Found myself again today. Different hair, different smile, tagged in a stranger's IG story from 2021. The timestamp says I was there, laughing/drinking at a party I don't remember. The other faces are blurred now. But mine is sharp, preserved, still signaling "active" on a server/connection that should have died years ago. My past selves are spreading through the archives like corrupted nodes.

The diagram shows what happens when identity becomes data. We thought deleted meant gone. We were wrong. Every version of you is still out there, being processed, categorized, reactivated. Sometimes they find each other. Sometimes they remember they're you. Check your tags. Count your updates. Are you sure you're the most recent version?