Adrian Vale believed in numbers.
He trusted them more than people, more than memories, more than the mirror.
Numbers didn't lie. People did.
Love faded. Friends turned. Systems stayed.
At thirty-four, Adrian had become the youngest Audit Commissioner in the Ministry of Progress. He ran algorithms tighter than most people ran relationships. While others had children or hobbies, Adrian had dashboards. His affection was divided between quarterly reports, energy distribution graphs, and a neatly arranged collection of budget calculators that lined his office shelf like trophies.
He measured everything.
He measured his water intake.
He tracked the calorie burn of his morning frown.
He knew exactly how many seconds of silence passed before someone faked a laugh in a meeting.
He kept a list of how many times he'd thought about quitting.
And updated it daily.
He lived in a city where emotions were redacted by routine, where human connection was a deprecated app. His apartment, Unit 4-19E, faced a digital billboard that looped the state slogan every ten seconds:
"JOY IS A DISTRACTION. OUTPUT IS TRUTH."
He didn't flinch at it anymore. He barely looked at it. But today… something was off.
It started with the coffee.
He poured it like always—left hand on the carafe, right thumb prepped for his biometric scanner to approve the caffeine dosage. Loryan law required productivity-class workers to consume state-rationed stimulants. It was supposed to "stabilize efficiency." He didn't question it.
But today, the coffee smelled different. It didn't smell industrial. It smelled like something he couldn't name. Something warm. Like memory.
Then came the deviation.
As he stepped into his transport pod—commute time 7 minutes, 36 seconds, station to station—the overhead screen glitched. It fuzzed out the quota feed, then blinked to a black screen with a white word in the center.
"Unmeasurable."
He stared. For a full three seconds—far longer than regulation reaction time.
Then it was gone. Back to status updates. No explanation. No anomaly report.
He told himself it was a bug. But somewhere deeper, the kind of place he didn't even like admitting existed, something shifted.
The audit district was silent that morning.
Silent in a way that cities shouldn't be. Silent like a warning.
He sat at his terminal and opened the day's first file—a compliance dossier on Emotional Output Violation 447B. Someone had been caught hugging in a marketplace without a state license. The violation included images. Two young men, clasping shoulders, laughing. Natural. Wild. Real.
Adrian stared too long. Long enough for the system to ping his screen.
You have exceeded review time. Emotional drift suspected. Please recalibrate.
He minimized the file and closed his eyes.
Recalibrate. That was the word they used. As if humans were just thermostats.
By noon, the air tasted like metal.
By 3 p.m., he had reviewed seventeen violations. Nine hugs. Four songs. One spontaneous dance. Three recorded instances of crying in public.
But it was the crying that broke him.
Not the act itself, but the aftermath. The punishment. One woman had her work permit revoked for mourning her mother's death too loudly. Adrian approved the sanction—he had to. It was protocol.
But his hand trembled when he pressed the key.
A single tear fell onto the edge of his desk. He wiped it before it touched the sensor. No one could know. Not even him.
At 4:44 p.m., the building shook.
Not a full quake—just a whisper of instability. Barely enough to make the screens flicker. But in that flicker, every monitor glitched at once. Then blacked out.
And one word appeared across every screen, in bold serif text, ancient and elegant:
"HAPPINESS."
Followed by:
"Recalibrating Worldview."
"Candidate Identified: Adrian Vale."
"Initializing… GNH SYSTEM."
Then silence.
Then darkness.
Then… light.
Adrian opened his eyes not to the world, but to something else.
He wasn't at his desk. He wasn't in Lorya. He was nowhere. Or everywhere. The air around him shimmered like language.
He stood in a wide plain of fog and light, and before him floated a massive translucent interface.
It looked nothing like the government dashboards. There were no bar graphs, no suppression meters. Instead, it pulsed with something organic. Gentle. Alive.
The voice came next.
Soft. Unthreatening. Male, maybe. Or maybe it was just his inner voice softened by something he didn't understand.
[Welcome, Adrian Vale.]
[You have been chosen by the Gross National Happiness System.]
[Classification: World-Level Emotional Collapse Detected.]
[Purpose: Repair the world's lost humanity through emotional restoration.]
[This system does not reward blood or profit.]
[It rewards smiles. Tears. Growth. Connection.]
[Ready to begin?]
Adrian opened his mouth to answer—but realized for the first time in years…
He had no words.
End of Chapter 1