DARS deceptively flat face changed from its usual white to something that resembled a small, round TV with people and places moving across it. His computer generated voice spoke over the events on his ‘monitor face’ like a narrator:

[There once were two twins that were separated at birth. One was called Jenny and the other Janice. While Jenny was adopted into a wonderful, caring family, Janice was not so lucky. In her younger years things were alright, but as she grew older her parents fought more frequently until they went through a vicious divorce—]

“Uh... do adoption agencies separate twins?” Felicia asked, eyebrows furrowed in doubt.

“User, do not interrupt the review or this System will just send you on the Mission without any information.”

“Jeesh, so testy!”

[When Janice’s parents separated, things only got worse for her. Her father was drunk all the time and her mother began sleeping around. No matter which parent she lived with, her life was miserable. To escape her broken family, Janice spent more and more time wandering the city streets. By chance she fell into the wrong crowd and began doing drugs. In her drugged stupor, she was less restrained and soon her life spiralled out of control.

As an adult, in a moment of lucidity, she decided to find her birth family. She wasn’t able to find her parents, but she did discover she had an older twin sister who looked exactly like her. Seeing a good opportunity, she decided to meet with her twin.

Jenny wasn’t like Janice, who’d suffered abuse from her parents and peers. She lived a good life with loving, generous parents. She was innocent and pure, but most importantly: ignorant and gullible.

Janice could use Jenny to her heart’s content as long as she cried on her old twin’s shoulder and acted pitifully. Taking money, gifts, even “borrowing” Jenny’s identity, Janice was able to live very well for herself despite her poor choices in life.

One day Janice met Darius King, a wealthy second generation businessman. He was extremely handsome but cold. He wasn’t interested in Janice, which made Jancie want him more. Finally, after all her efforts failed, she resorted to drugging him when he foolishly let his guard down. Her connections were such that the drug she used on Darius was extremely effective, finally allowing her to spend a wild night with him like she wanted.

By chance, she got pregnant from that one night stand. Rather than abort the child like she would have usually done, she used her pregnancy to threaten Darius for money. At first Darius didn’t believe she was carrying his child, but when a paternity test came back positive he had to believe it. Furious at how she was blackmailing him, but unwilling to let his own child be killed, he agreed to her terms.

She lived a luxurious life thanks to his “generous support”. After several months of living like a queen, she couldn’t bear to live like a pauper again. Unwilling to give up this splendid life, she demanded Darius marry her “for the child’s sake”. If he didn’t, she’d run away with his kid and he’d never see his child.

Darius had already gone as low as he was willing for a child he’d never met. He absolutely refused to marry such a terrible woman. When he wouldn’t agree to her terms, she did as she’d promised and fled.

With nowhere to go, she decided to go to “gullible” Jenny’s house. Along the way there it started to rain heavily, she was speeding and lost control of the sports car she was driving, getting into a horrible accident.

Janice had long since had her driver’s license confiscated by the police. She was using Jenny’s driver’s license and so it was Jenny’s parents who were called. The parents who got the call about “Jenny’s” untimely death, and how the baby had survived and they needed to immediately come to sign papers and take the child, were naturally very confused… After all, the real Jenny was safe at home and sitting in front of them.

Jenny and her parents went to the police station to figure out what had happened. Only then did they discover it was Janice, who had been pregnant and was near giving birth. The child had no father, or at least no way to find one, and Janice had been using Jenny as her alias. Jenny could prove she was Janice’s twin sister. The police ended up giving the child to Jenny.

Jenny loved that baby and took good care of it. Years passed, with Darius only finding out Janice had died in a car crash. It was only by accident that Darius saw Jenny walking with his son. He realized his son was alive and, he thought, so was Janice.

After some initial confusion and arguing, Darius fell madly in love with Jenny. She was a loving mother, docile and sweet. He couldn’t stand being away from her and found himself distracted at work. Rather than choose between work and Jenny, he chose Jenny.

Selling off his company, he took Jenny and his son and lived in the countryside for the rest of his life. Using his skills, he invested the money from his company's sellout and used the proceeds to live a comfortable life until he and Jenny died.

If there was anything sad that came of his decision, it was that his company floundered under new management. Eventually going bankrupt and shutting its doors completely.]

There was a long moment of silence.

Finally Felicia spoke up, “That’s… that’s it?”

“Correct.”

“That… are you sure I didn’t just watch the premise to a really poorly written romance novel?” She paused. “One that doesn’t even include the romance except as an afterthought?”

“This is not a novel but a timeline.”

“...”

“...”

“I can’t accept this! There’s so many things wrong with what I saw! I’m positive adoption agencies don’t allow twins to be seperated! I’m sure there should have been Child Service’s knocking on Janice’s parents door at some point! And how could Jenny NOT NOTICE Janice was basically stealing her identity?! How could Janice and Darius even met, their social circles and the places they frequented should be totally different! And the cops— what about the cops just handing a newborn baby over like that?!” She flailed her arms in angry frustration, “What the frick is wrong with this world— I mean, timeline?! It’s like a whole bunch of stupid romance tropes strung together!”

“The quality of this timeline is dubious.”

She pointed at him in triumph, “Ah ha! So even YOU noticed!”

“However, the lack of rationality is also what makes it a Level 1 Mission.”

“It… it does?”

“When the user goes into the Timeline, the lack of internal consistency means no one will notice if the user is… different. Therefore, the user will have room for making mistakes.”

“Oh.” Her pointing finger dropped.

“Would User like to hear the Goal for Level 1 Mission?”

“Goal?”

“To help the user fix the errors in the Timeline, two goals are given for each Mission. The main goal must be completed, and the quality of the completion will determine the reward—”

“Reward? I get a reward??”

“—correct. The second goal is an ‘extra’, optional, goal that the user may decide to aim for or skip completely. However, completing the extra goal will give the user a larger reward.”

“Oooh!” She clapped excitedly, feeling something had finally gone right for her. “I love rewards! What kinds of rewards am I going to get?”

“Wouldn’t it be more beneficial for the user to know what the main goal is first?”

“Oh right.”

“To complete the mission, the user must aim for this goal: [Prevent Darius King from meeting Janice OR Jenny at all costs. If he meets Janice even once, she’ll become obsessed with him. Even if she doesn’t get pregnant, her obsession will make him miserable and lead to his company going bankrupt. If he meets Jenny, with or without a child, he’ll fall madly in love with her and eventually sell off his company and it will go bankrupt.]”

Felicia blinked. “You mean the goal isn’t to save Janice? It’s about… saving Darius’… company?”

“Why does the user assume Janice needs to be saved?”

“Doesn’t she though?! Look at what she did to herself! If someone could just help her—”

“Janice behavior is not considered an error in this Timeline and, therefore, will remain as-is.”

“But—”

“User, Janice can not be saved.”

“How do you know that?”

The dots on DARS face blinked several times before he explained, “If Janice behavior were to change for the better in this Timeline, that by itself would be considered an error that needs to be fixed.”

Felicia frowned, feeling uneasy. “How can someone changing for the better be considered an error?”

“Do you know why this System calls your Missions a ‘Timeline’ and not worlds or universes?”

“How could I know? You’ve barely told me anything.”

DARS ignored her sarcastic exasperation, continuing, “This System uses the word Timeline because what is being dealt with is a plane of existence.”

Felicia’s mouth opened into an O, her face confused.

“There is more than one universe. And of the thousands upon thousands of universes that exist, they have thousands upon thousands of variations, what this System refers to as ‘timelines’. Each timeline has a set path it is to take, if it deviates from this path it will collapse. For the person called ‘Janice’, there is likely a timeline where her parents got along, or they split amicably, or where she was wise and chose a better path. But this Timeline you are going into is not one of those.”

“Timelines are like… dimensions then?”

“Correct.”

“I don’t understand… why does there have to be a timeline where Janice has to be miserable?”

“Do you enjoy existing?”

“Huh?”

“Do you enjoy existing?”

“What’s that got to— nevermind, yes I do.” Even though she was pretty sure she was dead at this point, she still felt alive. The feeling of being alive was very very nice, especially after experiencing a quick but painful death.

“Do you think every person in your family line was happy?”

“...er… well… no… I guess not...”

“Then, you would agree that someone, somewhere, in your family line was likely not happy?”

“...sure.”

“It takes only a single deviation for a person’s life to change, much less for their descendants to change. So for you to exist as you are today, someone had to live an unhappy life. Your life was the result of someone’s unhappiness. If they were not unhappy, and in a very specific way, you would not have been born. ”

“Ah.”

“You are not an exception, but the norm. Many people came into existence because someone before them was miserable. If that one person didn’t live a miserable life, those after wouldn’t exist.”

“...that still seems so unfair…”

“How is it unfair? There is a timeline where you do not exist because that one person who was unhappy, was allowed to be happy. There is even a timeline where they were unhappy in a different way, and someone different than you was born. And then, there is your timeline, where they were unhappy in the exact way needed for you to exist.”

Felicia rubbed the back of her neck, feeling uncomfortable. It was difficult to talk of justice and fairness in the face of the reality DARS was describing. She knew that for her to exist, everything had to go a certain way, even without DARS having to tell her…

Just as an example, if her parents hadn’t had sex on a certain day in a certain month, would she exist? Just a single detail could have changed her fate, and that’s just talking about her parents. The people before them and before them…. Going back generations… how many details had to go just right for her to exist?

If someone was unhappy along the way, even having horrible things happen to them, could she dare shake her fist at God and say it “wasn’t fair”? When the end result of someone’s suffering was allowing her the chance to be born?

Unable to come to any real conclusion herself, she said haltingly, “I… I guess… I understand… what you’re saying...”

“This System is satisfied the user understands.””

“Um… so… based off what you said, doesn’t that mean there are a lot of timelines?”

“Correct. The timelines per universe are so numerous that… errors occur. This is why the User was selected, to help fix these errors.”

“Wait.. I don’t understand… how does there being so many timelines cause errors exactly? If we know the reason behind the errors, then can’t we just fix that instead? Why go through all the trouble of going inside the timeline to fix things when we could just find the source of the problem and fix that instead??”

“That information is restricted.”

Felicia narrowed her eyes, “Is it really restricted or do you just enjoy not telling me important information?”

“The System currently has many restrictions. As the user completes higher levels, more information will be made available.”

“Why not now though?”

“That information is restricted.”

She gave a hollow laugh, “Of course.”

“Would User like to know the extra goal?”

“...sure.”

“[Help Darius King to live a balanced private and professional life.]”

“...”

“...?”

“Uh… How am I supposed to do that? Am I gonna be Darius King’s therapist or something?”

“No, User will be Darius King’s older step-sister.”

“....I’m gonna be who now?”

“Darius King’s older step-sister.”

Felicia remembered something important that DARS had said earlier and asked slowly, “And she’s…. Ok… with me… taking over her body?”

“...”

“......?”

“...”

“.........??????”

“...”

“............???????????”

“...the step-sister won’t notice that you’ve taken over her body.”

“What was with that long pause just now?!”

“The step-sister will be a good host for the user. Her name is also Falicia.”

“Hey! I’m asking a serious question!”

“This System will now initialize the Mission.”

“Wait, don’t ignore me you punk—”

“Initialized.”