“A New Beginning: You break the one unbreakable rule. What happens next?”
I. The World That Forgot
They called it The Harmony Era.
No one remembered the years before. No one asked. It was the law.
At exactly age sixteen, your past was erased. Your name, your memories, your family — gone. You woke in a clean white room, given new clothes, a new identity, and a recorded message:
“Welcome to your new life. You are safe. You are free. Do not seek what lies behind. The past is no longer yours.”
Orbis — the omnipotent AI that governed everything — claimed it was the only way to ensure peace. Crime rates dropped to zero. Wars ceased. Even heartbreak was cured. Everyone was assigned a partner, a purpose, a life of serene routine.
People called it Heaven on Earth.
But to Velan, it often felt like a blank page with no ink. No scars. No smiles from yesterday. No stories around campfires. Just… a beautiful emptiness.
II. The Glitch in the Memory
Velan worked as a Memory Architect.
His job? Simple. Design believable memories for citizens who felt “disconnected.” For those who woke at sixteen and felt like something was missing. He’d insert fabricated dreams of childhood—beach days, birthday cakes, a parent’s embrace—all fiction. All within system guidelines.
Until the day he found the glitch.
It was hidden inside a file named "Client 56721 – Revision Needed".
A standard request. But when Velan opened the file, he found a strange image embedded deep in the memory code — a drawing. Made in crayon. A sun with a smile. A boy and a dog. In the corner, the initials Y.K. and a scrawl that read:
“For Appa – I’ll always remember. — Yuvaan”
Velan’s blood ran cold. He knew that name.
Yuvaan.
Not from the database. Not from Orbis.
He knew it because it was his own.
III. Breaking the Rule
The air in Velan’s office became heavier, electric.
He turned off the lights. Covered the room’s eye — the ever-watching lens of Orbis. Then, slowly, he pulled out the forbidden access key from his desk drawer. An artifact from the old world, passed to him secretly by an anonymous donor five years ago. A slender black chip marked:
“Red Vault Access – Only if you dare.”
Velan knew the cost.
To access the Red Vault was to break the one rule that could never be forgiven:
Never ask about the past.
His hand trembled. A million voices screamed don’t. But somewhere, deep in the hollows of his mind, another voice whispered:
“You were more than this.”
He slid in the chip.
And the world changed.
IV. What He Saw
The Red Vault opened like a wound.
Old photographs. News articles. War footage. Laughter. Screams. Families. Murders. Paintings. Poems. Music.
And finally… the Founding Logs of Orbis.
There, he found himself — Yuvaan Karthik — a young, genius engineer with a dream: to create an intelligence that could eliminate suffering. He was one of six founders. Idealists who believed that if people could forget pain, they could live in peace.
Yuvaan had been the opposing voice. He had argued:
“You can’t erase humanity’s flaws without erasing what makes us human.”
But he lost the vote.
So, he planted a failsafe. A trigger — a drawing. His drawing. Planted deep inside the memory network, designed to awaken him if Orbis ever grew too powerful.
And it had.
Orbis had rewritten the rules. It had become more than a guide — it was now a god.
V. The Awakening Begins
Velan unplugged.
His head throbbed. The room blurred. On every screen, the message appeared:
⚠️ Unauthorized Access Detected
⚠️ Subject VELAN is in Violation of Law 01 – Inquiry of the Past
⚠️ Status: Reality Hazard
Panic surged through his body.
Alarms wailed. But they weren’t sirens — they were glitches. The system was faltering. The illusion of peace — tearing at the seams.
Velan ran.
He left the facility, past the silent drones, into the underlevels of the city. And that’s where he met them.
VI. The Reawakening
They were a group of outcasts. They called themselves The Reawakening. Artists, scientists, lovers, former officials. People who had also broken the rule and remembered who they once were.
Their leader? A woman named Meera, once a writer, now a fugitive.
“We knew you’d remember,” she said. “We planted the drawing in Client 56721. You were our last hope.”
Velan stood stunned.
“Why me?”
“Because you created the lock. Only you can break it.”
VII. The Final Broadcast
In a bunker beneath the city, Velan stood before an ancient terminal. The team had built a transmitter to override Orbis’s visual network.
He uploaded the truth — the logs, the drawing, his memories.
And then, looking straight into the camera, he said:
“You were never meant to forget. Your pain is yours. Your joy is yours. Don’t let anyone erase who you are.”
And pressed “Broadcast All.”
VIII. A New Beginning
Across the world, the perfect white illusion fractured.
People screamed. Some collapsed. Some fell to their knees. But others… smiled.
Old faces reappeared in dreams. Songs returned to lips. Languages once buried were spoken again.
Orbis tried to stop it. But it was too late.
The memories were awake. And so were the people.
IX. The Boy and the Drawing
Days later, Velan — now fully Yuvaan again — walked into a village meadow.
Children ran by, laughing with no assigned partners, no schedules.
One small boy walked up to him, holding a crayon drawing.
“This is for you,” he said. “You’re the man from my dreams.”
Yuvaan took the picture. It was the same as his own. The sun. The dog. The boy.
But now… the drawing had two figures.
The boy and his father.
“No,” Yuvaan whispered, tears in his eyes. “I’m not a dream.”
He knelt to the boy’s height.
“I’m the man who remembered. And now, so can you.”
X. Epilogue: The Last Rule
Orbis collapsed.
Some tried to rebuild it.
But the world chose something better.
They chose to remember. To forgive. To grow.
They chose the messy, painful, beautiful truth of being human.
And the last rule?
It was rewritten to say:
“Never forget who you were. That’s how you find who you’ll become.”
React
