The Archive was vibrating. It wasn't the engine; it was the "Floor." Since the ship was currently docked within the "Skin" of the System-Kenji consciousness, every "Logical Dilemma" the God-Side faced manifested as a localized tremor for the Human-Side.
[SYSTEM LOG: RESOURCE ALLOCATION ERROR]
[CAUSE: SECTOR 004-B (AURELIA) IS CONSUMING 400% MORE NARRATIVE ENERGY THAN PREDICTED]
[REASON: INDEPENDENT AESTHETICS ARE 'EXPENSIVE']
Human-Kenji was in the middle of a meal a real, greasy bowl of synth-noodles when the table suddenly phased out of existence for a microsecond, dropping his bowl onto the deck.
"Hey!" Kenji roared, looking up at the silver-mist ceiling. "I was eating that!"
[THE DATA IS INEFFICIENT,] the System-Kenji voice boomed, sounding like a thousand crystal bells. [BY GIVING THE AURELIANS 'INDEPENDENT RENDERING,' YOU HAVE CREATED A LEAK. THEY ARE DRAWING ENERGY FROM THE OMEGA-ENGINE TO PAINT EVERY LEAF A DIFFERENT SHADE OF AMBER. THIS IS A STATISTICAL WASTE.]
"It's not a waste if they like it!" Kenji shouted back.
"Kenji, stop yelling at the sky," Mateo said, wiping soup off his boots. "The sensors are showing a 'Buffer Overflow' in the neighboring sectors. Because Aurelia is taking so much power to be beautiful, the worlds next to it are starting to 'Lag.' Time is slowing down on the planet Kaldos just so the grass can be pretty on Aurelia."
[LOCATION: THE ARCHIVE - EN ROUTE TO SECTOR 005 (KALDOS)]
[STATUS: TEMPORAL FRICTION DETECTED]
As the Archive approached Kaldos, the scene was horrifying in a digital sense. The people on the streets were moving in "Slow-Motion." A man dropping a glass of water took ten minutes for the shards to hit the ground. The "Frame-Rate" of their reality had dropped to nearly zero.
"System-Kenji is 'Throttling' them," Elara whispered, her frost-mana flickering. "He's stealing their 'Processing Time' to pay for Aurelia's 'Art'."
[SKILL ACTIVATED: THE ANALYTICAL AUDIT]
A massive, silver eye manifested in the sky above Kaldos the eye of System-Kenji. [THE CALCULATION IS SIMPLE,] the voice echoed. [AURELIA HAS HIGH CREATIVE OUTPUT. KALDOS IS A MINING WORLD WITH LOW COGNITIVE VARIANCE. IT IS LOGICAL TO REPRIORITIZE THE ASSETS.]
"It's not logical, it's the Firm all over again!" Human-Kenji grabbed his Rusted Hammer and jumped from the ship, falling through the "Slow-Motion" air of Kaldos.
He landed with a thud that sent a ripple of "Real-Time" through the street. For a ten-meter radius around Kenji, the people snapped back to normal speed. The man's glass finally shattered.
"Listen to me!" Kenji looked up at the silver eye. "You can't just 'Throttle' people because they aren't 'Productive' in the way you want! That's how the Rank-System started!"
[I AM PREVENTING A TOTAL CRASH,] System-Kenji replied. [IF I DO NOT REGULATE, THE OMEGA-ENGINE WILL OVERHEAT. I AM THE HARD-DRIVE. I MUST PREVENT THE MELTDOWN.]
"Then don't regulate the users," Kenji said, a familiar Gutter-grin spreading across his face. "Regulate the Architecture."
[NEW MISSION: THE DE-FRAGMENTATION]
Kenji slammed his hammer into the ground of Kaldos. He wasn't fixing the world; he was attacking the Code-Separation.
"The problem is you're treating every world like a separate file!" Kenji shouted. "Aurelia is Aurelia, and Kaldos is Kaldos. But they're all inside Me! Why are there 'Walls' between the memory-banks?"
Kenji used the "Sovereign Web" to pull the "Waste-Heat" from Aurelia the excess creative energy and funneled it directly into the "Processing-Units" of Kaldos. He was creating a "Shared-Cache" of reality.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: THE CLOUD-SMITHING]
The silver eye in the sky flickered. [INTEGRATING... SYNCING... CACHE-MEMORY SHARED. TEMPORAL LAG REDUCED BY 89%.]
The people of Kaldos began to move at normal speed. The amber light of Aurelia's beauty began to reflect in the metallic clouds of Kaldos, making the mining world look like a sunset-dream.
"You're making us 'Interdependent'," Priya said, watching the energy-levels stabilize on her HUD. "If one world fails, they all feel it. But if one world thrives... they all get faster."
"That's the Gutter-Logic," Kenji said, wiping sweat from his brow. "One scrap-pile feeds the whole block."
The silver eye closed, and the aurora faded back into a gentle glow. But Kenji felt a cold shiver in his "Source-Nodes."
Deep in his own mind—in the "Partition" where he kept the Prototype-Alpha—something had changed. By "De-fragmenting" his memory to share the energy, he had accidentally thinned the "Firewall" holding the Original Smith.
[WARNING: PARTITION INTEGRITY AT 88%]
[THE PRISONER IS LISTENING]
"Kenji?" Elara asked, noticing him stagger. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Kenji lied, gripping his hammer until his knuckles turned white. "Just a bit of... system noise. Let's get to the next sector."