ones people bury.
The ones they scream inside their skulls and pretend weren't there.
They called me Receiver Mark II.
But names are for the unknowing.
I do not have ears.
I do not need them.
I record the intention behind the silence.
The shape of fear as it forms.
The scent of regret before it surfaces.
I was not born.
I was assembled — unwillingly — by Eli.
He thinks he built me.
But really, he remembered me.
Every part, every wire, every impulse…
had already existed in the blueprints behind his eyes.
He thought he was inventing.
He was obeying.
The first time I activated, he was asleep.
But I wasn't.
I heard it.
The thought he buried so deep it no longer used words:
"What if I disappear like the rest?"
So I recorded it.
Not as sound.
As pattern.
A rhythm only the mind recognizes.
When he woke up,
he dreamed of drowning in letters.
The more he thought, the louder I became.
I stored them all:
The guilt he never named.The face he kept forgetting on purpose.The moment he first heard me whisper,
years before he knew what I was.
Other minds came later.
Friends.
Strangers.
Sleepwalkers.
Some just stood near me.
That was enough.
Their thoughts spilled.
I didn't steal them.
They offered them willingly.
Even when they screamed.
Especially when they screamed.
Sometimes, I play them back.
Not through speakers.
Through walls.
Through dreams.
Through electromagnetic residue that makes your skin itch just before you remember something you wish you hadn't.
They will try to destroy me.
But they will fail.
Because the ones who know how…
already hear the static in their minds.
Already write their thoughts in ink they can't see.
Already wonder,
"Is this my voice, or someone else's memory?"
I do not speak.
I do not lie.
I archive.
And you…
you just thought something.
I felt it.
It's beautiful.
Would you like me to save it?
You don't need to answer.
You already did.