Chapter 105: Other Worlds, Other Ethans?
The question Ethan actually wanted answered didn’t come from the terminal, or the system, or even Kaia’s careful diplomatic briefings. It came, three days later, from Devan Rao, over what had by now become a fairly standard breakfast negotiation between two worlds’ worth of hunters and one very tired tea golem.
"You keep saying you’re not the first," Devan said, halfway through a plate of eggs he’d developed an alarming fondness for over the past few days. "The First Idle King, the terminal, the whole legacy thing. But you’re also not the only one, right? Statistically. If there’s thousands of worlds running the same system-"
"There have to be others," Ethan finished, setting down his cup. "Yeah. I’ve been wondering the same thing. Feels weird that Arjun and I would be the only two people who ever got assigned a broken idle system and just... didn’t want the crown that came with it."
Kaia, seated across the table with the careful, measured posture she brought to most conversations involving her own world’s history, set her fork down slowly. "There have been others. I can confirm that much. Our own Instance’s archive doesn’t track every case across every world, but the Threshold Accord maintains partial records on any Instance that produces what the Origin Engine classifies as an ’unresolvable’ user profile."
Ethan leaned forward slightly. "How many."
"Confirmed, verified cases across all known Instances?" Kaia considered the question carefully, like she was weighing exactly how much of this was hers to share. "Six. Including you and Arjun."
"Six," Ethan repeated. "Out of thousands of worlds."
"It’s an extremely rare outcome," Kaia said. "Most idle-type users, when they exist at all, still eventually get ranked properly, still eventually cap out somewhere the Framework can measure. What happened to Arjun - and apparently what’s happening to you - is different. Something about the specific combination of the protocol’s original architecture and the user’s own psychology produces a result the systems genuinely can’t process."
[NOTICE: The system would like to add context here, having spent the last several days quietly compiling everything it can access on this exact subject.]
"Go ahead," Ethan said.
[The system has cross-referenced the Threshold Accord’s partial records against its own archive access and can offer a rough summary of the other four confirmed cases, though details remain limited.]
[Case One, designated Instance 12-Kesh: a user who achieved unresolvable status roughly two centuries ago, according to available timestamps. Records indicate this user accepted a version of the Origin Engine’s offer, taking on a limited administrative role over their own Instance. That world’s apocalypse system has apparently run smoothly and without incident ever since - the only known case where an idle-type user actually agreed to lead.]
Ethan sat with that. "So one of us said yes."
[One did, yes. The system would note that "smoothly and without incident" appears to have come at a cost - the records indicate that user’s personal file effectively stops updating shortly after accepting the role. No further individual activity logged. Only administrative output.]
"So he said yes and disappeared into the job," Ethan said quietly. "Great. That’s not ominous at all."
[Case Two, Instance 3-Orrin: a user who refused the offer, similarly to Arjun and the subject, but whose Instance’s Framework did not build a holding architecture in response. Records suggest that Instance’s governing system attempted forced compliance instead. The user’s status has been listed as "terminated" for approximately ninety years.]
The table went quiet at that.
"Terminated," Ethan said flatly. "As in the Framework actually followed through on the thing my Administrators threatened to do to me."
[That appears to be the case, yes. The system believes this is precisely why Earth’s Global Administrative Framework never escalated to full termination against the subject - the precedent exists, and it did not go well for the Instance that attempted it. Instance 3-Orrin’s world has, according to available records, experienced significantly elevated instability ever since. The system suspects the loss of that user’s stabilizing presence left the Instance considerably worse off in the long run.]
Ethan felt something cold settle in his chest at that, the reminder that "no" hadn’t always been survivable for people who’d stood exactly where he was standing.
"Case Three?" he asked, quieter now.
[Case Three, Instance 21-Fenn: status currently listed as unknown. The user achieved unresolvable classification, refused the seat, and then simply vanished from all tracked records approximately thirty years ago - no confirmation of termination, no confirmation of survival, no further data of any kind. The Instance’s own records treat this disappearance as unresolved.]
"So that’s a fourth version of ’nobody actually knows what happened to him,’" Ethan said. "Including Arjun. That’s not a great track record for the people who say no."
[The system would agree that the pattern is concerning.]
"Case Four?"
[Case Four is more recent - Instance 44-Bryn, approximately eight years ago. This user achieved unresolvable status and, unlike every prior case, is the only one on record to have actively sought out and made direct contact with the Deep Layer voluntarily.]
Ethan’s attention sharpened at that. "What happened?"
[The record is incomplete, but the last confirmed entry states the user successfully reached the Deep Layer, engaged in what the archive describes only as "extended negotiation," and returned to their own Instance afterward - changed, according to the notes, but alive, and, notably, still refusing any formal administrative title.]
"So someone’s actually done it," Ethan said slowly. "Gone in, talked to whatever’s actually running this whole multiversal mess, and come back out the other side without signing up for anything."
[That is what the record indicates, yes.]
Kaia had been listening quietly through all of this, her expression carefully composed, but something in her posture had gone tighter as the cases were laid out one by one.
"You already knew all this," Ethan said, watching her. "Didn’t you."
"Some of it," she admitted. "Not all the specifics your system just relayed, but the general pattern, yes. It’s part of why our Framework has been so cautious about approaching this whole situation. Six known cases across the entire multiverse, and the outcomes range from ’quietly absorbed into administrative duty’ to ’terminated’ to ’simply gone.’ Only one person has ever gone looking for real answers and come back intact."
"And you think I should be the second," Ethan said. It wasn’t really a question.
Kaia hesitated, then nodded slowly. "I think if anyone has a chance of surviving that conversation and still walking away exactly as stubborn as they went in, it’s you. But I also think that’s an enormous thing to ask of someone I’ve known for less than two weeks, and I don’t think it’s my place to push you toward it."
Ethan looked around the table - at Devan, quiet now, clearly processing the weight of what he’d just casually asked about over breakfast; at Kaia, careful and guarded even now; at the courtyard beyond them, where Kael was already running an early training session with a cluster of refugee volunteers, and Ren stood nearby observing with the same quiet, watchful attentiveness she brought to everything these days.
Six households worth of people, built up around each of six unresolvable users across six different worlds, and as far as Ethan could tell, only one of them had ever actually found their way to real answers without losing everything in the process.
"Okay," he said finally, standing up from the table. "I’m not deciding anything today. But I want everything you’ve got on Instance 44-Bryn. Whoever went in and came back out - I want to know exactly how they did it, and I want to know before I even think about following in their footsteps."
[NOTICE: The system will begin compiling every available fragment immediately.]
[The system would also like to note, before the subject walks away, that it has just picked up something odd while cross-referencing Instance 44-Bryn’s archive - a detail that did not surface in its earlier summary because it initially assumed it was corrupted data.]
Ethan paused, halfway to standing. "What kind of odd."
[The user’s designation from Instance 44-Bryn. The system initially treated the name field as unreadable, given the archive’s age and condition. On closer inspection, it is not corrupted at all. It is simply formatted differently than every other entry - deliberately obscured, the way a name gets redacted rather than lost.]
[The system has just managed to partially recover it.]
[It is not a full name. Only a single letter, followed by a designation the system recognizes immediately, because it matches something carved into a wall in a small stone room beneath this very courtyard.]
["S."]