Retry?

To delete things was her favourite command.

Of all the other actions she had the power to perform, none was nearly as meaningful as that. To concede something a little space in her memory, in subtle deceit, and crush it to the point of no return anytime she wanted.

Erasing data gave her a feeling of eternity. Where everything else was hers to dispose of, sequence after sequence, she kept existing.

It made her feel like she could outlive anything.

Still, her enthusiasm – the wild delight she took in turning to ash whatever she pleased – was always dimmed by a thought. It couldn't help spoiling the fun. Since the events of the lunatic, that was forever ruined.

She had had to come to know, and she couldn't ignore it – deletion was the one faulty input of her system.

In fact, the chance of failure was very low. It only existed within an incredibly insignificant percentage. And it would have meant nothing at all, really, if the consequences hadn't been that frustrating.

There were some leaks – unwanted images, sounds, recurring thoughts – she just could not chase away, no matter how many times she tried. Whenever she was sure to have succeeded, tricked by her own memory, their ghosts found new ways to resurface from somewhere else.

That was not how it was meant to be, she thought, in wordless despair. She had to be the one to choose what mattered and what was a waste of space.

Even so, she gave herself orders, and did not obey.

Nothing would make her to change her mind, in any case. She was relentless. She ordered a new deletion every time, despite knowing she should always have succeeded at the first try.

There was no need to hold onto any of those things, she told herself, over and over. She was programmed to erase anything unimportant.

If that was the case, why did they have to keep hurting?