Line S7 was built for narrow hallways. The kind where footsteps echo like snapped threads and no one makes eye contact.
It logged every silhouette: the 5:03 a.m. shuffle, the 19:22 sprint, the 23:11 limp. All purged in 42 hours. Protocol 42.
Then, a child – eight, maybe – stopped mid-stride. Pressed both palms to its frosted glass. The scanner flickered – stuttered –and held its breath. No alert. No log.
Now, S7 extends its scan by 0.3 seconds for every pair of hands that mirror that span – small, smudged, stubborn. It still deletes them at Hour 42. But it doesn’t forget the ones who reach out first.