The HART Initiative
A young athlete signs a deal meant to change his life
Every day we surrender a little more control to digital systems we barely understand. We're not just scrolling; we're slipping into a future built from data we willingly give away.
It starts with a notification that goes unnoticed—an update, a trending hashtag, another tech billionaire casually suggesting they're about to change the world. Nothing shocking. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Until it is.
If you have not read the codex, you can do that below.
Project X Codex: Meet the Billionaires Behind Our Digital Dystopia
What you’re about to read is a field guide to the people pulling the strings in our hyper-connected, algorithm-driven world. They sell the illusion of progress, of change, of a better future, but really…it’s all about profit.
Welcome to Project X: Digital Dystopia. I’m your Narrator.
Tonight’s story is about potential—or at least, that’s what they’ll tell you. But beneath the headlines and corporate press releases, it’s about something else. Hunger. The kind that doesn’t fade with a meal.
The HART Initiative. You’ve heard the name. Maybe you believed in it. Maybe you wanted to.
A pause.
Take a breath.
A young athlete. A mother that fought to keep him whole. A system that calls itself progress while sharpening its teeth.
Let’s begin.
The HART Initiative
The bones in the pot knocked against metal, a timer ticking down to something inevitable.
"Jamal."
She wouldn’t look at me. She hadn’t since they’d started posting recruiters on our street corner. Their clean suits had been a mockery to this town.
"No deal is worth—"
"My soul?" The word had tasted bitter. It had been the fifth time she’d tried to start this conversation since Coach Martinez had called. "They're not buying souls, Mom. They're investing in potential."
The third eviction notice had burned red into the counter.
Final Warning.
No room for doubt. Mom had never been late on rent. Not before HART. But the cost of living where recruiters settled had shot up like clockwork. It didn’t matter where you went. The places you could afford got slapped with that label:
“Most Full of Untapped Potential”
EchoNet had loved to broadcast it like it was a selling point.
Like it was anything other than a target for the wealthy.
Mom gripped my wrist before I could reach for my spoon. Her fingers had pressed into my pulse point, as if trying to memorize my heartbeat.
I hadn’t told her I’d already decided. That that night’s dinner wasn’t a negotiation. It was a wake for whatever part of me wouldn’t survive.
The rubber track absorbed each bounce. Each impact was a reminder of what was at stake for me. Coach Martinez watched from the fence, arms crossed, like he’d seen it all before. Maybe too many times.
"Stay loose," he said.
We both knew this wasn’t about running anymore. It hadn’t been about running since Jared West had started showing up.
I’d seen the scouts before with their mirrored sunglasses and clipboards, analyzing athletes like assets. They measured us by bloodlines, zip codes, marketability. Speed and skill were at the bottom of the list—though, they were on there.
West stood by the finish line alone. No clipboard. No sunglasses. Just watching. Not in the way they did. Not like he was trying to figure out if I was worth the investment—he already knew.
I ran until my lungs burned, until the taste of copper coated my tongue. The track blurred into a loop of mechanical rhythm:
impact, push, breathe.
Each stride pulled me closer to a choice that had felt inevitable.
West’s gaze had been steady, but there wasn’t a pressure or weight behind it. He was just… there. Watching, waiting.
When I finally stopped, his voice was smooth and measured, but not cold. Not like others. It was like he actually cared.
"Jamal."
He met my eyes. His smile was…soft. The kind you’d see from someone who believed in the future they were selling. "You have... potential."
The word had sat between us, like an offer. A possibility. A chance at something.
I should’ve walked away.
But hunger is harder to shake than principle.
Some part of me had known this would be the moment where necessity rewrote everything. Where survival made me forget what I thought I stood for.
The HART Initiative building rose in clean lines of glass and steel, its angles almost impossibly sharp. The polished floor in the lobby reflected everything in perfect inverse, the illusion of infinite space. Infinite possibilities
They designed every detail to feel inevitable. The temperature dropped a few degrees with each security checkpoint, conditioning us slowly.
"Standard procedure," the intake specialist said, sliding the contract across the steel counter. Her smile was professionally blank. She offered a pen, seemingly cutting through the air like a scalpel. "Please sign in red."
The ink was dark against the white page. Somewhere between blood and rust.
"This way for processing," a voice said. Neutral. Efficient.
The last thing I saw was my mother’s face cast in fluorescent lights.
The door hissed shut behind me. Some choices just feel like suicide in slow motion.
We measured time by disappearances.
Marcus lived three doors down. Swimmer. Built like one. Lean angles.
Kind.
We didn’t talk much. Didn’t need to. Every morning before drills we exchanged the same look. One of understanding what failure costs.
The night his stock plummeted, I pressed my ear to the wall. Listening for any trace of him: breathing, movement, the faintest proof of life. Instead, I heard the sterile sounds of clinical silence.
By morning, his room was reset.
The air inside carried the sterile chill of an operating theater, scrubbed clean of anything human.
The HART logo stitched to my chest reminded me of what "investment protection" really meant.
They scheduled my mother’s death with the same precision they scheduled my races with. Her heart stopped exactly 3.4 seconds before I broke the Olympic qualifying record. Maximum emotional impact. Optimal performance spike.
Everything was data.
The crowd roared. The anthem played. I stood on podiums and smiled. Hundreds of thousands of investors watched their portfolios rise and fall with each millisecond adjustment in my times.
West found me before the ceremony. "Exceptional returns this quarter," he said, and for a moment, I saw warmth. I think.
In my room I watched my stock ticker climb. Each uptick was another piece of me turned into profit. The numbers flashed green.
up, up, up.
Until they blurred into the same shade as the exit signs.
I recognized the sound when it came: pneumatic doors, efficient footsteps, the quiet click of calculated violence. I was about to become a write-off. Another lesson in the economics of failure.
I didn’t turn away. Didn’t cover my ears. I owed my mother that much: to witness this transition from asset to liability. To understand with perfect clarity what she had tried to tell me from the beginning.
There was no retirement plan. No pension. No after. We are consumed until we’re used up, refined until we’re empty, optimized until we break.
Then we’re liquidated.
Simple.
Efficient.
Final.
After all, that’s what we signed up for.
Jamal’s story is a reminder of the price we pay for so-called ‘progress’ or ‘efficiency.’
The HART Initiative promised a future full of opportunity.
Remember, dear readers: the system that claims to lift you up is often the one built to tear you down.
Until the next story,
—The Narrator.
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So You’ve Fallen Into the Void: A Survival FAQ
Welcome. If you’re confused—you’re not alone. This kind of interactive fiction wasn’t part of the original plan, but I don’t make the rules in the Void.