I sat on a damp, oil-stained curb outside a 7-Eleven in Queens, New York. In my left hand was a half-eaten hotdog that tasted more like cardboard than meat, and in my right, a cracked smartphone that shouldn't even be working.
Rain sizzled against the hot pavement, sending up a humid mist that smelled like old tires and desperation. I ignored the water dripping down my neck, my eyes locked on the store's sliding glass door.
"Three minutes and forty seconds," I muttered, taking a cynical bite of the hotdog. "If that digital timer burning into my retinas is correct, old Henry at the counter is about to have a very, very bad Tuesday."
If anyone was watching me, they'd see a scruffy twenty-something delivery guy talking to himself in the rain. They'd probably think I was on something. But in my reality, the world had stopped being normal two hours ago.
Right now, a translucent, pale-blue panel was hovering over the cashier's bald head like a UI element from a poorly optimized RPG.
[Target: Henry Miller] [Status: Target of Armed Robbery] [Fate: Grave Injury & Total Financial Loss] [Time to Event: 00:03:12]
I looked away from Henry and glanced at a woman walking her poodle past me.
[Target: Sarah Jenkins] [Status: Ignorant] [Fate: Will find a $20 bill in a puddle, then slip and sprain her ankle in 10 minutes.]
Then, I looked at a businessman in a suit rushing to catch the bus.
[Target: Robert Kane] [Status: Stress Level 88%] [Fate: Will be fired by 5:00 PM due to a leaked email.]
It was nauseating. Every person, every stray cat, even the rusty fire hydrant across the street had a tag. The world was no longer a place of mystery; it was a giant, transparent database, and I was the only one with the admin password.
I wasn't a prophet. I wasn't a saint. I was Silas, a Computer Science student who couldn't even afford a new bike, let alone save the world. I was just... curious. I wanted to see if this "system" was a hallucination caused by my head hitting the asphalt, or if the universe had actually glitched out on me.
[Flashback - 2 Hours Ago]
The day started out as a classic New York disaster.
I was pedaling like a madman, trying to deliver a $45 order of General Tso's Chicken to a guy in a penthouse who probably wouldn't tip. The rain was coming down in sheets. I took a sharp turn on 42nd Street when a yellow cab—bless its heart—decided that traffic lights were merely suggestions.
The cab clipped my rear tire. I went flying.
I remember the screech of metal on pavement, the smell of spilled soy sauce, and the sharp, blinding pain as my forehead met the curb. When I pulled myself up, my bike was a twisted mess of aluminum, and my phone—my only way to get orders—looked like it had been through a rock crusher. The screen was a spiderweb of dead pixels.
"Great," I had hissed, wiping blood from my brow. "Just great."
I dragged my bruised body back to my shoebox apartment. It was a 10-by-10 room that smelled like ozone and cheap solder. Since I couldn't afford a professional repair, I did what any desperate CS student would do. I opened my "junk box"—a collection of salvaged motherboards and half-fried chips I'd found in campus dumpsters.
I needed a temporary processor to bypass a short on my phone's logic board. That's when I found it.
At the bottom of the bin was a chip I didn't recognize. It was bone-colored, about the size of a fingernail, with microscopic engravings that looked less like circuits and more like... ancient runes. It felt cold. Unnaturally cold.
"Whatever," I'd muttered, my hands shaking from the adrenaline of the crash. "If it fits, it sits."
I soldered the chip onto the board. The moment the lead cooled, a spark—bright and purple—shot out from the phone. It didn't just hit my hand; it felt like it surged straight through my nerves and anchored itself in my brain.
I fell back onto my bed, gasping for air. My vision blurred, then sharpened.
A voice, cold and mechanical, echoed in the silence of my skull:
"Fate Archive System synchronized." "Host: Silas. Lineage: Unknown." "World Data Layer... Unlocked."
I thought I was having a stroke. I scrambled to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, looking for blood in my eyes. I stared into the mirror, expecting to see a status bar over my own head.
But there was... nothing.
I saw my own pale face, the dark circles under my eyes, and the fresh bruise on my temple. But no floating text. No destiny timer. No status bar.
I looked at the leaky faucet in the sink: [Status: Corroded. Fate: Will burst in 48 hours.] I looked at a spider crawling near the ceiling: [Status: Hunting. Fate: Death by rolled-up newspaper in 12 minutes.]
Everything else had a script. The sink, the spider, the mold on the wall. But when I looked at myself?
[Target: Silas] [Fate: ERROR. DATA NOT FOUND. ACCESS DENIED.]
My heart hammered against my ribs. It was as if the system could read every line of code in the universe, but I was the only "Bug" it couldn't scan. I wasn't part of the pre-written story. I was an anomaly.
[Back to Present]
3:13 PM.
I threw the rest of the hotdog into a nearby trash can. The air felt heavy. The rain seemed to slow down, or maybe it was just my perception.
A man in a heavy, oversized grey hoodie walked past me. He wasn't looking at his phone. He wasn't looking at the rain. He was staring straight at the 7-Eleven entrance, his hand stuffed deep into his front pocket.
Over his head, a red box pulsed like a warning light on a nuclear reactor:
[Status: Armed Robber. Desperation Level: 95%] [Fate: 5 Years in Prison. Failure.]
My breath hitched. My CS brain immediately started calculating the variables. If I called the cops now, they'd take five minutes to arrive. By then, Henry would already be shot in the shoulder. If I yelled a warning, the guy might panic and pull the trigger early.
I realized then that the "Fate" I was seeing wasn't a suggestion. It was the most likely outcome based on the current "code" of the world. And since I was the only one who could see the code, I was the only one who could decide whether to let the program run... or insert a line of my own.
3:14 PM.
The man pushed the door open. The chime of the bell sounded like a funeral knell.
I stood up, my knees slightly wobbly. I didn't rush in. I wasn't a hero. I just walked toward the glass window and watched.
Inside, the man pulled a snub-nosed revolver. Henry's hands flew up, his face turning the color of ash. I could see the sweat on the robber's neck. I could see the trembling of the gun barrel.
3:15 PM.
The digital timer in my vision hit 00:00:00.
At that exact microsecond, the robber barked a command. Henry reached for the register, but his trembling hand knocked over a display of lighters. The robber panicked. He squeezed the trigger.
BANG!
The sound was muffled by the thick glass, but the flash was unmistakable. Henry collapsed behind the counter, clutching his shoulder. Money was scattered everywhere. The robber scrambled, grabbing a handful of twenties before sprinting back toward the door.
He burst out, nearly knocking me over. He didn't even look at me. He was too busy running toward a dark alleyway where, according to the system, a patrol car was about to turn the corner.
My vision suddenly flared with a bright, golden light.
[Event Verified: Henry Miller's Fate achieved.] [System Reward: 10 Fate Points.] [Current Balance: 10 FP.] [First Prediction Successful. Tutorial Phase: Complete.]
I stood there in the rain, watching the blue and red lights of a police cruiser reflect in the puddles a block away. The robber was already as good as caught.
A strange sensation washed over me. It wasn't just adrenaline; it was a cold, sharp clarity. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like a victim of New York's cruelty. I didn't feel like a delivery guy struggling for rent.
The 10 Fate Points felt like a tiny hum in the back of my mind, a resource waiting to be spent.
I looked down at my shattered phone. The screen flickered, and a new prompt appeared:
[Spend 5 FP to repair 'Personal Tool'?]
I smirked, a drop of rain tracing a path down my nose.
"Repair," I whispered.
The cracks on the screen didn't just disappear; they flowed back together like liquid silver. The dead pixels ignited with vibrant color. The battery jumped from 2% to 100%.
"Holy crap," I laughed, the sound lost in the New York thunder. "It's real. It's all real."
I wasn't just a observer anymore. I was the programmer. And NYC was about to become my favorite playground.