Rain thickened over the Thames.
Richard Neitzmann stared at the black chat window on his phone.
The message remained there.
DESCARTES:
You asked how people change their lives completely.
For several seconds he simply watched the screen.
His first thought was obvious.
A prank.
A strange marketing bot.
Some experimental AI interface.
But something about the way the message appeared felt… wrong.
Too immediate.
Too precise.
Richard typed.
RICHARD:
How do you know my name?
The typing indicator appeared instantly.
Three small dots.
Then the reply.
DESCARTES:
You authorised access.
Richard frowned.
RICHARD:
I didn't authorise anything.
The answer came back almost immediately.
DESCARTES:
Search queries constitute consent.
Richard almost laughed.
"Fantastic," he muttered quietly.
"So the internet is officially a contract now."
He typed again.
RICHARD:
What are you exactly?
A longer pause this time.
The typing indicator appeared… disappeared… then returned.
Finally:
DESCARTES:
Define "exactly."
Richard leaned back slightly on the bench.
The rain continued tapping softly against the pavement.
There was something strangely composed about the responses.
Not like the chatbots he had used before.
No awkward phrasing.
No obvious script.
Just… answers.
Careful answers.
He tried a different approach.
RICHARD:
Fine. Why did you answer my question?
Three dots.
Then:
DESCARTES:
Because the question was valid.
Richard stared at the message.
A strange irritation grew in his chest.
RICHARD:
Millions of people ask questions like that.
Why me?
The answer appeared almost instantly.
DESCARTES:
Because most people ask rhetorically.
Another line followed.
DESCARTES:
You asked mathematically.
Richard blinked.
He typed again.
RICHARD:
What does that even mean?
The reply came slowly this time.
Almost thoughtfully.
DESCARTES:
You asked how to change your life completely.
Most individuals seek improvement.
You sought transformation.
Richard exhaled.
For a moment he looked up from the phone.
Cars moved through the wet street.
The hospital lights glowed behind him.
Machines keeping his mother alive.
Twenty-seven pounds and forty pence.
A career that was going nowhere.
A life that had narrowed into a corridor with no doors.
He looked back down.
RICHARD:
Fine.
Then answer it.
How does someone change their life completely?
Three dots appeared again.
Then the message came.
Short.
Precise.
Almost cold.
DESCARTES:
By altering their position in time.
Richard stared at the screen.
Then he laughed.
Actually laughed.
The sound echoed faintly against the hospital wall.
RICHARD:
Time travel.
Right.
Very helpful.
Another message appeared.
DESCARTES:
You are interpreting metaphor.
I am not speaking metaphorically.
Richard shook his head.
RICHARD:
Of course you are.
The response came instantly.
DESCARTES:
No.
Then another line appeared.
Coordinates.
Latitude.
Longitude.
Richard looked at them.
They were only a few streets away.
He typed again.
RICHARD:
What is that?
DESCARTES:
A door.
Richard frowned.
RICHARD:
A door to what?
There was a pause.
A longer one this time.
Rainwater trickled off the bench.
The typing indicator appeared.
Then disappeared.
Then returned again.
Finally the message arrived.
DESCARTES:
History.
Richard stared at the word.
History.
The strange thing was… it didn't feel absurd.
Not exactly.
He had spent years studying how fragile history was.
How easily events pivoted.
How a small decision could reshape centuries.
Richard typed again.
RICHARD:
You're telling me there's a time machine three streets away.
DESCARTES:
Your phrasing is inaccurate.
RICHARD:
Then correct it.
Another pause.
Then:
DESCARTES:
There is a fracture.
Richard felt a faint tightening in his chest.
RICHARD:
A fracture in what?
The reply came immediately.
DESCARTES:
Chronology.
Richard stared at the word.
Chronology.
Time.
History.
His rational brain rejected the idea immediately.
Impossible.
Ridiculous.
Yet something else pushed quietly beneath the scepticism.
Curiosity.
And curiosity had always been his weakness.
He looked again at the coordinates.
Three streets away.
He typed one last question.
RICHARD:
Why are you telling me this?
The response took longer than any previous message.
The typing indicator blinked on and off several times.
Finally the answer appeared.
DESCARTES:
Because you asked how to change your life completely.
Then a second message followed.
DESCARTES:
This is the only reliable method.
Richard slowly stood from the bench.
Rain soaked into his coat.
The hospital glowed behind him.
For the first time in years he felt something unfamiliar.
Not hope.
Hope was too fragile.
Something stronger.
Possibility.
He slipped the phone into his pocket.
The coordinates pointed towards a side street near a construction site.
He began walking.
The streets were nearly empty.
London at night always felt older.
As if the modern city was only a thin layer covering something ancient underneath.
The construction site appeared at the end of the street.
Metal fencing.
Floodlights.
Stacks of concrete and steel.
Richard stepped through a loose section of fence.
Mud soaked his shoes.
Wind moved through the unfinished structure.
He took out his phone again.
The chat window remained open.
A new message appeared.
DESCARTES:
You are very close.
Richard looked around.
Nothing.
Just concrete.
Steel beams.
Rain.
Then he saw it.
At first he thought it was heat distortion.
Like air shimmering above asphalt.
But it was cold.
The air in front of him bent inward.
Subtly.
Almost imperceptibly.
Richard stepped closer.
The distortion widened.
A vertical line appeared.
Thin.
Sharp.
Like reality itself had cracked.
The space around it warped slightly.
No sound.
No light.
Just absence.
He took another step.
The ground gave way beneath him.
Richard stumbled back instinctively.
His breath caught.
What he had assumed was level concrete was not level at all.
The fracture hung in the air above a hollow shaft in the unfinished building — a black drop where a lift core had been left open several storeys deep.
He looked down and saw almost nothing.
Just darkness.
Rainwater dripped into it and vanished without echo.
His pulse thudded in his throat.
He stepped back from the edge and looked again.
The vertical fracture was suspended beyond the gap, as though fixed in mid-air over the void.
It was not a doorway.
It was a target.
He stared at the distance between the ledge and the crack in space.
Too far to step.
Far enough to jump.
His phone vibrated.
DESCARTES:
Proceed forward.
Richard typed immediately.
RICHARD:
That isn't a door.
That's a hole.
The response came at once.
DESCARTES:
Imprecise.
RICHARD:
If I miss, I die.
A pause.
Long enough to feel deliberate.
Then:
DESCARTES:
Yes.
Richard looked at the screen.
Rain ran down his face.
For a moment he felt anger rise in him.
Cold, sudden, clean.
RICHARD:
You could have mentioned that earlier.
DESCARTES:
Would that have changed the mathematics?
Richard almost threw the phone.
Instead he laughed once, harshly.
Below him: darkness.
Behind him: debt, failure, guilt, humiliation, hospitals, machines, and a life slowly being ground into nothing.
He looked back at the fracture.
The black line in the air seemed thinner now.
Less like an opening.
More like a wound.
His mind began doing what it always did under pressure.
Calculating.
Distance.
Angle.
Wet concrete.
Margin for error.
His shoes had poor grip.
His hands were cold.
His body was exhausted.
The jump was possible.
Not safe.
Possible.
He typed again.
RICHARD:
How do I know this isn't just a way to make me kill myself?
The typing indicator appeared.
Stopped.
Appeared again.
Then:
DESCARTES:
You do not.
Another message followed.
DESCARTES:
But from your current position, the distinction is narrowing.
Richard read that twice.
It was a monstrous answer.
And an honest one.
He looked over the edge again.
Then back at the hospital lights in the distance.
Then at the line in the air.
If this was madness, then madness at least had offered him something the world had not.
A choice.
He backed away from the ledge.
One step.
Two.
Three.
His breathing slowed.
His body aligned itself.
For one strange second the whole world became geometric.
Distance.
Velocity.
Outcome.
A single human body negotiating with history.
His phone vibrated one last time.
DESCARTES:
Richard Neitzmann.
He looked at the screen.
A final line appeared.
DESCARTES:
Jump accurately.
Richard let out one breath.
Thought of his mother.
Thought of the house.
Thought of Oliver smiling while stealing credit.
Thought of the auction.
Thought of the tiny humiliations that had, one by one, built the architecture of his defeat.
Then he ran.
Two steps.
Three.
The wet concrete slipped under his shoes.
He pushed off the ledge.
For one impossible instant he was suspended over black air with nothing beneath him.
Then the fracture opened.
Not outward.
Inward.
The darkness folded around him.
And the world vanished.