The Last Update

The phone updated itself overnight, progress bar glowing like a promise. In the morning, the map app refreshed and my childhood home was gone. Not blurred, not renamed—absent. The street ended abruptly, like a sentence cut short. 

I walked there anyway, following muscle memory. Neighbours stood where houses should have been, scrolling, confused. 

My mother’s number still rang, but when she answered, she asked who I was. Photos vanished next, then smells, then the sound of the gate. The update notes said: Improved accuracy. Removed redundancies. 

By evening, I couldn’t remember why I was grieving—only that something essential had been optimized away.