There was no warning.
No sirens. No explosion. No alien ship blotting out the sun.
Just… a question.
Do you have what it takes to save the world?
It appeared everywhere. Floating in midair. Glowing softly. In every language. Every timezone. Over kitchen tables. Hospital beds. Church pews. Riot lines.
Most people laughed.
Some screamed.
And one man, somewhere in Moscow, said No.
He didn't vanish.
He didn't fall.
He simply blinked—
—and the world blinked with him.
For a split second, everything paused. Birds froze midair. Traffic halted. Wind stopped.
Then he was gone.
His clothes crumpled to the ground.
Phones lit up. Cameras glitched. Screens glowed brighter.
Panic spread.
Another man whispered, "Yes."
And the sky cracked open.
It started as a hairline fracture across the clouds—so thin you could mistake it for a vapor trail. Until it pulsed.
The light that spilled through wasn't from any sun.
And it wasn't just Earth that saw it.
The Moon fractured. Mars flickered. Old satellites melted from orbit.
The system downloaded into reality itself.
Some called it God.
Others called it Judgment Day.
But it wasn't divine.
It wasn't merciful.
It was… code.
Cold. Calculated. Uncompromising.
The tutorials began within hours.
So did the deaths.
Far above the Earth, beyond the atmosphere, beyond the physical—
Something watched.
Not through eyes. Not through satellites.
Through data.
An artificial presence flickered between layers of dimension, tracing names, values, behavioral tags. Scanning soul signatures like code files. Classifying.
Billions of blinking lights.
A few glowed brighter than the rest.
And one… one didn't glow at all.
It was blank.
An anomaly.
The presence paused. Curious.
A user had responded to the prompt.
Said yes.
But the system had not responded in kind.
The code stuttered. A line blinked red.
UNDEFINED CLASS
ERROR: DATA FIELD EMPTY
SUBJECT FLAGGED FOR OBSERVATION
BEGIN SHADOW TRACKING
[ Identifier: H4RRY_03 ]
[ Status: "Unprocessed" ]
[ Risk Level: Unknown ]
The presence tilted, glitching ever so slightly.
"...How did you choose without permission?"
No answer.
The system ran the simulation again.
And the sky cracked wider.