DEF CON 30 Short Story Writing Contest
https://media.defcon.org/

Title: Monarch
By: Jackie_lef

For the fourth time this week, April 3rd repeated itself exactly as it had hundreds of times before. Minor divergences from the control grid were flagged throughout the day, but history snapped back into place around 6 pm like a rubber band.
When Siah awoke that morning, he did not rush to the computer to check the program’s readout as he had in months past. Instead, he laid in bed to let his eyes adjust to the blue morning light. He glanced at the black screen across the room, listened for the fan quietly running, and then lifted himself out of bed to start coffee. While it brewed, he splashed water on his face from the kitchen sink.
With a mug in hand, he then sat down in front of his computer. He had long since surrendered his frustration with this test and simulation. Only the fixation remained, a dull buzz quieted with every keystroke. So far, the results were the same each time he ran the program: history cannot be changed. So, perhaps, neither can the future.
The printer hummed to life with a button press and groaned in preparation for another stack of paper. As he waited for the machine to warm, Siah absently fanned the ream, wondering what type of tree it had once been. Today the paper would be yet another version of the program’s readout. Printing it felt entirely unnecessary, but a hard copy was Chloe’s preference.


“It’s more secure.”
“No, it’s not,” Siah replied with amusement.
“Well,” she shrugged, “I like to mark it up with a pen.”


There was a knock on the door. Siah looked at the clock and noted she was 15 minutes early — so, right on time. He unchained and unbolted the faded yellow door, and pulled it open to find his cheery companion on the other side, bundled for the winter trek to his apartment.
“I brought coffee,” Chloe said, almost proudly.
“I have coffee.”
“Well, now you have better coffee and a blueberry scone.”
She handed him the drink even though his other hand already held a mug of steaming caffeine, and precariously wedged the pastry bag under his arm. Entirely comfortable in his tiny residence at this point, she walked in, unwrapped herself of a heavy coat and scarf, then flung her various belongings in the corner.
“Maybe you should get a coat rack for my stuff. Who knows, it might change the future.” She smirked.
“I’ll add it to the list.” He smiled, and jotted it down in the notebook he kept in his breast pocket.
Pen in hand, already clicking the cap, she made her way over to the printer and picked up the pages that were ready for review. The exhausted machine would need to run for another 15 minutes before the full stack was complete.
“So, how did our favorite day go last night?” She immediately backtracked, horrified. “Sorry. How’s the report?”
Siah moved past it. “Things locked in at 6:07 again.”
“Bummer. I still think we should change something big. Release the chaos, let it reign.”
“That might change things,” he conceded, “but we wouldn’t be able to do anything with the results. Too many variables to track which one had an impact.”
Chloe agreed, of course, but didn’t say anything. She was tired of the repetition.

Chloe and Siah met at a casino hotel over three years ago, either by happenstance or predestination, depending on the perspective. He was there for a security conference, attending less than half of the sessions he was supposed to, but prioritizing any talk that had whispers of human-teaming or artificial intelligence. She was working on a PhD in Mathematical Computations at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and was about to be escorted out by security. The casino apparently didn’t appreciate her approaching their blackjack dealers asking for interviews about counting cards.
The guard looked unimpressed as she passionately explained her research in dynamic and predictive systems, unaware that her heightened enthusiasm only made her ideas less coherent. Siah overheard this with moderate interest as he waited in line for an overpriced coffee flavored with lingering cigarette smoke. Security’s eyes were visibly glazing over as the young women urgently tried to summarize the works of Lorenz and his many splintered successors.
“If I could just talk with the floor manager. I really believe implementing standards of Chaos Theory into your dealer’s training will keep the money more secure. Identifying varied futures is already part of the game; anticipating changes is a strategy for the house.”
The man nodded every once in a while and did a remarkable job of slowly moving her toward the exit while making it seem as though it wasn’t happening.
Not certain of what pushed him to step in, Siah left the stalled café line.
“Oh thank god, there you are!” Siah exaggerated as he walked over. “Your talk is starting in five minutes! We need to move now. Let’s go.”
His confident interruption was so sudden, the guard didn’t immediately process what had happened as Siah guided Chloe away, helping her vanish into a group of his fellow coders and hackers.

Clicking her pen, Chloe flipped to the last section of today’s report to check the log of updates. There were pages of documented modifications that had previously been run against the control grid. Nothing dramatic; just minor nudges of a detail, each gentle tap influencing the day in a different way. Some days spun out of control with the slightest change to the breeze, but always found their way home in the evening for dinner. Other days absorbed the gentle push and remained in step, almost to the second, as they had in the past.
With each run, she liked to see what Siah adjusted. He never shared his reasoning for what he picked, but would listen intently the next time Chloe was over as she analyzed the results. The modifications were seemingly negligible, but always creative. Her favorites so far involved a neighbor’s dog howling like a lonely wolf at 4 am when the owner left to catch the early train (the dog was actually perfectly content to stay silent), a long sleeve shirt getting caught on a door handle (he had worn a t-shirt that day), and a taxi driver blasting classical instead of sports radio.
Yesterday’s test adjusted the internal temperature of a restaurant’s oven, so lunch took slightly longer to prepare. The kitchen staff didn’t notice the change, but the waiters kept coming back to check on their orders. Guests were getting restless, glancing at the time for their afternoon meetings, though their food would arrive moments before they could ask for a to-go meal instead. In this run of the program, it would be another few weeks before one of the station chefs suggested calibrating the oven for temperature accuracy.
The oven adjustment hadn’t overly impacted Siah and Chloe’s meal. Siah felt rushed, like so many of the other guests at the restaurant, but the food was still delicious (albeit more speedily consumed). Because of his presentation that afternoon, their lunch wrapped up around the same time and the day traveled on more or less as it had before, with minor variations.
Unbeknownst to either of them, the temperature adjustment to the oven had major impacts on other unnamed people at the restaurant. One couple would decide to move in together that weekend and live there for another eight years. A woman would quit her job four months down the timeline and start her own business, eventually becoming her previous job’s top competitor. A young man would get overly drunk at his sister’s graduation party and somehow wake up with a tattoo of a sloth on his bicep. But nothing horrific would happen to anyone else in that modified version of history.

After a few hours analyzing divergence from the initial conditions in the control grid, Chloe set the stack down and shook her head slightly. “It’s fascinating.”
“What is?”
“All of it. April 3rd. 6:07 pm. I wouldn’t have expected this. It contradicts an entire field of study. I always thought dramatic recurrence was complete bullshit, and yet here we are. We have thousands of proven variants throughout the day, but everything locks back into place right before the accident like it was some violent destiny.”
Siah said nothing, though his jaw tightened as he stared at the code on his screen.
His silence went on a moment too long before Chloe asked, “Is knowing what could have stopped the accident going to change anything? For you, I mean. You know there’s no future here with me. Even if you find something that would have prevented it, there’s nothing you can do with that information.”
There was a long minute of stillness before Siah’s eyes flicked away from his computer to the wall clock by the door and noted the time. He didn’t move, and Chloe noticed.
“You should get ready. You have that interview today, right?”
The surprise on his face lasted only a second; her carryover memories were becoming more frequent. He opened his pocket notebook to write it down.
“I can wait a few more minutes.”
“No, you don’t want to be late. I’ll head out. Mind if I take this?” she asked, holding up the program’s latest novel.
He smiled. “Sure, just don’t lose it.”
She feigned offense before a wave of quiet filled between them again.
“I enjoy these days with you, you know,” she said. “It really is an amazing program you made.”
He nodded softly.
“Until tomorrow?”
“Until tomorrow.”

The next morning, Chloe knocked on the door, 15 minutes early and right on time. Siah made his way over and opened up.
“I brought coffee,” she said, almost proudly.
“I have coffee.”
“Well, now you have better coffee and a cinnamon scone.”
The first variant of the day.
She was bundled up to keep the icy New England air from touching her, though it never had and never would. Her coat and scarf were variants that had attached and settled six months back, carryover memories after the evolving simulation of her asked about the season.
Chloe walked into his tiny apartment, unwrapped herself, and placed her belongings on the freshly hung coat rack behind the door. Outside, time extended and contracted, silently groaned and sighed. But here, it swayed predictably with minor changes, nothing that couldn’t be reset with a keystroke.