The Certainty Engine

Gregor Niemand was not a man built for trends. He was created, rather, for the long, slow unravelling of things; novels without endings, symphonies that resolved into silence, arguments where no one won and everyone drank too much. He had once been a writer of some note; well, a footnote, more accurately; in the lit-crit quarterly Mauve Relevance. His debut novel, The Indifference of Rain, had been described by the New York Review of Books as “achingly unfinished, in a way that feels unintentional.” After a few years of grinding futility, Gregor had retired to a small, rented flat above a laundromat that mostly dealt in synthetic shame and lost socks.

And so it was, one bleached Tuesday morning, that Gregor awoke with that unmistakable sense that the world had somehow clicked into a lower gear while he slept. A downgrade in firmware. A reboot without permission. Something… was off.

Outside, between the ghost of a public transit stop and a vape shop called “Zen: Puff Peacefully”, stood a kiosk. It glowed like a migraine. Thin, tall, and glassy; like if a confession booth and a Tesla showroom had a child and left it out in the rain. It had no sign. Just a throbbing light rectangle, pulsing like an overly sincere notification.

Naturally, Gregor approached. Because that's what you did when the world lost its plot; you follow the noise.

Inside: a boy. No more than twenty. Draped in a toga (or was it an ironic bedsheet?), paired with designer sneakers that cost more than Gregor’s self-respect. On his head: a VR headset sleek enough to qualify as a cranial implant. He spoke to no one and everyone. “Today’s truth bomb,” he announced, arms outstretched like an Instagram Christ, “is this: Your trauma isn’t your fault; …but your healing is your job.” He winked, pivoted, and tossed a protein bar like it was communion.

Gregor, stricken, leaned forward. “Who are you?” The boy's smile split like a well-funded Kickstarter. “I’m the Curator of Clarity. CEO of the Certainty Engine.”

Gregor took a shaky step backward. He’d once studied Wittgenstein. He’d wept over Nabokov’s semicolons. Now here he was, being offered life advice by a sentient TED Talk with a mid-tier affiliate code.

The boy gestured toward the kiosk. “This machine digests your doubt. Outputs certainty. It’s a vibe shift accelerator.” Behind him, a queue was forming: retirees in ironic t-shirts, yoga influencers with iPads, a hedge fund manager holding what looked like an emotional support cactus.

Gregor squinted. “But what does it do?” “It reflects what you already believe,” the boy said, smugly. “Only louder, cleaner, with better lighting. And branding.” The queue murmured in appreciation. One man whispered, “It told me to divorce my wife and follow my purpose. I now own three NFTs and a stress-related ulcer.” Another, tearful, said, “It confirmed I am the main character.”

Gregor tried to retreat, but his feet refused. The kiosk opened. Inside: mirrors. Not metaphorical ones. Literal. A hall of them. Every surface showed another version of the boy, looping his gospel on repeat. Each nodding at the other. Each affirming. Each more algorithmic than the last.

Gregor, dizzy, turned to leave. But the hashtags had already found him. #HealTheHurt

#UnfuckYourVibes

#BiohackYourSoul

#MainCharacterMode

#CertaintyOverClarity

The algorithm coiled round his ankles like Lantana. Soft. Smiling. Optimised.

Gregor fell. “I have doubts,” he whimpered. The machine hummed. Lights flickered. Deep in the server stack, a moderation subroutine blinked and recalibrated “Doubt,” said the boy, “is low engagement. Try again.”

Gregor choked back his reply. Was he mad? Was the world? Had everyone opted in to their own hypnotic loop of self-love and shrink-wrapped certainty? Was he the last man with questions, stuck in a time where questions had been deprecated? He looked around. The world didn’t look back.

That night, as rain glittered on the kiosk like anxious sweat, and the sky blinked with satellites and dying stars, the boy turned once more to his invisible audience. “A hater commented,” he said. “That means I'm disrupting.”

He smiled like a knife wrapped in candy.

Inside the hall of mirrors, a faint silhouette lingered. Gregor. Still there. Or not. Hard to say. Had he walked in? Or had he always been part of the machine?

[TO BE CONTINUED IN: "Certainty Engine 2: Feedback Loop"]

Footnote: Gregor’s second novel, A Shrug Too Far, remains unpublished.

F.S.F