"Ding. 342615 — Host, I am System 5001."
"Great. Morning starts with a robot telling me my name," Isabella said, rolling over. Her hand knocked a pizza box off the cheap nightstand.
"Your name is Isabella Evans. Objective: survive and rewrite the original heroine's ending," System 5001 replied in an even tone.
"Survive," she echoed. "That is comforting coming from a thing that woke me up because it literally installed itself in my head."
"Installed is inaccurate. You consented by reading the file."
"I read a PDF at 3 a.m. while procrastinating rent. Consent is flexible when caffeine is involved."
"Consent logged." The AI added a soft ding like a tiny applause.
Isabella pushed herself upright. The studio-room smelled like old laundry and damp cardboard. She opened a drawer and found nothing but receipts and a lighter with a missing cap.
"Explain," she said. "One sentence. Then I make coffee. Then you get ignored for an hour."
"Information: You are dead in the source material. You have three days before the plot point that triggers that death. Mission set: prevent that ending. Secondary: remain financially solvent."
She laughed sharp. "Oh, that's it? 'You are dead.' Thanks for the bedside manner."
"Clarification: Host, you are alive now. In the original timeline, the heroine dies on chapter twelve. The narrative outcome is fixed in source code that influences world events via media nodes. Your mission is to alter those nodes."
"Source code? Media nodes? That's a lot of sci‑fi for a
