The city learned quickly.
Not efficiently—but painfully.
Two days after the clinic incident, the pattern repeated across smaller scales: neighborhood councils, school boards, transit committees. Each decision carried weight, and each weight spread itself thin across many shoulders.
No single collapse.
No single villain.
Just erosion.
Minh Truong saw it in the numbers first.
Lifespan values no longer dropped sharply after major events. Instead, they thinned—minutes shaved here, hours there. A collective sanding-down of futures, almost elegant in its subtlety.
Shared blame had become shared cost.
At a community center in the south district, a housing allocation meeting stretched past midnight. The room smelled of coffee and tired patience. People argued over criteria—families first, medical need, employment proximity.
All reasonable.
All incomplete.
When the final list was approved, applause broke out. The process had been transparent. Votes recorded. Reasoning documented.
A success.
Minh watched as people filed out, relief evident on their faces.
Above their heads, numbers dipped—barely noticeable, synchronized like a tide pulling back.
No one noticed.
Except him.
Elena Park reviewed the day's reports with a hand pressed against her temple.
"We thought transparency would help," she said over the call. "It does. But it also… spreads the pain."
Minh nodded, even though she couldn't see him. "Transparency doesn't reduce cost. It reallocates it."
"That's not what people expected."
"They wanted absolution with a paper trail," Minh said. "Instead they got ownership."
Elena hesitated. "Isn't that what you wanted?"
Minh looked out the window at a row of apartment lights flicking off one by one.
"I wanted honesty," he said. "This is something else."
"What?"
"Wear," Minh replied. "People can carry guilt. They can't carry it forever."
The system observed silently.
In Advisory Mode, it no longer pushed outcomes. It measured. Compared. Reflected patterns back at those who created them.
It logged a new metric:
Decision Diffusion Index: Rising
Shared blame reduced immediate conflict—but increased long-term fatigue.
The system did not judge this.
It simply recorded it.
The first public argument over blame erupted on a morning news panel.
A commentator praised community governance as "mature and humane." Another countered that no one was being held accountable when things went wrong.
"Who do we blame?" the host asked.
The question lingered too long.
Minh muted the broadcast.
Above the host's head, the number trembled, then steadied.
Questions had costs too.
Later that day, Minh was invited—politely, insistently—to attend a regional oversight review. Not as an authority. As a witness.
He sat at the edge of the room while representatives presented outcomes: improved trust metrics, reduced protests, smoother discourse.
Then the data shifted.
A graph appeared showing aggregate lifespan reduction—still lower than during Control, but trending upward.
Silence followed.
A woman at the table spoke carefully. "Is this… acceptable?"
No one answered.
Minh finally did.
"Acceptable to whom?" he asked.
Eyes turned toward him.
"You're all paying," Minh continued. "Just slowly enough that it doesn't hurt yet."
A man frowned. "That's better than sudden loss."
"Sometimes," Minh agreed. "But slow loss is easier to normalize."
The room stiffened.
"That sounds like fear-mongering," someone said.
Minh shook his head. "It's pattern recognition."
Outside, a protest formed—not against the system, but against no one. People held signs demanding accountability without naming a target.
WHO DECIDES?
WHO PAYS?
Minh watched from across the street.
Above the crowd, numbers wavered unevenly. Some dipped. Some held. A few rose—energized by purpose.
Shared blame didn't affect everyone equally.
It never had.
That evening, a young council member approached Minh as he left the building.
"You make it sound like we're failing," she said. Her voice was steady, but her eyes were tired. "But what's the alternative?"
Minh considered her.
Above her head: 31y 6m 12d — stable, but thinning at the edges.
"There isn't a clean alternative," he said. "There's only trade-offs you're willing to see."
She crossed her arms. "So what would you do?"
Minh met her gaze. "I'd stop pretending that shared blame means shared impact."
She frowned. "Explain."
"Some people will always absorb more," Minh said. "Because they have less buffer. Less power. Less room to fail."
Her jaw tightened. "So we should single out decision-makers again?"
Minh shook his head. "No. You should single out effects."
She looked confused.
"Track who pays," Minh said. "Not who voted. If the same groups keep losing time, your process is broken—no matter how fair it looks."
She stared at him for a long moment.
"That would be uncomfortable," she said.
"Yes," Minh replied. "That's how you know it's honest."
The system updated its logs that night.
Attribution Visibility: Increasing
Decision Diffusion: Stabilizing
Fatigue Projection: Elevated
It offered no recommendation.
It didn't need to.
Minh returned home late.
He sat at his desk, notebook open, and wrote a single line:
Shared blame doesn't erase responsibility. It hides patterns.
He closed the notebook.
Outside, the city settled into uneasy sleep—no longer guided, no longer protected, but awake in a way it hadn't been before.
Minh lay back and stared at the ceiling.
He thought about Control, about silence, about the slow grind of consequence.
Vol 4 was no longer about systems or numbers.
It was about endurance.
And whether a society could survive knowing that every decision—no matter how fair—still took something from someone.
Above him, there was no number.
Only time.
And time, he knew now, was never shared equally.