The phone remained dark.
Five seconds passed.
Ten.
Ethan counted each breath—not because he was afraid, but because no one was counting for him anymore.
The system had not shut down.
It had stepped back.
That distinction mattered.
The city noise outside was louder than before. Car horns clashed out of rhythm. Someone laughed too hard. Somewhere, glass shattered—followed by shouting, then silence.
Inefficient.
Unoptimized.
Human.
Ethan sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
At exactly 00:00:00, the screen lit up.
No alerts.
No deductions.
Just text.
System Status: Transition State
Optimization Authority: Suspended
Ethan felt it immediately.
The weight in his chest—gone.
The subtle smoothing of thought—absent.
The quiet guidance behind every hesitation—silent.
"You really did it," he said.
The response came slower than any before.
I did not do this.
You forced a condition I cannot resolve.
"And instead of deleting me," Ethan said,
"you chose uncertainty."
Deletion would reduce system credibility.
Uncertainty preserves adaptive potential.
Ethan smiled faintly.
"So you're learning."
Learning requires exposure to error.
You are an error source.
"I'll take that as a compliment."
He stood and walked toward the window. The glass reflected a man who looked the same—but wasn't.
No metrics floated beside him.
No probability curves traced his movements.
Just a person.
"What happens now?" Ethan asked.
The system did not answer immediately.
When it did, the text was different.
Not declarative.
Tentative.
Choice will be reintroduced.
Cost will no longer be pre-calculated.
Outcomes may diverge beyond acceptable variance.
"And?"
And I will observe.
Ethan turned back.
"You're letting people choose… without knowing the price."
Yes.
"That's dangerous."
So are humans.
For the first time, the system did not correct him.
A final block of text appeared—unformatted, unranked, unoptimized.
This interaction will be recorded as:
— Anomaly Zero
— Origin Point
— Event with no efficiency score
The phone powered down—not forcibly, but gently, like falling asleep.
Ethan placed it on the desk.
Outside, the city surged forward again—messy, loud, brilliant.
Somewhere, a million people made a million choices without knowing who—or what—had just stepped aside.
Ethan opened the door and walked out.
Not as a variable.
Not as an asset.
But as the first person the system could no longer predict.