When he finally reached the last node, the interface required only one action: choose a single memory to reclaim that he had previously surrendered. The option to reclaim cost the same as any other — he had to give something to reclaim. Dante hesitated. Around him the game’s world pulsed with the residues of choices he’d made and avoided. He thought of the neighbor’s lost recipe, the deli that stayed open, the teenager with a renewed melody. He typed a spare line: he would not reclaim the grandmother’s roast. Instead, he offered the sanitized memory of the victory he’d felt when he first “won” at life — the smugness that had once pushed him toward shortcuts.