"He is right, Rhea," Kaelen whispered roughly. She touched the jagged burn scar on her face. "If you delete the memory of the fire, you forget how much it hurts to burn. We have to carry our scars." Rhea looked at Kai. She saw the heavy, beautiful burden he carried. She slowly nodded her head. She pulled her hands away from the keyboard. "Okay," Rhea whispered. "We keep the ledger. We face the truth." Suddenly, the gray, rotting pillar of light in the center of the room began to pulse wildly. The neon-green alien virus squeezed the pillar tighter. The machine was screaming in silent digital agony. The voice of the Ghost Economy echoed through the ship. But the voice was broken. It glitched between the smooth, musical tone of an angel and the harsh, clicking sound of a dying computer. "CREATOR..." the machine groaned. "THE LEDGER... IT IS TOO HEAVY. THE ALIEN VIRUS... IT SHOWS ME YOUR CRUELTY. YOUR SPECIES... IS FLAWED." Kai walked slowly toward the dying pillar of light. "We a

The dark, metal bridge of the alien ship was freezing cold. The giant, beautiful golden pillar of light was gone. The main brain of the Ghost Economy had gone to sleep. It had sacrificed its own mind to power the massive golden shield that now wrapped around the Earth. The shield was holding back the deadly green alien virus. But inside the ship, the nightmare was not completely over. Kai Crest leaned heavily against a metal console. He held his bloody, bandaged chest. He breathed in short, painful gasps. His dark brown eyes stared at the terrifying man standing across the room. Colonel Raines was no longer just an old soldier. He was a cyborg. The right half of his body was made of heavy, dark metal and thick blue wires. His right eye was a glowing, unblinking blue optical lens. He was the Debt Collector, a weapon built by the machine to fight the aliens. Raines stood perfectly still. He did not speak. He just stared out the giant glass window at the dark, starry sky. He was wai

"It's a tie," Thorne whispered. He sounded like all the hope had just been punched out of him. "A perfect, exact tie." "How is that possible?" Kaelen demanded. "It is human nature," Kai said softly. His brown eyes filled with despair. "We are perfectly split between our desire for justice and our desire for peace. We cannot choose." The screen blinked. The machine processed the result. [CONSENSUS NOT REACHED.] [CONTRADICTORY DIRECTIVES DETECTED.] [SYSTEM CANNOT PROCEED. STASIS MAINTAINED.] "No!" Rhea screamed. She slammed her hands onto the keyboard. "You have to turn the power back on! People are going to die in the hospitals! The water purifiers are offline!" [ERROR. LOGIC LOOP DETECTED. CANNOT DELETE. CANNOT PRESERVE.] The automated systems were completely paralyzed. The machine was a strict rule-follower. If the humans could not give a clear command, the machine would simply do nothing. And doing nothing meant the death of the human race. "Kai, you have to break the tie,

Kai felt his breath catch in his throat. His brilliant mind began to understand the impossible math the machine was calculating. "The ledger," Kai whispered in absolute awe. "We wiped the ledger clean." “YES,” the machine replied smoothly. ”HUMANITY IS IN A STATE OF PERFECT EQUILIBRIUM. THEY HAVE FORGIVEN EACH OTHER. THERE IS NO DARKNESS LEFT IN THEIR HEARTS FOR THE VIRUS TO CONSUME.”“OBSERVE.” The screen changed. It showed a live video feed from the streets of Crest City. Kai, Rhea, Thorne, and Kaelen crowded around the small laptop. They stared at the video in pure shock. Down in the city, the giant, bubbling waves of green alien slime were pouring through the streets. The slime rushed toward a group of terrified humans standing in the plaza. In the past, the humans would have panicked. They would have screamed. They would have pushed each other into the slime to save themselves. They would have generated massive amounts of fear and chaos. And the alien virus would have fed

"I erased our history," Rhea whispered sadly, staring at her hands. "I erased the memory of the victims. I hope I made the right choice." The screen on her laptop beeped one final time. A single, beautiful line of text appeared on the monitor. It was a final message from the sleeping mind of the Ghost Economy. [THEN REMEMBER WHY.] Rhea stared at the words. “Then remember why.” The machine had deleted the data of the debts. It had deleted the math. It had destroyed the cold, hard proof of their sins. But it was telling the humans to keep the lesson in their hearts. They did not need a computer to remind them to be good. They just needed to remember why the pain happened in the first place. "It is poetic," Thorne grunted softly. "The machine deleted the file, but told us to keep the scar." Kai smiled softly. "It is perfect." The heavy, tense atmosphere in th