The Echo of Choices

In 2045, the world lay in ruins — not from nuclear fire, but from nature's furious rebirth. Cities crumbled under earthquakes, coasts vanished beneath tsunamis, volcanoes blanketed the sky in ash. Humanity survived, scarred but alive, forced to rebuild from the ground up.

Alexander Rivers — billionaire, architect of his own downfall — stood amid the wreckage of San Francisco. He had changed everything. And nothing.

The time device had brought him back too late.

San Francisco. A small apartment in the Mission District.

25-year-old Alex stared at his older self.

“Who the hell are you?”

“You. From a world you’re about to destroy.”

The warning was brutal.

“Emma will mock you endlessly — your code, your Bitcoin obsession, your ‘cold logic’. She’ll call crypto a ‘nerd scam’. Stay with her and you’ll lose your edge.”

Young Alex hesitated.

“But we’re happy…”

“Happy? She’s eroding you. Leave her. Buy Bitcoin at $1. Build the empire. Save yourself.”

Proof convinced him.

He broke it off that night.

Emma’s tears haunted him, but he walked away.

Wealth came fast. Power followed.

His influence hardened politics.

Trump’s return. Escalation.

Trump armed Ukraine with B-2 Spirit bombers carrying payloads beyond imagination.

When Russian forces struck Kyiv, Zelensky retaliated — targeting the Kremlin.

The strike hit.

Beneath the Kremlin, an ancient mechanism awakened — a planetary reset switch.

Volcanoes roared to life.

Earthquakes tore continents.

Tsunamis erased coastlines.

Civilization collapsed, but life endured.

A chance to start anew.

In the shattered remains of San Francisco, older Alex found her.

Emma — gray-haired, weary, but alive.

Their eyes met across the rubble.

“Alex…” she whispered. “You left me.”

He collapsed before her.

“I thought your mockery was poison. I thought I was saving myself.”

She knelt, voice steady despite the pain.

“Mockery? I challenged you to be more than money and machines. Without me, you became ruthless. Your choices brought this cleansing — volcanoes, quakes, waves wiping the slate clean.”

She paused, eyes distant.

“I feel the other path, like déjà vu. If you had stayed… the world would have burned in nuclear fire. Half the planet a radioactive wasteland. The other half a prison worse than North Korea — that fucking bastard Putin tightening his grip forever, turning nations into gulags.”

Alex flinched at her raw anger.

“Putin… that piece of shit,” he muttered, the words tasting like ash.

Emma nodded bitterly.

“Yes. That monster would have won everything. Your leaving triggered the reset — destroyed civilization, but gave humanity a second chance. Staying would have condemned us to endless tyranny and fallout.”

He took her hand.

“There was no good choice.”

“No,” she said softly. “But we survived. And perhaps… we can rebuild together.”

Above them, volcanoes glowed against the night sky — not an end, but a beginning.

The End.

Edited and translated with the assistance of AI Grok. Illustrations generated by Grok.