The Algorithm I: Origin of Chaos

At 3 a.m just before dawn, he sat on his cranky favorite chair just beside his bed at the corner of the room working on his laptop, lines of codes flashing over his face with a couple of bugs beautifully visible in red, which he had to deal with before calling it a day.

It was the fourth morning of a trial and error campaign - scavenging codes from various forums and github repositories. Building what he calls The Algorithm a prediction software he saw as a one way ticket out of poverty.

A nursing student at the top of his class in his third year at the university, who wasn't vast in programming but had utmost passion for coding and trading.

"Perfect!" he said, with a tired voice, twenty five minutes past 4 a.m with his heavy eyes, dim as the lamp on his table.

Heavy noise coming from his fan like it was screaming for salvation, disturbing his roommate, Phililp, who was already far gone in his sleep. Strong disturbing smell coming out the window of his room, which he never seemed to care about. He was living his dream; coding at midnight, while the world was asleep.

Happy he's finally gotten it right, he was about shutting down, already clearing the table when he heard a sharp beep from the speaker of his laptop, he looked at the screen, and saw something strange:

"Probability: 96%

Event: Fire - Common Room

Time: 05:23"

He stared, confused, trying to understand what he was looking at.

"What is this?" he whispered, trying not to wake Philip up.

He waved it off and shut it down, saying to himself, "it should be a bug or something, I'll fix it tomorrow", checked his phone, it was already 4:49 am - eleven more minutes until the hostel bell would ring.

"Well, I don't have a class this morning" he said, while jumping on his bed, leaving the laptop on the table.

Couple of minutes into trying to fall asleep and his eyelids just can't seem to close, his mind still thinking about what he saw on the laptop: Probability. Fire. 05:23.

What was that?

Is that really a bug?

Is there going to be a.....fire?

The last one had him jumping off his bed, turned the laptop back on to read what he saw again if that was actually the case.

The same screen popped up, only this time there was something more:

"Probability: 96%

Event: Fire - Common Room

Time: 05:23

Time left: 00:15:47"

"Wait, wait, wait" he was muttering, panick showing all over his face.

"What have i done?" his heartbeat started rising as the countdown kept running.

"What do I do?" asking himself, parading the room when it suddenly clicked in his head.....

"Hold on, it's the common room, there's no way a fire outbreak can happen there right? It's an empty room!"....

He found relief in that and sat on his bed, heartbeat going back to normal, staring at the screen with assurance nothing was going to happen. His roommate who was now half awake, asked what he was doing.

"Nothing, good morning" he replied, looking at the back of his head as he was walking out of the room to ease himself.

Now curious, his eyes were glued to the running countdown on the screen

00:05:22...00:05:21...00:05:20

He couldn't look away, waiting to see what will happen once it ends....atleast it's just a code, and an empty room.

Finally,

00:00:12.... 00:00:11.... 00:00:10..

Each beep from the speaker was getting louder in his head.

00:00:03.... 00:00:02.... 00:00:01.

Silence...

Nothing happened.

He burst out a loud laugh, with his hands on his chest.

"Phew! So what was that all about?"

He fell back on his bed, eyes closed, with a big smile on his face like he just escaped hell.... Just a code, just a code.

Then...

BANG!

His door barged open...