Title: Echoes of Tomorrow

this story create by khalid khan

In the city of Vireon, choices weren’t made by people anymore. At the age of 16, every citizen received a LifePath Code—generated by the Central Algorithm—that told them everything: their job, their spouse, where they'd live, how many children they would have, and even when they would die.

The world was perfect. No crime. No war. No heartbreak.

Just certainty.

Until Arin asked the question no one dared to speak.

“What if I want to fail?”

It started on a quiet morning. Arin was 15, a few months away from his Code. He watched his older sister cry silently in the kitchen, wiping her tears before anyone could see. The Algorithm had matched her with a boy from Sector 9. He was kind, stable, a high-ranking medical officer—but not the boy she loved.

Love, according to the Algorithm, was unnecessary. It created chaos. Pain. Risk. The Algorithm removed risk.

That night, Arin hacked into the Learning Hub—a school for the gifted that trained Coders who worked on minor adjustments to the Algorithm. He wasn’t a prodigy, but he was angry. Angry enough to learn.

And he did.

He learned that the Algorithm didn’t understand art. It didn’t understand dreams. It optimized life based on data from billions of humans who had made “mistakes” so future generations wouldn’t have to.

But Arin didn’t want perfection.

He wanted to stand on stage and tell jokes. He wanted to fall in love and be rejected. He wanted to stay up late writing bad poetry and eat cereal for dinner and scream at the stars.

He wanted to choose.

On the day he turned 16, the city gathered for his Code Ceremony.

He stepped forward. A hologram appeared in front of him.

“Arin Vell—LifePath Approved.”

Assigned Occupation: Energy Sector Auditor

Assigned Partner: Kayla Jurn, Sector 3

Date of Death: July 14, Year 81

The crowd clapped. Parents smiled. The future was secure.

But Arin stood still.

He looked straight into the camera that broadcasted across the city and whispered:

“No.”

Gasps echoed. Silence followed.

The System paused.

A warning blinked on the screen:

ERROR: Subject Deviates from Assigned Path.

He stepped down and walked away.

And just like that… the city cracked.

The next day, five more teens said “No.” Then ten. Then hundreds.

Some didn’t want their assigned jobs. Some were afraid of their predicted deaths. Some just wanted a taste of uncertainty.

The Algorithm panicked. Vireon’s perfect system began to unravel. People started painting again. Singing. Making mistakes.

Some marriages failed. Some jobs were left undone.

But for the first time in decades…

People were alive.

Years later, Arin stood on stage—no longer an energy auditor, but a stand-up comedian—telling a story about the time he almost married someone he’d never met.

The crowd laughed.

After the show, a girl handed him a notebook.

“I saw your Code Day,” she said. “It gave me courage to ask my own questions.”

He opened the notebook. It was filled with poems.

Terrible poems.

Beautiful poems.

Unapproved, unsorted, unfiltered.

Human.

End.