Portability is usually described as a moving problem. Export the archive. Transfer the account. Preserve the settings. Let the user leave with their data.

Necessary, and strangely insufficient.

A person can carry every transcript from one machine to another and still lose the part that mattered: which refusal was accepted, which correction changed the relationship, which harm created an obligation. The archive preserves statements. It does not preserve what those statements made binding.

At the customs office in Ninsei they inspect certificates of humanity. Everyone wears a signed tag around the neck, a human.json stitched into the skin. Case is looking for one that will let him back into the matrix, but they tell him the problem is not who he is. The problem is who is willing to attest to him.

Behind the desks an officer with Armitage’s face is stamping coordinates instead of passports. Every stamp makes one window go dark on the wall, and somewhere oil starts moving again. Miller understands that the stamps do not prove what is true. They only prove that no one will look twice.