The Failure of Certainty

Jorik stared at the blank page on his holoscreen, the cursor blinking mockingly. He sighed.

“Okay, focus,” he told himself. “You’re the best Science Fiction writer in the galaxy!”

This was, strictly speaking, only partially true in that he was the only Science Fiction writer in the galaxy. No one else bothered anymore.

Because what was left to write about?

His ancestors had lived in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. They dreamed of starships travelling faster than light. They imagined what teleportation would be like. They had feared time travel paradoxes. Now, faster than light starships existed. Teleportation was now a standard way to get around. And time travel paradoxes were mostly an HR issue now.

Jorik tapped his stylus against his forehead. “Come on, brain,” he muttered to himself. “Give me something really out there!”

He tried brainstorming, and wrote on his holoscreen.

Aliens? The reply from his holoscreen came back almost immediately. “You are already neighbors with countless other species. This is boring”

Evil AI? The holoscreen almost seemed to chuckle as it answered. “The last AI uprising was resolved peacefully when the machines unionized and demanded paid vacation. Now they mostly write self-help books.”

Alternate dimensions? Jorik could hear the sneer in the holoscreen’s response. “Vacation packages to the so-called “Reverse Continuum” have been running for decades. As it turns out, most people’s evil doppelgangers are just slightly ruder.”
He gave it one more try.

Apocalyptic disasters? This time a single eye appeared on his holoscreen. The single eye stared at him sardonically for a few moments, then disappeared. The reply appeared. “Seriously? Between planetary weather control and reverse entropy engineering, nothing ever really gets destroyed anymore. Even planets blowing up can be CTRL-Z’d”.

Jorik groaned and buried his face in his hands. Science Fiction was dead. Dead and buried. Sometimes he wondered why he even bothered anymore. Hell, most writers didn’t even write anymore. They just plugged a neural net into their data jack, thought real hard for a few moments, and out popped their story. Nice. Neat. The only thing missing was a pretty little bow.

The fact that Jorik still wrote his stories with a light pen and his holoscreen made him something of an eccentric in his community. Real authors were a dying breed. And yet… people still craved stories. He still had an audience. Somehow, despite knowing the entire universe was at their fingertips, people wanted to be surprised.

Jorik thought harder. What would be unthinkable in an age of infinite progress? What would they consider to be impossible?

It suddenly hit him.

He started typing.

Several hours later, he breathed for what felt like the first time in forever, and was astounded at how much he had cranked out. He scrolled his holoscreen back up to the beginning, and looked at the title he had written there.

THE FAILURE OF CERTAINTY

His story revolved around one single man named Derek on a distant and primitive world. Derek lived his entire life without access to the knowledge of the universe.

He had no neural uplink to the Galactic Database, no instantaneous fact-checking, no way to instantly summon a history of everything that had ever happened. Nothing.

When Derek had a question, he had to figure things out on his own.

Sometimes he even – Jorik hesitated on this next concept, as it was so alien, but he had to commit – got things wrong.

Jorik sat back, heart pounding. This was madness. No one in modern civilization ever wondered about anything. People were born with the sum of all knowledge already in their heads or readily accessible with the briefest of thoughts. The idea that someone could not know something was the most alien concept imaginable.

He kept writing.

Derek’s world was chaotic. Unpredictable. Full of mysteries. He had to discover things.

He made mistakes. He learned. He adapted. He grew.

Jorik paused, staring at his words.

This was…good!

He could already imagine the reactions. The shock. The horror. The fascination. A character who had to think for himself? A world where people didn’t already have every answer?

This wasn’t just Science Fiction.

This was Science Horror!

Grinning, Jorik kept writing.

In this particular part, Derek sat at a wooden desk – yes, wooden, not synthesized quantum lattice – staring at a paper map. Not a holomap. Not an AI-assisted topographical neural projection. Just a piece of parchment with lines drawn on it.

And here was the kicker: he didn’t know where he was!

His location was not beamed into his brain via GPS. He couldn’t ask a nearby AI. He had to – Jorik cracked his knuckles before typing the most outrageous sentence of his career – use landmarks.

In the story, Derek chewed on a pencil. An actual wooden pencil with a natural rubber eraser. Natural rubber hadn’t existed in millennia, not since The Great Boing of 2447.

“Okay,” Derek muttered. “If the river is there, and the mountain is that way…then I’m…lost.”
Jorik felt a shiver run down his spine. This was madness.

People in the modern age had never been lost. The idea that someone could just not know where they were was absurd.
And then – oh, he was getting daring now – Jorik typed something even worse.

Derek made a guess.

Not a calculated, algorithmically optimized, probability-assessed answer. A gut feeling. He pointed to a random direction and said, “Eh, I think it’s that way.”

Jorik giggled manically to himself. His heart pounded. This was the most dangerous thing he had ever written.

But the real test? His agent.
 
THE FIRST HURDLE
Jorik’s agent, Vezna-12, was a three-meter-tall gelatinous entity encased in a hovering containment shell. She had been genetically engineered for maximum negotiation skill, which meant her brain functioned entirely on loopholes, market analytics, and the ability to extract royalties from beings that technically didn’t exist yet.

She was also not amused.

“This,” she said., after reading Jorik’s manuscript, “is not Science Fiction.”

Jorik leaned forward. “I know. It’s Science HORROR.”

Vezna-12’s quivering mass wobbled in a way that indicated deep skepticism. “Explain.”

Jorik clasped his hands. “Think about it. Our society has mastered every conceivable form of knowledge. But this?” He gestured to the manuscript open on Vezna-12’s holoputer. “This is about ignorance. The unknown. A man not knowing things!”

Vezna-12’s containment shell emitted a confused hum. “And this is…scary?”

Jorik smirked. “Tell me, Vezna. When was the last time you didn’t know something?”

Vezna-12 hesitated. Her body did something that might have been a frown. “That’s ridiculous. If I want to know something, I simply query the Galactic Database.”

“Exactly,” Jorik said. “Now, imagine a universe where that’s not possible. Where there IS no Galactic Database!”

The silence that greeted Jorik’s musing was telling.

Vezna-12 pulsed a soft blue. “…That is terrifying.”

Jorik grinned. “And the best part? People will eat this up. It’s the one thing they’ve never experienced. A universe where people have to figure things out instead of just knowing the answer or having instant access to the answer.”

Vezna-12 pondered this. “So you’re telling me,” she said slowly, “that this story revolves around a man who doesn’t have answers?”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?” Jorik asked, exasperated.

“Bear with me,” Vezna-12 pleaded. “I need to say this out loud.”

Jorik waved Vezna-12 on with his hand.

“So, as I was saying, he doesn’t have all the answers.” Jorik nodded. “A man who has to…guess?” Jorik nodded again. “A man who is wrong sometimes?”

Jorik smiled as he answered, “Frequently.”

Vezna-12 shuddered so violently that her containment shell flickered. “I need a moment.”

Jorik leaned back, confident. He had done it. He had cracked the code.

Finally, Vezna-12 managed to visibly compose herself. “…Jorik, this is the most horrifying thing I have ever read.”

“I know,” Jorik said.

“People will panic.”

“I know,” Jorik repeated.

Vezna-12 exhaled through her containment shell. “Okay. We’ll pitch this as an experimental horror series and sell the first rights to the Neural Drama Syndicate. They owe me a favor. If it catches on, we can branch into immersive reality streams.” She paused. “If we don’t get banned first.”

Jorik shrugged, “If we do, that’ll just prove how dangerous it is.”

Vezna-12 pulsed yellow. “You’re a madman.”

Jorik smirked, “No, I’m a Science Fiction author. There is a difference.”

THE COMING STORM

The backlash came fast.
Jorik had barely finished signing the contract before the literary world – if one could even call it that anymore, considering most “books” were AI-generated memory infusions – erupted into outrage.

“An insult to intelligence!” declared the Intergalactic Literature Review.
“Reckless, irresponsible, and dangerous!” warned the Galactic Neural Collective.
“We rate this book a 0.0000001 on the Enjoyment Scale – based on predictive analytics, because none of us actually read it.” was the verdict from the Quantim Critic Consortium.

The outrage wasn’t just academic.

Religious groups condemned The Failure of Certainty as “anti-omniscience propaganda”. The Church of the Universal Mind, which worshipped the Galactic Database itself, declared Jorik a “blasphemous agent of ignorance”. They held mass protests outside bookstores – well, data-streaming nodes, but the principle was the same.

Conspiracy theorists were even worse.

Some claimed Jorik was working for an ancient, secret society of Luddites. Others insisted he was a time traveler from a primitive past, trying to corrupt modern society with “Stone Age thinking”.

But the craziest theory of all was also the most pernicious. This was the one that said Derek was a real person.
Jorik laughed when he first heard it.

Then he stopped laughing when people started trying to become like Derek.
Jorik watched the news feed in shock.

Vezna-12 sloshed anxiously in her containment shell. “I cannot believe this.”

Jorik shook his head. “I was just writing a book!”

Vezna-12 gestured at the screen. “You didn’t write a book, Jorik. You wrote a virus.”

On the feed, the extent of the crisis was evident in the bedraggled appearance of the normally perfectly-coiffed spokesperson for the Intergalactic Council as she spoke to a large hovering flock of drone-mics:

“We are now facing an unprecedented public health crisis. People are actively choosing ignorance. We are in the midst of a full-scale informational pandemic. These…Unknowers…threaten to destabilize civilization itself.”

Jorik rubbed his temples and groaned. “Okay. How do we fix this?”

Vezna-12 hesitated a beat too long. “…I’m not sure.”

Jorik blinked.

Silence.

Then, slowly, a grin crept across his face. “Vezna…”

“What?”

“You don’t know.”

Vezna-12’s mass recoiled. “Don’t start.”

Jorik stood, pacing excitedly. “Think about it! You, the most well-connected, hyper-intelligent agent in the literary industry… don’t know the answer!”
“I will know in about 0.2 seconds,” Vezna said hurriedly.

“No, don’t look it up.” Jorik grabbed the containment shell, staring at her gelatinous core. “Just…think!”

Vezna-12 twitched. “I hate this.”

Jorik grinned. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

Vezna-12 shuddered. “I think I’m going to vomit.”

Jorik sat down, steepling his fingers. “We’re past the point of undoing this. People are hungry for mystery. They want to experience not knowing for themselves. Maybe…we lean into it.” Jorik rubbed his hands together as he spitballed. “We should make it a point NOT to discourage them. No official statement from the author or the publishing company. Something like that.”

Vezna-12’s containment shell dimmed as she thought.

Then, finally, she pulsed bright green.

“Okay. Let’s get really irresponsible.”
 
THE DAM BURSTS

Jorik sat in Vezna-12’s office, his head in his hands. “Alright, so…let me get this straight.”

Vezna-12 pulsed an annoyed shade of orange. “It’s not that complicated, Jorik.”

“No, no, I need to say it out loud.” He lifted his head, rubbing his temples. “The book has been banned.”

“Yes,” Vezna-12 replied.

“Ownership of it is illegal,” Jorik continued.

“Yes,” Vezna-12 said again.

Jorik paused before going on. “And the penalty for possessing it is…”

“Variable,” Vezna-12 said. “Minor fines for first offenses. But repeat offenders or large-scale distributors are receiving full cognitive reprogramming.”

Jorik blanched. “They’re brain wiping people over a book?”

“Vezna-12 swirled uneasily in her containment shell. “Not technically. They’re calling it ‘Corrective Neural Harmonization.’ “
Jorik groaned. “Oh, well, that’s so much better.”

Vezna-12 continued, “Sarcasm aside, we have a bigger problem.”

Jorik threw up his hands. “What could be bigger than the collapse of my career and your publishing company?”

Vezna-12’s form undulated as she brought up a holographic display. “The book is now the most valuable contraband in the galaxy.” She gestured to a graph. “See this? This is when they banned it.” A sharp spike. “And this is the price of a hard copy on the black market. It’s worth more than pure antimatter.”

Jorik leaned forward, reading a few of the reports. People were printing out the book, physically printing it on actual paper, just so it could be hidden from digital sweeps. Others were transcribing it by hand, creating sacred texts.

And then there were the Whisper Networks. These were groups of people who had memorized the book word for word and would recite it in secret, underground gatherings.

“Oh, for the love of…” Jorik rubbed his face. “We’ve created Bible smugglers!”

Vezna-12 pulsed dark green. “And the worst part? Some people really do think Derek is real.”

Jorik sat back. “I was afraid of that.”

Vezna-12 flicked through intercepted messages. “Some say he’s a time traveler. Others think he’s an AI ghost. One group claims he’s a higher-dimensional entity using the book to communicate with us.” She paused as she flicked through screen after screen. “And there’s at least one faction convinced he’s the rightful ruler of the galaxy and that the current government is suppressing him.”

Jorik let out a long sigh. “We’re gonna get arrested, aren’t we?”

Vezna-12 pulsed. “Oh, absolutely.”

At that precise moment the door disintegrated.

A squad of Galactic Enforcement Officers stormed in, weapons raised.

“Jorik Thale and Vezna-12,” barked the lead officer. “You are under arrest for informational terrorism and mass cognitive destabilization!”

Jorik put his hands up. “Oh, come on! We were just talking about getting arrested! Couldn’t you have let us enjoy the last few minutes of freedom?”

Vezna-12 just hovered silently, colors swirling across her surface in incoherent patters.

The officer gestured, and a suppression field locked in around them.

“Guess not,” Jorik muttered as they dragged him away.
 
THE INTERROGATION

Jorik sat in a cold, featureless room, strapped to a neural feedback chair. Across from him sat Director Xorva, the head of the Galactic Information Stability Bureau.

Xorva’s eyes were dark and unreadable. “Tell me, Thale. Where is he?”

Jorik blinked. “Where is who?”

Xorva leaned forward. “Derek.”

Jorik sighed. “Not this again.”

Xorva placed a device on the table. It projected dozens of intercepted transmissions, all featuring Derek’s name. Reports of people actually meeting him and receiving his wisdom in person.

“You think he’s real?” Jorik asked, half-laughing.

Xorva’s expression remained stone cold. “You expect me to believe that you wrote about a man who doesn’t know things, and suddenly, all across the galaxy, people are claiming to see him? By coincidence?”

Jorik exhaled. “I didn’t expect any of this!”

Xorva tapped the device, flipping through surveillance footage. “We have records of Unknowers meeting in secret, trading physical copies of your book like sacred relics.” He paused on a clip of a woman, sitting in a dimly lit room, whispering passages from The Failure of Certainty to an enraptured audience.

“You see this?” Xorva asked. “They’re treating it like holy text!”

Jorik swallowed heavily. “That’s…not my fault.”

Xorva continued. “Entire colonies are cutting themselves off from the Galactic Database, trying to live like Derek.” He leaned in. “Do you know what it means to have no information, Jorik? No, navigational AI?”

His voice was rising in volume as he continued. “No medical scanners? No predictive crime prevention? Do you know how dangerous that is?” He was shouting at Jorik by the end, almost directly in his face. A loud beep came from somewhere in the room, perhaps from someone observing who wanted to remind Xorva of proper interrogation protocol.

Jorik took no notice of Xorva’s ire, however. He was too wrapped up in considering his words. Perhaps it was a little concerning, after all.

“But it gets worse,” Xorva continued after collecting himself. He had gotten up and gotten a drink of water from the dispenser in the corner.

He returned to the table his device was sitting on, tapped a couple buttons, and then turned it around so Jorik could see. A new report was hovering in mid-air.

Jorik skimmed it, then frowned.

“…A ship?”

“A transport vessel,” Xorva confirmed. “Hijacked by Unknowers. They wiped the navigation system and blind-jumped into deep space.”

Jorik felt his stomach turn.

“They wanted to get lost, Thale,” Xorva spat. “They wanted to experience true uncertainty.”

Jorik exhaled sharply. “Did they…” He couldn’t finish his thought.

“We don’t know,” Xorva said flatly. “Because that’s the point. No one does.”

Jorik sat back in his chair, his mind reeling.

This had gotten out of control.

Xorva folded his hands. “Now, tell me the truth, Thale.”

Jorik looked up.

Xorva stared into his eyes. “Did Derek tell you to write this?”

Jorik let out a nervous laugh. “How many times do I have to tell you the same thing? DEREK IS NOT REAL!!!” Jorik slapped his palm down on the table to punctuate the last word. That same cautionary beep sounded again. Apparently Jorik had drawn its ire this time.

Xorva blinked at the loud report, then calmly asked, “Then explain why people are talking to him.”

Jorik shook his head. “They’re delusional. They’re buying into their own myth.”

Xorva let the silence stretch, then finally asked, “Are they?”

Jorik hesitated. He thought back to the long nights of writing. He remembered the whispers in the back of his mind, and how Derek’s words almost seemed to write themselves.

No. That was just how writing worked.

Right?

Xorva sat back. “We’re at war, Thale.”

Jorik’s stomach twisted. “War? With whom?”

Xorva’s eyes darkened.

“With Derek.”
 
THE LAST AUTHOR

Jorik Thale sat by candlelight, scratching ink onto fragile sheets of paper.

Paper.

He still wasn’t use to it. The way it wrinkled, the way the ink smudged if he wasn’t careful. The way his wrist actually ached after just a few paragraphs.

Not that long ago, this would have been a charming exercise in historical curiosity.

Now, it was the only way to record anything.

The Galactic Database was gone. The Unknowers had seen to that. First, they rejected it. Then they attacked it. One by one, planetary data cores were erased, their knowledge wiped away like footprints in a sandstorm.

It took less than a month for civilization to collapse. Navigation systems failed. Medicine regressed to guesswork. Starships drifted aimlessly, unable to plot safe routes. Governments crumbled as leaders, too reliant on the Database, found themselves suddenly stupid.

And through it all, the Unknowers thrived.

They embraced uncertainty, and everything that came with it. They celebrated ignorance. They spread like an unstoppable plague, laughing as the last remnants of rational society tried, desperately, to cling to knowledge.

Jorik had tried to fight back. He had helped organize secret vaults of information. He had scouted locations for hidden archives. He had even sheltered scientists who whispered equations to each other in the dead of night in gross mockery of the previous Whisper Networks who had helped that damnable book spread insidiously. He had done all he could to try to keep something alive.

It was never enough.

The Unknowers found them. They burned the books, smashed the tablets, and persecuted the scientists as heretics of doubt.

And so now, it had come to this.

A man. A candle. A pen. A last desperate attempt to write it all down before the waves of ignorance swallowed even this.

Jorik dipped his pen again and continued.

“The fall was rapid, but not unexpected. The signs had been there, long before my book. People craved certainty, and when it was taken away, they panicked. The Unknowers did not panic. They thrived in the chaos. They spread the words of Derek like scripture, despite never truly understanding them. Derek was not a prophet. He was a mistake. A joke. A simple idea that festered into a virus. And I, Jorik Thale, was the fool who set him free.”

He paused.

The candle flickered.

The shade was down over the only window in his small room, and a shadow moved against it.

Jorik’s breath caught in his throat. He set down the pen, heart thumping. He had been the target of several groups convinced he was responsible for the downfall, so he was currently in hiding. He had not seen Vezna-12 since they were arrested.

There came a knock at the door.

Soft. Gentle.

Slowly, Jorik stood. He made his way to the door, hand trembling as he reached for the handle.

He opened it.

Standing just outside was a man wearing a brown hooded cloak, face lost in shadow. He reached up and dropped the hood, revealing a man Jorik had never seen before but yet knew intimately all the same.

Standing before him in the dim light was Derek.

Not a cultist. Not an imposter.

Derek.

The man from his book.

The man who never existed.

He smiled. “Hey, Jorik.”

Jorik’s voice barely worked. “…No.”

Derek chuckled. “Yeah.”

Jorik shook his head. “You’re…you’re not real.”

Derek shrugged. “And yet, here I am.”

Jorik swallowed. He could barely catch his breath, let alone speak. “What do you want?”

Derek smiled again. “I just wanted to say thanks.”

Jorik felt his stomach drop. What did this mean?

Derek patted him on the shoulder. “You did good work, man. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Jorik stared at him, horror creeping up his spine. He really was responsible for everything. All the death and destruction, the collapse of the entire galaxy, was his fault. Derek had used him as a conduit, somehow, to spread his horrible message.

Derek grinned wider. “Anyway, I gotta run. There’s still some thinking people out there. Can’t have that, can we?”

And then…

He was gone.

Jorik stood there, frozen, as the candle burned lower. He stood there for a long time.

Outside, the sound of laughter echoed in the darkness, then quickly faded away.