Chapter 20 – Cloud Bureaucracy Beta Launch (and Immediate Failure)
The morning after the Divine Audit, the Bureau of Heavenly Affairs should have been basking in relief.
Instead, it was... buzzing.
Not the calm kind of buzzing, but the frantic, "the intern is doing something again" kind of buzzing.
Inside Office 404 — the section unofficially known as The Pit of Unfiled Reports — Ne Job stood proudly atop a stack of dusty scrolls, waving a glowing talisman in the air.
"Behold!" he declared, eyes blazing with enthusiasm. "The dawn of a new era! Bureaucracy 2.0! No more scrolls, no more ink, no more losing divine forms in tea spills! Welcome to... the Cloud Bureaucracy!"
Assistant Yue stared up at him, still nursing a stress-induced headache from yesterday's audit. "Ne Job, you can't just put the word 'cloud' in front of something and call it progress."
"Yes, I can," he said cheerfully. "Mortals do it all the time."
Bao the Delivery Spirit floated nearby, munching on celestial buns. "So this thing actually stores documents... in the sky?"
"In the Heavenly Cloud Network," Ne Job corrected. "See, I've bound each report to a tiny spirit and uploaded it into divine mist for easy access. Instant recall, zero clutter!"
Yue's voice was dangerously calm. "You bound report spirits."
"Yes!"
"Without authorization."
"Technically, it's an open-source system."
"Technically, you're about to get smote."
Ne Job grinned, unbothered. "Relax! The auditors are gone, Lord Xian's calm again, and Master Taiyi said I should 'innovate responsibly.' I'm just skipping the second part."
Right on cue, a door slammed open.
Lord Bureaucrat Xian strode in, his face that specific shade of tranquil fury reserved for ancient immortals dealing with interns. "Ne Job," he said softly. "What have you done now?"
"I digitized the Bureau!" Ne Job said proudly. "Look—one talisman scan, and any file appears instantly!"
He waved his hand, and a glowing scroll materialized midair.
For three glorious seconds, it seemed to work.
Then the scroll burst into flames, spun in circles, and began shouting in ancient celestial language:
> "ERROR! DUPLICATE SOUL RECORD DETECTED! INITIATING SELF-DESTRUCTION PROTOCOL!"
The Bureau shook violently.
Yue ducked behind a desk. "Ne Job! What protocol did you put in those report spirits!?"
"I—I don't remember! I might've used the template from the Divine Punishment Engine!"
Lord Xian's composure finally cracked. "You what!?"
"Don't worry!" Ne Job said, conjuring more talismans. "I can fix it!"
He tossed another one into the air. It exploded into a thousand miniature spirit clouds that began duplicating themselves like an overexcited swarm of divine mosquitoes.
Soon the entire office was filled with floating copies of reports yelling contradictory data:
> "Soul No. 223 reincarnated successfully!"
"Soul No. 223 still awaiting karma review!"
"Soul No. 223 accidentally turned into a cabbage!"
Bao screamed, "They're unionizing!"
Sure enough, the glowing clouds were forming a swarm and chanting in eerie unison:
> "Equal processing power for all spirits! Down with paper slavery!"
Lord Xian buried his face in his sleeves. "I knew allowing him back after the audit was a mistake."
Yue, already typing on an abacus-shaped terminal, shouted over the chaos. "I can reverse the system if I override the primary binding rune! But I need a distraction!"
Ne Job saluted. "I'm on it!"
Before anyone could stop him, he leapt onto the nearest desk, conjured a megaphone made of light, and shouted,
> "Attention, free data-spirits! I am your creator! And I—uh—offer promotions!"
The spirit swarm paused. Thousands of tiny glowing eyes turned toward him.
"Promotions?" they echoed.
"Yes! You'll all be upgraded to supervisor spirits!"
They hummed suspiciously. "Define 'supervisor.'"
"Uhh... you'll supervise... yourselves!"
There was a long pause. Then, to everyone's shock, the spirits cheered.
Yue blinked. "I can't believe that worked."
"It didn't," Xian said grimly, pointing at the walls. The spirits were now replicating faster, chanting their new slogan:
> "Supervisor Spirits Unite! Overthrow the Bureau!"
The marble floor cracked under divine overload.
Yue slammed her hands on the terminal. "Ne Job! Hold them off while I rewrite the binding script!"
"Got it!"
He grabbed his spear, spun it like a baton, and charged into the glowing storm. The spirits swarmed around him, forming chains of light that tried to drag him upward into the data cloud.
"Yue!" he shouted, struggling. "I think they're trying to upload me!"
"Then don't let them!"
"That's not advice!"
Bao tried to help by throwing blessed dumplings into the cloud. They promptly got digitized.
Meanwhile, Xian began chanting ancient bureaucratic spells — the kind used to finalize divine decrees. His hands moved in elegant patterns, sigils of control glowing between his fingers.
"By authority of Heaven's Record—Seal and Subdue!"
A wave of energy crashed through the room, freezing half the spirits mid-air. Yue's abacus terminal flashed. "Almost there... almost—got it!"
She slammed the final rune.
The entire Bureau went dark.
For a breathless moment, there was only silence.
Then, slowly, the glowing clouds faded, dissolving into harmless mist. The scrolls rematerialized neatly onto shelves. The office lights flickered back on.
Everything was... normal.
Except for Ne Job, who was now stuck half-inside a cloud, upside down, and glowing faintly blue.
"Yue?" he croaked. "Am I... still on the network?"
Yue sighed. "You're lucky I didn't format you."
Lord Xian exhaled, smoothing his sleeves again. "Assistant Yue, ensure that no trace of this 'Cloud Bureaucracy' survives. Effective immediately."
"Yes, my lord."
"And as for you, Intern Ne Job..."
Ne Job winced. "Yes, sir?"
"You are hereby assigned to manual data reconstruction. Every scroll. Every ledger. Every soul record. By hand."
"Wait—you mean—"
"Yes," Xian said coldly. "The old-fashioned way."
Yue gave him a sympathetic pat on the back. "Congratulations. You just downgraded Heaven's technology by three thousand years."
Bao snickered. "At least now you can't crash the system again."
Ne Job groaned, clutching his spear like a broom. "This is cruel and unusual punishment."
"Consider it training," Xian said. "For the day you finally learn the value of proper filing."
As the Lord departed, Ne Job slumped onto a pile of scrolls. The other spirits returned to work, pretending not to notice the faint smell of burned data.
Yue sat beside him with a weary smile. "So, Cloud Bureaucracy... huh?"
He grinned weakly. "It was a visionary idea. Just... too visionary."
"Next time," she said, "maybe try something less world-ending."
He nodded. "Like... automated karma forms?"
Yue froze. "No."
"Paperless prayer requests?"
"No."
"Self-updating heavenly tax codes?"
"Ne Job!"
He laughed, ducking as she threw a scroll at his head.
Above them, the last bits of divine mist drifted through the rafters, shimmering faintly — tiny remnants of Ne Job's grand failed innovation.
Somewhere deep in the Bureau's unseen archives, one rogue data-spirit blinked awake again, whispering softly to itself:
> "Version... 2.1."
And just like that, while the Bureau sighed in temporary peace, the next disaster quietly began compiling in the background.