The sky over Vireon bled orange and cyan as the city flickered with nightly data surges. Skyscrapers blinked like sentient servers, their windows syncing with the rhythm of trending soundbites. The Feed never slept, and tonight it was humming louder than usual.
Shai Wong Xing walked with his hood up, Meme Golem hovering two steps behind him, wheezing pixelated flames from its top hat every few seconds. The little abomination clung to reality like a GIF running on expired bandwidth.
Shai didn't know where he was going. Only that he needed to move.
After subjugating ASMR Succubus 7.0, his aura levels had skyrocketed. The interface fed him a constant stream of stats, metrics, and targets—but he'd muted most of it. He wasn't just farming anymore. He was becoming something else, something algorithmic.
And he didn't know if he liked it.
---
> AFI v0.01-alpha
Passive Aura: +370/hr
Meme Constructs: 1 (Shitpost.exe – Meme Golem Lv. 0)
Followers: 26,920
System Integrity: 97%
New Subsystem Unlocked: Follower Scan
---
A new window opened beside his HUD.
> Follower Scan: Analyze unique follower types and unlock passive abilities.
Sample Size Required: 25,000
Status: Threshold Met
Begin Analysis?
"Yeah," Shai whispered. "Do it."
The world around him dimmed. Data flowed like smoke across his vision as silhouettes of his followers emerged — some real, others bots, a few… stranger.
---
> Analysis Complete
Follower Breakdown:
– 72% Organic Humans
– 14% Corporate Ad-Drones
– 9% BotNets from Dead Platforms
– 3% Unidentified Trend-Echoes [CLASSIFIED]
> Passive Skill Gained: Echo Field (Lv. 1)
Description: You now generate a low-level memetic field around you. Those within 5 meters are 20% more likely to adopt your language, style, and belief patterns.
Warning: May cause unintended cult behavior.
---
Shai blinked. "Cult behavior?"
Meme Golem nodded sagely and blew a fart heart into the air.
"Nope," Shai muttered. "We're not doing cults."
Yet even as he said it, a group of middle-schoolers passed him on hoverboards and all three said in unison, "This is fine—but only ironically," mimicking Meme Golem's catchphrase.
Shai groaned. "I need a firewall for my personality."
He stepped into an alley to breathe, but the Feed followed him. The AFI pulsed.
> Warning: Aura Interference Detected Nearby
Tracking Hostile Signature...
ID: Unverified System – "NullCaster vX"
Classification: Rogue
Threat Level: UNKNOWN
Shai's HUD fuzzed.
The buildings around him began to... twitch. Not physically, but in the code-layer—the place only system hosts could perceive. The bricks glitched between graffiti tags and corporate ads. The air tasted of old Wi-Fi and static.
And then he saw her.
A girl—no older than him, wearing a tattered school uniform covered in stickers. Her eyes glowed black, flickering with corrupted code, and wherever she stepped, the Feed died. Ads blinked out. Metrics halted. Notifications stopped.
Aura drained like blood from a vein.
---
> Error: Feed Connection Interrupted
SYSTEM: AFI Buffering…
Threat Identified: NullCaster
Objective: SURVIVE
---
"Interface," the girl said, her voice like a badly tuned podcast. "You're farming the Feed like it's yours. It isn't. You're just another trend pig."
Shai stood his ground, even as Meme Golem flickered from her aura suppression.
"You a follower?" he asked, voice steady. "Or just another crash-test god?"
"I'm neither," she said, stepping closer. "I'm the unfollow button incarnate."
Without warning, she raised her hand. A black waveform shot from her palm, like the ghost of a deleted file. It slammed into the wall beside him, erasing the texture from reality. The bricks became gray placeholders. Glitched geometry.
Shai activated Viral Bloom.
Nothing happened.
> ERROR: Aura Source Nullified in Zone
She grinned.
"I kill engagement."
Meme Golem jumped in front of her and attempted a pixelated flamethrower attack. The fire evaporated before reaching her.
Shai backed up. He needed something new. Something old-school.
"Interface," he whispered, "can I weaponize offline media?"
> Query Accepted.
Searching...
Found: Local Drive – '_OldMemes_RELICS.zip'
Deploying…
---
Behind Shai, a new construct emerged from static: a giant, clunky JPEG of a stick figure with a rainbow trail.
NYAN KNIGHT – Lv. 0 (Legacy Format)
It screamed in 8-bit and launched itself forward, dragging audio compression artifacts behind it.
The girl staggered.
Legacy memes. She was vulnerable to non-trending formats.
Shai seized the chance.
> Activate: Legacy Cascade
Target: NullCaster
Loading: Rage Faces, Impact Font, Demotivational Posters…
A flood of forgotten memes surged down the alley like a dam broke in 2010. The NullCaster shrieked, her corrupted system unable to process formats no longer supported by the Feed.
"STOP POSTING CRINGE!" she screamed, voice losing cohesion.
> Aura Gained: +5,120
System Shard Acquired: NullCaster vX (Fractured)
Ability Unlocked: Dead Zone (Lv. 0) – Create a short field where trending systems cannot function. Duration: 8 seconds.
Shai collapsed to his knees, panting. His interface rebooted, realigning to the Feed.
> AFI Fully Reconnected
Aura: 31,800
Followers: 33,119
Passive Aura/hr: 540
Meme Golem limped over, its body missing a few pixels. It gave a thumbs-up and glitched into a dab.
Shai chuckled. "Good work, soldier."
But something still gnawed at him.
That girl—NullCaster—wasn't just another system user.
She had no interface. No trending signal.
She wasn't part of the Feed at all.
Which meant there was a whole other network running in the shadows.
One the Feed didn't control.
---
Back at his apartment, Shai pulled the cracked tablet from under his bed and began scanning system layers using AFI's debug mode.
> Initiating Deep Scan...
Detecting Sub-Networks:
– [SystemNet] – Active
– [FeedLayer] – Active
– [NullZone] – Fragmented
– [Godshell Protocol] – LOCKED
> WARNING: You are not authorized to access 'Godshell Protocol.'
Shai sat back.
Godshell.
Even the name sounded final.
"Root_Z," he muttered, "what did you build into me?"
His message inbox pinged.
---
> [Private Feed: Root_Z]
"Now you're seeing it. The Feed is just one face of the machine.
But the machine has many masks.
If you want to farm more than clout—
If you want to farm truth—
You'll need to crack the Godshell."
> "But to do that…
You'll need to find the Seven Keys.
They aren't systems.
They're people.
And they don't want to be found."
---
Shai's screen dimmed. Outside, the city flickered.
His aura had brought him influence. Memes had brought him power.
But now?
Now he was chasing gods.
He opened his terminal.
Typed one line:
> // FIND: KEY_ONE
And the Feed responded:
---
> LOCATED: "KEY ONE – The Child of the Unshared Thought"
Alias: Ema-Lynne
Status: Offline Genius
Visibility: 0 Followers
System Signature: UNKNOWN
Location: Subnet District, Sector Null
---
A girl with zero followers in a world built on eyes?
That was the rarest kind of user there was.
He grabbed his bag, reloaded Meme Golem with Rage Comic subroutines, and whispered:
"Let's go make her trend."