Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

Meera Kapoor’s report reached Director-General Rao’s desk by nightfall, and reactions within the council chamber split almost exactly as they had before — except this time, the refusal itself had added fuel to a fire that had only been simmering.

”He turned it down,” General Iyer said, reading through the transcript with visible, mounting frustration, ”over a briefing schedule.”

”That’s the substance of it, yes,” Meera confirmed, standing at the head of the table, still slightly unsettled by how genuinely, entirely unbothered Ethan had seemed by an offer that represented, by any reasonable measure, the single greatest concentration of legitimate authority on the continent.

”This isn’t a man declining a job,” Iyer said, setting the transcript down with a sharp slap against the table. ”This is a demonstration. He’s telling us, quite clearly, that he considers himself entirely outside our authority. That he’ll help when he decides it’s worth his effort, and ignore us the rest of the time.”

”Or,” Rao said quietly, from the head of the table, ”he genuinely just doesn’t want the job.”

”With respect, Director-General, I don’t believe that’s a luxury we can afford to take at face value.” Iyer stood, pacing the length of the chamber with the restless energy of a soldier who’d spent thirty years believing that unaligned power, however well-intentioned, was still a fundamentally unsolved problem. ”An asset of this magnitude, operating entirely outside government structure, sets a precedent we cannot allow to stand unchallenged. What happens the next time a Calamity-class threat emerges somewhere he doesn’t personally care about? What happens if his priorities shift? We have no leverage. No oversight. No recourse.”

”He’s been nothing but helpful,” Bhargava countered, from across the table. ”Sheltering refugees, defeating the Colossus, protecting an entire district for free—”

”Voluntarily,” Iyer snapped. ”Which is precisely the problem. Everything he’s done, he’s done because he chose to. That’s not protection, Minister. That’s dependence on the goodwill of an unaccountable individual who has already demonstrated, quite plainly, that our authority means nothing to him.”

The room fell into an uneasy silence. Rao studied his hands for a long moment, weighing the political reality against his own instincts, and found, uncomfortably, that Iyer’s argument carried real weight despite everything he personally wanted to believe about the boy’s character.

”What are you proposing, General?”

”A demonstration of our own,” Iyer said. ”Not conflict — I’m not suggesting we provoke a fight we clearly cannot win through force. But a clear message. A show of continental military presence near his territory. A formal notice of registration requirement, backed by consequence if ignored. He needs to understand that operating outside government oversight carries a cost, even for someone with his capabilities.”

”That sounds,” Meera said carefully, ”like exactly the kind of provocation that could go catastrophically wrong.”

”It’s a calculated pressure campaign,” Iyer said. ”Nothing more. We’re not attacking him. We’re reminding him that the continent still has structures that matter, and that goodwill alone isn’t a sustainable basis for national security.”

Rao sat with the proposal for a long, heavy silence, the weight of thirty years of careful governance warring against the genuine, unprecedented nature of the threat — or asset, depending entirely on how the next few weeks unfolded — currently residing in a residential apartment three districts away.

”Approved,” he said finally, against his own better instincts, mostly because the alternative — doing nothing, and hoping Ethan’s goodwill held indefinitely — felt like the more dangerous gamble of the two. ”Limited deployment. Show of force only. No engagement unless directly provoked. General, you have my authorization to organize a formal presence near the sanctuary boundary, along with a registration notice.”

”Understood, Director-General.”

Iyer left the chamber that evening with a grim, focused determination that had been building steadily since Meera’s report first crossed his desk. He’d spent thirty years building the continent’s remaining military infrastructure out of the apocalypse’s wreckage, coordinating what few functional forces survived into something resembling a coherent defense — and the idea that a single unregistered civilian could simply opt out of that entire structure, refusing accountability while accumulating power that outstripped the government’s own combined military capacity, sat wrong with him in a way that went beyond simple professional frustration.

It wasn’t about the boy’s character, not really. Iyer didn’t doubt, based on the reports, that Ethan’s intentions were probably genuine. What he doubted, with the particular bone-deep suspicion of a career soldier, was the structure — or lack of one. Power without accountability was, in his professional experience, a problem that eventually resolved itself badly, regardless of how well-meaning the person holding that power happened to be today.

”Assemble the Third Battalion,” he told his aide that night, drafting deployment orders with the same methodical precision he’d applied to every military operation of his career. ”Full formation, defensive posture. I want them positioned along the sanctuary boundary by tomorrow morning. Formal registration notice delivered simultaneously.”

”Sir, if I may — given what we know about his capabilities, is a full battalion deployment the wisest—”

”It’s not a wise deployment,” Iyer said flatly. ”It’s a necessary one. If he genuinely has no interest in conflict, a formal military presence changes nothing for him. If he does have ambitions beyond what he’s shown us, we need to establish, clearly and immediately, that this continent still has teeth.”

The aide hesitated, clearly uncomfortable, but didn’t push further. Orders were orders, and General Iyer’s judgment had guided the continent’s fragile defense structure through three weeks of chaos without a single catastrophic failure. If he believed this was necessary, the aide had learned to trust that instinct, however uneasy it made him feel.

By midnight, the deployment orders were finalized, the Third Battalion’s mobilization already underway, columns of vehicles and personnel beginning the slow march toward a residential block that housed, by Iyer’s own careful count, over four hundred civilians currently living under the protection of the very individual his forces were about to confront.

None of it, Iyer told himself, walking back to his quarters through the dim, generator-lit halls of the Provisional Capital, was meant as aggression. It was structure. Precedent. The simple, necessary reminder that even the most powerful individual on the continent still existed within a world that had rules, obligations, and consequences.

He didn’t fully believe his own reasoning, even as he formed it. Some smaller, quieter part of him — the part that had read Meera’s transcript twice, that had noted the casual, unbothered way Ethan had turned down the single greatest offer of authority the Provisional Government could produce — understood, with a creeping unease he refused to voice aloud, that he was about to send an entire battalion of soldiers to knock, uninvited, on the door of something that had already proven, repeatedly and without effort, that it didn’t need to take any of them seriously at all.