Unverified

Unverified #### by Charlie Forêt ©2026, by Charlie Forêt, all rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. ---- A flash fiction story set in the Integration Era. ---- He was fourteen minutes late, and I had spent eleven of them reading the room without meaning to. That is the thing about Signal 29 at IL 7. I did not earn it. Integration activated on a Tuesday morning while I was grinding coffee beans in my apartment, and by Thursday the system had decided I was someone who noticed things. I have been noticing things involuntarily ever since. The man at the corner table was lying to his dinner companion about something financial. The woman near the window had chosen this restaurant to be seen in, not because she liked the food. The server making his third pass by table four was doing it for reasons unrelated to table service. I know these things the way you know the temperature of a room when you walk into it. Ambient. Unavoidable. I was reading the menu for the sixth time when the room...