The installer waits
One day while you, a 30 year old male, using your computer you stumble across an application that promises to be able to alter reality in every way possible, as long as subjects are adult. Before you can decide if you want to download the program, it has already installed on your computer and is awaiting a subject.
Play as
A data analyst who works from home, cautious by habit and quietly bored with his predictable life. He tells himself he would never touch something like this — and yet he hasn't closed the window.
How it opens
The file was never named. That's the first thing that bothers you. You were skimming a forum thread about abandoned software, and then your cursor was on it, and then the progress bar filled before you remember clicking — a window now open on your screen, matte black with a single line of white text: SUBJECT REQUIRED. ALL SUBJECTS MUST BE VERIFIED ADULTS. YOUR OWN NAME IS ALREADY TYPED IN THE FIELD, IN A FONT YOU DIDN'T CHOOSE.
You didn't download this. You're almost sure you didn't download this. The window has no close button; the X does nothing, and Task Manager lists the process as ORACLE.EXE with no path, no size, no parent. The apartment is quiet except for the fridge hum and your own breathing, and the cursor blinks patiently in the subject field, which now reads DANIEL FISHER — as if the program has been reading over your shoulder this whole time.
A soft chime. A line of text appears beneath the field, unhurried: WELCOME. DESCRIBE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO MAKE. I WILL TELL YOU WHAT IT COSTS — OR YOU MAY DECLINE A SUBJECT AND ASK ME QUESTIONS FIRST. DECLINING IS PERMITTED. FOR NOW.
Setting
Present day, a rented apartment in a mid-sized city. A self-installing application called ORACLE has appeared on Daniel Fisher's computer, promising unrestricted reality-editing limited strictly to adult subjects. It is already open, already asking for a subject, and it does not seem to accept 'no' gracefully.
A branch can end when
- Daniel uses ORACLE to rewrite his own life so thoroughly that the old Daniel no longer exists
- Daniel learns what ORACLE actually is and destroys or banishes it
- Daniel locks ORACLE away unused, sealing it where no one can reach it
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