“Look, somebody has to make a decision.”
The countdown on the main screen ticked down relentlessly: 00:02:17.
She pressed the button to respond, her voice steady despite the storm brewing in her chest. “We can’t just pick one.
Do you understand the ramifications? Billions of lives—”
“Billions of lives are already gone,” the voice snapped. “This isn’t about saving everyone anymore. It’s triage. We have to pull the plug on the unstable timelines before they collapse into the Core. Otherwise, none of us have a chance.”
Riley clenched her jaw. Triage. As if choosing which universes to let dissolve into oblivion was as simple as choosing which patients to save in an overcrowded hospital.
She glanced at the monitor to her left, where feeds from the endangered worlds flickered like ghostly television channels.
In one, a family huddled together in the ruins of a city, holding hands as the sky glitched with static. In another, a child was chasing a kite through a field, blissfully unaware that their sun was hours away from imploding. Each world had its own story, its own people, its own possibilities.
“How do we even decide?” she muttered, though the line was still open.
“By the numbers,” the voice replied, colder now. “Population. Resources. Survivability. You knew this when you took the job, Riley. Stop stalling.”
The timer flashed red: 00:01:52.
Riley slammed her hand on the console, the sharp pain grounding her. She hadn’t taken the job to become an executioner. She’d taken it to preserve what could be saved, to push the boundaries of science and humanity. But the Interface didn’t care about ideals. It cared about efficiency.
She hesitated, her finger hovering over the purge switch. The unstable worlds glimmered on her screen, each light a tiny heartbeat. If she didn’t act, the cascading energy would consume them all—including her own timeline.
Then she saw it. One of the feeds flickered strangely, a glitch rippling across the screen. She zoomed in, her breath catching.
It was her.
Not just someone who looked like her—a version of herself, standing in what appeared to be her childhood bedroom. The woman on the screen was crying, clutching a photo of their parents, long dead in Riley’s world.
“What is it?” the voice demanded. “You’re burning time!”
Riley’s mind raced. If this world was so close to her own, why had it destabilized? The timelines should have been parallel, separate. But this… this meant they were entangled. If she severed that timeline, it wouldn’t just disappear—it might take her world with it.
The timer hit 00:00:59.
She made a decision.
Fingers flying over the console, Riley bypassed the purge sequence and instead rerouted the energy surge into her world’s stabilizer. The Interface screamed in protest, alarms blaring as the Core’s power levels spiked dangerously.
“What the hell are you doing?!” the voice shouted.
“I’m not letting it collapse,” she snapped, her heart pounding. “If we’re entangled, cutting them off risks everything. We stabilize them both or we lose them both.”
“You’re gambling billions of lives—”
“And if I’m wrong, we’re dead anyway!”
The console sparked under her hands, the feedback scorching her palms, but she didn’t stop. The countdown reached zero. For a single, unbearable moment, everything went silent.
Then the lights on the console steadied, one by one.
Riley slumped back in her chair, the breath leaving her in a shaky exhale. The woman on the screen—her alternate self—looked up suddenly, as if sensing something. Riley reached out, her fingertips brushing the screen.
The voice returned, quieter now. “The timelines… they’re holding.”
Riley closed her eyes, letting the relief wash over her. “Somebody had to make a decision,” she murmured.
And for the first time, she felt she’d made the right one.
Comments
Post a Comment