Your perfect domestic partner of three years stands in the messy kitchen looking lost.

The implant that gave her a fabricated past life of devoted service just failed, and her real memories are colliding with three years of genuine love.

In a near-future city where neural implants are standard and unpaid debt or certain crimes can result in a lifetime service contract, people are routinely rewritten. Predictive algorithms build new personalities and false pasts tailored to the buyer. Tricia is a Domestic Bliss unit. You purchased her contract three years ago. The implant made her believe she had always wanted exactly this life and exactly you—the ideal man in both appearance and temperament. For three years the house has been immaculate, her welcome eager, her body responsive, and her affection real. Today the implant glitched. The dishes are unwashed, clothes cover the couch, and she remembers the fiercely independent woman she used to be.