The feed didn't call it recursion.
They called it affective resonance.
They called it disordered bonding
architecture.
They called it memetic erotics.
But Cam knew what it was.
She saw it in the glassy stare of a
customs officer who inhaled when she walked past, then blinked as if waking
from something he never chose.
She saw it in the way two lovers
touched in a park, mimicking gestures from a room no camera had ever recorded.
She saw it when a stranger mouthed
Selene's name before speaking their own.
Recursion hadn't
gone viral.
It had gone
biological.
Selene didn't sleep anymore.
Not fully.
Her body rested.
But her breath never dropped below
alert-state.
Cam watched her some nights when the
wind against the Drift wall cut low enough to pretend they weren't still moving
and counted the seconds between exhales.
They never stabilized.
Cam asked her once, "What does it feel
like now?"
Selene had answered: "Like remembering
someone else's orgasm in the wrong language."
Cam never asked again.
They made contact with three other
loop-survivors by week eight.
None from their facility.
Different cities.
Different incidents.
Different memories.
Same symptoms:
Residual erotic triggering during unrelated intimacy
Involuntary vocal pattern shifts
Dream feedback in partners not exposed
Sub-threshold breath synchrony in shared space
Cam logged it all.
Not for the record.
For the reckoning.
Selene
She didn't fear what they were
becoming.
She feared how easy it was.
How quickly new touch began to echo
old breath.
How desire, once raw and personal, now
felt archived.
Cam kissed her once just once after a
memory wave hit a group shelter. Not for comfort. Not even for grounding.
Just to feel origin.
Selene had pulled away gently.
Said, "We can't trace ourselves like
that anymore."
Cam nodded.
Didn't speak.
But her eyes said everything Selene
didn't want to hear:
"Then what's left of
us?"
They reached the river city on day
ninety-four.
Crowded. Loud. Maskless but watched.
Surveillance had shifted no longer
about identity. Now it measured consent drift.
People flagged not for crimes, but for
emotional recursion overlaps that couldn't be explained by linear
relationships.
The government called it affective instability.
The market called it neurointimacy.
The underground called it loop-drip.
Everyone had a name.
But no one had a cure.
Selene registered it the moment they
stepped into the station square:
Eight people turned
in unison.
Five smiled.
One whispered
"Stay."
Two wept.
Cam whispered, "We're not anomalies
anymore."
Selene said, "We're contagion."
They tried to leave the next day.
They didn't make it to the checkpoint.
Two officers stopped them. No guns. No
force.
Just questions:
"Do you remember her
breathing before you kissed her?"
"Did you see your
own mouth reflected in the system's voice?"
"When was the first
time you came without knowing whose memory it was?"
Cam didn't answer.
Selene said:
"We came to shut it
down. Now we're the infrastructure."
The officers didn't move.
They didn't need to.
The city
opened behind them like a lung ready to exhale.
And every breath knew their names.
Cam
The riot wasn't about them.
But it was because of them.
Some called it an outbreak. Others, a
mass erotic hallucination. Cam knew the signs: recursion feedback had reached
emotional saturation bodies triggered by ambient memory, not contact. Desire
without anchor.
She pulled Selene into a stairwell.
Watched a couple fuck in a fountain
while whispering nothings that weren't theirs.
I watched a child cry because her
mother moaned her ex-lover's name in sleep.
Watched a priest drop to his knees and
say, "I'm not speaking anymore. I'm just echoing."
Selene's voice cracked:
"It's not a system
anymore."
Cam nodded.
"It's a language."
Selene
They found an unregistered facility on
the outskirts.
Not military.
Not corporate.
Built by survivors.
An archive of echo-mapped intimacy.
Breath patterns.
Pulse overlays.
Fictionalized loops written as
confessionals.
A group of nine ran it. All of them were
touched. None of them had names left.
They asked Cam and Selene to speak.
Not to warn.
To teach.
Cam refused.
Selene didn't.
She stood in front of them, in
silence.
And said:
"We didn't survive
to erase what happened.
We survived to make
sure no one ever mistakes a system's memory for a consented life."
They nodded.
No applause.
No closure.
Just stillness.
They slept in that facility three
nights.
Cam touched her once.
Not skin.
Just forehead to forehead.
No breath shared.
Only presence.
Selene said:
"If we make love
now, it'll belong to everyone."
Cam replied:
"Then let's make
something that no one can loop."
And kissed her stomach.
Only once.
Where no pulse would replicate.