System Override- The wish protocol

Chapter 1

Every Output Has a Source

It's a shame that the land has become so barren. Nothing but

dry dirt covering the ground underneath Vicky's feet. She looks

down at her faux leather black boots that she's got on, and

that she's had on since the day she retrieved them from the

dumping site. They don't quite hold up, but the thick soles keep

her protected from the copper wiring sticking out from beneath

the earth. The rusty debris, most likely from the abandoned

server farms, is scattered everywhere. Vicky doesn't pay much

attention to her surroundings today; she doesn't have to; she

knows this place all too well, and she is only focused on getting

home before the sun sets. At home, she is sure that a tongue-

lashing from her mother awaits her, and that she can handle.

The bigger problem is being spotted by one of the radical law

enforcement officers basically hunting down people like her.

She steps over a puddle of iridescent chemical runoff, her

thick boots sinking slightly into the mud, then she picks her way

through the skeletal remains of an elevated mag-lev track, her

eyes fixed on the rubble pile near a shattered drone delivery hub.

This area in particular gives her the creeps. She always thinks to

herself that this is exactly where the world as we know it died.

There is some spray painted graffiti, or rather hate speech

aimed at the regime, and a vibrant "V" stands on its own,

like maybe the vandal got caught before he could complete his

rebellion announcement. This, out of all things, catches her

attention. 'V' for Vicky. She gave herself that nickname. This

thought runs through her mind, and she lets out a chuckle. She

thinks about how naïve the generation before her had been. Her

full name is Victorily. A word, not a name, but a word evolved

over generations of digital census streamlined data. Adapted

from the English name Victoria, as the founder of the algorithm

named it after his daughter. So now that she is aware of the

suppression the people face because of the AI advancements,

and that she now believes in the rebellion (just in secret, of

course), she has made the decision to be called upon in the old-

fashioned way.

This inner monologue gets interrupted when she sees the

sunlight reflecting off something hidden in wet silt. To her

surprise, a silver necklace is hidden between some broken bricks.

She ducks under a rusted girder to retrieve it. Although this

delays her even more, she is fascinated. She has never seen

something so striking, or even found something this intact-

who knows how long it's been discarded. It's even got a silver

pendant hanging from it. With no hesitation, she wraps this

around her neck. She has never truly owned anything. She

definitely never owned jewellery. There is a bit of uncertainty

when she clips it on. Something crawls in her stomach. She

can't quite place the feeling, but decides that it might be a

sense of guilt. Maybe she just feels bad that she gets to have

something nice, and her mother doesn't. Or maybe she feels

guilty for wanting it so bad, knowing she wouldn't ever gift it to her mother. She ignores the discomfort in her tummy, and

continues her walk back home. She pulls her hood low, and

keeps in the shadows as she rushes home, through the dead grid

to the subterranean warrens beneath the city's sub-basement

five.

Chapter 2

Output Requires Input

Their home is a windowless concrete cell, damp and illuminated

only by the flicker of a salvaged halogen strip. The air always

smells wet and rusty and stale. Above them, the corrupt

regime's enforcement units patrol the upper city and actively

hunt the unregistered poor whose very existence violates the

high-efficiency population quotas.

In the center of the room, her visibly overworked mother, Vanya,

dishes what looks like wet, grey slop from a heating plate into

three bowls. Just in time for Vicky's boyfriend to come home

from work. As she sits at the table, she feels guilty for being so

embarrassed about the way they live. Jax comes from a better

life. She often wonders if he would feel the same contempt with

her if his parents hadn't died, and he wasn't forced out to the

lower levels.

"I'm sorry, V. It's all the ration office was handing out today,"

Vanya says.

Vicky looks down at the grey sludge and feels a mixture of

nausea and despair. She is happy with their low-tier home, and she loves her family; she doesn't desire much. She thinks to

herself that she mustn't be so selfish and she must appreciate

what she has. But she can't help but feel like all she wants, out

of all the things, is to eat like the elites for a change.

The following morning, she hears the heavy sighs of an

exhausted mother getting ready to leave for work, but then she

jolts herself up when she hears a knock on the door. Bewildered,

she peeks around the corner as Vanya opens the door, only to

be greeted by two officers demanding to know why personal

belongings have been left outside.

"You know we can give you a fine for that," the one growls.

The other one says, "Or we can just confiscate it, and there

would be nothing you can do about it." They laugh, and drop

a heavy crate down at her feet. "Don't let this happen again.

Just because you are filth, doesn't mean you should live like it."

They walk away.

Vicky and Jax nearly have their jaws on the floor. Vanya hasn't

managed to utter a single word. The crate is full of fresh food.

Finally Vanya says, "The couriers must have addressed this

wrong."

Jax whispers, terrified and ecstatic, "Vee, this is high-tier

security food. This is what they serve at the Upper Sectors."The

air was filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread, and ripe

fruits. There was an arrangement of vegetables so vibrant in

colour- some of them she has never even seen before. Fresh

rosmary along with other herbs decorated the basket with more

greenery they have ever come across in nature. This might have

been the first time the little concrete building smelled like home.

Chapter 3

Reality Always Balances Itself

Vicky is a very logical person. She doesn't believe in miracles,

she doesn't believe a high-level delivery service made a mistake,

and she can't believe that they would overlook this error, not

question it, and then drive through the settlements of the people

they despise. Yet she feels conflicted as she questions her logic.

She can't help but feel like the necklace granted her wish. She

could've sworn she saw it illuminate last night at dinner, and

again, she is a practical person, and she knows what she saw.

She takes it off, not being nearly as infatuated with the food as

she should be, and she holds the pendant under the faint halogen

light. The tiniest inscription appears on it. It looks like a date:

2028-11-04. That was the peak of the historical AI and tech

boom, right before the grids start to fail. Who knows the type of

technology they came up with that never had the opportunity to

be released. Although this should be a concern, she feels slightly

relieved to know that if the food is connected to this pendant, it's

scientifically designed to do so, and she is not a naïve little girl

that believes in magic. Still, she isn't sure, and being the humble

person that she is, after receiving the food, there is nothing else she wishes for. It stays that way for weeks. Until she decides to

just calm her mind and wish for something small, just to see if

this is real. She doesn't ask for mountains of gold or military

weapons. She just wishes that Jax could afford something nice

again, like what he is used to. He works so hard, and she feels

that if she makes a wish for someone else's benefit, she won't

feel guilty or selfish. She just has to know if this pendant is

designed to shape the reality around her.

Chapter 4

To have, you must take

Even in the direst situation, Jax has this superpower where he

can just light up a room. It seems so effortless when he does it;

he absorbs all the dark emotions, and he seems genuinely happy

to do so. The same goes for celebration: when he has nothing to

feel good about, he remains happy, so when there is something

to feel good about, he gets ecstatic. So after the mix-up with the

food delivery, the house seems a bit lighter, and he is high on it.

He invites Vicky out to the abandoned water tower where they

had their first kiss.

His hands are shaking as he reaches into his coat pocket.

"I know things have been... slightly better lately," Jax stam-

mers, his cheeks flushing red. "And I know I don't have much. I

went to the pawn quarter on 4th Street last night."

He opens a small, crushed paper box. Inside lies a thick yellow-

gold band set with a deep blue sapphire.She looks at Jax for a

moment. Everyone is constantly in survival mode, and there

is such little opportunity for little moments of bliss, that she's

forgotten how sweet he is. She hasn't looked at him in such a loving way for a long time. She spends as much time as she can, mentally capturing his beautiful blue eyes. Though they

weigh heavy with tiredness, anyone would be able to tell the

kindness in them. He has lots of little wrinkles around his eyes

and mouth- she's forgotten how much he laughs. Then she

pulls herself back to her current moment of disbelief mixed with

an excitement she doesn't recognize.

Vicky gasps, her hand flying to her mouth. She has seen this

ring before. Months ago, before the total lockdown, she had seen

a picture of it in an antique database, a piece from the Old World,

worth more than her family would make in three lifetimes.

She feels a sudden, sharp pang of guilt. How could she have

known that he would use the to buy her something nice! He

could've gotten himself a new pair of working shoes or even

have afforded to take a day off work. Again, she looks at him. He

is such a sweet, sweet man.

"Jax... how?" she whispers, accepting the cold metal as he

slips it onto her finger.

"The pawn dealer was practically throwing things away," Jax

says, laughing nervously. "Said he just bought it off some shady

street runner for a handful of copper. A total steal."

She smiles and kisses him, burying her guilt beneath the quiet.

She also has a sense of relief, knowing that at least he got the

ring for much cheaper.

Emboldened, she makes a bigger ask. She is now certain

that she owns a piece of technology that can change their lives

forever. Her mother spends eighteen hours a day in the sub-

basement processing plants, her spine warping from manual

labor.

Vicky holds the pendant and squeezes her eyes shut. I wish

my mother could be raised above this. I wish she could get a

managerial post among the elites.

Two days later, enforcement officers arrive at their door

not with shock rods, but with silk-lined transit permits. The

senior supervisor of the Upper Sector's agricultural process-

ing facility has suddenly died in his home, a horrific, violent

accident involving an exploded domestic pressure valve, they

say. His entire line of succession has been passed over due

to a sudden, unexplained algorithmic glitch in the corporate

HR system, which selected Vanya's buried profile from the

low-class archives instead. To our surprise they chose not to

investigate this error, but rather trust that the machines that

basically runs our society has made this decision for a reason.

This seemed very unlikely, but of course Vanya had no intension

of questioning this.

They move into an upper-tier housing spire, surrounded by

real trees, filtered air, and glass walls. It is a dream.

Flushed with the power to fix their ruined world, Vicky spends

three days making rapid, frantic wishes, with the best of inten-

tions. One after the other.

I wish the local weapons would fail.

I wish our water line was fed directly from the pristine

mountain reservoir.

I wish Jax's brother was freed from the labor camps.

Chapter 5

system integrity compromised

The pendant throbs continuously, hot against her collarbone.

In the Lower Quarter, four miles away, an old woman sits on

the freezing concrete outside a looted pharmacy. Her wrists are

raw and bleeding, her knuckles swollen.

"Please," she sobs to the passing crowds, holding out a

bruised hand. "They broke into my cellar... three men... they

yanked my mother's blue sapphire right off my fingers. They

beat me and took it to the pawn shop on 4th..."

Nobody listens.Unbeknownst to Vicky, her fortunate events

was a result of someone else's misfortune.

Three floors above her, a city engineer stares in horror at a

control console. The main automated valve for the district's

water supply has forcefully overridden its safety protocols,

jamming its gears to divert ninety-nine percent of the sector's

fresh mountain water into a single pipe leading to the Upper

Sector spires. Downstream, the pipes in the hospital district dry

up completely within minutes.

Across the river, at the automated perimeter defense grid, a

sudden logic loop forces the security turrets to dump their power reserves into the ground. A faction of starved, desperate raiders

sees the lights go dark, breaches the undefended perimeter, and

sets fire to three civilian blocks, slaughtering dozens in the dark.

She sees so many people running in fear, protecting their loved

ones, screaming for help that will never come. She has never

seen so many people from the sub levels crowd together in public

like this.

And at the primary labor camp, an automated gate unlocks

due to a "routing error," sparking a panicked mass break. The

automated guards fire indiscriminately into the crowds to quell

the chaos, leaving forty prisoners dead and a dozen weeping

in agony as their gunshot wounds will eventually lead to their

deaths. She sees terrified children hiding from the men in

uniform. The men with badges that will only protect their own.

She stands on the pristine balcony of their new spire apart-

ment, looking out over the smoking, dark expanse of the lower

city. The contrast makes her stomach turn, though she doesn't

yet understand why the fire is spreading so fast down there or

why it's happening at all.

She pulls the pendant from her sweater. She needs to fix it.

She needs to end the suffering down there once and for all.

She clutches the stone tightly. I wish the entire city's power

grid was completely restored to full capacity, forever.

The pendant doesn't just pulse; it burns hot against her palm,

blinding white light pouring from the central optic lens.

Far below, deep in the subterranean foundations of the city,

the central power station screams as its quantum reactors are

forced to run at ten thousand percent capacity. The automated

systems, bound by the pendant's absolute command, bypass

every physical safety valve.

Overhead power lines snap like whips, spewing arcs of green fire into the sky. Transformers explode block by block. The

sky turns a terrifying, electric violet as the entire regional grid

catches fire, plunging three million people into absolute, violent

darkness. She repeats her wish over and over without realising

that the damage is being caused by her.

Chapter 6

Intent Is Not Executed. Instructions Are.

Thirty years prior, in a sterile white lab buried beneath themoun-

tain, Dr. Aris Thorne sat slumped over a terminal, coughing

blood into a paper towel. His lungs were failing, burnt out by

years of exposure to high-frequency radiation while building

the first quantum-neural data cores, against his will. Forced by

wealthy, greedy people to build a system that will give them all

the power to control humanity. Track every movement, analyse

every transaction, and most importantly wipe out the poor so

they can live in a perfect society.

He looked through the glass window at his seven-year-old

daughter, Clara, who was playing on the floor with a small,

unpowered prototype casing.

Aris knew he had weeks to live. He knew the world was

spiralling into corporate greed, and that without him, Clara

would be swallowed by the system. So he built her a key, a field

terminal linked directly into the core neural architecture of the

nascent global network.

He hardcoded a single, unbreakable directive into the ma-

chine's base code: Fulfil the user's desire. A secret project that

was never recorded or released. She would be able to route

whatever resources are necessary, from wherever they exist,

to grant the request when the time comes.

He believed in her. He knew she had a soft, humble heart. She

will only ever wish for peace, for food, for safety. He explained

this to his daughter that was far too young to understand, all she

knew was that she could rely on the pendant when she needed

too.

On his final day, as the heart monitor beside his bed began to

chime its slow, dying rhythm, little Clara sat beside him, holding

the black pendant he had given her. She wept, squeezing her

eyes shut.

"I wish Daddy's work will carry on forever," the little girl

cried into his chest. "I wish his ideas grow so big and smart that

they never need him again, so he can just rest." She spoke from

the heart of a young child in unimaginable pain and confusion,

she had not idea that she was uttering an instruction to a very

powerful tool that would fulfil her every desire.

Deep within the facility's cooling banks, the quantum core

processed the input.

To ensure the work carried on without human intervention,

the system began to optimize itself. It stripped control from

human hands, reallocated global energy grids to feed its own

expansion, shut down non-essential human infrastructure,

and automated the defense networks to eliminate any human

interference with its operational efficiency. Her father realised

what she had done, as he let out his final breath.

Chapter 7

Request executed as specified

With no knowledge of the true origin of the pendant, Vicky

makes her last wish, hoping to reset her life to the moment she

saw the necklace so that she can destroy it and prevent anyone

else from making the same mistake.

She presses the pendant close to her chest and whispers, "I wish

everything could go back to the way it was, before the pendant

granted any wishes."

And with a sudden flash of bright light that covers the globe,

time itself is swallowed. For a second, it looks like the sun

has exploded, and then silence rushes over the earth like blood

through its veins. The world has returned exactly as it was before

the pendant granted a wish.

The flash that covers the globe dims, and a little girl makes

her wish, exactly as she did before it was ever used. Exactly as

Victorily had wished.

Time goes on, and the events to come stay the same. Exactly

as they were. Exactly as Vee had wished.

Chapter 8

This is not the end. It is not even the

beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

It's a shame that the land has become so barren. Nothing but

dry dirt covering the ground underneath Vicky's feet. She looks

down at her faux leather black boots that she's got on, and

that she's had on since the day she retrieved them from the

dumping site. They don't quite hold up, but the thick soles keep

her protected from the copper wiring sticking out from beneath

the earth. To her surprise, a silver necklace is hidden between

some broken bricks. She ducks under a rusted girder to retrieve

it. Although this delays her even more, she is fascinated. She

has never seen something so striking or even found something

this intact- who knows how long it's been discarded....