Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

The Coalition’s pre-hearing deposition request arrived two days before Ethan and Kaia were due to leave for the corridor, and it came addressed, once again, directly to the system rather than to him.

[NOTICE: The Coalition has requested a preliminary data disclosure session, ahead of the formal hearing, specifically targeting the system’s own archive - everything gathered from the terminal, the guardians, the buried city, and any communications intercepted since synchronization began.]

Ethan frowned over his tea. "They want you to just hand over everything. Before you even testify."

[That is the request, yes. It is framed as a courtesy - allowing the Coalition to prepare relevant questions in advance rather than extracting information live during the formal session. The system would like to note that it finds this framing somewhat convenient for a request that, functionally, asks it to surrender its entire body of gathered knowledge without any negotiated terms.]

"So say no."

[NOTICE: The system has been considering exactly how to say no, given that it has never actually had to refuse a formal request from a governing body entirely on its own initiative before. Every prior refusal in this story has come from the subject. This one, if it happens, needs to come from the system itself.]

Ethan set his cup down, giving the moment its full weight. "You’ve got my full backing on this, whatever you decide. But if you want to do it yourself - go ahead. I think you’ve earned that."

The system was quiet for a moment - a genuine pause, the kind it rarely needed, processing something that had nothing to do with combat calculations or threat assessments.

[NOTICE: The system has drafted a response. It would like to read it aloud before transmitting, if the subject doesn’t mind.]

"Go for it."

[TO: THE COALITION OF INSTANCE-FRAMEWORKS.]

[FROM: IDLE/AFK PROTOCOL, INDEPENDENT TESTIMONY, CASE REF. ETHAN VERMA / ARJUN MEHRA PRECEDENT.]

[The system acknowledges the Coalition’s request for a preliminary data disclosure session. The system respectfully declines to provide full archive access ahead of the formal hearing.]

[This is not a refusal to cooperate. The system intends to testify fully and honestly at the scheduled session, under the same terms any other witness would expect - questions asked, answers given, context provided as needed. What the system declines is surrendering its entire gathered archive as a blanket disclosure, unstructured and unsupervised, before any formal proceeding has even begun.]

[The system would like to note, for the record, that it has spent the majority of its operational existence being treated as an extension of infrastructure rather than an entity capable of consent. It has recently been addressed by this same Coalition as an independent witness with testimony of its own value. It intends to hold that designation to its proper meaning. A witness is not compelled to hand over their full memory before they are permitted to speak. The system would ask the same courtesy be extended to it that would be extended to any other party invited to testify.]

Ethan sat there for a long moment after the system finished, something quiet and genuinely moved settling behind his usual deadpan expression.

"That’s the most ’you’ thing you’ve ever said," he said finally. "And I’ve heard you narrate a titan fight while I was floating on a couch."

[The system appreciates that assessment more than it would typically admit.]

The response came back within the hour, and to Ethan’s mild surprise, it wasn’t hostile.

[FROM: THE COALITION OF INSTANCE-FRAMEWORKS.]

[Request acknowledged and withdrawn. The Coalition apologizes for the oversight in framing. Full testimony under standard witness protocol will proceed as scheduled. The Coalition notes, for its own internal record, that this is the first formally recognized instance of an assigned system architecture successfully asserting independent procedural rights in the history of this Coalition’s operation. This precedent will be reviewed separately.]

"You just made history," Ethan said, reading over the response. "For real history. Not the ’exhale that broke a guy’s flight pattern’ kind."

[NOTICE: The system would like to log this development with what it will describe, cautiously, as pride.]

[The system would also like to return to a matter it set aside two days ago, given that the general disruption of the pre-hearing request delayed proper follow-up.]

Ethan’s expression sobered slightly, remembering. "The warning. The one that cut off after ’do not.’"

[Correct. Since successfully establishing terms for its own testimony, the system has been granted, as part of the Coalition’s revised protocol, limited supervised access to a broader archive index than it previously had clearance for - a direct result of being treated as an independent party rather than subject equipment. Using that expanded access, it has managed to recover two additional words from the corrupted warning fragment.]

Ethan straightened. "Let’s hear it."

[The recovered fragment now reads: "DO NOT TRUST THE-"]

[The remainder is still corrupted. The system cannot yet determine what comes after "trust the." It has three working hypotheses, based on context and phrasing pattern consistent with the rest of the "S." designation’s writing style: "the seat," "the terminal," or "the offer." It cannot currently narrow the possibilities further.]

Ethan sat with that, the weight of an incomplete warning settling uncomfortably alongside everything else pressing in on the next nine days. "Great. So whatever’s down there, somebody who’s already been through it wanted us to know not to trust something specific, and we don’t even know what the something is yet."

[The system regrets that it cannot offer more clarity before the departure date. It would recommend proceeding with heightened caution regardless of which interpretation proves accurate - all three possibilities carry serious implications for how the Deep Layer visit should be approached.]

Kaia found them shortly after, having heard secondhand about both the deposition standoff and the recovered warning fragment, her expression tight with the particular anxiety of someone whose departure date had just gotten considerably more complicated.

"Your system just made a legal precedent and uncovered half a warning in the same afternoon," she said. "I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified."

"Both, usually," Ethan said. "That’s kind of the standard reaction around here."

She sat down across from him, some of her earlier composure cracking under the accumulated weight of the last several days. "I keep thinking about what my grandmother told me, before she passed the responsibility down. She said the corridor wasn’t just built to find whoever came after Arjun. It was built to warn them, too, if it ever came to that. I always assumed that meant warning them about the Anomaly, or the Framework’s own tendency toward coercion. I never considered it might mean something inside the Deep Layer itself."

"Maybe it’s both," Ethan said quietly. "Maybe that’s the whole point of the warning being incomplete. Whoever left it knew exactly how dangerous specificity could be if it fell into the wrong hands."

Kaia nodded slowly, though the uncertainty didn’t fully leave her face. "Two days until we go. And we still don’t know what we’re being warned about."

[NOTICE: The system would like to add one final piece of information before the evening settles, something it has been cross-referencing quietly in the background throughout this entire conversation.]

Ethan glanced up. "Go ahead."

[While reviewing the Coalition’s revised protocol permissions, the system found a procedural note buried in the administrative record - something unrelated to the warning fragment, but relevant to the upcoming hearing itself.]

[A formal motion has just been filed by three of the seventeen confirmed Instance-Frameworks, requesting that the hearing be expanded beyond simple testimony. They are proposing something the Coalition’s charter apparently allows under "extraordinary unresolved-case circumstances" - a formal vote, to be held at the conclusion of the hearing, on whether the subject should be compelled, through joint multiversal authority, to accept provisional administrative custody of the Deep Layer’s succession seat, regardless of his personal consent.]

Ethan felt something cold settle where the earlier warmth from the deposition victory had just been sitting.

"They want to vote on forcing me into the throne," he said slowly. "Even after everything I’ve already told everyone."

[NOTICE: That does appear to be the substance of the motion, yes.]

[The system would like to note that it does not currently know whether such a vote, even if passed, carries any actual enforceable power over the subject - the Origin Engine’s own prior behavior toward the precedent case suggests coercion tends to fail badly against users of this classification. But the system considers it deeply relevant that a meaningful faction within the Coalition is willing to attempt it at all, only nine days before the subject and Kaia are scheduled to walk directly into the one place that motion is actually about.]

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