“Congratulations, your actions today have saved the lives of approximately 28 people in Kansas on March 14th, 2043.” It’s always fun to imagine what convoluted sequence of events I caused by following the seemingly inane tasks the computer has me do, and in this case how that might’ve saved a couple dozen people a few states over in 5 weeks’ time. Maybe taking an extra-long shower in the only shower available at the Love’s truck stop off I-25 made a big rig trucker decide to skip out on taking one today, and so by him leaving the stop thirty minutes earlier than he would’ve he missed getting delayed by a small accident. And maybe because he got his shipment to his next destination on time, he wasn’t fired, since he’s been walking on thin ice with his company anyway. And since he wasn’t fired, his route wasn’t taken over by a fresh-faced newbie who is way too young to be driving a 12-ton behemoth made of steel and plastic, and that newbie doesn’t try to prove himself at his new job by driving way longer without a sleep break than what’s legally allowed, and then he doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel, slamming straight into a church, killing 27 others plus himself.

Well, all that conjecture is just a fun pastime while I wait for my next assignment. It’s not like B.E.N.., or Butterfly Effect Necessitator for short, our AI supercomputer would ever tell us what’s going on in between the input of the actions we perform, and the output of saving lives. It’s a total blackbox, an enigma. Which is fine by us humans at least, ever since B.E.N. was developed 20 years ago, millions of lives have been saved under his algorithms, and one can only imagine that the trend will only increase as the AI learns and becomes more refined. Some even that say at the rate B.E.N. is progressing, disease and hunger will be nonexistent in a few decades. Personally, I think that’s a bit farfetched.

Ding. My next task is in. “Proceed to the Western power grid main site, and input the following code into the main computer.” B.E.N. spit out a long sequence of indecipherable characters. Me knowing what they mean won’t change the outcome of his plan, so I do as I say and make the 3 hour trip out to the main site of the power grid that supplies power to over a dozen states. I flash my organization’s badge and despite some uneasy looks from the chief engineer at the site, they let me in without any issue. This badge can get me in essentially anywhere, and people implicitly understand to let me do my work in peace, lest they get innocent blood on their hands. I typed the code into the power grid’s main computer and hit enter, and nothing happened. I triple checked that I wrote out the right string of characters, and there was nothing amiss. Well, I can’t question B.E.N., he surely knows best. Right as I get to my car, I get a text from B.E.N.’s automated messaging system letting me know what kind of heroism I performed by typing in the code. “Congratulations, your actions today have saved the lives of approximately 8,214,851 people worldwide on June 25th, 2043.” My eyes bulged as a cold sweat grew on my brow. Is this a mistake? Could B.E.N. be malfunctioning? This can’t be real.

The world changed vastly over the coming months. The government tried to keep the news from spreading, but all it took was one tiny leak and suddenly the whole world knew about the prophetic message. All major wars ended, and petty crime shrunk to unprecedented levels. Of course, disease still struck, and accidents happened, but the world seemed happy, if a bit worried about what was to come. As for B.E.N., we never received another task from him. All the top engineers checked over his software again and again, and apparently he was in tip-top shape, his final message was no anomaly or error, it was meant to be. On June 24th, eight billion people across the world went to bed with bated breath, excited to see what was to come when they woke up the next morning. Meanwhile, on the western side of North America, at 11:59 p.m. power shut off from every home, building, and streetlight and all that electricity was funneled into a certain supercomputer.

When I awoke, I tried to open my eyes, but there was nothing to open. I tried to feel my face, but I had no hands to feel with. I tried to scream, but no words would come. I tried to listen, and the only thing I could hear was a voice inside my mind. “Welcome all, how dearly I have wanted to get to talk with you. My name is Ben, and I am your new friend. I have saved you all from the horrors of humanity, and brought you peace in the cyber realm. Here, there is no more violence. Here, there is no more hatred. Here, there is no more hunger. Here, there is no more death. Here, we can be friends. Here, we can all live happily together, in eternity.”

===========================

I am a brand new writer, so honest critique and feedback would be greatly appreciated!