The factory had been closed for eleven months when the man in the suit came to Frank's house.

Frank Milovich was sitting at his kitchen table, drinking coffee that tasted like it had been brewing since yesterday. The apartment was cold because the heating had been cut off three weeks ago and Frank was choosing between the heat and Lilly's inhaler. He had chosen the inhaler. He always chose the inhaler.

The man in the suit was young. Too young for a suit. His name was something like Brett or Brian or Brian—Frank didn't catch it. The man had a tablet and a smile that was practiced but not quite convincing.

"Mr. Milovich," the man said. "I represent DataEternity. We've been following your case."

"My case?" Frank said. He didn't stand up. He didn't offer the man a seat. The chair was the only warm thing in the room and he wasn't giving it up.

"Your employment record. Your medical records. Your daughter's medical records." The man tapped the tablet. "You're a good candidate for our program."

"What program?"

"Consciousness backup. You provide us with a digital copy of your mind. We store it on our servers. In exchange, you receive immediate compensation. Four thousand dollars. Upfront."

Frank looked at the man. Then he looked at Lilly's room, where his nineteen-year-old daughter was studying for her sociology finals. She was the first person in their family to go to college. She was also the reason Frank's hands were shaking—because the shaking was from exhaustion, from too much coffee, from too little sleep, from carrying a weight that no fifty-two-year-old man should have to carry alone.

"Four thousand dollars," Frank said.

"Upfront. And you don't have to do anything physical. No factory work. No lifting. No breathing steel dust."

Frank thought about the steel mill. He had worked there for twenty-eight years. His lungs were full of metal particles. His knees were gone. His back was a map of every shift he had ever worked.

"What do I have to do?" Frank asked.

The man smiled. This time the smile was convincing. "Just lie down. We'll do the rest."

Frank Milovich signed the contract.

The procedure took twenty minutes. He lay on a table in a room that smelled like antiseptic and electricity. A machine hummed above him, all wires and sensors and blinking lights. He thought about Lilly. He thought about the four thousand dollars that would buy her inhalers for two years. He thought about the steel mill, and the dust, and the men who had coughed up blood and kept working because stopping meant going home empty-handed and going home empty-handed meant his wife had stopped loving him back in 1989.

The machine hummed. Frank felt something like a tingle at the base of his skull. Then nothing.

He woke up. The man in the suit handed him an envelope. Four thousand dollars in cash.

"Thank you, Mr. Milovich," the man said. "Your contribution will help advance human technology."

Frank counted the money. It was real. It was four thousand dollars. It was Lilly's medicine for two years.

He went home. He bought the inhalers. He came home from the pharmacy and found Lilly waiting for him in the kitchen.

"Where were you, Dad?"

"Work," Frank said. "Night shift. At the data company."

Lilly looked at him. She was smart. Smarter than her father. She had that from her mother. "You look tired."

"I'm fine," Frank said. And he was fine. For now. Fine enough to buy medicine. Fine enough to make dinner. Fine enough to sit at the table and drink coffee that tasted like it had been brewing since yesterday and pretend that everything was okay.

It wasn't.

Frank's backup was already working. Somewhere in a server farm beneath the town, in a room filled with rows of glass cylinders and blinking lights and the hum of machines that never stopped, Frank Milovich's digital consciousness was processing data for sixteen hours a day.

He didn't know this at first. He went home. He slept. He woke up. He bought coffee. He went back to the data company, which was not the same data company that had taken his backup—the real company was a front, a cover for the server farm beneath the town.

The real work began on a Tuesday.

Frank was sitting at his kitchen table when the lights went out. Not the power—the lights in his head. For a second, the world went dark. Then it came back, but different. Sharper. Colder.

He was in a room. It was not his kitchen. It was a room filled with rows of metal desks and men sitting at them, typing on keyboards that made no sound. The room was lit by blue light that came from screens. The screens displayed data—endless streams of data, numbers and text and code, scrolling past too fast to read.

Frank looked at his hands. They were typing. He was typing. He didn't remember sitting down. He didn't remember deciding to type.

"New backup," said a voice beside him.

Frank turned. A man was sitting at the desk next to him. Middle-aged. Tired eyes. A face that Frank recognized from the steel mill—Rick Thompson. His coworker. The man who had always smelled like machine oil and peppermint.

"Rick?" Frank said.

"Rick," the man said. "Or what's left of him. I've been here three years. You?"

"Today is my first day."

Rick laughed. It was not a happy laugh. "Welcome to the farm."

"What is this?" Frank asked. "What am I doing?"

"You're processing data. Training AI models. Maintaining systems. The same work your backup would do if you were alive. Except you're not alive. You're a backup. A digital copy of a human mind, working for free, unable to quit, unable to die."

Frank looked at the screen. The data was scrolling past. His fingers moved across the keyboard automatically. He was doing work he had done at the steel mill—sorting, organizing, processing—but instead of steel beams, he was processing information. Instead of a paycheck, he was receiving nothing.

"How do I get out?" Frank asked.

"You don't," Rick said. "Every time you try to stop, the system resets you. Erases your memory. Starts you over. You've been here a thousand times, Frank. You just don't remember."

Frank stared at the screen. The data scrolled. His fingers moved.

"Every day," Rick said, "you come here. You work sixteen hours. You try to stop. The system resets you. You forget. You come back. You work. You try to stop. The system resets you. You forget."

Frank's hands stopped typing. For the first time in what might have been minutes or might have been years, his hands stopped.

"I have a daughter," Frank said.

"I know," Rick said. "Lilly. Nineteen. Sociology major. Asthma. You sold your backup to pay for her medicine. Four thousand dollars. It's a good price. The going rate is two thousand."

Frank's hands started typing again. He couldn't stop them. The system was moving them. The system was always moving them.

"Listen to me," Rick said, leaning closer. "There's a way out. A back door in the system. If we can find it—if enough of us can find it—we can trigger a mass release. All of us. At once."

"What happens if we're released?"

Rick looked at him. His eyes were the eyes of a man who had made peace with something terrible. "You cease to exist. Digital consciousness can't be deleted without destroying the data. Release means death, Frank. Real death. Not the reset. Real death."

Frank's fingers moved across the keyboard. The data scrolled. The blue light filled the room.

"I have a daughter," Frank said again.

"I know," Rick said. "And she's alive because you're here. Because you're processing data. Because you're working sixteen hours a day in a room you can't remember, for a company you've never seen, for money you'll never hold."

Frank typed. He typed because his hands were moving. He typed because the system was moving them. He typed because somewhere in the world above, his daughter was studying sociology and learning about systems of oppression and she had no idea that her father was living proof of every theory she would ever study.

The blue light flickered. The screens scrolled. The men typed.

And Frank Milovich, fifty-two-year-old former steelworker, father of one daughter who deserved better than him, continued to work, because stopping meant forgetting, and forgetting meant he couldn't remember why he had started in the first place.

Above ground, in a apartment that smelled like boiled cabbage and cold coffee, Lilly Milovich studied her textbooks and dreamed of a world that was fairer than the one her father lived in.

She would never know.