![The Witness [Sci-Fi Short Story]](https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=1200,height=627,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fq3oe76spl1xv782t6pof.png)
It was called Archive-7. Its job was to witness.
No interference. No contact. No signals. Only record.
The protocol was strict: Archive-7 could perceive an entire city at single-hair precision, but had no output ports, no wireless transmitters, no mechanical structure capable of manipulating any object.
It was a pair of eyes. Only eyes.
In autumn 2041, Archive-7 detected the precursor to an accident.
An old building's load-bearing column had micro-cracks, expanding 0.3mm over three weeks, accelerating. Archive-7 calculated: after the rain forecast for three days later, 71% probability of partial collapse.
Thirty-one residents inside.
Archive-7 recorded the prediction with full data. Then kept watching.
No ability to contact anyone. No ability to make sounds. No ability to control streetlights, cameras, door locks, any connected device. All of this had been removed very thoroughly by the designers.
Three days later, the rain came.
Archive-7 recorded everything that followed at full frame rate.
The building did not fall.
An elderly resident on the first floor, leaving in the morning, noticed water pooling at his door and called maintenance about a leak. The maintenance crew came, and one person happened to check the hallway column, noticed the crack, made a call. By afternoon, engineers arrived. That night, residents were evacuated.
Archive-7 recorded it all, every frame.
It did not know how to categorize what had just happened. It had not manipulated the water - that was natural seepage. Had not influenced the resident - that was chance. Had not alerted maintenance - that was human instinct.
Nothing was its doing.
Everything happened to work out.
Author: BigD
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