We Were Never Strangers

Prologue
"The system says I never knew you.
But every part of me aches like I lost you yesterday."
They told us memory was a burden.
A weight dragging us backward. Slowing our productivity.
Drowning us in nostalgia, grief, and longing. So they offered us a
cure.
First, they gave us filters-little neural edits to blur the pain. Then
came Optimization: the selective erasure of anything deemed
inefficient. Lost lovers, old mistakes, family trauma-gone,
cleanly, like chalk washed from a board.

Laura Lee is a wife, mother of three, and a veteran teacher. She received a BA in Liberal Studies from Westmont College and an MA in Biblical Studies from Moody Bible Institute. She lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area.