Chapter 33: Defied The System

The study was silent, save for the low hum of the System’s cooling fans, a sound only Evelina could hear.

The red warnings continued to pulse against her retinas in a panic that urged her to hoard her remaining points, to liquidate her grain, and to retreat into the safety of the known world.

[WARNING: Projected probability of disaster remains below 5%]

[ADVISORY: Retain points for ’Social pardon’ conversion]

"Your logic is built on old patterns and current cloud formations," Evelina whispered, her voice rasping in the dry air, ’’But you are looking at the symptoms, not the source of things."

She ignored the screen and pulled a fresh sheet of parchment toward her. She didn’t use the System’s automated calculators this time.

Instead, she reached for a barometer she had commissioned weeks ago, a delicate instrument of glass and mercury.

She looked at the mercury. It was rising but it was not the slow rise of a fair-weather day, but rather, it was a sharp spike that defied the gentle weather everybody could see.

Evelina began to scribble, her quill moving with unstoppably. She plotted the mercury’s rise against the direction of the upper-level clouds she had seen before the fog rolled in. She factored in the sudden silence of the warblers and the scorched scent of the afternoon’s freak wind.

Her thoughts began to join the dots. The System could analyze the clouds, and the Council could analyze the markets, but the warblers were capable of the root of the world. They were all fleeing.

But why would they flee such a great weather?

Unless... they sensed something was wrong.

The perfect rain wasn’t a blessing but more like, it was a cap.

The moisture in the air was being trapped by an invisible wall of high pressure moving in from the desert wastes of the far North.

It was a heat dome, kind of a prison that would compress the air, superheat it, and incinerate everything beneath it. The rain was the last gasp of a dying atmosphere before the everything exploded.

"The butterfly effect of my actions... didn’t cancel the drought at all" Evelina realized, her eyes widening as the final calculation clicked into place, "Instead, it made it way more powerful. What should have been a slow famine has been taking the shape of an instant execution."

The System chimed again, the red light turning into a frantic strobe.

[ERROR: Host’s calculations are based on instinctive variables not recognized by the central processor. Please revert to Data-Driven Decision Making.]

Evelina looked at the [Purchase] button for the Prototype Steam Engine Blueprints. 2,500 points.

It was more than half of her remaining wealth.

If she was wrong, she would barely be left with much to protect herself when things went downhill.

"Data is just a record of what has already happened," Evelina whispered softly, "But I am not the one who is going to follow anyone or anything blindly in an ever-changing world."

[System Warning: If the ’Heat Dome’ fails to materialize, the Host will face a 98% probability of total social collapse.]

"Then let it collapse," Evelina replied. Her finger didn’t tremble as she moved it toward the shimmering icon, "I’m tired of playing by your rules, and I’m tired of the world’s scripts. At the end of the day, I would still listen to me the most."

The blue screen exploded into a cascade of golden light, the blueprints downloaded into her mind with a force that made her vision swim.

Evelina could see the pistons, she saw valves, and the raw power of fire and water that had been combined to do the work of a thousand men.

[2,500 Heart-Wrecker Points Deducted.]

[Transaction Complete]

[Current Balance: 2,400 Heart-Wrecker Points]

[Status: You have defied the System’s Survival Protocol. May the Host have mercy on her own soul.]

Evelina leaned back in her chair, the sudden gain of mechanical knowledge making her temples throb. She waited for the System to mock her some more, for Henderson to knock on the door with more bad news, or even for the rain to continue its gentle tap-tap-tap against the stone.

But there was no sound... even the small chirps of crickets had stopped.

Evelina frowned, her ears straining.

The drizzle had stopped abruptly.

She stood up and walked to the balcony doors, pushing them open.

The cold wind that had been gracing the kingdom for a month was gone. The trees in the garden were frozen and their leaves perfectly still as if they had been cast in bronze.

The air was unnervingly warm, the humidity of the rain now turning into a suffocating steam.

"It’s here," she whispered into the dead air.

At that moment, the barometer on her desk behind her shattered, the glass spraying across her maps as the pressure finally exceeded the limits of the instrument.

[Notification: ’Critical Anomaly’ has been re-labeled]

[Current Status: The Great Ignition]

Evelina did not sleep that night as she spent it standing on the balcony, observing the sky like a sentry.

She spent the remainder of the night standing on the balcony, watching the horizon like a sentry.

The transition of the sky was barely subtle because deep violet of the midnight sky did not turn into the soft pinks of a typical spring morning. was not subtle.

Instead, the darkness was replaced by a harsh light that bled into a scary angry orange.

When the sun finally crested the horizon, it resembled a copper eye staring down at a world it intended to burn.

Evelina’s face grew solemn with every passing second.

By 8:00 AM, the dew that had clung to the rose petals in the garden vanished with a hiss.And the air which had been damp and cool only hours before, now felt like it had been passed through a furnace.

By noon, the temperature spiked completely. A fifteen-degree jump in a matter of hours turned the stone manor into a heat radiator.

The servants, who had spent weeks whispering about Evelina’s madness now moved in a daze. Their faces were slick with sweat, and their eyes were wide with disbelief.