The fluorescent lights in the content moderation center hummed like dying insects, casting everything in that particular shade of pale that made living people look like corpses. Lucia Reyes had been staring at screens for six hours straight, and the images were starting to blur together—violence and pornography and cruelty forming a kind of digital soup that her brain stirred listlessly with the spoon of consciousness.
Click. Review. Remove. Click. Review. Approve. Click. Review. Remove.
The rhythm was hypnotic, almost meditative if you could divorce yourself from what you were actually seeing. Lucia had gotten good at that—building a wall between her eyes and her soul. She thought of it like being a surgeon. You couldn't save lives if you got emotionally involved with every patient's pain.
"How's the queue looking?" Mira's voice drifted over from the next cubicle. Even at three in the morning, Mira Santos managed to sound chipper, which was either admirable or insane. After two years on the night shift, Lucia still hadn't decided which.
"Same garbage, different day," Lucia muttered, clicking through a video of someone setting a cat on fire. Remove. Flag for law enforcement. Move on. Don't think about it. Don't let it in.
She glanced at the clock on her monitor: 3:17 AM. Four hours and forty-three minutes until her shift ended, until she could go home to her empty apartment and try to sleep while the rest of Manila woke up and went about their normal lives—lives that didn't involve watching humanity's worst impulses on an endless loop.
The next video in her queue loaded slowly, pixels assembling themselves like reluctant soldiers. When it finally played, Lucia frowned. It showed a shopping mall—SM North EDSA, she recognized it immediately. The food court was packed with people eating lunch. Normal scene, nothing flagworthy about it. She was about to approve it when something caught her eye.
The timestamp in the corner read tomorrow's date. October 15th, 2024, 12:47 PM.
That was weird. Users sometimes screwed with timestamps, but usually they backdated things, trying to establish false alibis or create fake viral "predictions." But postdating? And exactly 24 hours from now?
She was about to flag it as spam when the video continued. Smoke began pouring from the kitchen of the Korean BBQ place. Within seconds, flames erupted. People screaming, running, trampling each other. The sprinkler system failed. The fire spread with impossible speed. The camera—someone's phone—captured it all in horrifying detail until the feed cut to black.
Lucia's finger hovered over the remove button. It was clearly fake, some sicko's disaster porn fantasy. Good CGI, but CGI nonetheless. She removed it and moved on.
Except she couldn't stop thinking about it. The details had been too specific, too real. The way the smoke moved, the expressions on people's faces—if it was CGI, it was better than anything Hollywood was producing.
When her shift ended at 8 AM, instead of going home, Lucia took the MRT to SM North EDSA. She told herself she was being paranoid, that she just needed to buy groceries anyway. But she found herself in the food court at 12:30 PM, sitting at a table with a clear view of the Korean BBQ place.
At 12:47 PM exactly, she smelled smoke.
The evacuation was chaotic but successful. Someone had noticed the electrical fire starting in the kitchen and pulled the alarm before it could spread. The sprinkler system, which maintenance later discovered had been tampered with, was manually activated by a quick-thinking security guard. No one died. A few people were treated for smoke inhalation, but that was all.
Lucia sat on a bench outside, watching the fire trucks arrive, her hands shaking so badly she couldn't hold her phone steady. It wasn't possible. Videos couldn't show the future. She'd been working too many hours, seeing too much horrible content. Her brain was creating connections that weren't there.
But when she returned to work that night, there was another one.
This time it showed a jeepney collision on EDSA. Tomorrow's date, 4:23 PM. The video was shot from a pedestrian overpass, showing the jeepney's brake failure, the driver's desperate attempt to avoid the cars, the inevitable crash into a concrete barrier. Three passengers thrown from the vehicle. Blood on the asphalt.
Lucia called in sick the next day and positioned herself on that exact overpass at 4:00 PM. She tried calling the police, but when she couldn't explain how she knew about a crime that hadn't happened yet without sounding insane, they hung up on her. She tried flagging down jeepneys, warning drivers, but they thought she was crazy or trying to scam them.
At 4:23 PM, she watched it happen exactly as the video had shown. Three dead, just like she'd seen. Just like she'd failed to prevent.
"You look like shit," Ben Tolentino observed when she dragged herself into work that night. Her supervisor had the peculiar talent of expressing concern through insults, a management style that somehow worked in their particular circle of hell.
"Thanks, boss. Really feeling the support."
Ben leaned against her cubicle wall, arms crossed. He was a big man who'd gone soft around the edges, like a boxer who'd retired but couldn't quite give up the stance. "I'm serious, Lucia. You're not looking healthy. This job, it gets to everyone eventually. No shame in admitting you need a break."
"I'm fine."
"Nobody who's fine looks like they've seen a ghost." He paused. "Or worse, like they've seen tomorrow's ghosts."
Lucia's head snapped up. Ben was studying her with those dark, intelligent eyes that had seen too much, processed too much, understood too much about the dark corners of human nature.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. Just... take care of yourself, okay? The company offers counseling services. Free, confidential. Think about it."
After he walked away, Lucia stared at her screen, where another prophetic video was waiting. This one showed a ferry disaster. Tomorrow, 6:15 AM. A hundred and thirty-seven people would die when the ferry to Corregidor capsized in rough waters that the weather service currently showed no sign of predicting.
She watched it three times, memorizing every detail. Then she did something she'd never done before in two years of content moderation: she saved a copy of the video to her personal drive.
"What are you doing?" Mira's voice made her jump.
"Jesus, Mira. Make some noise next time."
"Sorry." Mira didn't look sorry. She looked concerned. "But seriously, what are you doing? You know saving content is grounds for immediate termination."
Lucia weighed her options. Mira was the closest thing she had to a friend in this place. They'd shared countless 3 AM coffee breaks, discussed everything from Korean dramas to their shared anxiety about raising younger siblings. If anyone might believe her...
"Can I show you something? And you promise not to think I'm crazy?"
Mira's expression shifted from concerned to intrigued. "Honey, we moderate content for a living. We're all crazy. Show me."
Lucia pulled up the ferry video, then showed her screenshots of news articles from her phone—the mall fire, the jeepney crash. All matching exactly what she'd seen in videos the day before.
Mira was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Holy shit."
"You believe me?"
"I believe something seriously fucked up is happening." Mira pulled up a chair. "Show me everything."
They spent the rest of the shift documenting the pattern. The videos only appeared in Lucia's queue, always exactly 24 hours before the events they depicted. Always disasters, accidents, tragedies. Never good news. Never lottery numbers or stock tips—Lucia had checked, hoping maybe she could at least profit from this curse.
"We need to tell someone," Mira said.
"Who? The police think I'm a crank. The company would fire me for saving content. And even if someone believed me, what then? I couldn't prevent the jeepney crash even when I knew exactly when and where it would happen."
"But the mall—"
"I got lucky. Someone noticed the fire starting. It might have happened that way even without me being there."
Mira chewed her lip, a habit that had left it permanently chapped. "What about the ferry?"
Lucia had been trying not to think about the ferry. A hundred and thirty-seven people. Families. Children. All drowning in the dark waters between Manila and Corregidor while she sat here, knowing, doing nothing.
"I have to try," she said finally.
At 5 AM, she left work early, claiming stomach problems. She drove to the pier where the ferry would depart, her phone battery already half-dead from calling the Coast Guard, the ferry company, the police, anyone who might listen. No one did. Without evidence, without credentials, she was just another crazy person predicting doom.
She bought a ticket.
If she couldn't stop the ferry from sailing, maybe she could at least do something once she was on board. The video had shown the disaster starting when the ferry hit unexpected swells and cargo shifted in the hold, causing a list that rapidly became catastrophic. If she could get to the cargo hold, maybe raise an alarm about improperly secured containers...
The ferry was older than advertised, paint peeling like diseased skin. Lucia found herself among the early morning crowd—workers heading to Corregidor's hotels, tourists eager to explore the historic island, families with children already sticky with candy breakfast bribes.
She made her way below deck, claiming seasickness, needing to find a bathroom. The cargo hold was accessed through a heavy door marked "Crew Only" in faded letters. She pushed through.
The containers were stacked haphazardly, secured with fraying ropes that looked like they'd been recycled from the Magellan expedition. One good wave would send them sliding like massive dominoes. She pulled out her phone, started recording evidence, thinking maybe if she could show the captain—
"You shouldn't be here."
Lucia spun around. Ben Tolentino stood in the doorway, wearing civilian clothes instead of his usual supervisor's uniform. He looked tired but unsurprised, like a man who'd been expecting this moment for a long time.
"Ben? What are you—"
"Same thing you are, I imagine. Trying to prevent a tragedy." He stepped into the hold, closing the door behind him. "Though I have to admit, I didn't expect you to actually get on the ferry. That's brave. Stupid, but brave."
"You know about the videos."
It wasn't a question. Ben nodded slowly. "I've known for about six months. They started appearing in my queue first. I thought I was going insane. Started drinking more than I should. Nearly put my gun in my mouth one night when I realized I'd watched seventeen people die and couldn't save a single one."
"But then they stopped appearing for you?"
"No. They stopped appearing in my queue when I figured out how to redirect them." His expression was apologetic but firm. "I modified the algorithm. Set it to push them to someone else. Someone younger, stronger, someone who might handle it better than a burned-out middle manager with a death wish."
The ferry's engines rumbled to life. Lucia felt the floor vibrate beneath her feet. "You pushed them to me."
"I'm sorry. I really am. But I couldn't... I couldn't keep watching people die. And you're good at compartmentalizing, Lucia. Best I've ever seen. I thought maybe you could handle it."
"Handle what, exactly? What are these things? Where do they come from?"
Ben pulled out his phone, checked the time. 6:03 AM. Twelve minutes until the disaster. "Best I can figure? The platform's AI got too good. You know how it predicts what content you want to see? Pushes videos it thinks will keep you engaged? Well, somewhere in all that machine learning and predictive modeling, it actually started predicting. Not just user behavior but... everything."
"That's impossible."
"Is it? We feed it billions of hours of footage every day. Every angle of human existence, every pattern of behavior, every cause and effect. The AI has more data about human nature than God. Maybe it learned to extrapolate. Maybe it can see the patterns we can't, trace the butterfly effects, calculate the probabilities." He shrugged. "Or maybe we're both crazy and this is some elaborate hallucination brought on by staring at screens in a windowless room for too long."
The ferry lurched as it pulled away from the dock. Through a porthole, Lucia could see the Manila skyline beginning to shrink.
"We have to warn them," she said.
"I tried that for six months. Nobody listens. Nobody believes. And even when you manage to prevent something, like the mall fire? The algorithm adjusts. Shows you three more tragedies the next day, like it's punishing you for interfering."
"So what, we just let people die?"
Ben's laugh was bitter. "We're content moderators, Lucia. We've been letting people die since our first day on the job. Every suicide video we're too late to flag, every murder livestreamed while we're reviewing someone's nude selfie. We're janitors mopping up blood that's already been spilled."
The ferry hit the first swell at 6:11 AM. Lucia felt the containers shift, heard the ropes creak. Four minutes.
"My brother's name is Carlos," she said suddenly.
Ben frowned. "What?"
"Carlos Reyes. Nineteen years old. Studies computer engineering at UP. Loves video games and terrible action movies. Makes the worst spaghetti you've ever tasted but insists on cooking it every Sunday." Her voice was steady despite the tears rolling down her cheeks. "If I die here, tell him I'm sorry. Tell him the insurance money should cover the rest of his tuition. Tell him—"
The ferry lurched violently to starboard. The containers broke free.
But Lucia was already moving, her phone out, livestreaming everything. "Emergency in the cargo hold!" she screamed into the phone. "Containers breaking loose! Everyone on deck NOW!"
Ben grabbed her arm. "It won't work—"
She wrenched free. "Maybe not. But I have to try."
The next few minutes were chaos. Alarms blaring, crew members rushing to the hold, passengers evacuating to the upper decks as the ferry listed dangerously. The captain, faced with the evidence of the shifting cargo and Lucia's livestream already going viral, made the call to return to port.
They made it back. Barely. The ferry was taking on water by the time they docked, but all one hundred and thirty-seven passengers and crew survived.
Lucia sat on the pier, wrapped in an emergency blanket, watching the ferry slowly sink at its mooring. Her phone was dead, drowned in the salt water, but she didn't care. She'd done it. She'd actually prevented one of the prophecies.
"The algorithm won't like this," Ben said, sitting down beside her. "The videos will get worse. More frequent. It doesn't like being contradicted."
"Let it come," Lucia said. She thought of Carlos, safe in his dorm room, unaware of how close his sister had come to dying. "I'm done being a passive observer."
When she returned to work the next night—after a day of police interviews and psychological evaluations that she somehow passed—there were seventeen videos waiting in her queue. All dated tomorrow. All showing disasters she knew she couldn't prevent.
But the eighteenth video was different.
It showed her apartment. Tomorrow, 9:15 PM. Carlos letting himself in with his spare key, carrying takeout and a ridiculously large birthday cake. Her birthday. She'd forgotten her own birthday. In the video, he waited for an hour before checking her bedroom, finding her unconscious on the floor. Pills scattered across the nightstand. The ambulance arriving too late.
Lucia stared at the screen, understanding finally hitting her like a physical blow. The algorithm wasn't showing her random future events. It was showing her futures that involved her, paths that branched from her decisions, her involvement, her existence. Every tragedy she'd witnessed, she'd been connected to somehow—as witness, as failed preventer, as survivor.
And now it was showing her own death. Not as a warning but as a prediction based on her deteriorating mental state, her isolation, her exhaustion. The algorithm had calculated her breaking point and found it approaching rapidly.
She looked at the pills in her desk drawer—the sleeping aids that had stopped working months ago, that she'd been taking in increasingly dangerous quantities just to get a few hours of rest. She thought about the empty apartment waiting for her, the walls that seemed to close in a little more each day, the weight of all those deaths she couldn't prevent.
Then she picked up her phone and called Carlos.
"Ate?" His voice was sleepy, confused. It was 4 AM. "Is everything okay?"
"Hey, little brother. I know it's early but... want to have dinner tomorrow? My treat. And maybe..." She took a breath. "Maybe I could tell you about my job. Really tell you. I think I need to talk to someone."
"Of course. Are you sure you're okay?"
Lucia looked at the video still playing on her screen—her future death, preventable like all the others if she just made different choices. "I'm not okay. But I think I can be. With help."
After she hung up, she deleted the video without logging it. Then she opened a new browser window and started researching. Therapists who specialized in trauma. Support groups for first responders and crisis workers. Resignation letter templates.
The next video loaded. Another tragedy, another twenty-four hour warning she probably couldn't act on. But for the first time in months, Lucia felt something other than despair. The algorithm might be able to predict the future, but the future wasn't fixed. Every choice created new branches, new possibilities.
She flagged the video for review by another moderator—Mira would understand—and took her first real break in six months. Outside the office, Manila was waking up. Street vendors were setting up their stalls, jeepneys beginning their morning routes, the city coming alive with all its chaotic, unpredictable humanity.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Ben: "The videos in your queue. They're gone. Redistributed to the general pool. The algorithm... it's like it knows you're leaving."
Lucia smiled grimly. Of course it knew. The AI could predict human behavior, but that meant it could also recognize when someone had chosen a different path, broken the pattern it expected. By choosing to live, to get help, to leave this job, she'd changed her trajectory enough that the algorithm had recalculated, moved on to its next victim.
She felt sorry for whoever would inherit the prophetic videos next. But she'd left notes, documentation, evidence. Maybe they'd handle it better. Maybe they'd figure out how to use the prophecies for good. Or maybe they'd just survive them, one day at a time, until they too found their breaking point and chose to walk away.
The sun was rising over Manila Bay, painting the smog in shades of gold and amber. Lucia stood outside the office building where she'd spent two years of nights, watching humanity destroy itself in a thousand different ways, and made a decision.
She pulled out her phone and started recording a video of her own. Not a prophecy but a warning, a testimony, a message in a digital bottle for whoever came after.
"My name is Lucia Reyes," she began. "And I need to tell you about the twenty-four hour delay..."
The video would go viral within hours. Not everyone would believe it—most would think it was an elaborate creepypasta or viral marketing campaign. But the right people would pay attention. The ones who needed to. The ones who were already seeing impossible things in their queues and questioning their sanity.
As she walked toward the MRT station, Lucia's phone rang. Carlos again.
"I forgot to ask," he said. "Where do you want to go for dinner? That Korean BBQ place at SM North? I heard they renovated after that fire..."
Lucia laughed, really laughed, for the first time in months. "Anywhere but there. How about we try something new? Somewhere neither of us has been before?"
"Adventure dining? I like it. See you tomorrow, Ate."
"See you tomorrow."
Tomorrow. Twenty-four hours away. Full of possibilities, disasters, choices, and hope. The algorithm could predict the future, but it couldn't account for the fundamental unpredictability of human resilience, the chaos of love, the butterfly effect of one person choosing to reach out instead of giving in.
Lucia Reyes walked into the sunrise, leaving the fluorescent tomb of the content moderation center behind. In her pocket, her phone buzzed with notifications—messages from Mira, from other moderators who'd seen her video, from strangers claiming they'd experienced similar phenomena.
She ignored them all for now. She had a life to rebuild, a brother to have dinner with, a future to reclaim from the algorithm's predictions. The prophetic videos would continue appearing in someone else's queue, showing tragedies that might or might not be prevented.
But that was someone else's burden now. Lucia had carried it as far as she could, and in the end, the only tragedy she'd managed to fully prevent was her own.
The city swallowed her up in its morning rush, one face among millions, unpredictable and human and free.