Rift Codex

After every rift the official explanation comes fast and in step: thin upper atmosphere, ionospheric disturbance. A dozen-odd outlets file it inside a 20-minute window without changing a word.

What turns up now and then at a rift site: a grey metal crate with a circular mark cut into it, unnamed personnel, and the force that comes afterwards and presses everything back into "the everyday."

A unit of measurement a reporter coined for himself. No instrument can measure "how much a face has been changed," so he uses the living face in his memory as the baseline.

The moment the first rift appeared. A run of overwrites and rifts after it all lock onto three-something in the small hours, tightening down further and further. 03:00 to 04:00 is the most dangerous.

A perception that can see the overwrite. It marks where something has been changed; what it was changed into, and by whom, it will not answer. The more you see, the higher the cost.

People are wiped, quietly, from their accounts, from their friends' memories, from every record. But show the person concerned a piece of footage and the memory will now and then loosen.