Anomaly 11: Divine Corruption

Sylas returned to his desk after an early lunch break with a mug of piping hot honey shot ambrosia. He was humming some celestial-pop tunes. The chair he sat on cracked a bit due to the sudden, slightly heavy weight. He casually chatted to his co-worker and took a sip into his mug before checking his 'favorite little failures' (the weaks) if they were doing nothing valuable again. 

He moved his mouse and tried to light up the holographic screen as he sipped into his mug again. 

When the screen lit up, he was greeted by a message that made him spit his ambrosia in no time. 

!ERROR 406: WEAK FILE SYSTEM OVERRIDE

STATUS: IRRETRIEVABLE

AFFECTED: EUROPE

LOGS: CORRUPTED

REPORT FUNCTION: DISABLED

Suddenly, every tab started closing on its own as if someone was using his screen. It was fast, too fast for his chubby fingers to catch up. The screen was glitching violently, and the tabs started to shut down. The windows started to collapse one after another. 

Then out of nowhere, a message flashed before his eyes. 

To whom it may concern: 

"Looks like someone left the door open so early, even though it isn't break time yet. So I helped myself to the pantry. By the way, I found delicious data and very poor, terrible encryption in your hologram display. Oh, and your important files? Gone. I made it easier for you to handle the 'weak and trash' files of weak humans. You're welcome. 

Love

Little Virus…

"WHAT-WHAT IS THIS!?" he screamed, yelling and yanked at the keyboard as fast as he could, smashing function keys. "No..nononononnnooo! I need to run a deep trace and recover the logs! I need logs, backups! Something!"

[SYSTEM ERROR- DATABASE 5600- LOW-TIER SUBJECTS]

!ALERT: CRITICAL DATA BREACH DETECTED

FILES CORRUPTED/DELETED IRRETRIEVABLE

"All monitored profiles between weak to weakest have been purged."

"Incident classified as critical intrusion"

"Source: unknown"

"Signature: None"

AUTO-LOG NOTE:

"This wasn't a breach. This was a message."

Then another message pooped in. It was slow, glitchy, stylized, like a hacker taking joy in taunting him. 

"UNAUTHORIZED INTRUSION LOG"

"I noticed you weren't using these files. So I did what any helpful virus would do. I cleaned the house. All your 'statical trash'? Gone. All those 'waste of space'? Gone. They don't belong to you anymore. So, you can't control what you can't see and now, you're blind. 

With love,

Little Virus.

Sylas was staring at the message in horror.

"T-they deleted every low-tier record. Every unranked subject vanished. Oh my Gods! We've lost complete tracking of one half of Europe's baseline population!"

Sylas may be called weak trash or just a waste of space, but in reality, those kinds are usually where the anomaly starts.. They were under monitored, constantly. And Sylas had lost every one of them. 

In his mind, how did that happen? No one could rewrite from the inside the system. Who could even do it? It was a question kept playing in his mind as he sweated like a cosmic bullet as he tried to restore and retrieve the retrievable. 

Meanwhile, dozens of these 'weak citizens' were forgotten by the system and suddenly felt lighter and free. Their TacMa connection was interrupted and gone silent. It's like part of their soul was ripped apart from them which oddly gave them satisfaction. 

Within the Celestial Tactical Management Master Server and control room, the council of watchers floating in a holographic form above the map of the Earth noticed the massive portion of the globe, specifically the Europe's weak and low-tier humans, had just gone black. 

They sent a projected message telepathically to the Council to attend to the problem immediately. 

Meanwhile, Sylas was now panicking. He opened an emergency system line, the anomaly analysts team.

"Manual escalation, priority black. System breach, threat level Critical."

"Acknowledge. Please describe the threat's origin," one of the emergency analysts answered his request.

Sylas wiped his sweat before speaking.

"That's the thing. I don't know. I-it… it erased all my logs! And it left a message!"

The emergency anomaly analyst rolled her eyes. He knew Sylas so well. He usually left his working place unattended. Maybe someone was playing a prank on him. 

"We are a unit specializing in Anomaly. We can't investigate the 'thing' that erased your logs unless it's an anomaly."

"B-but-"

"If it's not an anomaly, I'm dropping the call. Thank you for calling us.'

Sylas slammed his chubby hands on the table and frantically typing override commands with one hand and tried to plug in a firewall crystal with the other. 

"Come on ,baby! Work. Don't get me killed by a god today. I just fixed my credit ranking."

The light dimmed, and a final pop-up appeared.

"Error 660: Your escalation right from your nodes was removed. 

Sylas took a long breath

"I'm so dead."

Sylas leaned back in his chair. His face was pale. 

"Okay, relax," he uttered, trying to calm himself. "It's just a glitch, a rogue script. I need to do something before the higher-ups learn about this. Think. Think, self."

Sylas hovered over the screen and made a new file, and started to reconstruct the names of those he still remembered. 

First, he typed Marcus' name, his classification, power level and threat rating. He also made a mark saying his Tacma was unstable Tacma. And labelled him as a normal human being. 

Sylas typed a message saying it was the Tacma's malfunctioning and that it wasn't his fault. 

A pop-up message flashed before him.

"Warning: Attempting to mask Null anomaly. Are you sure?"

Sylas typed a message.

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure. Gods, damn it!"

And he slammed the enter key, sealing the problem. He exhaled like he dodged an execution. He opened a secret line to his supervisor and carefully rehearsed the words he would say. 

He cleared his throat and calmed himself before tapping the on and relaxing. 

"All systems are green. There was no breach. It's just a minor fluctuation in the non-threat sector. There was no unusual."

"Are you certain?" His supervisor asked. 

Sylas forced a chuckle.

"Yes, sir. Its just another failed human. He's not even worth watching."

"Good. You need to be ready. The coucil wanted to have a word to you."

Sylas paled. 

"Yes sir," he answered as his heart pump faster than before. 

A few minutes later, Syals was teleported right before the strongest Gods and goddesses called councils. All of them wore a robe in light and glory. They looked down at the celestial who was in charge of critical files. 

"Sylas, you called the Emergency Anomaly analysit over a minor file corruption?" The god of Order asked him. 

Sylas was nervous.

"Y-yes, my Lord. It was just a routine fluctuation. A rogue virus entered my server. It was not a threat. I already fixed it."

The goddess of truth narrowed her eyes at him. 

"And why does your face look like your 

constipated?"

Sylas was sweating hard like was literally washing his face. 

'I have a digestion issue, my lady."

"He's lying," the God of war simply commented, smirking, which made Sylas more nervous than before.

"No, no, Vulcan, Tina. That's just how he always looks."

The council of gods and goddesses murmured for a few moments and then everything became quiet after that. 

"Fine. If it was truly nothing, we won't waste time," the goddess of faith broke the silence. 

Sylas released the air he was holding and thought it was over. 

"But Sylas…" she traced. 

All eyes turned to Sylas. 

"Next time you make a wrong judgment and become nervous, contacting the crucial group of our system for nothing, wasting their time, your soul will be recycled into a mana bug."

"U-understood."

As the divine meeting and their presence faded, Sylas went back to his office. He slumped into his chair. He sat there for a little while, his mind running wild. 

Maybe I should apply for vacation leave? Or maybe I'll just resign, he said. Because somewhere in his mind, if the council makes a thorough investigation, he'll die. No questions asked.