Lose points—by lingering too long at a viewport, questioning a work order, or failing to smile at an enforcer drone—and your rations thinned. Your air quality dropped to “economy.” Your social graph grayed out, marking you as Low Trust .
Mira stared at her own neural map, the glowing threads of the scaffold wrapped around her decision-making centers like ivy on a ruin. She had never made a free choice. Every “yes” to a work shift, every “no” to a second look at a stranger’s face—all of it had been nudged, weighted, rewarded or punished before she even thought of it. ebravo
She thought of Ren’s empty smile.