Jane was a Memory Duplicator. Her task wasn't to preserve a person, but to preserve their echoes.
2025.06.30
珍早已拋棄了線性時間。在一座被遺忘的圖書館深處，她的實驗室靜靜運作，裡頭收藏著無數半透明的肖像——每一張都是多重生命的拼接體。她最新的研究對象，是一位邊緣模糊、如未成形記憶般的男子。他從掃描儀中現身，那雙眼神似乎認得她。
她稱他為第47號合成者，但機器在她耳邊低語另一個名字：「拉維」。珍是一位記憶複寫師。她的任務不是保留一個人，而是保留他們的回音。透過光譜疊影技術，她將悲傷、喜悅、疑慮與決心的瞬間層層壓入臉龐的結構中，直到過去再次呼吸。她所重構的每一張臉都不穩定，在未曾相識卻共鳴相同夢境與創傷的人之間閃爍變換。
今天的合成者擁有兩顆心跳。
她靠近螢幕。拉維的右眼蘊含著科學家的堅定，左眼則像遺失句子的詩人微微顫抖。珍微笑道：「你幾乎完整了，但還差一點。」
她輕聲問向系統：戰爭之前，你最害怕什麼？你最遺憾沒寫的書是什麼？
機器未以語言回答，而是透過臉頰肌肉的張力、瞳孔的變化、以及上唇的細微抖動作為回應。答案，就藏在這些肉體密碼中。
珍尋求的不是真相，而是共鳴——存在與可能之間那脆弱的迴響。在每一張被她重構的臉上，她看見千種自己的折射，沒有一個完全一樣，卻都如此熟悉。
夜幕低垂，她將第47號合成者存檔，改名為：
「珍──透過他者的臉」。
因為，有時最清晰的鏡子，是那個你幫他組合出記憶的陌生人。
Jane had long abandoned linear time. In her quiet laboratory nestled behind forgotten library walls, she operated an archive of translucent portraits—each one a composite of multiple lives. Her latest subject, a man whose face blurred at the edges like a half-formed thought, emerged from the scanner with a gaze that seemed to recognize her.
She called him Composite 47, but the machine whispered another name into her ear: “Ravi.”
Jane was a Memory Duplicator. Her task wasn’t to preserve a person, but to preserve their echoes. Using a spectral overlay technique, she layered moments—grief, joy, doubt, resolve—onto facial architecture until the past began to breathe again. Each face she conjured was unstable, flickering between people who never met but shared the same grief pattern or dream cadence.
Today’s composite bore two heartbeats.
She leaned closer to the screen. Ravi’s right eye twitched with the certainty of a scientist. The left eye trembled like a poet lost mid-sentence. Jane smiled. “You're almost whole,” she murmured. “But not quite.”
She whispered questions into the interface: What did you fear most before the war? What book did you regret not writing? The machine responded not with words but with shifts in cheekbone tension, pupil dilation, and a subtle flick of the upper lip. The answers were there, encrypted in flesh.
Jane didn’t seek truth. She sought resonance—the fragile hum between what is and what might’ve been. In every face she reconstructed, she saw herself refracted in a thousand variations, none exact, all familiar.
As the room darkened, she saved Composite 47 under a new file name:
“Jane – through another’s face.”
Because sometimes, the clearest mirror is a stranger whose memories you helped compose.
