Algorithm of chance

Chapter 1

There were no windows in the Bureau.

Not because it was impossible — the technology allowed it. But because there was nothing to look at. Everything an operator needed was right in front of him: the control panel, the task feed, the observation block, and a green activity indicator blinking with mechanical regularity.
Tick. Tick. Tick. — like the pulse of the system. Not a person.

Alex had long since stopped seeing this as a job. It was more of a... fluid state. A flow. Machine meditation. He wasn’t living — he was merely... flowing through shifts.

Sector B-24 — “Minor Inconsequentialities” — was considered one of the most stable. No catastrophes, no deaths, no grand turns of fate. Just the small stuff.
A slip. A lost lighter. A delay at the coffee machine that caused someone to miss running into an old friend.
Things no one would remember — but the system logged every single one.

Alex didn’t care. He felt no connection to the world or the people in it. Over the years, he had become almost part of the interface: swift movements, dry gaze, minimum emotion.

Today, nothing hinted at deviation.

He sat with a cup of synthetic drink rumored to have seven flavors and not a single real one. The task feed pulsed in front of him — smooth, calm, predictable:

Coincidence 889317/K2: Woman, 32, loses an earbud.
Coincidence 889318/K2: Young man snags sleeve on mailbox latch.
Coincidence 889319/K2: Leaf falls from a tree directly into a coffee mug.

He clicked without thinking. None of it meant anything.
The system claimed: the accumulation of small things creates movement.
But where was that movement?

“You’re gray again,” said a voice in his ear. It was Lio — a colleague, sector neighbor, and possibly the only one who could be called a friend. “Listen to this, it’s hilarious — yesterday some guy on the parking lot got shit on by a pigeon right on the rear-view camera. He was backing up, couldn’t see a thing, and—”

Alex didn’t finish listening. He just switched off the audio link.

At that moment, one of the observation screens glitched.
Nothing unusual — the system lagged sometimes.
He reached to reset it, when suddenly…
He froze.

On the screen — a balcony. Gray city blocks, standard facade.
A woman stood at the railing. Not moving.
Just looking up.

One second. Two. Three.
He checked the timestamp: 15:14.

Alex rewound the archive. Same time — yesterday.
The day before — again.
Every day, at 15:14, she stepped out onto the balcony and simply… stared at the sky. Not at her phone. Not at the neighbors. The sky.

Not movement — waiting.

For the first time in many shifts, something stirred in him.
A small, quiet question: why is she doing this?
The system didn’t register her activity as an anomaly. The woman — ordinary. No status. No tags.
And yet — she didn’t fit the pattern.

Alex ran a static analysis. Steady pulse. Psycho-emotional profile within normal limits.
But watching her live — her gaze evoked… the sense of a pause.
As if everything else was moving, flowing, buzzing — but around her, there was silence.

“Alex, you alive?” Lio’s voice cut in again. “You’ve got three unapproved requests.”
“Yeah,” he replied automatically and muted the voice feed.

He wanted to close the screen, but his hand hovered over the panel.
Then, cautiously, he opened the repeat-time settings.
Set a reminder: Daily. 15:14. Screen 382.

He didn’t know why he did it.
There was no place for “interest” in the system. Only function.
But something about that figure on the balcony disrupted his internal pattern.

He returned to the task feed. Requests flowed on, just like before:

Coincidence 889320/K2: Woman notices a stranger’s note but doesn’t read it.
Coincidence 889321/K2: Man hears a song from childhood and briefly smiles.

Alex approved them. One by one. Quickly.
But inside — for the first time in a long while — a thought flickered:

“What if someone... is waiting for a real coincidence?”

And that was already dangerous.
Because such thoughts weren’t system-approved.

To be continued....