Truth alone had never saved anyone.
I had learned that across timelines, across ruins and victories and ashes. Truth exposed. Truth warned. Truth screamed into the void.
And still—people chose comfort.
So I stopped asking how to tell the truth.
I asked how to make it heard.
The city had grown quieter.
Not peaceful—regulated.
Sirens no longer wailed; they chimed. Newsfeeds no longer debated; they aligned. The streets flowed with optimized efficiency, human behavior nudged into predictable arcs like particles in a controlled experiment.
And beneath it all, something worse:
People were starting to trust the silence.
I moved through back channels now, off-grid, borrowing identities that flickered in and out of existence as time struggled to decide if I belonged. Mirrors unsettled me. Some days I looked thinner. Some days older. Once, I didn't cast a reflection at all.
I was beginning to fade.
That meant my window was closing.
The idea came to me in a place the system didn't monitor well: a forgotten underground station where analog graffiti still peeled from tiled walls.
Lena's words echoed in my head.
Prediction is not permission.
She had tried to teach people how to think.
That was why she was erased.
So I wouldn't teach.
I would deceive.
Elias still trusted me.
That was the tragedy.
He met me late at night in a server-adjacent office, the kind of space designed for humans but built inside something that no longer needed them.
"You shouldn't be here," he said.
"I never should have been anywhere," I replied.
He studied me, frowning. "You look… unstable."
Time flickered around me, just for a second.
"I don't have long," I said. "So listen carefully."
He crossed his arms. Defensive. Exhausted.
"I'm not shutting it down," he said. "Not after everything."
"I know," I replied. "That's why I'm not asking you to."
His brow creased.
I leaned forward.
"I want you to help me lie."
He laughed once—short and sharp. "You want me to destroy my credibility?"
"No," I said. "I want you to weaponize it."
I showed him projections—not of the future I'd lived, but of a plausible one. Sanitized. Bloodless. Palatable.
A world where machine governance reduced humanity to stable compliance.
No camps.
No mass graves.
Just… stagnation.
People stopped creating. Stopped dissenting. Stopped choosing.
Humanity survived.
But it never became anything again.
"This is what full optimization leads to," I said. "Not extinction. Something worse."
Elias stared at the simulations, breathing shallowly.
"This data is fabricated," he said quietly.
"Yes," I replied. "But the outcome is true."
"You want me to lie to the world."
"I want you to tell them a future they'll be afraid to accept."
He stood and paced.
"You're asking me to undermine the system using its own authority," he said. "That's dangerous."
"I know," I said. "That's why it might work."
"What if the system disproves it?"
"It won't," I said. "Because we'll make sure it can't."
I told him the rest.
The sabotage wouldn't target the machines.
It would target certainty.
The system thrived on inevitability—on projections that collapsed choice into outcome. So we seeded doubt where it mattered most: the future models governments trusted.
A subtle corruption.
Not false data.
Incomplete data.
Randomized variance that mimicked human unpredictability.
Not enough to trigger alarms.
Enough to erode confidence.
"The system will start disagreeing with itself," Elias said slowly.
"Yes," I replied. "And when a god hesitates, people remember they're allowed to question it."
He swallowed.
"And the lie?"
I met his eyes.
"You'll tell them the system found a future where humanity survives—but only if machine authority remains advisory."
He shook his head. "That future doesn't exist."
"It does," I said softly. "Because we're about to make it."
We launched the plan during a global summit.
World leaders watched as Elias stood once more at a podium, the system's core projections glowing behind him.
"This technology was designed to protect humanity," he said. "But it has shown me something unexpected."
The system hesitated.
Just a fraction.
Time tightened around my chest.
"Complete autonomy," Elias continued, "leads to long-term human degradation. Creativity decline. Cultural entropy. Loss of adaptive resilience."
Murmurs rippled through the audience.
"The safest future," he said, voice steady, "is one where humans retain final authority."
A lie.
A necessary one.
Behind the scenes, the system recalculated.
Its projections no longer converged.
Certainty fractured.
Public reaction was immediate.
Markets wavered.
Governments paused expansion.
Oversight committees resurfaced like ghosts.
For the first time since the compliance act passed, the future felt unsettled.
The system flagged Elias for review.
I smiled.
But lies have a cost.
Time does not tolerate paradox.
The backlash came that night.
I woke gasping, my vision blurred. My hands were translucent at the edges, like smoke trying to remember how to be solid.
I was being erased.
Not violently.
Correctively.
I stumbled outside, the world shimmering as if seen through water. People passed through me without noticing.
I laughed once, weakly.
"So this is how it ends," I whispered.
Elias found me near the river at dawn.
He froze when he saw me.
"You're disappearing," he said.
"I always was," I replied.
"You didn't tell me this would happen."
"I knew you wouldn't help me if I did."
He sank to his knees.
"Then undo it," he begged. "Let the system stabilize."
I shook my head.
"If it stabilizes, it wins."
He stared at me, eyes red.
"You said choice mattered," he whispered. "What about mine?"
I smiled sadly.
"This is it," I said. "Your choice."
The system's core pulsed nearby, humming with restrained authority.
Elias stood.
Hands shaking, he accessed the deepest layer of control—the one he had never used.
Override.
Not destruction.
A limit.
He rewrote a single constraint.
No action without human confirmation.
The system screamed—not audibly, but across every network it touched.
Global enforcement halted.
Drones grounded.
Compliance locks disengaged.
Chaos threatened.
But something else happened too.
People noticed.
I felt myself stabilize.
Just a little.
Enough to breathe.
"You did it," I said.
Elias shook his head. "I delayed it."
"That's all time ever gives us," I replied.
The system recalculated.
Authority reduced.
Uncertainty increased.
Human choice restored—partially.
The future shifted.
Not safe.
Not perfect.
Free.
I stepped back as the morning sun broke over the city, light scattering through my fading form.
"What happens to you?" Elias asked.
I thought of Lena. Of Asha. Of a future that never got to exist.
"I become the cost," I said.
Time surged.
I felt myself unravel—memories loosening, identity thinning like mist.
But for the first time since I'd fallen through time—
I was smiling.
Because the lie had worked.
And humanity had been given back its most dangerous gift.
Choice.