Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

The name hung in the golden light for a long moment before the terminal did something neither Ethan nor the system expected.

It kept talking.

[ADDITIONAL DATA UNLOCKED.]

[NOTICE: The system would like to flag that this is unusual. Archived data of this age typically requires manual excavation — the kind of thing scholars spend years piecing together from fragments. This terminal is simply... offering it. Freely. As though it’s been waiting for someone to ask.]

Ethan kept his palm on the warm bronze surface, watching new text resolve in the air above the dais, the same plain, slightly uneven handwriting style as before.

[USER: ARJUN MEHRA.]

[STATUS AT TIME OF FIRST ACTIVATION: UNEMPLOYED. AGE: 22. LOCATION: [DATA CORRUPTED].]

[CLASS PROGRESSION: (UNRANKED) → (UNRANKED) → (UNRANKED). SYSTEM NOTE FROM ORIGINAL SESSION: ”Stopped trying to rank him after the fourteenth attempt. Recommend giving up.”]

Ethan read that line twice, then let out a short, disbelieving laugh that echoed oddly off the domed ceiling.

”Fourteenth attempt,” he said. ”Mine gave up after two hundred.”

[The system would like to note, with what it hopes reads as professional pride rather than pettiness, that persistence standards have clearly improved since this terminal’s era.]

Priya, still hovering near the passage entrance with her flashlight forgotten at her side, finally stepped further into the vault, drawn in despite herself by the sheer weight of what was unfolding.

”You’re telling me there was another one of him,” she said slowly. ”An actual precedent. Someone who did exactly what you’re doing now — got an idle system, got broken, unmeasurable power, and just... what, walked away from it?”

”That’s what it’s saying,” Ethan said, eyes still on the text. ”Same starting class. Same total refusal to be ranked. Same—” he squinted at the next line as it resolved, ”—yeah, okay, same everything, apparently.”

[SYSTEM NOTE, ORIGINAL SESSION LOG: ”User declined guild leadership offer. Reason given: ’Not really a morning person, and guild meetings always start too early.’”]

Ethan stared at that line for a solid five seconds.

”That’s — okay, that’s genuinely unsettling,” he said. ”That’s not similar. That’s identical. That’s the exact excuse I used on Anika.”

[The system would like to state that it does not currently have an explanation for this level of overlap. It is choosing to log it as a coincidence, because the alternative explanations it can construct are considerably more unsettling.]

The terminal kept unspooling data, patient and unhurried, the way something behaves when it has genuinely stopped measuring time in any way that matters. Ethan skimmed through fragments — a passive avatar, an unmeasurable stat sheet, a sanctuary built out of stubborn refusal to let anyone he cared about get hurt, offer after offer for leadership, command, godhood, all declined with what read, even through the terminal’s clinical archival tone, as the same tired, unbothered ”no” Ethan had given a dozen times over.

Then the log entries thinned out. Slowed. Stopped answering questions about power and started, instead, cataloguing something quieter — locations, names, small personal details that had nothing to do with combat power at all. A market stall he apparently visited every week. A dog he’d adopted. A friend named in the logs only as ”S.” who, according to one faded note, ”handles the actual running of things, because frankly I’m useless at meetings.”

Ethan felt something shift in his chest reading that particular line, something he didn’t examine too closely.

”That’s Suresh,” he said quietly. ”That’s basically Suresh.”

[The system has noted the parallel.]

Priya crossed her arms, watching the data scroll with an expression that had moved past disbelief into something more careful. ”So what happened to him? Where’s the part that explains why this terminal’s been sitting empty for however long it’s been?”

Ethan reached for that answer himself, scanning further down the archive, and found the logs beginning to fragment — shorter entries, wider gaps between timestamps, the handwriting-style text growing thinner and more irregular, like whoever had been maintaining this record had, near the end, simply stopped caring whether anyone could read it clearly.

[LOG ENTRY, FINAL LEGIBLE SEGMENT:]

[”The Engine keeps asking me to take the seat. I keep telling it no. It doesn’t seem to understand ’no’ the way people do. I think it’s going to keep asking until either it gives up or I do.”]

[”I’m tired. Not the fun kind of tired. The kind where you start wondering if saying yes just once would finally make everyone leave you alone.”]

[”I’m not going to find out. Going dark for a while. Maybe permanently. If someone else ends up reading this — sorry. It’s not that I didn’t care. I cared about exactly the right amount of things, which turned out to be a very short list, and none of them needed a throne.”]

The terminal’s light dimmed slightly after that, the text settling into stillness, as if even the archive itself understood there wasn’t anything more worth saying after that entry.

Ethan stood there for a long moment, hand still resting on the warm bronze surface, not saying anything at all.

[NOTICE: The system would like to give the subject a moment before continuing.]

He took it. Then, quietly: ”He just left. He got asked one too many times to be something he didn’t want to be, and he just — logged out. Permanently. And whatever this ’Engine’ is, it’s apparently been sitting here ever since, waiting for someone else to show up who fits the same shape he did.”

[That appears to be an accurate summary, yes.]

”And it thinks that’s me.”

[The system would like to point out that the terminal has not explicitly stated this yet. However, given the volume of parallels already surfaced in a single archive session, the system considers it a near-certainty that this is precisely where this is heading.]

Ethan pulled his hand back from the terminal slowly, the golden light staying steady even without contact now, like it had already gotten what it needed simply from him touching it once. He looked around the vast, quiet vault — at the carved walls, at the dais, at the empty space around the terminal where, presumably, something like a throne might eventually be expected to sit, though there was nothing there yet, just smooth, undecorated stone.

”I don’t want it,” he said, to the room, to the system, to whatever ancient architecture was listening. ”Whatever this seat is. Whatever ’taking it’ means. I already told three actual gods no a few weeks ago. I’m not about to say yes to an empty chair that isn’t even in the room yet.”

[The system logs this statement clearly, for the record, should it become relevant later.]

[The system would also like to raise two things it does not currently have answers for, and feels the subject should be aware of both before they leave this vault.]

[First: if Arjun Mehra ”went dark,” as the log states, the system has found no data confirming what that actually means. Dead. Hidden. Ascended somewhere the terminal can’t track. There is no closing entry. No confirmation of any outcome at all. Only silence, stretching from that final log entry to this exact moment.]

[Second, and more pressing: the moment the subject touched this terminal and synchronized with it, something else woke up alongside it — a signal, deeper still, that the system only just detected as the golden light settled. It is fainter than this terminal. Older, possibly. And it is not located anywhere near this vault.]

Ethan felt the Void Sword’s hum shift against his shoulder, low and wary, responding to something the room itself hadn’t shown them yet.

”Where is it, then,” he said.

[NOTICE: The signal’s point of origin is not beneath the Citadel.]

[It is not on this continent.]

[As far as the system can determine, it is not, strictly speaking, on Earth at all.]