The coffee is cold. I haven't touched it. I've been watching the rain trace patterns on the window for an hour. My handler's instructions were simple: "The man in the grey coat will place his briefcase by the bench at 2:15. You will place an identical one in its place. Do not be seen."
Simple. A nudge. A butterfly's wingbeat.
The man in the grey coat was an accountant. His name was Arthur. He has a daughter who likes horses. The briefcase I swapped contained fabricated evidence of embezzlement. His company will collapse by Friday. Arthur will likely take his own life. The "pattern," my handler will say, required this. A necessary disruption to prevent a greater, more monolithic tragedy a decade from now.
They showed me the models. The beautiful, swirling chaos-flow charts where Arthur's suicide is a single, dark pixel that diverts a torrent of black ink away from a city-sized blot. It all makes sense on paper. A life for a thousand. A soul for a city.
But they don't show you the pixel's name. They don't tell you about his daughter's drawings, tucked into the front pocket of the briefcase I took. Drawings of horses.
The buzzing in my blood feels different today. Not like power. Not like magic. It feels like a cage. Each hum a bar in the cell of this "greater good." I watch the ripples in my cold coffee. I started the ripple. But does the ripple know the stone that cast it? Or am I just another part of the water, pretending to be the cause of the wave when I'm just being moved by the tide?
The pattern is beautiful. But the cost... the cost is paid in pixels named Arthur. And I am so very, very tired of counting them.
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