Leo stared at his future self's hollow eyes. The software had given him a choice. Not the choice to prevent the collapse. The choice to know about it. To be complicit in it, or to scream into the void until someone listened.
"3.9.9 is the last version before they added the conscience patch."
He opened the laptop again. The software was still there, but the video feed was gone. In its place, a single line of text: Plate N Sheet Professional 3.9.9 Download
"Do you want to see the 2027 I-90 overpass failure? Y/N"
That night, he dreamed of numbers. Not cold, static numbers. Living, crawling numbers that formed a giant, shimmering sheet of metal, bending under an impossible load. The sheet whispered one sentence, over and over, in the voice of the woman in the yellow raincoat: Leo stared at his future self's hollow eyes
Leo slammed the laptop shut. His heart hammered against his ribs. This wasn't a finite element analysis package. This was a goddamn oracle.
The park. His park. The exact spot where the pedestrian bridge would go. The video showed a woman in a yellow raincoat walking a small, fluffy dog. She stopped, looked around, then unzipped her coat to reveal a t-shirt that read: "I SURVIVED THE OLD BRIDGE COLLAPSE OF '22." The choice to know about it
He typed "Y."
"Creepy," Leo muttered, and launched it.
Then, the secondary window opened. It wasn't a data sheet. It was a live video feed.