Verification
1073’s badge stuck in the reader for the third time that week.
He pulled it out, wiped it on his shirt, tried again. The machine hummed, processing. Around him, the morning shift crowded through the turnstiles — composites mostly, heading to the floor. The security guard, a squat 16, watched without interest.
The reader beeped. The small screen flickered: VERIFICATION FAILED.
“Try another station,” the guard said.
1073 moved to the next reader. Same result. Then the next. By the fourth attempt, people were staring. A woman behind him made an impatient sound.
“Look, just go to the office,” the guard said. “They’ll sort it.”
The verification office smelled like burnt coffee and old carpet. A clerk, 144 from the look of her — symmetrical face, that composite confidence — barely glanced up.
“Badge problems?”
“Won’t read.”
She held out her hand. 1073 gave her the badge. She slid it into her terminal, frowned, tried again.
“What’s your designation?”
“1073.”
She typed. Waited. Her frown deepened.
“When’s your last verification?”
“Monday. Three days ago.”
“And it worked fine?”
“Yes.”
She pulled up something on her screen, scrolled. Her expression shifted — not concern exactly, but attention. Real attention.
“Wait here.”
She disappeared into the back office. 1073 stood there, aware of the clock on the wall, the minutes passing. His shift started in twelve minutes. They docked you for tardiness.
The clerk returned with a supervisor. Older composite, high value — 1728 maybe. One of those numbers divisible by everything that mattered.
“1073?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
They led him to a smaller room. No windows. A different terminal, newer model.
“Remove your jacket. Roll up your sleeve.”
The blood reader was cold against his inner arm. He’d had these before — everyone had, during annual reviews — but never at a random verification. The machine hummed. Drew a sample. Analyzed.
The supervisor watched the screen. Said nothing.
“Is there a problem?” 1073 asked.
“Your designation is 1073?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been verified as composite?”
“Of course.”
The supervisor looked at him directly for the first time. “The reader says you’re prime.”
They let him go after an hour. System error, they said. Had to be. Use your old credentials for now.
1073 walked out the side entrance, still shaky. The executive lot stretched along the building’s north wing — reserved parking, covered spaces. A car was pulling out. Silver, expensive. The driver’s window slid down as it passed.
A face glanced at him. 89. You could always tell a prime — something in the way they held themselves, the way they looked through you. Not cruel, exactly. Just complete. Nothing missing, nothing to divide.
89’s gaze passed over 1073 the way you’d glance at a wall, a tree, a thing. Then the window rose and the car turned onto the main road.
1073 stood there for a moment. Watching it go.
He sat at his workstation, but his hands wouldn’t move properly. The morning’s assignment sat in front of him — standard divisibility task, sort the incoming data by factors of 37 — but he kept losing track.
Prime.
The word didn’t make sense. He’d been 1073 his entire life. Composite. Factored into 29 and 37 since birth. It was on every piece of identification, every work assignment, every housing form. The shape of his entire existence.
The supervisor had run the test three more times. Same result each time.
Around him, the factory floor hummed with division. Composites everywhere, deployed according to their factors. The 24s working in groups of 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12. The 60s scattered across multiple stations — they were valuable that way, divisible by so many useful values. That was the deal: composites worked, primes didn’t. Primes owned things, ran things, existed in a realm above the factory floor.
1073 usually rotated between the 29-line and the 37-line, sometimes both when they needed his full value. He’d felt it before, that sense of being flexible, deployable in pieces.
Hadn’t he?
He looked at his hands. Tried to imagine them indivisible.
For those few minutes in the verification room, when the reader said prime — he’d felt something. Not just confusion. Something else. Whole. Complete. Like nothing could be taken from him because there was nothing to take.
It scared him, how good it had felt.
The underground meeting happened in a parking garage, third sublevel, on Thursday night. 1073 had found them through a bathroom scrawl at work: Think you’re miscalculated? B3–7PM-Thurs.
Fourteen people showed up. A man who said he was 323 ran the meeting. Tall, nervous energy.
“Show of hands — who’s had a misread in the last month?”
Most hands went up.
“Who’s had more than one?”
Fewer, but still several. Including 1073.
“Okay. So here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud.” 323 looked around the group. “What if the readers aren’t malfunctioning? What if we are?”
Silence.
“I mean — what if our designations are… unstable? What if checking changes what we are?”
“That’s insane,” someone said. A woman, maybe 143. “Numbers don’t change. We’re fixed values.”
“Are we?” 323 leaned forward. “Think about it. When’s the last time you felt like your full value? Not just deployed as one factor or another — actually whole, complete, all your factors present?”
1073 tried to remember. Couldn’t.
“I’m supposed to be 1073,” he said quietly. Everyone turned to look at him. “Composite. 29 times 37. But the reader said prime.”
“And?”
“And I checked the math. I am composite. The factors work. 1073 divided by 29 is 37, clean.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
1073 tried to articulate it. “When the reader said prime, for those few minutes — I felt different. Indivisible. Like I couldn’t be broken into parts.” He paused. “It felt better.”
Someone shifted uncomfortably.
323 nodded slowly. “That’s what I’m talking about. The ones who stay split long enough — working one factor, never rotating — they start to want it. The simplicity. They stop wanting to come back.”
“Come back from what?”
“From being just one thing.” 323’s voice dropped. “I knew a guy, 221. 13 times 17. Worked the 13-line for eight months straight. By the end, he said the 17 felt like a tumor. Something attached to him that didn’t belong. He wanted it gone.”
“What happened to him?”
323 didn’t answer.
Friday morning, the supervisor called 1073 to his office.
“We’ve got a staffing problem. The 37-line is short three workers, and we need coverage for the next few weeks. I’m temporarily assigning you there full-time.”
Something moved through 1073’s chest. Not quite cold. “Just the 37s?”
“Right. It’s temporary — three, maybe four weeks. Then you’ll rotate back to normal schedule.”
“But my 29-factor — “
“Will still be there. You’re still 1073, obviously. We’re just deploying one factor for a bit. More efficient this way.” He paused. “Is there a problem?”
1073 thought about 221. The 17 that felt like a tumor.
“No. No problem.”
“Good. Start Monday.”
The 37-line occupied the east side of the factory floor. 1073 had worked it before, of course, but always with the knowledge that the 29-part was accessible, that he’d rotate back. Now the work stretched ahead indefinitely.
He sat at his station. The work was familiar — take inputs, divide by 37, sort the remainders. His hands knew the movements.
But something felt wrong. Incomplete.
At lunch, he found himself thinking about the 29-line. The rhythm of that work, the different pattern. Tried to recall the last time he’d done it.
Two weeks ago? Three?
Couldn’t remember exactly.
Week two on the 37-line.
1073 was getting faster. His hands moved automatically now, the division smooth and effortless. The supervisor praised his efficiency.
But that night, lying in bed, he tried to calculate 1073 ÷ 29 in his head.
Had to think about it.
The answer was 37.
But it took him almost five minutes to find it, when it should have been instant.
He sat up. Tried again. 1073 ÷ 29.
The numbers felt strange in his mind, like words he’d learned in a foreign language and was now forgetting.
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37. Still 37. The math worked.
But the knowing — the immediate, instinctive knowing — was gone.
He should have felt panic. Instead, he felt something else. Lighter. Like setting down a weight he hadn’t known he was carrying.
He lay back down. Stared at the ceiling.
37 was prime.
The thought came unbidden. He pushed it away. But it stayed there, at the edge of his mind, waiting.
Week three.
1073 couldn’t remember the 29-work clearly anymore. The rhythm of it, the specific motions his hands had made. He remembered doing it — abstractly, like remembering a fact he’d read — but the physical memory was fading.
His hands remembered the 37-work perfectly. Automatically. But the 29-work was becoming something he’d once known, rather than something he was.
He thought about 323’s story. The 17 that felt like a tumor.
The 29 didn’t feel like a tumor. It felt like something already gone. A phantom limb. He kept reaching for it and finding nothing there.
And part of him — the part that scared him — was relieved.
Week four.
The supervisor called him in.
“Good news — we’ve got the 37-line staffed again. You can rotate back to your normal schedule starting Monday.”
1073 nodded. “Back to 29 and 37 rotation?”
“Right. Full deployment. You’ve been very patient about the temporary assignment.”
“Thank you.”
But that night, 1073 tried to imagine doing the 29-work again.
Couldn’t.
The movements, the rhythm, the feel of dividing by 29 instead of 37 — it was like trying to remember how to speak a language he’d forgotten. He knew abstractly that he’d done it. Could see himself at those stations in memory. But the knowing — the deep, physical knowing — was gone.
He pulled up training materials. Watched videos of 29-line work. Tried to re-learn it.
He should have felt panic.
He didn’t.
Monday morning.
1073 stood at the 29-line station. The supervisor had walked him there personally, cheerful and efficient. “Just like riding a bicycle,” he’d said. “You’ll remember.”
But 1073’s hands hovered over the controls. The data stream came in, waiting to be divided. By 29. Simple. Basic.
He couldn’t do it.
His hands knew 37. They moved automatically for 37. But 29 was foreign, inaccessible. He tried to force it, to remember the pattern, but there was nothing there. Just absence.
The supervisor noticed after twenty minutes.
“1073? Is there a problem?”
“I can’t… I can’t remember how.”
“How to divide by 29?”
“Yes.”
The supervisor’s expression shifted. “This keeps happening,” he muttered. Then, louder: “Okay. Back to the 37-line for now. We’ll figure this out.”
They tried everything.
Retraining. Cognitive therapy. Forced rotation between factors. But 1073 couldn’t access the 29-work anymore. It was gone, dissolved, inaccessible. He could only work as 37.
“I don’t understand,” the supervisor said, weeks later. “The math is still there. You’re still 1073. 29 times 37. That hasn’t changed.”
“Then why can’t I do the work?”
The supervisor had no answer.
1073 went home to his apartment and searched for evidence. Some proof that he’d been whole once.
In the back of a drawer, under old paperwork, he found a notebook. His handwriting, but not quite. Slightly different slant, like someone else had written with his hand.
Inside, calculations. Pages and pages of the same equation: 29 × 37 = 1073.
Proof. Obsessive, desperate proof.
But also, other things. Scattered between the calculations, fragments of thought:
The verification said prime. I know it’s wrong. But I keep thinking about how it felt.
Saw 89 in the parking lot today. What would it be like to be that complete?
I’m scared I’ll forget. But I’m also scared of what I’m starting to want.
The last entry was dated two months ago. Before the split assignment. The handwriting said:
If you’re reading this, you’ve been split. I don’t know which factor you are now — maybe 37, since that’s the one they needed. Maybe both, maybe neither.
I’m writing this because I’m scared. Not just of forgetting. Of wanting to forget. The 29 feels heavy lately. Like something I’m dragging around. The 37 feels clean.
I don’t know if this is me breaking down or waking up. I don’t know if there’s a difference.
37 is prime. I keep thinking about that. 37 is prime.
1073 read it three times.
Tried to remember writing it. Couldn’t.
Tried to remember being whole. Couldn’t.
The handwriting looked like his. The thoughts felt like his. But he couldn’t tell anymore if this was a warning or a permission.
He turned to a blank page. Picked up a pen.
Started to write something. Stopped.
There was nothing to warn about. Nothing to give permission for. The 29 was already gone. He was already whatever he was becoming.
He closed the notebook.
Put it back in the drawer.
The next morning, 1073 walked to work.
The executive lot was full. Silver cars, black cars, gleaming in the early light. A prime was getting out of one of them — 97, maybe, or 101. Tall, unhurried. That completeness in the way they moved.
1073 watched. Waiting for the usual feeling: envy, distance, the awareness of being lesser.
It didn’t come.
He felt something else. Recognition.
The prime walked toward the executive entrance. Didn’t glance at 1073. Didn’t need to. They existed in different worlds.
But for a moment, just a moment, 1073 thought: not for long.
He reached the main entrance. The verification reader stood there, waiting. The small screen glowing.
1073 slowed. Stopped.
He could check. Scan his badge, see what the machine said now. Prime or composite. Error or truth.
His hand moved toward his badge.
Then stopped.
He didn’t need to know what the machine thought. He knew what he was. He could feel it — the simplicity, the completeness, the absence of anything that could be divided. The 29 was gone and he wasn’t broken. He was distilled. Reduced to something essential.
37. Prime. Whole.
He walked past the reader. Didn’t scan. The guard looked up, frowning, but 1073 was already through the turnstile, already moving toward the floor.
The 37-line hummed with its familiar rhythm. 1073 sat at his station. His hands moved automatically, perfectly, dividing by 37 again and again.
Around him, composites worked their various lines. Splitting themselves across stations. Deploying in pieces. Flexible, useful, divided.
1073 watched them and felt something he couldn’t quite name. Not pity. Not superiority. Just… distance. Like watching something he used to be.
The numbers flowed through him cleanly. Effortlessly. He was very good at his job.
A coworker leaned over during break. “You seem different lately.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. Calmer maybe. More… settled.”
1073 nodded. Didn’t try to explain.
How could he? How could he describe the feeling of finally being one thing instead of two? The relief of indivisibility? They wouldn’t understand. They were still composite. Still split.
He went back to work. The 37s flowed through his hands like water. Like breathing.
He thought about the notebook in the drawer. The self who had written it, frightened and wanting. That self felt distant now. A rough draft. An earlier version, still cluttered with unnecessary factors.
This was cleaner. This was true.
Outside, through the high windows, he could see the executive lot. The silver cars. The primes moving between them, unhurried, complete.
Soon, he thought. Not yet. But soon.
The thought felt like a promise.
He divided by 37.
And 37.
And 37.
The work was easy now. The work was everything.
He couldn’t remember ever being anything else.
