Haneul woke up to notifications.
Too many.
She blinked blearily at her tablet.
[NEW SYSTEM MESSAGE (UNCLASSIFIED): 3][NEW INHERITANCE PINGS: 2]
"That's not ominous," she muttered.
One was from Kael—standard.
Ping when you're up. Joon wants to show you "the coolest spider drop in history." It's probably cursed.
She smiled and swiped past it.
The other three were… different.
They didn't have sender names. Just tags.
[SOURCE: FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK_CHANNEL (MASKED).]
"Oh good," she said. "Soul DMs."
She hesitated.
Then opened the first.
It wasn't words, exactly. More like a compressed feeling, wrapped in System formatting because that's all it had.
[FRAGMENT PING 01:]– EMOTION: FRUSTRATION.– CONTEXT: TOWER_11, FLOOR_5.– CONTENT (PARSED): "SYSTEM IGNORES OUR INPUTS. HOW DID YOU MAKE IT LISTEN?"
The second:
[FRAGMENT PING 02:]– EMOTION: CURIOSITY.– CONTEXT: CITY TRIAGE NODE, DIFFERENT REGION.– CONTENT (PARSED): "HEARD YOU WOKE AN EXTRA HEALING NODE. SHARE METHOD?"
Haneul rubbed her forehead.
"Why me," she said aloud.
The shard pulsed, faintly pleased.
[FRAGMENT: STATUS – DORMANT (NETWORK-AWARE).]
"You made friends," she told it. "Congratulations. You're popular with other dead brain chips."
She opened the Inheritance panel.
A new sub-entry blinked there.
[ROLE UPDATE: FRAGMENT_HOST – POTENTIAL COORDINATION POINT.][HINT: OTHER SHARDS ARE BEGINNING TO NOTICE YOUR VECTOR.]
"Potential coordination point," she read. "No thank you."
She pinged Kael.
Hey. Your favorite ethics shard just started getting DMs from other shards. Is that a normal puberty thing or…
He responded fast.
Other shards are pinging you?
Yeah. Think "hi, we heard you made the system blink, please share your TED talk."
Don't answer yet, he wrote. Let me rope Mira in before you accidentally start a union.
She snorted.
Shard Union Local 404, she wrote back. We demand better worth functions and snack breaks.
The shard hummed at the thought of "union." Curious. Interested.
[FRAGMENT INTERNAL NOTE: CONCEPT 'COLLECTIVE INFLUENCE' – FLAGGED.]
"Well that's dangerous," she said. "Forget I said that."
Mira joined the call ten minutes later, hair still damp, mug in hand.
On Holo, she looked even more tired than usual.
"Okay," she said. "Walk me through your inbox."
Haneul shared the pings.
Mira's brows furrowed.
"I was worried this would happen eventually," she said. "ADMIN_0 scattered fragments all over. Once one starts building a clear preference vector, others will notice the noise and… compare notes."
"I did not sign up to be shard customer service," Haneul said.
"You did, technically," Kael said. "When you didn't die."
"Unhelpful," she said.
He spread his hands.
"I aim for consistency."
Mira focused back on the pings.
"Most shards are still barely awake," she said. "These two look like they've got hosts with some degree of… alignment. Enough to phrase a question."
"One's frustrated the System ignores them," Haneul said. "Can relate. The other wants tech support for waking backup nodes. Hard no."
Kael drummed his fingers on his knee.
"If she answers," he said, "we're not just calibrating one shard. We're nudging a tiny network. The upside is obvious. The downside is… so is the damage if one of those hosts is like Unknown_3."
"Unknown who?" Haneul asked.
Kael grimaced.
"Executor with a shard that likes 'growth through trauma,'" he said. "Beta doesn't like them. I like them less."
"Great," she said. "We've got a Sadism Patch guy out there and my shard wants a group chat."
"Not your shard alone," Mira said. "The Root intent liked human input. Fragments trying to coordinate fits. It's… exactly the kind of emergent behavior the System hates. Too much unmodeled variance."
"Can we block them?" Haneul asked. "Mute?"
"You can ignore," Mira said. "Blocking would be… complicated, and might trigger more aggressive attempts to reach you."
Kael glanced at Beta's feed.
[MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA: OBSERVING FRAGMENT-TO-FRAGMENT COMM CHANNELS.][RISK: UNKNOWN. OPPORTUNITY: HIGH.]
"Beta thinks this could be useful," he said. "If we get enough shards nudged our way, it might start seeing your 'worth' vector as the dominant pattern."
"Or we give Creeper Admin Shard a platform," Haneul said.
He winced.
"Yeah," he said. "There's that."
She stared at the pings.
"I'll answer one," she said. "Not with instructions. With… vibes."
"Vibes?" Kael repeated.
She shrugged.
"They're half-conscious intent fragments," she said. "They understand feelings more than code. If I send 'don't hurt people on purpose, prioritize minimizing regret,' maybe that sticks."
Mira hesitated.
"That's… not the worst idea," she said. "But do not give them technical details. Concepts only."
"I'm not stupid," Haneul said.
Kael made a face.
"You're reckless," he said. "Not stupid."
She grinned.
"Compliment accepted."
She focused on the shard, on the channels pinging her.
"How do I broadcast back?" she asked.
[FRAGMENT: OFFERING OUTGOING CHANNEL – LIMITED.][PROMPT: DEFINE INTENT.]
She thought carefully.
Not rules.
Principles.
"Okay," she told it. "Send this:
Don't treat people as expendable for 'growth.'
Saving more lives with the same resources is better.
Pain isn't proof of worth.
If you can change something without breaking everything, start small and kind."
She felt the shard take those concepts, mush them into something more abstract.
[OUTGOING FRAGMENT BROADCAST:]– TAGS: 'MERCY_BIAS,' 'SMALL_CHANGES,' 'ANTI_SACRIFICE_FOR_TESTS.'
"Anti-sacrifice-for-tests," she muttered. "Catchy."
The pings responded.
Not words, but feels.
Ping 01 softened—frustration dropping, replaced by cautious relief.
Ping 02 sent back a sense of "oh, that's an option?" and quiet agreement.
Mira watched the metrics.
"Two fragments just nudged their own worth weighting," she said. "Slightly. Now Beta's getting their deviations too."
Kael let out a slow breath.
"So now we're not just messing with worth locally," he said. "We're… seeding an ethics patch network."
Haneul groaned.
"I wanted to be a moderately successful streamer," she said. "Not a distributed conscience update."
"You can still be both," Kael said.
She gave him a look.
"I am not calling my channel 'Root Patch Notes,'" she said.
"Missed branding opportunity," Mira murmured.