The chans system began to replay fragments at odd hours: the clink of a coffee mug, the soft rustle of family letters, a child’s mispronounced multiplication table. At first, employees were unnerved. Then they moved closer. The device did not play the past as a documentary; it recombined fragments into strange small scenes—an electrician’s humming folded into a seamstress’s tale, producing a new cadence that sounded like something between a song and a memory.