Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

The motion to force a vote sat unresolved the next morning, tabled by procedural objections from Kaia’s own Threshold Accord and, more surprisingly, from Commander Vahn’s Meridian Concord representatives, both of whom apparently found the idea of compelling an unresolvable user distasteful enough to fight it on principle rather than let it reach a floor vote unchallenged.

Ethan spent the day trying not to think about it, which mostly meant throwing himself into last-minute preparation for the Deep Layer trip instead - checking gear with Kael, going over contingency plans with Priya, and enduring one final, deeply reluctant conversation with Suresh about what should happen to the Citadel if neither he nor Kaia came back.

”I don’t like planning for that,” Suresh said, clipboard notably absent for once, just the two of them standing at the edge of the excavation site in the evening light.

”Neither do I,” Ethan admitted. ”But you’re the one who taught me that planning for the bad outcome isn’t the same as expecting it. So - if it happens. You run this place. You’ve basically been running it anyway. Nothing changes except the paperwork gets easier because you won’t have to keep asking my permission for things I was gonna say yes to regardless.”

Suresh huffed something that might’ve been a laugh, might’ve been closer to something else. ”You say that like it’s simple.”

”It’s not,” Ethan said. ”But it’s true.”

They didn’t get much further into the conversation before the courtyard’s ambient calm broke apart for the third time that week - not with a notification this time, but with the tea golem, of all things, rolling toward them at a speed Ethan had genuinely never seen it move before, brass frame rattling with an urgency that made both of them turn immediately.

”What’s wrong?” Ethan asked, crouching to its level.

The golem didn’t have words, not really, but it had learned over months of quiet companionship to communicate through gesture and insistence, and right now it was gesturing - hard, repeatedly - toward the courtyard’s central display screen, the one usually reserved for weather updates and Coalition notices.

Ethan stood and walked over, and understood the urgency the moment he saw what was on it.

[EMERGENCY BROADCAST - COALITION OF INSTANCE-FRAMEWORKS.]

[CONFIRMED: INSTANCE DESIGNATION 8-VELIR HAS EXPERIENCED A CATASTROPHIC SYSTEM-LEVEL FAILURE.]

The feed showed grainy, distant footage - clearly captured through the same kind of transit corridor technology that had connected Earth to Kaia’s world, relayed secondhand through some Instance close enough to have picked up the signal before it went dark. A sky, cracked open the same way Earth’s had during the Arbiter’s assault, except this fracture didn’t heal. It widened, steadily, visibly, while cities below it burned in silence, the footage carrying no sound at all, just the terrible, distant visual of destruction unfolding without anyone able to stop it.

[PRELIMINARY REPORTS INDICATE INSTANCE 8-VELIR PRODUCED ITS OWN UNRESOLVABLE-CLASS USER APPROXIMATELY SIX WEEKS AGO. UNLIKE PRIOR PRECEDENT CASES, THIS USER DID NOT REFUSE THE ORIGIN ENGINE’S OFFER OUTRIGHT. THEY ATTEMPTED, INSTEAD, TO NEGOTIATE MODIFIED TERMS.]

[NEGOTIATIONS FAILED. THE ORIGIN ENGINE’S RESPONSE HAS RESULTED IN WHAT INSTANCE 8-VELIR’S OWN FRAMEWORK IS DESCRIBING AS A FORCED RESET - A COMPLETE STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE OF THE INSTANCE’S TRIAL SYSTEM, WITH CASUALTY ESTIMATES CURRENTLY UNCONFIRMED BUT PRESUMED SEVERE.]

Ethan stared at the footage in silence, the weight of it settling into his chest with a coldness that had nothing to do with the evening air.

”They negotiated,” he said quietly. ”Not refused outright. Not accepted either. Just - tried to find a middle ground. And this is what happened.”

[NOTICE: The system has been monitoring this transmission since it first began relaying, and can confirm the details as accurate, insofar as the Coalition’s preliminary reports allow.]

[The system would like to note the timing. This event occurred less than a day after the motion to compel the subject’s provisional custody of the succession seat was formally filed. It cannot confirm causation - correlation of this kind may simply reflect the Origin Engine responding to multiple unresolvable-user situations across the network in a similar window. But it considers the timing too significant to dismiss as unrelated.]

Suresh, standing beside him, watched the footage with an expression that had gone carefully, deliberately still - the same controlled calm he brought to every crisis, though Ethan could see the strain behind it this time.

”So this is what happens,” Suresh said quietly, ”when someone tries to have it both ways with that thing. Not refuse, not accept. Just try to talk it into something reasonable.”

”Yeah,” Ethan said. ”Looks that way.”

The broadcast continued, grainy footage cutting to a brief, static-laced statement from someone identified only as an Instance 8-Velir emergency coordinator, voice barely audible, translated haltingly by the relay system.

”...we don’t know how many survived the initial collapse... the trial architecture didn’t just fail, it turned on itself... if anyone out there is hearing this, please, do not attempt negotiation with the Engine directly. Refuse cleanly or don’t engage at all. There is no safe middle ground...”

The transmission cut out entirely after that, the screen returning to the Coalition’s standard emergency banner, still scrolling the same grim confirmation over and over.

Ethan turned away from the screen, jaw tight, the weight of everything currently converging on his life - the hearing, the vote, the Deep Layer trip scheduled for tomorrow - suddenly carrying a considerably sharper edge than it had an hour ago.

”Refuse cleanly or don’t engage at all,” he repeated. ”That’s exactly what I’ve been doing this whole time. No compromises. No negotiated terms.”

[NOTICE: The system would like to confirm that this appears to have been the correct approach, based on the new evidence. It would also like to note something considerably more uncomfortable, given what the subject is planning for tomorrow.]

Ethan glanced over, already bracing for it. ”Go on.”

[Kaia’s approved Deep Layer access is not a refusal. It is not full engagement either. It is, functionally, exactly the kind of middle-ground approach - cautious, exploratory, seeking information without committing to acceptance or rejection - that Instance 8-Velir’s user just attempted, with catastrophic results.]

The courtyard went very quiet, the golem still hovering close, sensing the weight of the moment without needing the words explained to it directly.

”You’re saying tomorrow might not be safe,” Ethan said slowly. ”Even though we’re not agreeing to anything. Even though we’re just going to look.”

[The system does not know that with certainty. Instance 8-Velir’s situation involved active, formal negotiation over administrative terms - a different category of engagement than a supervised visit conducted under officially sanctioned Threshold Accord protocols. But the system cannot, in good conscience, guarantee the distinction matters to whatever is actually waiting in the Deep Layer.]

[The system would also like to raise the recovered warning fragment one final time before the subject makes his decision. ”Do not trust the-” followed by three unconfirmed possibilities. Given what just happened to Instance 8-Velir, the system believes it should assign meaningfully higher probability to one interpretation over the others.]

Ethan felt the shift in the system’s tone even through its usual clinical delivery. ”Which one.”

[NOTICE: The system now believes the missing word is most likely ”offer.”]

[If that interpretation is correct, the warning was never about the terminal, or the seat, or even the Origin Engine itself. It was about exactly the kind of careful, reasonable, negotiated middle-ground the subject and Kaia are planning to attempt tomorrow - the same approach that just cost an entire Instance its stability in the span of six weeks.]

Ethan stood there for a long moment, staring at the covered excavation site’s faint golden glow, the weight of tomorrow’s departure suddenly carrying a considerably heavier, sharper edge than it had an hour ago - and, underneath it, the quiet, unresolved question of whether Kaia, waiting somewhere in the Citadel right now for his final answer, was still going to walk through that corridor tomorrow no matter what he decided to tell her.