accept all

utility cannot survive in the absence of mastery

The end of the world nearly began with a minibus. Its red paint, standard issue for the early '80s Soviet Union, was besmirched with rust.

Having traveled this route many times in harsher conditions, the light fog of a September night was a welcome reprieve. Finally, the bus pulled up to its destination: the large iron gates greet their familiar friend with the same message as always.

CENTER FOR THE OBSERVATION OF CELESTIAL BODIES

The signatory gate, its guardhouse, and the minibus all pause for a breath beneath a single streetlight, three still bodies bobbing together in an endless ocean of night.

Suddenly, guards came streaming out of their post, shuffling aboard the bus, and reviewing passenger credentials one-by-one until they finally reach the back. A slender man in his early forties leans an elbow on the windowsill, one hand flicking ash from a cigarette. With the other, he draws an ID from his coat pocket.

"Petrov?" the guard asks, his thick brow furrowing beneath the fur of his ushanka. "You're not supposed to be in tonight."

"Yes," Petrov replies. "But Vasiliev is sick again."

The guard smirks and hands back the ID.

"You scientists weren't built for soldiering," he says, drawing a chuckle from the others.

Petrov stubs out his cigarette on the sill before taking back the card.

"You can be sure of that."

Realizing there would be no game with Petrov tonight, the guard sighs, makes a note on his clipboard, and disappears into his post. A low groan follows as the gates peel open, rusted joints crying their familiar welcome.

The bus continues into the darkness.

...

Petrov still hadn't decided if this was the best or worst job a man could have, but like every other night, he would have the next eight hours to quietly consider it.

Officially, his job was to notify the Kremlin if the Americans launched, that nuclear war was imminent and retaliation was required. But in practice, Petrov spent most nights contemplating his existence or fiddling with a few equations of his own design.

He had much preferred life as a programmer, building surveillance systems, rather than sitting at a desk watching them work. On quiet nights, his thoughts wandered back to the day of his so-called "promotion" from engineer to officer. At the time, it had felt intoxicating: higher pay, less grunt work, a crisp uniform, and the sense of defending his country.

In reality, he was babysitting a squad of glorified button-pushers, trained only to stare at screens and look for patterns.

"From his desk at the front of the room, his gaze drifted back toward his men, their faces blank with focus, absorbed in routine; moths drawn to the green glow of their monitors. Though it was buried deep in the heart of the facility, Petrov often remarked that the control center hardly belonged in a place so grandly named as the 'Center for the Observation of Celestial Bodies.'”

He scoffed.

"Bet they're just itching for the Americans to fire something," he muttered. "Anything to break the boredom."

There was no poetry in soldiering, he thought, and even less in managing.

His eyes turned back to the console. Despite his growing cynicism, the beauty of Oko still stirred something in him. Oko, "eye" in Old Russian, was the Soviet missile defense early-warning system; a constellation of satellites in Molniya and geosynchronous orbit. They watched the Earth's curve like patient sentinels, scanning for the infrared plume of a missile launch.

Petrov remembered the euphoria of watching the first satellite reach orbit. Numbers he'd scrawled on scrap paper now traced across the sky. If only he could go back to -

Suddenly the massive red light on his console flashed, wiping away his thoughts in an instant. The tin room erupted in sirens.

The screech of the alarms rushed into Petrov’s ears, scraping across the ridges of his brain. His eyes locked onto the flashing message on the screen:

MISSILE LAUNCH INITIATED: WYOMING, USA

Without thinking, Petrov grabbed the intercom and began barking orders, his steady chants rising into harmony with the blaring alarms.

"Everyone to stations. Follow my orders. Check all equipment. Report."

"Everyone to stations. Follow my orders. Check all equipment. Report."

"Everyone to stations. Follow my orders. Check all equipment. Report."

His throat dried with each repetition, but he continued, defaulting to his military training as his mind slowly began to revive from the shock.

The corps moved with frantic precision. Systems checks returned, one-by-one, all green.

Operational.

Accurate.

And then -

Another launch.

Then another.

Then another.

Then another.

Five in total.

The system declared it with certainty: the launch was real, missiles inbound. The next step in the protocol was obvious: inform the Kremlin.

Prepare for retaliation.

Petrov's hand hovered over the receiver. He lifted the phone, eyes still glued to the screen, staring at the message, as if he was waiting for it to change.

Something... something was wrong here.

Everything indeed seemed functional. But he had built this system. And he knew it could lie.

Errors could go uncaught, hidden in the labyrinth of circuits and calculations.

But perhaps more than Oko - he knew people.

The Americans had made their doctrine clear: if they ever did carry out a nuclear strike, it would be swift, vast, simultaneous, hundreds of warheads painting the sky with fire. Not five lonely missiles.

Why would they beckon Armageddon with a tepid attack?

They wouldn't.

Petrov dropped the phone back into its cradle with a soft click that seemed to echo through the building.

The room behind him swelled with panic, a tide of whispers and shifting boots.

Petrov could hear the muttering of dissent behind him. He was denying orders and breaking protocol. To these soldiers, he may as well be facilitating the destruction of the Soviet Union in its entirety, watching the Motherland burn while he sat paralyzed by doubt.

Finally, the mob reached critical mass, and a voice broke through the static air:

"Sir! All systems are operational. The missiles are inbound!"

No response. Only the hum of electronics.

"SIR! All systems are fully operational!"

A pause that stretched like a held breath.

And then, a quiet, deliberate response:

"The machines are certain. But I am not."

Another soldier stepped forward, boots clicking against the concrete floor. He spoke with a wavering tone:

"Sir, all of the satellites and the computers say the same. Now is not the time for denial!”

But with his back still to the troops, Petrov's knuckles whitened around the phone receiver, keeping it firmly planted. Sweat beaded on his forehead, collecting the fluorescent light before sliding down to pool on the metal desk below.

The countdown on his screen pulsed red: confirmation required.

So finally, he responded to his troops.

And his words would hang soberly in the air for the enirety of the 17-minute waiting period until projected impact.

“We built the systems. We should be smarter than the machines.”

Based on the true story of Stanislav Petrov (1939-2017), the man who saved the world from WW3 by correctly identifying a false alarm caused by light refraction off of low-altitude clouds.

Btw this was written at 3am after I accidentally accepted a cursor change that refactored my codebase to the point I got overwhelmed and just deleted the branch lol (cover art inspo).

But yeah I’ve been thinking a lot about AI and it’s affect on critical thinking and society in a general sense. Mostly I’ve been asking: what happens when we don’t understand our our systems anymore? is ethical AI possible? How do we achieve it? I’ve been working on an essay about this for a while now but haven’t been able to put it together, so I wrote this little short story to get the gears turning.

Here’s a sneak peak of that essay “The Lathe” if you’re curious tho