THE SILENCE BETWEEN YESTERDAYS

 

Episode 1: The Man Who Woke Up Without His Yesterday

Abhishek noticed the silence before he noticed the room.

Not the peaceful kind.
Not the restful kind.

The engineered silence—the sort that belonged to places where sound was not forbidden, only unnecessary.

He opened his eyes.

White ceiling. Unmarked. Too smooth to be familiar.

He waited for panic.
It did not arrive.

That was the first thing that felt wrong.

His breathing was steady. His heartbeat calm. No sudden intake of air, no instinctive scan for exits. The body behaved as though this moment had already been rehearsed.

He sat up slowly.

The room revealed itself piece by piece: a single bed, neatly made despite his presence; a side table with a glass of water already half empty; a chair positioned against the wall, not close enough to invite comfort, not far enough to discourage observation.

A clock hung above the door.

It ticked.

Loudly.

Abhishek stared at it for several seconds before realizing he did not know how long he had been here—and more unsettlingly, that this absence of knowledge did not disturb him.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed.

They responded immediately.

No weakness. No dizziness.

So whatever happened, he thought, was intentional.

The thought surfaced without fear. Without doubt. It felt like recalling a fact he had always known.

He stood.

The floor was cold beneath his feet, a sharp, grounding sensation that reassured him of his own physicality. He flexed his fingers, rotated his shoulders, tested the limits of his body the way someone did after a long flight.

Everything worked.

Too well.

He looked down at his hands.

They were familiar in the way tools were familiar—recognized by function, not by sentiment. There were no scars he didn’t expect, no marks that felt new. The lines on his palms told a story his mind refused to read.

A soft click sounded behind him.

The door opened.

A woman entered.

She was dressed plainly—professional without ceremony. No lab coat, no visible insignia. Her hair was tied back, practical, efficient. She carried a tablet under one arm.

“Good morning, Abhishek,” she said.

He turned toward her.

She had said his name naturally, without hesitation.

“Yes,” he replied, equally natural. “Good morning.”

The exchange felt rehearsed.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

Abhishek considered the question with more seriousness than it deserved.

“I feel… rested,” he said finally. “And I don’t trust that.”

The woman smiled faintly. Not amused. Acknowledging.

“That’s a reasonable response,” she said. “Sit, please.”

He obeyed.

She took the chair opposite him, angling it slightly—not confrontational, not intimate. A practiced distance.

“My name is Dr. Meera Sen,” she said. “I’ll be speaking with you for a while.”

“For how long?” Abhishek asked.

She tilted her head. “That depends on how many questions you ask.”

“Then probably longer than you expect.”

Another faint smile.

She activated the tablet.

“Let’s begin with orientation,” she said. “Can you tell me your full name?”

“Abhishek Rao.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-six.”

“Profession?”

He did not hesitate. “Ethics consultant. Systems governance. Artificial intelligence oversight.”

Dr. Sen’s fingers paused briefly over the screen.

“And do you remember why you’re here?”

Abhishek opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

Not confusion.
Not frustration.

Just… blankness.

“I don’t,” he said. “But I’m certain I chose to be.”

Dr. Sen nodded.

“That certainty is important,” she said. “Do you feel distressed by the absence of memory?”

He checked again. Carefully this time.

“No,” he said. “Should I?”

“That depends,” she replied. “On what you believe memory is for.”

The clock ticked.

Abhishek looked at it again.

“How long was I asleep?” he asked.

“Three hours,” she said. “Approximately.”

“And before that?”

She did not answer immediately.

“That,” she said carefully, “is part of what we’re evaluating.”

Abhishek leaned back against the bed, absorbing the weight of the moment.

He was not afraid.

That bothered him more than fear ever could.

Later—how much later, he could not tell—Dr. Sen handed him a folder.

“This belongs to you,” she said. “Or rather, it belonged to you before the procedure.”

Abhishek accepted it.

The folder was thin. Too thin to contain a life. Or a crime.

He flipped it open.

Most of the pages were blank.

Not redacted.
Not censored.

Blank by design.

At the front, a single page remained intact.

CASE STATUS: RESOLVED

No case name.
No details.

Just that.

Resolved.

“What case?” Abhishek asked.

Dr. Sen watched him closely.

“One you decided not to carry with you,” she said.

“That sounds irresponsible.”

“It would be,” she agreed, “if it weren’t deliberate.”

He closed the folder slowly.

Something in his chest tightened—not pain, not anxiety.

Recognition.

“I didn’t forget by accident,” he said.

“No,” she replied. “You didn’t.”

He looked at her. “Did it work?”

Dr. Sen met his gaze evenly.

“You’re functional,” she said. “You’re calm. You’re coherent.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one you asked for.”

The clock ticked.

Abhishek stood, walked to the small window near the ceiling. It was frosted—no view, only light.

“I feel like I’ve stepped into the middle of a sentence,” he said. “And whatever came before it was… heavy.”

Dr. Sen did not interrupt.

“I know my values,” he continued. “I know my principles. I know the frameworks I trust. But they feel… lighter.”

“Lighter can be useful,” she said.

“Or dangerous.”

“Yes.”

He turned back to her.

“Tell me this,” he said. “If I wanted to remember—could I?”

Dr. Sen held his gaze.

“You built in that possibility,” she said. “But you warned us not to offer it prematurely.”

“Why?”

She chose her words with surgical care.

“You said memory without emotional context creates hesitation,” she said. “And hesitation, in your words, was the greater ethical failure.”

Abhishek absorbed that.

It sounded like him.

That was the most unsettling part.

They discharged him before evening.

No ceremony. No dramatic warnings.

Just paperwork, signatures, and the quiet assumption that he knew how to exist in the world.

A cab took him home.

The city moved past the window in familiar patterns—traffic lights, pedestrians, vendors calling out prices. Everything was exactly where it should be.

Yet it felt distant.

Like watching a place he once lived in, now reconstructed from data.

His apartment door unlocked with a code his fingers remembered before his mind did.

Inside, the lights turned on automatically.

The air smelled faintly of something chemical. Clean. Sterile.

The sensation made his stomach tighten unexpectedly.

That’s odd, he thought.

He stood still until the feeling passed.

On his desk lay a book, open to the middle.

He did not remember buying it.

Inside, tucked between the pages, was a note.

Handwritten.

His handwriting.

DO NOT REQUEST RESTORATION.

Abhishek stared at the words for a long time.

They were not dramatic.

They were precise.

Practical.

A warning written by someone who knew him very well.

“Why?” he asked the empty room.

The silence answered the way silence always did.

By waiting.

That night, as the city settled into its rhythms, Abhishek lay awake in his bed.

He tried to remember yesterday.

Not the facts.

The weight.

Nothing came.

Instead, there was only calm.

Deep. Clean. Unquestioned.

And somewhere beneath it—barely perceptible, like pressure under still water—something waited.

Not a memory.

A consequence.

END OF EPISODE 1