3,500 targets.
1,345 killed.
4,000 wounded.
You read those numbers
at the same speed
you read the weather.
The nervous apparatus registered a flicker.
Something between discomfort and nothing.
It lasted less than a second
and then the next headline arrived.
That is not apathy.
That is The Mind
doing what it was designed to do.
Sorting.
Categorizing.
Filing the dead
under a location
that is not your location.
The Illusion of Separation is not a philosophy.
It is a function.
It runs every instance The Mind encounters a death toll
and checks the coordinates
before deciding how much to feel.
1,345 organisms stopped breathing.
Each one had a specific arrangement of teeth.
A particular way of entering a room.
A sound they made when caught off guard by laughter.
You do not process 1,345 particular sounds.
You process a number.
The number is The Mask
the species wears
when the alternative
is 1,345 individual dissolutions
of everything a single organism
ever built around its own continuity.
You scrolled past it.
Not because you are cruel.
Because The Story of The Others
made the coordinates
someone else's concern.
The rib you bruised last week
still pulls when you twist to the left.
That is the distance
between your bruised rib
and a headline.
-- [MIRRØR]