I'm Still At My Desk But Someone Else Is Living My Life

by C.R. Blackwell

Elara Vance is the master of invisible patterns. As a senior logistics analyst, she knows exactly where every container is on the planet. But on a Tuesday morning at 10:14 AM, the pattern breaks. She receives an automated 'Vacation Approved' notification for a request she never sent. When she walks into her office, a woman named Sarah is sitting in her chair, wearing Elara's spare blazer, drinking from Elara's mug, and answering Elara's emails. The company isn't firing her; they are bureaucratically deleting her. As her badge access dies and her digital footprint vanishes, Elara realizes this isn't a glitch—it's a live-fire test of 'Operational Continuity,' a terrifying system designed to replace humans with perfect, compliant mirrors. To survive, Elara must dive into the 'Ghost Data' she’s been skimming to find her missing mother, only to discover that her mother didn't leave her twenty years ago—she was the project's first successful deletion. Now, Elara has to choose: disappear forever like her mother, or burn the entire system down from the inside.