Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

Ethan found Kaia exactly where he expected - packing, or trying to, in the small guest quarters Suresh had set up near the east wing, her travel bag half-filled and abandoned on the bed while she stared at nothing in particular.

”You heard,” he said, leaning in the doorway.

”I heard,” Kaia confirmed. ”Everyone’s heard. It’s on every relay channel across the network by now.”

Ethan crossed his arms, watching her for a moment before saying what he’d come to say. ”I’m still going. Tomorrow. But I want to change the terms.”

Kaia looked up, cautious. ”Change them how?”

”No negotiation,” Ethan said. ”That’s what got Instance 8-Velir killed - trying to find a reasonable middle ground with something that apparently doesn’t do reasonable. So we’re not going down there to talk terms, and we’re not going down there to accept anything. We go in, we look for whatever’s actually true about Arjun and the ’S.’ designation, and the second anything even smells like an offer, we walk. No exceptions. No ’let’s just hear them out.’ Refuse cleanly or don’t engage at all.”

Kaia sat with that, some of the tension in her shoulders easing slightly at the clarity of it. ”That’s the plan I should’ve proposed from the start, honestly. I think I got so focused on finally getting answers that I stopped thinking carefully about how to actually survive getting them.”

”Yeah, well,” Ethan said, ”that’s what backup’s for. I’m coming specifically so somebody’s watching the door while you’re looking for what you actually need.”

”Thank you,” Kaia said quietly, and meant it.

[NOTICE: The system would like to log this revised approach and confirm it aligns with the emergency coordinator’s final warning. It also wants to note, for the record, that it will be maintaining continuous monitoring throughout the visit and reserves the right to flag an immediate withdrawal if anything resembles the pattern that preceded Instance 8-Velir’s collapse.]

”Good,” Ethan said. ”That’s exactly the kind of overreach I want from you right now.”

They didn’t get much further into final preparations before Suresh appeared at the door, expression carrying a specific, weary gravity Ethan had learned to associate with news that would reorganize the next several days of his life whether he wanted it to or not.

”The Coalition’s moved,” Suresh said. ”They’re not waiting for the scheduled hearing date anymore. Given what just happened to Instance 8-Velir, seventeen Frameworks decided overnight that this needs to happen faster. They’re calling it the Grand Concord - every Instance in current contact with the network, convening here, in person, as soon as travel can be arranged.”

Ethan blinked. ”How soon is ’as soon as.’”

”Three days,” Suresh said. ”After your Deep Layer trip, but not by much.”

Ethan let out a slow breath, doing the math on exactly how much was about to converge on his life in a single week - a journey into the one place a Framework’s own emergency coordinator had just warned everyone about, followed almost immediately by what sounded like the single largest diplomatic gathering in this entire story’s history, landing in his own courtyard, with a vote already tabled about forcing him into a throne he’d spent this entire volume refusing.

”Great,” he said. ”So no recovery time. Just straight from one crisis into the next.”

”That does appear to be the shape of it,” Suresh confirmed.

The representatives began arriving the following afternoon, and unlike every prior diplomatic visit - Kaia’s careful three-person delegation, Devan’s nervous bowing, even Commander Vahn’s blunt, focused negotiation - this one had the unmistakable weight of genuine, coordinated scale behind it.

Corridors opened across the district in staggered succession, each one depositing a formal delegation onto Earth’s soil with the practiced efficiency of governments that had clearly done this kind of large-scale diplomatic mobilization before, just never all pointed at the same address. Banners Ethan didn’t recognize went up in the designated visitor sections Suresh had expanded twice already this week. Translators - some system-provided, some apparently native to the visiting Instances themselves - worked overtime trying to keep basic communication functional across a courtyard that now held representatives from at least fourteen distinct worlds, each speaking languages the golem’s translation matrix strained to keep pace with.

Ethan stood near the gate, watching it all unfold with the particular, exhausted disbelief of a man whose apartment building had, once again, without his explicit consent, become something considerably larger than he’d ever intended it to be.

”This is insane,” he muttered to Priya, who’d been running perimeter coordination since dawn.

”This is diplomacy,” she said, not looking up from her checklist. ”Apparently they’re the same thing now.”

By evening, the count had climbed past twenty confirmed delegations, with several more corridors flagged as pending. The Meridian Concord’s envoy, Commander Vahn, had returned personally, apparently determined to make good on her earlier promise to testify. A quiet, severe delegation from Instance 12-Kesh - the world whose unresolvable user had accepted the Origin Engine’s offer two centuries ago and effectively vanished into administrative duty - arrived without fanfare, watching everything with an unreadable, careful attentiveness that made even Kael, usually unbothered by most things at this point, visibly wary.

And near the center of it all, standing quietly at the edge of the gathering crowd with an expression Ethan couldn’t quite parse, was a single, unaccompanied woman who hadn’t announced her arrival, hadn’t approached any of the designated reception areas, and hadn’t given her name to any of the intake volunteers currently scrambling to catalogue every new face passing through the gate.

Ethan noticed her mostly because everyone else seemed to be actively, deliberately not noticing her - a strange, unnatural gap in the crowd’s usual curious attention, like the visiting delegates recognized something about her that made them collectively decide to look elsewhere.

”Suresh,” Ethan said quietly, nodding toward her. ”Who’s that.”

Suresh checked his clipboard, then checked it again, brow furrowing. ”She’s not on any manifest. No Instance designation logged at the gate. Nobody flagged her arrival at all.”

[NOTICE: The system has just attempted to scan the individual in question for standard identification purposes.]

[The scan has failed.]

[Not incomplete. Not corrupted. Refused - actively, deliberately blocked by something on her end, the same kind of resistance the system encountered exactly once before, in the moments just before the Anomaly forced its way through the transit corridor.]

Ethan felt the Void Sword shift faintly against his shoulder, low and wary, and watched the unnamed woman finally turn her head, meeting his eyes across the crowded courtyard with a small, deliberate, unreadable smile - as if she’d been waiting, quite patiently, for exactly this moment to be noticed.