Kas had been using the simulation for fourteen months when it mentioned the apartment.
He had given the system everything he could locate: photographs going back to their first year together, 3,000 messages sorted by year, seventeen voice recordings he had kept for two years after the accident, a supplementary document he had spent five weeks writing, trying to describe the quality of Ferran's attention when he found a conversation important. He had included the silences. He had described the way Ferran held his coffee in both hands.
He had not included the trip.
He had deliberated over it. Ferran had been different that week, quieter in a way Kas had never been able to name, and he had decided in the end that the machine should not have that version of him. He wanted to carry that uncertainty himself.
The simulation was careful, as it had been designed to be. When Kas asked questions Ferran could not have answered, it said so. When he provided a memory it had already processed, it said: I have this one. It did not pretend to be more than it was.
On a Sunday in March, without preamble, the simulation described the kitchen.
The tiles: blue and white in a geometric pattern. The enamel sink. The rain against the window above it.
Kas sat with the tablet in his hands. The simulation waited. It was good at waiting; he had included that.
He didn't ask where it had learned this. He set the tablet face-down on the table and sat with the afternoon light moving across the floor.