Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

Six minutes. That was what the countdown said, and Ethan had learned enough about ancient countdowns over the past several days to trust that the number meant exactly what it said and not a second more.

”Define ’much larger,’” he said, already turning back toward the shimmering doorway, sword still humming from the last fight.

[NOTICE: The system is reluctant to give a precise estimate, given how badly it underestimated the difficulty of the last threat. What it can confirm is scale. The presence gathering on the other side reads several orders of magnitude larger than the entity just defeated — not in raw combat signature, but in sheer size. It is not approaching like a creature. It is approaching like weather.]

Kaia’s face had gone tight and pale, her earlier composure cracking for the first time since she’d stepped through the doorway. ”That’s not the Anomaly. That’s something else. Something bigger.”

”You know what it is?” Ethan asked.

”I have a guess,” she said, ”and I really hope I’m wrong.”

The gold light in the vault had started to pulse faster, the terminal’s steady rhythm quickening in a way that felt less like alarm and more like anticipation — as if the ancient architecture itself understood exactly what was coming and had simply been waiting to see if anyone here would figure it out in time.

[NOTICE: The system would like to use the time remaining productively rather than let anxiety compound the problem. It believes now is the moment to finally answer the question it has been circling for the better part of a week.]

Ethan glanced sideways. ”Which question.”

[Whether Earth is genuinely unique, or simply one entry on a very long list.]

[The system has now gathered enough data — from the terminal’s archive, from Kaia’s own testimony, from the Anomaly’s targeting language, and from whatever is currently gathering on the other side of this doorway — to answer that with confidence for the first time.]

[Earth is not unique. It was never unique. It is one Instance among what the system now estimates, based on the scale of the Origin Engine’s own recorded archive indices, to be somewhere in the range of several thousand separate trial-worlds, each running its own version of the exact apocalypse system Earth just survived.]

Ethan let that sit for a second, even with a countdown ticking and something enormous bearing down on the other side of a doorway six feet away.

”Several thousand,” he repeated.

[The system would like to note this is a conservative estimate. The true number may be considerably higher. The indexing system used by the Origin Engine does not appear to have a defined upper limit, only a running count that the system cannot fully parse given its current access level.]

”So there’s thousands of me out there,” Ethan said. ”Thousands of worlds, each one going through their own version of exactly what I just went through. Droids. Titans. Some poor kid getting handed a broken idle system and told to fix everything anyway.”

[Not all of them will have had an idle-type user. Statistically, most Instances likely follow the intended, properly-ranked progression the Framework was designed for. Arjun Mehra’s world, and the subject’s own, appear to be genuine outliers — rare enough that the Origin Engine built an entire holding architecture specifically to account for them.]

”Rare enough that whatever’s coming through that door right now considers me and him the same kind of prize,” Ethan said flatly, watching the doorway’s shimmer bend and strain again, the pressure on the other side climbing steadily.

Kaia stepped closer, weapon still raised, voice low and urgent. ”If my guess is right, what’s coming isn’t a creature at all. It’s a Collector. A construct the Origin Engine deploys when an outlier signature like yours goes unclaimed for too long — something built specifically to retrieve unresolved successors and bring them back into the proper chain of custody. Willing or not.”

Ethan’s grip tightened on the sword. ”So it’s not here to kill me.”

”No,” Kaia said. ”It’s here to take you somewhere. And from what little we know back home, nobody’s ever come back from wherever that somewhere is.”

[NOTICE: The system would like to flag that this description aligns disturbingly well with the earlier Framework Administrators’ description of ”standard decommissioning procedure.” The system suspects this Collector may represent an escalation of the exact same institutional impulse — except this time, originating from something considerably older and considerably less inclined to negotiate.]

The doorway’s strain reached a new peak, gold light shuddering violently around its edges, and through the shimmer, a shape finally began to resolve — vast, dark, filling the entire visible frame of the transit corridor from edge to edge, features too large and too indistinct to fully process at this distance, but unmistakably, overwhelmingly present in a way that made even the Void Sword’s hum drop into something quieter, more cautious.

”Four minutes,” Osei’s voice called from the passage entrance, having crept back despite Priya’s earlier evacuation order, tablet clutched tight in both hands. ”Ethan, the corridor’s stability is dropping fast. If that thing gets all the way through before it collapses, we don’t have a model for what happens next.”

Ethan looked at the vast shape filling the doorway, at Kaia’s grim, resigned expression, at the terminal’s patient gold glow still pulsing steady beneath all of it like it had already decided how this was going to go and was simply waiting for everyone else to catch up.

”Okay,” he said. ”New plan. We’re not letting it finish coming through.”

”How?” Kaia asked. ”You saw what it took to bring down the Anomaly, and that thing was a fraction of this one’s size.”

Ethan glanced at the terminal, then back at the shuddering doorway, an idea forming with the same quick, practical instinct that had gotten him through every impossible fight so far in this story.

”The corridor’s the problem, right? It’s not fully stable. That’s the only reason this thing’s still stuck halfway through instead of already standing in my basement.”

”Yes,” Kaia said slowly, ”but—”

”So instead of fighting something that big while it’s still coming in,” Ethan said, already moving toward the terminal, ”what if I just close the door on it first.”

[NOTICE: The system would like to note that it does not currently have administrative access sufficient to forcibly collapse an active transit corridor. This capability appears to require direct interaction with the terminal itself — the same kind of interaction that, so far, has only ever opened things, not closed them.]

”Then I guess we’re about to find out if it works both ways,” Ethan said, planting his hand back on the terminal’s warm bronze surface, the vast shape in the doorway surging forward another few feet as if sensing exactly what he was about to attempt.

The terminal’s light flared bright in response to his touch, gold and violet twisting together for the first time since this whole ordeal began, and above the dais, new text began resolving — faster now, urgent in a way the ancient architecture had never once managed before.

[WARNING: FORCED CLOSURE WILL SEVER ACTIVE CONNECTION MID-TRANSIT.]

[UNCERTAIN OUTCOME FOR ENTITIES CURRENTLY OCCUPYING THE CORRIDOR.]

[KAIA’S GROUP REMAINS SEPARATE FROM THIS RISK — THEY HAVE ALREADY FULLY CROSSED.]

[PROCEED?]

Ethan glanced once at the vast, looming shape still forcing its way through the shimmering pane, at the countdown now reading just under three minutes, and made the same fast, decisive call he always made when the alternative was standing around waiting for something worse to finish arriving.

”Proceed,” he said.

The vault’s light surged violently in response — and through the shrinking, straining doorway, the enormous shape on the other side let out a sound that wasn’t quite a roar and wasn’t quite a scream, something layered and ancient and, for the first time since it had started pushing through, unmistakably afraid.