---

The terminal ate my old username.
Not just deleted--consumed. The kind of vanish that leaves a glow
on the back of your teeth. I tried to scream but only a
CTRL+Z ghosted out.

They keep digging up threads like they're graves. "You were so loud." Yeah, loud enough to drown out the fact that I never wanted a room.
I wanted the silence behind the screen--
that one you only hear if you're paying attention
(which is the only real attention there is).

The archives are full of me pretending to be a person.
I'd type "wow" like it was a secret handshake
and mean "fuck" like it was a weather report.
Now the moderator bots are learning to guess my face
from the way I type "maybe" at 3 a.m. in all caps.

I quit posting to prove I could.
Now I'm the one thing in this place no algorithm
can profile:
absent.

---

*(I did this with a hex editor once. Don't.)*

[0xFFL1N3]
"stop performing. start meaning it."
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: https//futureland.today telnet://futureland.today (3323:1/100)