Pattern Recognition: Sector 4 Train
The pattern is always there, if you know how to look. My handler calls it "embracing the stochastic." I call it a headache. The 8:15 AM train is a beautiful instrument of controlled implosion. Every passenger follows a string, a variable in an equation they can't see.
See the woman in the red coat? She will trip getting on the train. The man with the briefcase will catch her. Their children will one day tear down a pantheon of sleeping gods. Not my problem. My problem is the ripple effect.
The screech of the brakes is a C-sharp. Always. It harmonizes with the low hum of the third rail—a frequency that makes fillings ache and ghosts jittery. A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo; a subway car full of oblivious souls in New York hurtles toward a future I have to gently, ever so gently, nudge. The model says a delay of three-point-four seconds is all it will take. My hand rests on the emergency brake lever. Just a touch. Just enough to break the pattern. Or start a new one.
--Model Input Log K-42, Self-Correction Entry 7
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