The Probability Shift

It's my fault

Kevin retreated into the confines of their penthouse, the walls closing in on him like a prison. He shut himself away, bolting the door and drawing the curtains tight. The city's hum outside became a distant drone, muted by layers of glass and fabric. Inside, the air laid thick with silence, punctuated only by Kevin's ragged breaths and the occasional creak of settling furniture.

He sat at his cluttered desk, surrounded by stacks of research papers and blinking computer screens. The room reeked of stale coffee and neglect. Vanessa's presence lingered in every corner—her favorite books lined the shelves, her perfume clung to the curtains, her laughter echoed in his mind.

Kevin's fingers trembled as he tapped a sequence on his keyboard, pulling up the probabilistic model they had worked on so tirelessly. His eyes scanned the data, searching for some overlooked variable, some missed opportunity that could have altered the course of that fateful night. He played and replayed the events in his mind like a broken record.

"If only I'd been there sooner," he muttered to himself, his voice cracking under the weight of guilt. "If only I'd seen it coming..."

Every scenario he ran through his mind ended in the same tragic outcome—Vanessa's lifeless body on the cold marble. His genius had failed him when it mattered most. The algorithms that had saved lives in far-off lands couldn't save the one person who meant everything to him.

He remembered Vanessa's unwavering faith in him, her belief that his work could make a difference. But now, those memories felt like salt in an open wound. How could he have let this happen? He should have known; he should have used their model to analyze her life, her fate, so he could have been able to protect her.

A framed photo on his desk caught his attention—Vanessa's radiant smile as she stood beside him at their wedding, her eyes shining with love and pride. Kevin reached for it with shaking hands, tracing her face with his fingers.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, tears blurring his vision. "I failed you."

The weight of his grief pressed down on him, suffocating and relentless. He buried his face in his hands, unable to hold back the sobs that wracked his body. The enormity of his loss consumed him entirely.

Days bled into nights as Kevin stayed locked away in their penthouse, a prisoner of his own despair. The outside world continued its relentless march forward—news broadcasts reported on global events, emails piled up unanswered—but Kevin remained frozen in time, trapped in that moment when Vanessa was taken from him.

Food deliveries came and went untouched; messages from concerned colleagues and friends went ignored. Kevin couldn't bring himself to interact with anyone—it felt like an affront to Vanessa's memory to keep on living as if nothing had happened.

Instead, he poured over their research obsessively, convinced there must be something he could do to make sense of it all. He ran simulations endlessly; turning his work towards the sole purpose of recreating the events that led to Vanessa's assassination. The police had nothing, and he needed to understand, he had to know! Each failure to reconstitute the details of that evening only deepened his sense of helplessness.

"Why didn't I see it?" he would mutter through clenched teeth. "Why couldn't I save you?"

Kevin's world narrowed to a single point—his obsession with what-ifs and could-have-beens. Sleep eluded him; every time he closed his eyes, he saw Vanessa's lifeless form again and again.

In those dark hours alone with his thoughts and regrets, Kevin grappled with an unbearable truth: despite all their efforts to control probability and predict outcomes, some things remained tragically beyond reach.

And so he stayed there—shut away from reality—in an endless loop of guilt and despair... Looking, searching...