Harmful Intentions

History shows that technological advancement brought about the end of civilization, fragmented into divisions that hastened its collapse. The problem was that the majority thoughtlessly embraced regression, while the intelligent proclaimed that freedom had ended long ago.

Freedom ended with an algorithm that read “intent,” marketed as a savior but fundamentally incapable of understanding logic.

To “avoid chaos” and “preserve harmony,” the Apology Law was introduced. If the algorithm identified someone with intentions deemed harmful, the accused was legally obligated to apologize to the victim. If the accused apologized and admitted guilt—acknowledging that they had harmful thoughts—they remained in the registry but were not punished. However, if accused three times, or if they refused to apologize, they were declared a danger to society and exiled to the Zone of Silence, a place where no communication with society was possible.

On June 23rd, at 1:10 a.m., two lifeless men in bland gray suits appeared at my door.

“You are accused of harmful intent” they said, offering no further explanation. I had no choice but to go with them.

The two gray men escorted me to a claustrophobic cell with concrete walls, no windows, and a single chair in the center. They told me they’d come for me at six in the morning to take me to trial.

It was already 3 a.m. All I had was panic and the chair. In those few hours, I tried to recall all the harmful intents I might have harbored in my life. The problem was that I was one of those quiet, introverted types—a person everyone says “wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Nothing came to mind.

I recalled no one provoking harmful intent. I was used to being a doormat, tired of fighting back.

I spent my days writing. My wife had left with her colleague, and I preferred the solitude to her insults calling me “useless.” Silence, at least, offered peace.

Society, fractured by the constant surveillance of the algorithm, had left me without friends.

That was the problem. I had lost the will to live in such a society, along with any desire or intention. Smoking, drinking coffee, and writing were habits, not intentions.

Detention bewildered me. I didn’t even live with intent.

I suppose it was precisely six o’clock in the morning when the two gray men returned for me. They didn’t strike me as the type to joke about seconds. They led me through narrow, gray-painted corridors with gray doors on either side until we arrived at an empty courtroom where they gestured for me to sit.

The courtroom reeked of bleach, as though executions had occurred.

Suddenly, it dawned on me: What if the algorithm, incapable of interpreting context and logic in thoughts and feelings, had interpreted one of my stories as harmful intent? It was true that I often vented my frustrations by punishing characters in my stories. The algorithm must have misinterpreted every artist. That explains the disappearance of art.

At that moment, a prosecutor burst into the courtroom as swiftly as a swallow’s tail, but there was no defense attorney. That profession no longer existed. The prosecutor was a tall, skinny man—one of those people you’d say had been consumed by malice from the inside out. A Worm. A tall Worm with feet. He wiggled constantly, twisting as if he itched all over or urgently needed the restroom.

As the Worm ignored me, I let my gaze wander across the courtroom. The gray walls pulsed, rearranging with each blink. Above the judge’s bench, AI slogans flickered erratically:

“Freedom is the absence of choice.”

“Apologize to survive.”

Their chaos reflected my growing despair.

It became clear that I no longer existed, even as an artist. AI wrote instead of me.

The Worm wiggled, pointing to the door.

A figure entered—the Judge of Intent—and took his seat at the bench. His mismatched face and darting eyes gave him a grotesque, puppet-like appearance. When he spoke, his voice didn’t match his mouth. His lips, twisted in perpetual disgust and drooping to his neck, bore no relation to the words emerging as if dubbed.

For a while, the judge leafed through documents in complete silence. I assumed they were about me, though I couldn’t imagine what they might contain. I didn’t dare to speak or ask. When he finished, he looked at the Worm, who leaped to his feet as if stung and began speaking in such a formal tone that I struggled to follow.

“Your Honor, the accused was caught red-handed in the act of harboring “harmful thoughts”, and the prosecution will easily prove this.” Only then did he take a breath.

“You are accused of thought crimes,” the judge said.

“Which thoughts?” I asked, my voice cracking.

He paused, tilting his head like a machine processing input. “Your thoughts. All of them.”

“But I—”

“Defensiveness confirms intent,” he interrupted.

My voice collapsed in my throat. I didn’t know what they wanted me to confess, and perhaps, neither did they.

“How do you plead?” the judge asked, his voice rasping as though he’d been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day since birth.

“Plead… Your Honor,” I mimicked how the Worm addressed him, “Plead to what?”

“The accused refuses to admit guilt and apologize to the victim, thereby obstructing the legal remedy.”

Legal remedy? I thought. Am I sick? Sick with what?

“Does the prosecution have witnesses?” the judge rasped again, directing his gaze at the Worm.

The Worm grinned as if he’d been waiting for this moment. “We call the accused’s teacher as the first witness.”

“My teacher?” I thought. “Back when I went to school, there was no algorithm! If anyone acted harmfully, it was that tyrant of a teacher!”

The teacher, nicknamed Psycho, entered, older but unchanged. He had been infamous for flailing and throwing things in class, only to quickly smile as if nothing had happened—hence the nickname.

Now, Psycho was frail and nearly blind, bumping into the witness stand before taking his seat. When given the word, he began in a saccharine voice:

“Your Honor, I did everything in my power to properly shape this boy. Perhaps I even contributed to his harmful nature, but my hands were tied! As a teacher, I wasn’t allowed to discipline him more severely, and by nature, I am a gentle soul.”

While Psycho spoke sweetly, I pictured him hurling chairs.

“He had harmful intent,” Psycho said. “When boys beat him, I saw retaliation in his eyes.”

“Retaliation? I feared.”

“I also recall a literature class where the students were asked to write essays about their fathers’ occupations. When I called on him, having no father, he hadn’t completed the assignment. Naturally, I gave him a failing grade. His tear-filled eyes turned red as blood—I swear he wanted to burn the school down.”

“Burn the school down? I just wanted to cry.”

“As I’ve aged, some memories have faded, but I can swear to this: one day, when other children pointed and laughed at him because his mother still brought him to school and waited for him after class, he wet himself. I’m certain he imagined a gun at that moment.”

“They weren’t pointing at me,” I thought. “They were throwing rocks at me while I cowered in the corner, bloody and bruised.”

“Your Honor,” Psycho leaned forward, his eyes wide with sincerity, “The accused often sat in my class and stared out the window. I saw the intent in his eyes—an intent to escape, to defy the order of the classroom.”

The judge nodded gravely, pronouncing: “Escapism leads to anarchy.”

“He has been a menace to society from birth. There is no doubt that he is guilty.”

The judge allowed Psycho to leave the courtroom. As he shuffled out, painfully slow or as fast as he could manage, I wondered: “How is it possible that even after these absurd and grotesque accusations made up by a tyrant, I feel no harmful intent toward him?”

The judge turned to me again, rasping, “Do you admit guilt and apologize to the victim?”

“Guilt for what?” I asked, confused. “Am I actually on trial for one of the ridiculous situations described by a madman?”

“No,” the judge replied coldly. “The prosecutor has brought witnesses to testify about your character, which is evidently prone to harmful intent. You are on trial for an intent only you can admit, and you must apologize to an anonymous victim. Otherwise, you will be exiled to the Zone of Silence.”

“Then no. I truly don’t know what intent you’re referring to. Wouldn’t it be simpler to tell me the accusation so I can respond to a real charge?”

“You clearly don’t understand the system. Prosecutor, call your next witness.”

The Worm wiggled with delight, announcing, “I call the accused’s wife to the stand.”

She entered, adorned with gaudy jewelry, her hair styled into an overdone perm that made her head look enormous. Her makeup-caked blouse emphasized her unattractiveness. “A harpy.” I thought.

We had vowed to stand by each other “in good times and bad,” yet here she was, standing as one of the pillars of doom, ready to crush me.

I sat there, devastated, staring at the table, holding my head. I didn’t have the strength to look at her, perhaps the most important person in my life, betraying me to prove her loyalty to the system for her own survival.

Unconsciously blending the dialects from my southern birthplace and her western home, she made a strong effort to speak in the central dialect. It was quite funny, but my reaction barely reached the corners of my lips. The main heroine of a Turkish soap opera couldn’t have been more unconvincing and exaggerated.

“Your Honor,” she said tearfully, though no tears appeared, “this man stole my youth. The algorithm should’ve caught him sooner.” She clutched a tissue she didn’t use. “He once asked if I was happy! Such doubt is harmful to harmony.”

I had once loved her confidence until I saw her superficiality for what it was.

“I…” she added a sniff, “I love this man, but I love the truth more. I’ll tell you everything.”

The truth that the perm wasn’t the best idea? I thought bitterly.

“I married him out of love, but he hid his “harmful intent” until the wedding. Soon after, he began calling me degrading names like “useless” and “a rag.”

I looked up in shock. “Why is she blaming me for her words?”

“I feared his intent to harm me or end any chance of having a child!” She threw herself across the bench dramatically, sobbing loudly but still without a single tear.

This deeply hurt me. After years of silence, I reacted with a yell: “What are you saying? How dare you? I begged you for a child all these years, but you said you didn’t want some brat to ruin your beauty. You—”

The judge interrupted me with a loud thump of his gavel, stating that he wouldn’t allow me to insult the poor woman on the stand.

I sat down, stunned, clutching my head. “Am I crazy? Maybe they’re all telling the truth, but my perception is warped. But if this is true, then I’m not me. I... I don’t know who I am anymore...”

As my thoughts struggled to regain some clarity, the actress on the stand continued her performance.

“Thank you, Your Honor. I’d like to add the most harmful intent of the accused.”

“The accused?” I thought. “So now, she’s stripping away my very name, my status, my identity.”

“I know I’m not perfect, but that’s only because I respect the algorithm! The accused loved silence, and I preferred to speak my intentions out loud rather than live in fear of how they might be interpreted. Sometimes, I wonder if I lost him in all that noise or if I simply didn’t understand him…” She paused dramatically. “But the algorithm is far more important to me—even more than my appearance. Maybe that’s why he told me he wanted to leave me for his colleague. But I refused. And since the law doesn’t allow divorce unless both parties agree,” she paused for a long moment, “he intended to kill me!” She collapsed, fake sobbing and writhing in exaggerated anguish—a weak range of actions for such an actress.

While the Worm escorted the exhausted woman out of the courtroom, I remained frozen. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the judge asking me for the third time if I admitted guilt and offered an apology to the victim. I responded from some other place. The words slowly came out of me, almost mechanically. If we were caricaturing the roles, this woman, my wife, would be the victim.

“Am I accused of killing her?” I asked “Well, yes, I must have killed her; there’s no other explanation. Is this the guilt I must admit and apologize to this victim of genocide?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself!” The judge was now even angrier. “I told you that the witnesses don’t know the reason for your trial. Only you know your intent. Will you admit it?”

“But what worse intent could I have than murder?”

“For murder, you’d be punished without trial. But your disgusting, repulsive, vile intent could shake society to its core and completely destabilize harmony!”

I sat down, mouth agape.

“Prosecutor, introduce the final witness, after which I will deliver the verdict.”

Completely beside myself, lost in my identity and thus lost from the courtroom, I didn’t notice that my mother had burst through the door and jumped onto me over the desk. She clung to me, caressing me roughly, as if slapping me, and hanging from the desk, trying to reach me with kisses:

“You’re mine! I won’t let anyone have you!”

As the Worm gently pulled her off me and led her to the witness stand, I remained motionless. I just turned my head toward the window and stayed catatonic.

Meanwhile, she wailed:

“Let me take him home! I won’t have anyone to sniff my flesh to see if it’s gone bad! To call to come for me every time I have a diarrhea attack! He didn’t mean it! All the teachers loved him! His wife adores him! He’s a model citizen! I never let him out of my hands! He’s my baby, my lover! He’s my trophy! Proof of my perfection! If you condemn him, you condemn me too! Come to mother, son, let me nurse you once again!”

I stared through the window, a lifeless person inside me, into the lifeless city. “In the background of the so-called harmony, this society operates like a perfectly tuned machine. Silence on the streets, people moving in neat lines, with minimal interaction and a complete loss of the spontaneity of human connection.”

While they forcefully dragged some madwoman out of the courtroom, I noticed the passersby didn’t even raise their eyes, as if everyone had already been condemned to silence.

Absently, I heard the judge asking me for the last time if I admitted guilt and offered an apology. Out of my body, as if hypnotized, I whispered, “What guilt? For what? Who? I’ve always been more afraid of hurting someone else than myself.”

The Worm, now almost gleeful, turned to the judge, who looked at me with wide eyes. “So, you admit?”

“What am I admitting?” I asked, my mind still reeling.

“You admit your harmful intent?!”

I didn’t understand. The judge nodded to the Worm, who whispered to me, “You just admitted your “harmful intent”.”

“What did I say? That I would rather hurt myself than hurt others?”

“Yes!” The Worm rejoiced.

And then it hit me. The previous night, I had thought about how I never quite fit in, how I had no life or expectations, and that the best thing would have been to end my life long ago. “So that’s it?! I’m being accused because suicide seemed like the only way out.”

The judge regained his official tone. “Accused, stand up. It is my duty to read the law to you again. The court offers “leniency”. If you admit guilt and apologize, the punishment will be light, but your name will remain in the register of “those with bad intent.” If you are accused three times or refuse to admit guilt and apologize to the victim, you will be declared a danger to society and exiled to the Zone of Silence—a place where no communication with society is possible. What will it be? Declare yourself.”

“Apologize to the victim or be declared a danger to society. I pose no harm to society—only to myself. So, I must be the victim. Yes. I am the victim. All these years, I’ve been helpless, not knowing how to fight, how to live, how to be human. That’s why I intended to take my life.”

I finally spoke. “Your Honor, I admit I had a harmful thought,’” I said, “but not guilt. I will not apologize because it’s not my guilt, and it’s not for me to apologize.”

The judge’s tired eyes met mine. He raised the gavel, declaring: “Guilty!”

As I was led to the Zone of Silence, I passed a wall with faint writing on it, barely legible, written by a shaking hand: “Silence is not the end!” I couldn’t help feeling I wasn’t alone.

Silence embraced me. In it, I found myself. The Zone was truly silent, but not deafening—peaceful. Finally, I could hear my heart, my breath, my thoughts. Here, in a world without judgment, I was no longer a son, nor a husband, nor part of society—I was simply me.

This wasn’t the end, but the beginning. Silence let me exist. Silence is freedom.