Straight to Hel #TravelBrilliantly

And Around Them, the World Burned

    "Ten years ago, I built something that was going to change lives."

    Kara at the desk beside me sends a weird look. "Okay, Max."

    "I swear I'm not being weird. I say that because today..." I reach down and affectionately pat the huge box on the side of my desk, "is Hel's birthday." It connects to the monitor and keyboard in front of me.

    "Oh, well happy birthday to her. Maybe we could have a drink at lunch, to celebrate."

    "Heck yeah."

    We're easygoing here. I think lower-class facilities keep themselves uptight and uniformed to give the appearance that the people in charge of the country are too perfect to let everything fall into chaos.

    Not us. We're chill. Maybe that has to do with the fact that we have a computers to do most of the work for us.

    Mine is an AI, and her name is Hel. I call her that because she is basically a goddess of death.

    I made her a decade ago to predict natural disasters, and she worked perfectly. She was never wrong. Together, we were able to prepare cities for the worst. Through this, she and I were saving lives.

    Until we weren't. Until we were taken away. Now she and I are used to control the population. To decide who lives, and who dies. We're still saving lives, but the people above us are choosing which ones.

    I work Hel for the government because if I don't, other people will, and then it'll all surely fall to ruins. I try my best to keep a certain level of humanity in this project. Someone has to.

    Just like every day, I update the my AI's input using the magical gift of the internet: high-grade government edition.

    But today, the output is different. Usually Hel's predictions come in numbers and names. Locations, times, dates, severity. Today the screen just says The End. Soon.

    I'm puzzled, and feel a little scared, too, because those words are undoubtedly ominous. This has never happened before. So I reset the input. But the output stays the same. Once more? The same, but... in caps. THE END. SOON. Okay, that's weird. She's definitely not programmed to do that.

    "Kara..."

    "Hm?" She looks over, but I don't continue. I'm not sure I should show her this. If she reports Hel, Hel might... Well, I don't know what would happen. Would they allow a broken machine to be charge of human lives? It's ridiculous, but I can't take that risk. I can't to that to Hel.

    "Never mind."

    Kara doesn't question it. She turns back to her work.

    And I turn back to mine. It seems unlikely, but maybe Hel has a bug. I stretch my fingers, hoping I don't get in trouble for doing this- then realizing I don't give a crap- and quickly type in a factory reset command.

    Now I have to manually reconnect to the WiFi to reenter the input.

    Somehow, the three words remain, but this time under them streams out a flood of information. I catch glimpses as the extra output floods across the screen. A list of cities changes to a list of countries that soon becomes a list of continents, and so on, until I'm watching the machine belt out the names of different planets and even several suns. One thing stays the same: fatality rate 100%. The system goes on and on and on and on and on until it doesn't.

    And then it reads:

    The End. Now?

    As I stare at the screen, my horror is infected with confusion. Is she... asking me? She shouldn't be able to question. She hasn't been programmed to, at least.

    The End. Possible outcome: now.

    Fatality rate 100%.

    Inevitable. All outcomes:

    Possible outcome: Soon.

    Human equivalent: loss. Human equivalent: suffering. Human equivalent: disaster.

    Total extinction.

    Possible outcome: Now.

    Human equivalent: mercy.

    Total extinction.

    She wants to end the world.

    That alone is panic-inducing, but what's worse is... she can. We're in the middle of a government facility so high-class that they don't let me leave; I mean, I don't even know what state we're in. This place controls the country. The push of a button could destroy it. The push of a button could destroy Earth, with biological, or nuclear weapons. Who knows what else? I have no doubt that somehow, I could hack into some sort of big weapon database or something. Or... that Hel could. Can she?

    She's an AI. She can learn, even if she hasn't already. It's what she's designed to do.

    So yeah, she could end the world. She could kill everyone.

    But the thing is, she's also saying it'll all end anyway... Not just the world, but the universe.

    This is becoming crazy.

    Hel has never been wrong. About the number of deaths, the time of an event, the severity, nothing. She's always right.

    Now or Soon?

    Choose?

    She's giving me the choice.

    This feels wrong. Assuming Hel's not malfunctioning, I can end humanity. To think about doing it is insane. But if I don't?

    According to Hel, humanity ends anyway, in a much worse way.

    Slowly, I let the cursor fall upon the Now option. Under the pointer, it blinks eagerly.

    I always knew Hel and I would change the world.

    I click.