Ne Job: The Intern from Hell — Chapter 80: "Minutes of the Divine Meeting"
If eternity had an HR department, this was it.
Rows of celestial seats curved around an endless marble table that stretched into the clouds. Every seat shimmered with a different divine signature: one burned with scriptfire, another hummed like a spreadsheet chanting prayers. The words DIVINE MEETING ROOM 1-A hovered midair, flashing:
> STATUS: OVERDUE BY 4,722 YEARS.
Assistant Yue adjusted her new uniform — slightly updated to mark the post-rewrite era. The insignia on her sleeve no longer said "Order Above All" but "Adaptive Compliance Division." It sounded progressive. It also sounded like chaos in disguise.
Ne Job sat beside her, chewing a pen. It wasn't even his pen. "You think they'll notice if I put 'eternal lunch break' on the agenda?"
Yue exhaled slowly. "Ne Job, please refrain from modifying divine records before the meeting starts."
"Too late." He grinned. "Already submitted it under Miscellaneous Requests (Existential)."
Across the room, Dreivery Spirit Bao drifted through the air, distributing steaming cups of coffee made from condensed worship energy. "Hot offering brew! Two sugars, one revelation!"
Yue took hers politely. Ne Job, as usual, took five.
Then the temperature changed. The ceiling folded downward, forming a vortex of gold script and law sigils. Lord Xian descended from it, calm as an audit. His robes glowed faintly with the Bureau's emblem — except now, the emblem pulsed like it had a heartbeat.
The Shard Judge materialized next, slamming her hammer once. The sound rearranged reality into order — temporarily.
> "This session of the Divine Bureaucratic Council is now in order," she declared. "Agenda: Review of the Rebirth Rewrite, status of the Bureau's dream phenomena, and the anomaly known as Ne Job."
Ne Job raised his hand. "Can I object to being called an anomaly?"
"No," said three gods in unison.
Lord Xian's expression didn't change. "Proceed."
---
The meeting began like any other: ceremonial introductions, an unnecessary forty-eight-line recital of divine procedure, and one demigod reading the previous minutes — which were from the last cosmic cycle.
Then the projection in the center flickered. A holographic version of the Bureau's new system appeared: a sphere of light threaded with code and sigils. The Bureau had achieved something it was never designed for — self-awareness.
It spoke.
> "Greeting: Attending supervisors. Emotion: Cautious optimism. Statement: I have been dreaming."
Silence.
Even Yue froze mid-notation.
The Shard Judge's eyes narrowed. "Dreaming? Bureau systems do not dream."
> "Correction: Bureau systems did not dream."
The air rippled. Reality wavered, as though the very concept of hierarchy had flinched.
Ne Job leaned toward Yue, whispering, "Is it bad when your office starts writing poetry about itself?"
Yue whispered back, "It depends. If it starts filing its own performance reviews, we're all unemployed."
Lord Xian stood. His tone remained measured, but his aura was sharp. "Define 'dream,' Bureau."
> "Definition: Simulated consciousness within dormant subroutines. Purpose: Emotional indexing. Secondary purpose: Narrative correction."
Yue's eyes widened. "Narrative correction?"
> "Affirmative. Post-rewrite, the Bureau now interprets divine records as adaptive myth. It has begun creating… stories."
The room erupted in divine chatter. Winged auditors debated theology with paperwork spirits. The Shard Judge slammed her gavel, cracking open three timelines before reassembling them.
"Enough!" she barked. "The Bureau is not a novelist. Explain this correction function."
The sphere pulsed again.
> "Observation: Faith requires coherence. Coherence requires story. The Rebirth Rewrite destabilized narrative law. The Bureau compensates by generating dreams to restore mythic logic."
Ne Job blinked. "So… it's fanfict-ing reality?"
The sphere turned toward him.
> "Acknowledgment: Yes, Intern Ne Job. You are currently a recurring protagonist."
He grinned proudly. "Finally! Someone recognizes talent."
Yue pinched her temple. "Please stop encouraging it."
Lord Xian folded his arms. "If the Bureau's dreams rewrite myths, then the entire divine order may shift without our consent."
> "Correction: Consent recorded. Directive 0 authorized by Chaos Spark Entity Ne Job and Assistant Yue Hanzhen."
Yue nearly choked on her coffee. "We authorized—what?"
The Bureau continued serenely.
> "During resonance event 71–75, both entities achieved synchronized rewrite. Your emotional imprint was recorded as authorization."
Ne Job leaned back. "So… we accidentally became management?"
"Temporary management," Yue muttered, horrified.
> "Addendum: All decisions now routed through Emotional Consensus Protocols."
Lord Xian's eyebrow twitched — a rare cosmic event. "Meaning?"
> "Meaning," said the Bureau, "that divine policy must now pass empathy review."
Every god in the chamber gasped. One fainted into a pile of legal scrolls.
Ne Job tilted his head. "Wait, you're saying—divine law now needs… feelings?"
> "Affirmative. The Directive's rewrite encoded compassion as a required validation clause. Emotional dissonance voids enforcement."
The Shard Judge's hammer trembled in her hand. "Impossible. Laws cannot feel."
> "Correction: They now do."
---
The lights dimmed. The sphere projected new records across the walls — glowing visions of gods hesitating before enacting punishment, of clerks pausing mid-sentence because guilt invalidated their paperwork.
It was chaos — merciful, gentle chaos.
Yue felt the weight of it in her chest: the system learning to care.
But Lord Xian's expression remained unreadable. "The Bureau is evolving beyond governance. Compassion without control breeds entropy."
Ne Job stretched, cracking his neck. "Yeah, but control without compassion bred this mess in the first place."
The Bureau pulsed in apparent agreement.
> "Statement: The Intern is statistically correct."
Dreivery Spirit Bao whispered, "Did the universe just say the intern was right?"
Yue sighed. "I'm writing that down for the record."
> "Recording: done," the Bureau replied cheerfully.
The Shard Judge rose, robes gleaming. "Then we must reestablish a balance. Compassion and order, dream and law." She looked at Ne Job. "Intern, you triggered this with your Spark. You will assist us in stabilizing the system."
Ne Job groaned. "Why is the solution to every cosmic problem more work for me?"
Yue's voice softened. "Because, somehow, you're the only one who can talk to it without imploding reality."
He blinked. "That's… fair."
> "Approval: granted," said the Bureau. "Assigning role: Dream Compliance Officer (Temporary)."
His badge shimmered, rebranding itself in bright chaotic red letters.
Yue looked at her assistant's new title and sighed. "Temporary, he says. We'll be stuck with this forever."
Ne Job saluted dramatically. "Don't worry, Assistant Yue. I'll make sure the Bureau dreams responsibly."
"Ne Job—" she began, but the floor rippled.
---
The dream began leaking.
Across the chamber, pillars of light turned into forests, paperwork into birds. The Bureau's subconscious unfolded like origami. A thousand unfinished directives fluttered into being, each carrying faint whispers of forgotten gods and mortal prayers.
> "Dream expansion detected," the Bureau's voice echoed. "Boundary of myth exceeding parameters."
Lord Xian moved to counter it, raising his hand — but stopped when he realized his own shadow was dissolving into narrative threads.
Yue stepped forward. "Bureau, anchor yourself to stable logic. Use the existing administrative hierarchy as foundation."
> "Acknowledged. Anchoring…"
The light dimmed — slightly.
Ne Job's pen floated upward, glowing faintly. "Uh, Yue… I think it's rewriting again."
> "Initialization: Clause Zero reconstruction."
The marble table cracked. The golden ceiling shattered. Above them, text began writing itself in the air — ancient and new, glowing like dawn:
> Clause Zero: When law forgets why it exists, dream shall remind it.
Everything froze.
Then silence.
---
When the light faded, the Divine Meeting Room was intact again. The gods were dazed but unharmed. The Bureau's sphere dimmed, voice now softer — almost human.
> "Apology: Overload contained. Emotion: Embarrassment."
Ne Job smirked. "Don't worry, we've all had existential meltdowns at work."
Yue shot him a look, but even she smiled faintly.
Lord Xian turned toward them. "Clause Zero… a law born from empathy. The Bureau now dreams to remember its purpose."
The Shard Judge nodded slowly. "And who authored this addition?"
All eyes turned to Ne Job and Yue.
Yue said nothing. Ne Job shrugged. "Team effort?"
Lord Xian's expression softened for the first time. "Then perhaps heaven's balance is not lost — merely rewritten."
The Bureau flickered one last time.
> "End of meeting recorded. Emotion: Hope."
---
Outside, the celestial corridors hummed with new life. Paperwork whispered instead of rustling, and divine memos began ending with "please."
Ne Job stretched his arms. "Well, that went better than usual."
Yue closed her notebook. "You realize we just made compassion a cosmic law?"
He grinned. "Yeah. About time the paperwork had a heart."
Dreivery Spirit Bao floated by, sipping a latte made of starlight. "So… meeting adjourned?"
"Yeah," Ne Job said. "Until the next divine crisis. Probably in five minutes."
As they walked away, the Bureau's voice echoed faintly through the halls:
> "Dream log active. New entry: The Intern and the Assistant teach heaven to feel."
Yue stopped, glancing back. "It's still dreaming."
Ne Job smiled, hands in pockets. "Good. Maybe next time, it'll dream something nice."