Chapter 3: The First Algorithm
On the eighteenth floor of Neo-Arcadia's Central Monitoring Tower, Elara Venn stood before a massive control panel that stretched from floor to ceiling. On the screen, the world was being transformed into numbers.
Every citizen in her new city was reduced to a digital file. DNA, family history, genetic predispositions, even silent mutations that only manifested under extreme conditions—everything was measured, categorized, ranked.
She told her assistants: "The soul is just a complex chemical composition."
She designed the Genetic Compatibility Matrix to be more than just a marriage algorithm. It was a complete system for managing humanity. Every major decision in a citizen's life was made based on their numbers: who they worked with, who they lived beside, who they married, even who was permitted to reproduce.
Children were no longer born by chance. Parents were chosen for them before they were created. Couples no longer chose each other. The algorithm decided.
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The Emotional Stability Index was the most important number in every citizen's life. A scale from zero to one hundred, it determined a person's ability to control their emotions.
Above eighty: ideal citizen. Granted prestigious jobs, reproduction rights, freedom of movement.
Between sixty and eighty: stable citizen. Routinely monitored.
Between forty and sixty: potential threat. Required to attend calming sessions, movement restricted.
Below forty: sent to rehabilitation centers from which no one returned.
A sudden drop in the index was enough to summon the Compatibility Units. Any unauthorized love, any deep grief, any intense anger—all lowered the index. And the lower the index, the closer the citizen came to death.
Elara said: "Emotional stability is the foundation of civilization."
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The Compatibility Units were not merely police. They were a complete apparatus of hunters, analysts, and executioners. They wore gray uniforms with no insignia, their faces covered by semi-transparent masks that revealed only their cold eyes.
They roamed Neo-Arcadia's streets around the clock, reading wristband signals from a distance, searching for any anomaly. A heart beating faster than normal. Sudden sweating. Fingers trembling. All were evidence of an emotional crime.
When they detected something, they did not ask questions. They did not investigate. They simply acted.
First warning: a red flash on the wristband.
Second warning: a siren pinpointing the offender's location.
Third warning: the termination injection.
Execution happened on the spot. In the street, at home, at work. No trials, no defense, no appeals.
Elara said: "Numbers do not lie."
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The Rehabilitation Centers were a dark secret the Authority never spoke of publicly. White buildings on the city's outskirts, surrounded by barbed wire and cameras on every corner. Those who entered never left.
There, scientists worked to cure emotional patients. Cure meant: erasing emotional memory, reprogramming responses, or in terminal cases—genetic termination.
Some citizens simply disappeared. Their neighbors would recall that their index had been low in the final days. Then nothing. No funerals, no data, no records.
Elara said: "Some cells must die for the body to remain healthy."
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The Programmed Marriages were Elara's boldest innovation. When citizens reached twenty-five, the algorithm sent them the name of their proposed partner.
No dating, no courtship, no love. Just a command.
Citizens were summoned to compatibility halls, where they stood in long lines, waiting their turn. Before each couple stood a doctor and an officer, preparing the genetic injection that would certify compatibility.
Some saw their partner for the first time in that moment. Some felt something strange in their hearts—fear, grief, or in very rare cases... hope.
But hope was the most dangerous feeling in Neo-Arcadia.
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The Anomalies were what Elara feared most. Citizens whose emotional responses did not conform to expected patterns. Men and women whose indices fluctuated randomly, whose behavior could not be predicted, who could not be categorized.
Elara watched them closely. Some seemed normal for years, then suddenly erupted into violent love or destructive hatred. Some lived double lives: model citizens by day, poets writing about rain and hearts by night.
She told her assistants: "These are the most dangerous."
She designed the Preventive Purification Protocol: any citizen whose index showed anomalous patterns more than three times was subject to genetic execution without warning.
She called this "routine maintenance."
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After a decade of the algorithm's rule, Neo-Arcadia had become a silent city.
The streets were clean, the towers gleaming, the air pure. No crime, no poverty, no conflict. And also no loud laughter, no public weeping, no lullabies sung by mothers to their children.
People walked like ghosts, faces empty, eyes glassy. They ate at set times, worked set hours, slept at set times. Their lives were schedules with no surprises.
Children grew up never knowing what love meant. Adults gradually forgot what it felt like when the heart beat for no reason.
One night, Elara stood at her tower window, looking out at the city she had built. It was quiet. It was perfect.
She smiled.
"This is Absolute Harmony."
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But Elara did not know that in one of her laboratories, in the basement of the Genetic Research Building, a young engineer was working in silence on something the algorithm could not see.
That engineer had designed hundreds of genetic death codes. Her hands had written the codes that killed Caelan and Nira, and thousands of others.
But her heart was beating illegally.
Sometimes she smiled alone in her room, remembering the face of a man who had died years ago—a man she had loved, whom the algorithm had deemed incompatible with her.
She opened forbidden files at midnight, read ancient poetry, listened to burned melodies, dreamed of real rain.
Her name was Lena.
And Elara knew nothing about her.
Because the algorithm, for all its power, cannot read what a woman hides in the depths of her genes.
To be continued in Special Chapter 4: The First Execution