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Later, when the cameras were off and he was alone with his wife, hands still shaking from the cocktail of adrenaline, fear, shame, guilt, and vodka he’d been partaking of all day, he started to tell her the truth. Even then, he only spoke it in the dark, so overwhelming were his emotions that he could not bear to be seen.

“The truth,” she said, prompting him, trying to draw him from the enveloping gloom of their bedroom.

The truth. Loaded words, given the week-long trial they had both just clawed their way out of, not even free of the wreckage of public opinion, the lawyers from the plant keeping a steady hand on his shoulder, the opposition from Augment Cradle staring daggers at him from across the marble courtroom floor, as he spoke about all the reasons their technology had failed him in a time of crisis.

The judge had asked for the truth from him. He’d been hoping with some shame that he’d get some older, white man like himself, who might already come to the bench with some suspicion of this technology that had “changed the world.” That he was the kind of older white guy who had looked at the cellphone, the electric car, the internet with the same sort of cool skepticism reserved for the steepest innovations. Someone who would not question why a person might flinch away from the new, the brilliant. Or question why, or even when, that brilliance might fail, lose its luster.

No, instead, it was someone young, someone in the know. Someone who believed in how foolproof the Guidance was; that she had taken hers off while sitting the bench was not something he took comfort in. A year ago, Augment Cradle had lost a defense case about government officials wearing the Guidance during a legal procedure; they were trying again and hoping to appeal on a higher federal level, but that wouldn’t help this week.

She’d been listening, eagle-eyed, watching the faces of all in the courtroom, especially his. And by the time he was on the stand, his lawyer had already said so much: his long working days, the endless hours of beige tedium, the ice-cold coffees and skipped meals, the growing strain between him and his wife, and of course, the financial burden of not being able to afford anything beyond the most basic package for his own Guidance . . . what more was there for him to say?

And yet, she beckoned him forward, to hear it all in his own words.

As he swore the oath and took a seat, he did his best to remember his lawyer’s words: This thing ruined your life, right? That’s the truth. So say it.

And he did. He recounted what happened that morning. He said it exactly as he’d been told to, as he wanted to believe it.

Then, the judge spoke, right before he hoped to step down, “Why didn’t you refuse, Mr. Peters?”

He had frozen, not even daring to blink. Slowly, he eased himself back into his seat, eyes going wide as he looked to his lawyers. The judge said, not unkindly, “You don’t have to look at them, just me, please. From what you’re saying, the Guidance gives you bad advice on what to do. It’s not your manager. It’s not your friend. It tells you something with data pulled from the basic package and so you have to do it? Don’t you have the ability to say no? For all their advancements, AugCradle have not yet invented a way to subvert free will. You retained yours. So why didn’t you act otherwise?”

He doesn’t remember what he said to her. Probably a cobbled together version of everything he’d been instructed to utter: Because I was exhausted. Because AugCradle didn’t make this for people like me. Because I’ve been conditioned to say yes to everything.

But it wasn’t the truth. And the look in the judge’s eye said she didn’t believe him.

A hand slipped into his; his wife gripped his palm in the dark and said, “What’s the truth, baby?”

The vision flashes before his eyes again. Not a day goes by when he doesn’t see it, molten and lurking.

What could have been. Would have been, maybe.

The voice of the Guidance whispering in his mind like his conscience made manifest.

Gabriel, across the fifty most accessible timelines, there is consensus: This plant’s safety measures do not hold. If operations are not ceased immediately, a mistake is made that is catastrophic. Across the majority of these timelines, your colleague Edward Schwartz falls asleep at his station, resulting in a missed venting maneuver. His replacement is late to her shift. The resulting tension is enough to create a crack in the sealant that no one will notice for six months, at which point, the plant explodes, creating a devastating loss of life both within and around the building. Now is the time to prevent that from happening.

And hadn’t Eddie been looking tired? That divorce was moving so slow, it was draining everything from him.

And wasn’t Barb always late, citing traffic on the 405 as reason enough to take her time clocking in?

And didn’t he himself glide through safety procedures, his own mind filled with racing thoughts enough that he knew he’d miss a crack that small and never know to look for it?

Maybe if he could afford the bigger package, access to one hundred, four hundred, one thousand different timelines, maybe he’d see a different future.

But what the Guidance had given him was enough.

He’d pushed the emergency button. Evacuated the plant, set off the warning sirens at 3:00 a.m., and alerted management. Everything came to a crashing halt, and the glares of pure venom that came his way while safety officers went foot by foot through the plant were enough to make his heart give out.

Sitting in the manager’s office, being screamed at for how much of a loss he had caused by panicking over nothing, Gabriel truly did wonder if he had lost his mind and let a little computer in his ear ruin everything.

The look on the officer’s face when she returned was enough to vindicate him. She’d caught the weak point. Verified it was months away from collapse, and it was already looking bad as it was.

She also found enough safety code violations to shut down the plant for an entire year of repair, with pay for all employees in the interim.

The trial had been the compromise. The board of the plant had told Gabriel and Gabriel alone: Get on the stand and you drag yourself through the mud as hard as you have to; make it worth us fixing this fucking mess. Get us money from AugCradle and maybe, maybe, you’ll have a job to come back to after.

And you tell anyone? We promise you: No Guidance, not even your piece of shit, will be able to find a timeline where you have a pulse.

In the dark, he breathes out, voice shaking. He wants to speak it into existence, the truth. I did it because it was the right thing. Because if I didn’t, eventually, it would destroy everything. And because if I was wrong, if I rolled the dice and lost, there’d be no one to blame but myself.

In his ear, he hears the soft ping of his Guidance.

Gabriel, it says. Telling her helps more than it hurts.

He trusted the device before and look where it landed him. He sat with that in the dark, thinking on it. The Guidance saw the multiverse and found the best path forward. He’d followed it faithfully for the last year. Did he dare follow it again?

“Maria,” he said, her name heavy on his lips.

Then, he began to speak, her face illuminated only by the soft golden glow of the Guidance at his temple.

He told her the truth and tried very hard not to think about every other world in which he did not.