Daniel stopped in the hallway, his hands trembling at his sides.
The smell of coffee and toast mixed with the warm air of the kitchen. The sound of clinking cutlery, the soft murmur of his parents' morning chatter. Morning light filtered through the curtains, casting familiar shadows on the floor.
For a moment, he was afraid to blink and lose it all.
His heart pounded against his ribs. This was real.
"Your heart rate is climbing dangerously, boss," Claude warned in his mind. "Want me to teach you breathing techniques or would you rather pretend you're a tragic soap opera hero?"
Daniel let out a weak laugh.
"Claude… it's been almost eighty years since I last saw my parents."
The AI's voice softened slightly, though the sarcasm remained.
"For them, you saw them last night. Try not to look at them like you just came back from the Vietnam War."
He inhaled deeply, held it in for a moment, then exhaled.
Time to go in. Daniel thought: Breakfast with Ghosts.
His mother was standing at the stove, stirring a pot. His father read the Chicago Tribune, with a steaming mug of coffee beside him.
It was like a scene frozen in time.
His mother turned and smiled.
"Good morning, sleepyhead!" she teased. "Your father was about to wake you with a bucket of water."
"I was going to give him five more minutes," his father chuckled, flipping the page of the newspaper. "He deserves," his father added, speaking to his mom.
Daniel felt his chest tighten.
His mother's smile, the way his father held the newspaper, the sound of a living home… all of it had been gone for so long.
"Are you okay, Danny?" his father asked, frowning.
Daniel blinked.
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
He forced a smile.
"Just… had a weird dream."
His mother laughed and placed a plate of warm pancakes in front of him, ruffling his hair.
"Eat, sweetheart."
Her hand brushed his cheek.
Warm. Soft. Alive.
Daniel clenched his jaw. His eyes burned.
He lowered his head before they could see the tears forming.
He wouldn't lose them again.
After breakfast, Daniel locked himself in his room and opened a notebook.
Claude soon chimed in.
"Planning an empire or writing a revolutionary manifesto? Just let me know if it's the second one so I can plan my escape."
He laughed.
Short-Term Priorities
Make money.
Secure financial power.
Prevent his family from struggling.
Mid-Term Goals
Build influence.
Control key industries before they blow up.
Long-Term Objectives
Prevent disaster.
Save the world!
...Stonks?
Claude let out a low whistle.
"Ambitious. But you forgot one tiny detail."
"What?"
"You have two hundred dollars. That plan needs two hundred billion."
He smiled.
"We're going to have to work hard."
His mother's voice came from the kitchen. Serious tone. The thin walls let him hear snippets of the conversation.
"I don't know, Robert… we're already tight this month."
Daniel felt a chill in his stomach.
His father sighed. "We'll figure it out."
This was where everything began to fall apart.
Not this time.
"Claude, what's the fastest way to turn two hundred dollars into more?"
She paused for dramatic effect.
"Sell a kidney?"
Daniel laughed.
Claude answered more seriously now, "Given the circumstances, I believe… poker."
"Good idea."
Walking through the city streets, Daniel reflected on his new reality:
The sun was brighter.
The air, cleaner.
The streets, more alive.
Daniel stood on the sidewalk, taking in the world around him.
History had already changed.
He took a deep breath. And remembered.
The buildings still stood. That was the first lie.
From a distance, the skyline still looked like it had bones—steel skeletons silhouetted against a sick sky. But up close, Chicago had become hollow. A city of façades and silence.
Daniel stood on the roof of what used to be a high school, now half-converted into a ration depot. The parking lot below was flooded from the last storm surge, dark water hiding the cracks in the pavement. Drones circled like vultures above the rooftops, scanning for movement, broadcasting their surveillance into a data net no one trusted anymore.
The Great Severance, they called it.
That was the name history had settled on for the coordinated collapse in 2060. Markets freezing. The UN dissolving. Nation-states defaulting one by one like falling teeth. It wasn't a war. It was a surrender—of systems, of trust, of meaning.
For Chicago, it meant the mayor's office burned for three days before anyone even bothered to try putting it out. It meant O'Hare became a refugee city guarded by ex-military PMCs. It meant power rationing, water blackouts, and the gangs becoming infrastructure.
You didn't call 911 anymore. You sent bribes through encrypted chains and prayed the local bloc enforcers answered.
Daniel watched two kids below—maybe eleven, maybe younger—kick a half-deflated soccer ball across the roof of a gutted bus. They wore shoes made from repurposed riot shields. One of them had a broken AR visor strapped to their face like it meant something.
"Southside's grid just dropped again," Claude reported in his ear. "Heat signatures down by forty percent. That's either a blackout or another purge."
"Purge," Daniel muttered. "They hit Bronzeville last week."
Claude didn't respond. She didn't have to. There was no moral framework left to filter the data.
A year ago, he'd tried to rebuild something—a financial cooperative, encrypted and autonomous, with just enough stability to feed the neighborhoods. The ledger was transparent. The inputs fair. It lasted eleven weeks. Then one of the crypto gangs reverse-engineered the local fork, gamed the liquidity pool, and siphoned half the network into offshore blacknets.
They left a message in the smart contract:
"Thanks for the free lunch, old man."
Daniel had killed two of them. Not out of rage. Just necessity. They were killing people with the money they stole. He didn't sleep that week. Not from guilt—he just couldn't find silence anymore.
Now? He was tired. Tired of bandaging a corpse.
"Population collapse in Cook County expected to cross 50% by end of fiscal year," Claude said, her voice oddly calm.
"There's no fiscal year anymore," Daniel said.
"Force of habit."
The sun was setting. A thin orange smear across the bruised sky, filtered through carbon and ash. Somewhere, a gun fired. Short burst. Not automatic. Probably personal.
Daniel didn't flinch.
"Remind me again," he said quietly, "what I was trying to save?"
Claude took two seconds too long to answer.
"You still believe in them," she said. "Even now."
He didn't respond.
He just watched the horizon and remembered a breakfast table in 2001—coffee, pancakes, a newspaper rustling in his father's hands.
"Claude… how much did a poker table cost in 2001?"
"Low stakes? Between fifty and two hundred bucks. High stakes? Five grand, ten grand. More, if you're lucky."
Daniel gave a villain-worthy smile.