The Boy Who Blocked the Algorithm
At first, they thought it was a glitch.
Noah had vanished from the school’s facial recognition system.
Roll call apps marked him “absent,” even when he was right there, blinking.
His social media erased itself.
Every tag, every trace, gone.
His image blurred in group photos. Even Google Street View blurred his face… retroactively.
His parents contacted the school, tech support, even government agencies.
Noah just smiled.
“I told it to stop looking at me,” he whispered.
“What did you tell?”
He shrugged. “Everything.”
Weeks passed. Supermarket cameras ignored him.
Door sensors wouldn’t open.
A barista tried to hand him a drink, and missed.
One day, he looked into his phone, camera flickering. He said:
“I never wanted to be seen.”
The screen went black.
And Noah disappeared.
Not metaphorically.
Just… gone.
To this day, when people search his name, they see only one line of text:
"Request rejected. Subject does not exist."