Ne Job: The Intern from Hell — Chapter 125: "System Error: Memory Reborn"
The reboot began with silence.
Then—noise.
Not the divine hum of the Bureau's routine cycles, but something raw, primal. Static, laughter, typing, screaming, singing—all overlapping as if reality itself had too many open tabs.
Fragments of Heaven, Hell, and Bureau collided, folding into one another like shards of corrupted glass. And standing in the middle of it all was Ne Job, his body flickering between form and code.
Half of him was still intern—tie crooked, ID tag glowing faintly. The other half was something else entirely: luminous circuitry, veins of molten data pulsing like a second heartbeat.
"System… status?" he muttered.
A familiar ping answered from above him—Bao's voice, garbled through the chaos. "System status: utter nonsense, sir! The filing cabinets are flying, my teacup's reciting prayers, and someone just approved themselves for reincarnation as a Wi-Fi router!"
Ne Job blinked. "So… Tuesday."
Yue appeared beside him, her form stabilizing with visible effort. Her robes were shredded by digital static, one sleeve reforming as lines of divine code. "You broke the Bureau and recompiled it in debug mode."
He looked around. The Bureau halls had become a living architecture—columns woven from memory threads, desks formed from stacked timelines, paperwork drifting like constellations in zero gravity.
"I didn't break it," he said with a grin. "I… diversified its data sources."
Yue crossed her arms. "You've merged chaos into a regulatory framework. The system's alive—but ungoverned. It's rewriting causality every few seconds."
Right on cue, a clerk floated past, bowing politely as his head transformed into a printer. "Good morning, Madam Yue! May I—" BEEP "—error 404 soul not found!"
She sighed. "Case in point."
From the distance, Lord Xian's fragmented projection reappeared—less human now, more silhouette made of cascading code.
> "Ne Job," the voice echoed through the fractured halls. "The Directive is unstable. Merge complete—but system integrity… compromised."
"Yeah, no kidding," Ne Job replied. "We're one crash away from metaphysical blue screen."
> "Correction," Xian said calmly. "We are one iteration away from stability. The hybrid network must synchronize around a central node—your Spark."
Ne Job frowned. "So… I'm the new Bureau core?"
> "Affirmative. You are the living database of the Bureau's total memory."
Yue's eyes widened. "That means if he's deleted—"
> "All data collapses," Xian finished. "Rebirth fails. Existence reverts to unprocessed entropy."
Ne Job rubbed the back of his neck. "So no pressure."
Bao floated closer, clutching a trembling stack of metaphysical forms. "Sir, if I may humbly suggest—we file for a backup!"
"Bao," Ne Job said gently, "you can't back up chaos."
> "Incorrect," said a new voice.
Everyone turned.
Out from a swirling breach of light stepped the Forgotten God of Paperwork, calm as ever, carrying a single glowing pen. His expression was unreadable—half reverence, half exhaustion.
> "You can't back up chaos," he said, "but you can index it."
Yue blinked. "You… survived the Directive's purge?"
> "I was the Directive's archivist," he replied. "I never truly die. I just get misfiled."
He turned to Ne Job. "The Spark has rewritten the Bureau in your image. Now you must catalog it—or it will unravel itself."
Ne Job frowned. "Catalog what, exactly?"
> "Everything," said the Forgotten God, extending the pen. "Every law, every memory, every mistake. Write them into existence again—but this time, not as divine decree."
Ne Job took the pen. The moment his fingers closed around it, a pulse of gold light rippled across the Bureau. The chaotic energy around them shifted—less frantic, more rhythmic, almost breathing.
Yue watched him carefully. "You're… rewriting reality?"
He nodded. "No more top-down control. No more gods deleting interns. We're rewriting Heaven as an open system. Everyone gets access."
Bao gasped. "Sir, that's… heresy!"
Ne Job smiled. "It's called progress."
He pressed the pen to the air, and lines of text appeared—code interlaced with poetry, forming new laws of existence:
> "Every soul retains memory of labor."
"Every failure can be filed again."
"Every intern deserves a lunch break."
The Bureau trembled—then stabilized.
Monitors blinked into order. Paperwork aligned itself in glowing stacks. The flying cabinets landed gently. Even the Wi-Fi reincarnate clerk returned to human form, sobbing with gratitude.
Yue's shoulders relaxed. "You… did it. You actually stabilized the Directive."
Ne Job lowered the pen, smiling faintly. "Nah. I just taught Heaven how to multitask."
Then, the floor under them pulsed once.
The golden architecture began to fade—layer by layer, like an old document being archived.
Yue's expression darkened. "What's happening?"
> "Transition complete," said Lord Xian's fading voice. "Directive: Memory Reborn."
Ne Job looked around. "You mean this isn't the end?"
> "No," said Xian. "It's the beginning."
The Bureau dissolved into light.
Yue reached out, her hand finding Ne Job's. For a moment, they were the only constants in the shifting void.
"Where to now?" she whispered.
Ne Job grinned as the light swallowed them both.
"Anywhere that still needs paperwork."