The Story of Karen
I sat down at the table, holding Karen in my hands. It felt familiar, like an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. “When I was a kid,” I began, “Uncle Shizumori and I built Karen as a school project. While other kids were making volcanoes or baking soda rockets, we built an AI that could evolve and adapt to any situation. It was... insane, even by Uncle Shizumori’s standards.”
Granny Hana leaned forward, intrigued. “What could it do?”
“Everything,” I said, a small smile creeping onto my face. “Karen could analyze data, solve complex equations, even predict outcomes based on incomplete information. It was like having a supercomputer in your pocket. But the best part was building it. Uncle Shizumori and I spent weeks working on it, tweaking the code and testing the hardware. It was... fun.”
Grandpa Ren raised an eyebrow. “Fun? Sounds like a nightmare to me.”
I chuckled. “It was. But it was our nightmare. And we loved every second of it.”
Granny Hana smiled. “It sounds like you two were really close.”
I nodded, my smile fading. “We were. But the thing is, Karen shouldn’t exist here. We only showed a replica at the school project. The real Karen was kept secret. Only Uncle Shizumori and I ever saw it.”
Grandpa Ren crossed his arms. “So if no one else knew about it, how’d it end up at the lottery shop?”
I looked down at Karen, my mind racing. “I don’t know. But the only person who could’ve sent it is Uncle Shizumori.”
---
The Truth About Uncle Shizumori
I decided to dig deeper. I activated Karen and asked it to replay its last conversations. The AI’s holographic interface flickered to life, displaying a series of logs and recordings. As I scrolled through them, my heart sank.
There was a new set of logs under the emergency distress signal, It was sent to me…
The logs revealed the truth: Uncle Shizumori had used the unstable God Particle to time travel, just like I had. But he hadn’t just traveled through time—he had become one with it. His body and mind had been broken down and reassembled at a subatomic level, giving him the ability to observe and manipulate the flow of time itself.
I grabbed a piece of paper and started scribbling calculations, trying to understand the implications. The numbers didn’t lie.
If Uncle Shizumori tried to enter the world, he could cause time to distort... because in his dimension, Time is a river. Right now, he is one with time itself. If he tries to open a portal and enter the world in that state, time itself will “leak” out of it, causing reality to distort and lose its identity in the time space continuum. It could stop time entirely, reverse it, or even disintegrate everything around him. In the worst-case scenario, his very existence could unravel the fabric of reality, sending everything back to the Big Bang.
I collapsed into a chair, the paper slipping from my hands. I stared at the floor, my mind reeling. Uncle Shizumori wasn’t just a time traveler anymore. He was something... more. Something beyond human.
Granny Hana picked up the paper, her brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of the equations. “Shinra, what does this mean?”
I looked up at her, my voice barely above a whisper.
“It means Uncle Shizumori isn’t human anymore. If he tries to enter the world, he could destroy everything.”
---
The Movie and Ren’s Realization
Just as the room fell silent, Karen’s hologram flickered again. This time, it displayed a movie poster. The title read **“Shadow of the Iron Fist”**, and the tagline promised an action-packed thriller about soldiers taking down a terrorist organization that rose to power overnight.
Granny Hana tilted her head. “Why is it showing us this?”
I frowned. “I don’t know. But if Uncle Shizumori sent it, there’s a reason.”
Grandpa Ren shrugged. “Well, I’m not gonna argue with a ghost AI. Let’s watch it.”
We settled in front of the TV, and the movie began. It was intense, with explosions, shootouts, and a lot of dramatic speeches about justice and sacrifice. As the credits rolled, I turned to Grandpa Ren.
“Does any of that make sense to you?” I asked. “I mean, you’re ex-military. Have you ever seen something like that ?”
Grandpa Ren leaned back, his expression thoughtful.
“Actually, yeah. There was this one time when I was still in the army. A terrorist group called **The Crimson Hand** suddenly appeared out of nowhere. They were well-funded, well-organized, and seemed to have access to resources that no new group should’ve had.”
Granny Hana frowned. “What happened?”
“We dug deeper,started comparing them to other groups of similar motives and actions.” Grandpa Ren said. “Turns out, they weren’t new at all. They were an old group that had just rebranded themselves after their previous identity got exposed. By changing their name and covering their tracks, they managed to stay under the radar. But we connected the dots to this new group and took them down.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
He paused, his eyes narrowing.
“You know, now that I think about it, Prometheus could be the same thing. A shell company hiding behind a new name while continuing the work of a pre-existing group… It never made sense to me, You said it was instantaneous but that shouldn’t be possible. how could such a powerful organisation appear overnight ?”
I sat up straight, my heart racing. “You mean... Prometheus might not be the real threat? There’s something bigger behind it?”
Grandpa Ren nodded. “Exactly. The question isn’t about Prometheus. It’s about a secret society of wealthy elites controlling the world from the shadows. That’s what we should be looking for.”
Granny Hana after finally understanding why Uncle Shizumori risked everything to send karen, said
“So THAT'S why your uncle sent this. He was trying to warn us that something far more sinister than Prometheus is out there, and it's been there for a VERY long time.”
“Yeah, it seems that way.” Says Ren.
Meanwhile, I was still lost. I couldn’t bear the thought of the people behind my mother’s death still being alive. It was sickening to think about. But a part of me, deep down, felt happy,TRULY happy. Because now, i can absolutely DESTROY the people that did this to me and take my sweet time while doing so. Just the thought of killing those monsters gave me goosebumps.
Deep down, I’ve always wanted revenge… and THIS is my chance.
---
Ren’s Investigation
Grandpa Ren grabbed his phone and started making calls. “Hey, it’s me,” he said, his tone serious. “I need you to look into something for me. Ever heard of a secret society of rich elites planning to create wars ? Maybe through weapons monopolisation or controlling politics?”
He listened intently, his expression growing darker with each call. Finally, he hung up and turned to us.
“A couple of my old buddies said they were investigating something like that before their senior officers forced them to shut it down and burn all the files. But they made a soft copy before they destroyed everything. They’re sending it to me as we speak… And Shinra… There’s something you should know. They say there are rumours of a man who has lived for over a century, ruling this secret society. A mad man made of science and pure talent. If that was really true, You know what that could mean right ? ”
Granny Hana leaned forward, cutting Grandpa Ren off. “That’s a start. But we need more than just files. We need a plan.”
She wanted to change the subject and Grandpa Ren took the hint. He stopped talking about it. But I already heard everything I needed to.
There is a chance that the CEO, The man who was behind the relocation programme and that so-called twisted paradise… is still alive. That thought alone terrified me, sending chills down my spine. But at the same time, deep down, I was EXCITED, brimming with happiness, the thought of killing that piece of shit myself, cutting each limb of his one after another and savouring every second of it, The thoughts alone filled my brain with dopamine… It was pure bliss… I WANTED TO ENJOY TORTURING THAT FILTH AND LAUGH WHILE DOING SO.
---
Hana’s Lab: The Scientists’ Common Thread
Before I could completely start smiling from those thoughts, Granny Hana stood up and gestured for me to follow her. “Come with me, Shinra. There’s something I want to show you.”
I followed her into her lab, where she pulled up a list of the scientists and their inventions on her computer. “You already know about these people,” she said. “But there’s something you might not have noticed.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“They all have something in common,” she said. “They all come from poor families. Look at this guy—he wanted to make a crop that could grow in all places because his father, a farmer, always suffered losses due to the crops failing to grow in their land. And this girl—she built an engine that could run on water because her father could barely afford the fuel prices to visit her.”
I nodded slowly. “So they all had personal reasons for their inventions.”
“Exactly,” Granny Hana said.
“If we tell them about the danger they’re in—without revealing too much—we might be able to get them to cooperate with us. It’ll make it easier to protect them. We can offer them work, promise them that we’ll make sure their inventions become mainstream. Technically we aren’t lying. That was your plan all along right ?”
I thought about it for a moment.
“But how do we convince them to trust us regarding the “you’re in danger” part? We can’t protect them just by changing their place of work. We need them to listen to us, 24/7.”
Granny Hana smiled. “That’s where Ren comes in. His old badge from the military, his medals, and the news articles about his accomplishments—they’re all still valid. If we show them that, they’ll know we’re not messing around.”
---
The Smile That Wasn’t His
As I listened to Granny Hana’s plan, something inside me shifted. The pieces were falling into place, and for the first time since I’d arrived in this timeline, I felt a flicker of certainty, I felt those thoughts of killing the CEO and the rest of his group, I felt a sudden twitch inside me, something inside me snapped, i didn’t know what it was but I LIKED IT. It gave me confidence, I could practically see myself holding a blade to the CEO’s throat, taking my sweet time cutting him up, PIECE BY PIECE, BIT BY BIT…
“I know exactly what to do,” I said, my voice steady while visibly grinning from ear to ear.
But to anyone watching, the smile that followed would have sent chills down their spine. It wasn’t the smile of a hero, or even a boy trying to save his mother. It was the smile of someone who had glimpsed the abyss—and decided to leap.
---
Something had snapped.
Perhaps it was the weight of time itself, crushing the boy who’d once sobbed into his mother’s hospital sheets. Or the slow, venomous realization that to outplay monsters, you must first grow teeth of your own.
The smile didn’t belong to Nishi Shinra. Not anymore. It was a borrowed thing—sharp as a scalpel, cold as the space between stars—the kind of smile that doesn’t fade, but settles, like frost on a corpse.
When had the switch flipped? When he held Karen? When he unraveled Shizumori’s fate? Or earlier, much earlier—when he learned that salvation and annihilation wear the same face... When he saw all the puzzle pieces fall in order, creating a web that connected all the dots, allowing him to see the path to certain victory ?
Funny, he mused, how quiet the other voice in his head had gone. As if it had finally handed him the reins. Or simply… stepped aside to watch.
One thing was certain: the boy who feared the dark was gone.
Now the darkness itself feared him.
End of Chapter 7
To be Continued