The Algorithm of Her Hair

 

The Algorithm of Her Hair

The mirror wasn’t real. Not in the traditional sense. It was a pane of hyperglass, scanning, analyzing, feeding data into the system with every flick of her wrist, every pass of her fingers through the thick strands of hair that fell down her back.

Processing… Processing…

Her hair was too long. The system flagged it instantly.

"ERROR: Non-compliant length detected. Efficiency rating: 64%."

She sighed. The voice was always there, cold and clinical, reminding her that excess was unnecessary. Long hair served no functional purpose. It required maintenance. It got in the way. It was wasteful.

She ignored it, lifting the heavy length into her hands, twisting it absently, feeling the impossible softness between her fingers. The strands slipped through like liquid silk, catching the sterile white light from the ceiling, moving in ways that no algorithm could predict.

She knew what the system wanted.

The others had complied. Sleek, regulation cuts. Straight, symmetrical bobs. No loose strands, no distractions. Neat. Contained. The kind of hair that fit into society’s framework, into its cold, calculated precision.

She could walk into the salon tomorrow and have it done. The machine would scan her, determine the ideal cut for her face shape, and reshape her into something… efficient.

But the thought made something inside her recoil.

She set the brush down. Her reflection stared back at her, the hyperglass flickering slightly as it tried to reconcile the discrepancy between the woman it had been programmed to mold and the woman she actually was.

She reached back, letting her hair fall freely once more, feeling its weight, its resistance.

For a moment, she thought she heard the system hesitate. A flicker in the audio, a glitch in the otherwise perfect voice.

"Recommendation: Override?"

Her lips curled into a slow, knowing smirk.

"Override this," she whispered, reaching forward—

—and shutting the system down.

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