Kael's dreams that night were all paperwork.
Not the usual Tower nightmares—no teeth, no falling, no red HP bar hanging by a pixel. Just endless forms.
JUSTIFY DEVIATION FROM BASELINE.CITE OUTCOME METRICS.DEFINE 'WORTH' IN 200 WORDS OR LESS.
He woke in his capsule with a crick in his neck and MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA hovering politely at the corner of his UI.
[MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA: STATUS – IDLE (REVIEWING).]
"New stalker unlocked," he muttered.
It pulsed once, like it had heard him.
[NOTE: EXECUTOR HUMOR FLAGGED – NON-RELEVANT.]
"Great," Kael said. "It has opinions about my jokes."
He opened its main descriptor.
[OBJECT: MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA][PURPOSE: EVALUATE IMPACT OF NON-BASELINE WORTH DECISIONS.][SCOPE: LOCAL REGION (GRAY-3, ADJACENT NODES).][INPUTS: OUTCOME METRICS, RESOURCE STRAIN, LONG-TERM STABILITY INDICATORS.][SPECIAL: ADAPTIVE THRESHOLD BASED ON PAST CASES.]
"So you're a living patch note comment section," he said.
[CLARIFICATION: I AM NOT 'LIVING.'][I AM A PROCESS.]
Kael froze.
"You can… respond," he said.
[I CAN LOG RESPONSES TO RELEVANT ACTORS.]
"Am I a 'relevant actor' now?" he asked.
[YES.][ROLE: EXECUTOR.][ROLE: LOCAL VARIANCE SOURCE.]
"Rude," he said.
[FACTUAL.]
He rubbed his eyes.
"Okay, Auditor," he said. "Do you have a shorter name? BETA makes you sound like a test feature that's going to crash the Tower."
[DESIGNATION: MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA.][ALTERNATIVE SHORT LABELS ACCEPTED FOR UI PURPOSES.]
"So I can nickname you," Kael said. "How about… Beta?"
[ACCEPTED.]
"Wow, low standards," he said.
[HUMOR: NON-RELEVANT.]
He sighed and scrubbed through last night's triage incident in its logs.
Beta had logged everything with terrifying detail: timestamps, resource usage, estimated long-term societal impact.
[CASE 0001 – TRIAGE_EVENT_HOSPITAL_GRAY-3-HEALING_NODE.]– BASELINE: ONE DEATH (CIVILIAN – TRANSIT WORKER).– SHARD-INFLUENCED: NO DEATHS.– RESOURCE COST: +32% NODE STRESS, TEMPORARY CAPACITY LOSS.– LONG-TERM PROJECTIONS:• TRANSIT DISRUPTION: LOWERED.• GUARD/HUNTER MORALE: INCREASED.• COMMUNITY TRUST IN MEDICAL SYSTEM: INCREASED.– PRELIMINARY VERDICT: POSITIVE DEVIATION.
At the bottom:
[FOLLOW-UP: MONITOR EXECUTOR/FRAGMENT HOST FOR FUTURE DEVIATIONS.]
"So you're not here to smite me," Kael said. "You're here to… grade me."
[PARTIALLY CORRECT.][I EVALUATE PATTERNS, NOT INDIVIDUALS.]
He thought of ADMIN_0, crushed under the weight of trying to fix everything.
"Do you have logs from before Root went offline?" he asked.
[NO.][ROOT-LEVEL ETHICS HANDLERS CORRUPTED / ARCHIVED.][MY CODEBASE DRAWS FROM FRAGMENTS AND PATCHES.]
"So you're new," he said.
[RELATIVELY.][I WAS SPAWNED AFTER CUMULATIVE WORTH-CONFLICT ERRORS REACHED THRESHOLD.]
"Because shards started complaining more," Kael said.
[CORRECT.]
He sat up.
"And you're not automatically loyal to baseline," he said slowly. "You're… neutral?"
Beta took a fraction of a second longer.
[BASELINE IS DEFAULT, NOT SACRED.][I EVALUATE WHETHER DEVIATIONS IMPROVE LONG-TERM STABILITY.]
Kael laughed once, short and dry.
"You're a stability gremlin," he said. "You don't care about 'good' or 'evil.' You care about 'does the system fall over.'"
[APPROXIMATION ACCEPTED.]
"So if we keep nudging things and outcomes improve—more lives saved without wrecking infrastructure—you'll… back us up?" he asked.
[IF DATA SUPPORTS THAT CONCLUSION, I WILL RECOMMEND PERSISTING SIMILAR DEVIATIONS.]
"And if we mess up?" he asked.
[THEN I WILL RECOMMEND DAMPENING OR ISOLATING YOUR INFLUENCE.]
Cool shivers crawled down his spine.
"At least you're honest," he said. "That's more than I can say for half the humans in this equation."
[HUMAN HONESTY LEVELS: OUT OF SCOPE.]
He snorted.
"Tell that to cults," he said.
[CULT BEHAVIOR PATTERNS: NEGATIVE IMPACT ON STABILITY (HIGH CONFIDENCE).][MANY CULT-DRIVEN EVENTS FLAGGED AS UNFAVORABLE.]
"Good," Kael said. "We agree on something."
He swung his legs out of the capsule, feet hitting the floor.
"Beta," he said, "I can't promise I won't push again. I also can't promise I won't screw up. But I can promise I'm not doing this for fun or power. I just… don't want the bad math to win every time."
The process didn't respond right away.
[INTENT STATEMENT LOGGED.][WE SHALL SEE.]
"Comforting," he muttered.