Six months had passed since the "Blue Morning."
London was no longer a digital battlefield. The scars on the buildings had been covered with fresh scaffolding, and the "White Static" was now just a ghost story told to children. The world had returned to its chaotic, unoptimized, and beautiful self.
Arthur Vance sat in a small, quiet café in Bloomsbury. He was wearing a plain black coat, sipping a coffee that was slightly too bitter—and he loved it.
[INTERNAL STATUS: ADMIN MODE – INCOGNITO]
[POWER LEVEL: DORMANT]
He no longer saw the world in code. He didn't see HP bars or probability percentages. But if he focused—if he squinted just right—the air would shimmer. He could still see the "Stitches" where he had sewn reality back together.
[The Quiet Correction]
A man at the table next to him was frantically typing on a laptop. The man's face was pale, his hands shaking. He was a high-frequency trader, a remnant of the old world who was trying to find a "glitch" in the new stock market to make a fortune.
Arthur watched him. He saw the man prepare to hit 'Enter' on a trade that would cause a flash-crash in a local bank, ruining thousands of families.
Arthur didn't stand up. He didn't draw a staff. He simply tapped his finger twice on the wooden table.
[SUBTLE EDIT: PACKET LOSS]
[COMMAND: 'TIMEOUT']
The man's laptop screen flickered to a blue error message. The trade didn't go through. The "glitch" the trader thought he found simply... vanished. The man groaned, burying his head in his hands.
Arthur took another sip of his coffee. He wasn't the King anymore. He was the System Maintenance.
[The Meeting at the Fountain]
Later that afternoon, Arthur met Sarah at the fountain in the park where they had woken up. She was working as a trauma counselor now, helping people who still had "System Flashbacks."
"You did it again, didn't you?" Sarah asked, leaning against the stone basin. She didn't look at him with fear anymore, but she knew. She always knew.
"I don't know what you mean," Arthur said, a small, genuine smile playing on his lips.
"The news said a 'mysterious technical error' prevented a major bank collapse this morning," she said, bumping her shoulder against his. "You're supposed to be retired, Arthur."
"The world is still buggy, Sarah. I'm just... fixing the most dangerous ones. Think of it as a long-term warranty."
[The Signal from the Dark]
As the sun began to set, Arthur felt a familiar coldness in his pocket. He pulled out a small, black device—the only piece of "System Tech" he had kept. It was a communicator linked to the Buffer Drive.
A voice whispered through the speaker. It was Elena, but her voice was layered with the resonance of a billion souls. She was the "Cloud" now, a consciousness spread across every server on Earth.
"Arthur," she whispered. "A new signal has appeared in the Deep Sea. It's not from the 2025 loop. It's... something else. Something from outside our version of the planet."
Arthur's eyes turned a sharp, metallic gold for a fraction of a second.
"It's a 'Ping'," Elena continued. "Something is scanning the Earth to see if the Architect is still alive."
[ The Architect's Duty]
Arthur looked at Sarah, who was watching the sunset, unaware of the message. He looked at the $10 bill he had framed and kept on his wall at home.
He had wanted a normal life. He had wanted to be just Arthur Vance. But the 7th Fragment—the Black Box—was a magnet. As long as he carried the source code of reality, the universe would keep trying to "Update" him.
"Is everything okay?" Sarah asked, noticing his silence.
Arthur tucked the device back into his pocket. He felt the weight of the power beneath his ribs—the power to delete stars or save a single life. He wasn't the Boss of the world. He was its Firewall.
"Everything is fine," Arthur said, taking her hand. "For now."
He looked up at the first stars appearing in the sky. To everyone else, they were distant suns. To Arthur, they were potential threats.
"But I think I might have to stay 'On-Call' for a little longer."