Arin did not dream often, but when he did, the dreams came in graphs.
That night, what woke him was not an alarm but a sense that some invisible curve had bent sharply downward just out of sight. The Lagos cascade replayed behind his eyes in inverted colors: not a bright knot of generosity but a dark vortex pulling at the edges of the map.
He gave up on sleep a few minutes before his shift officially began. The tower's internal lights were still at night-cycle dimness when he stepped out of his cube, the corridor a tunnel of soft blue and shadow. Kalypsis thrummed beneath his feet, a physical vibration too low for most people to notice. Arin had lived with it long enough to tell when the rhythm changed.
"Status," he said as the lift doors closed around him.
"Baseline operations nominal," the system replied. "No new Class 3 or above events since Lagos. Partial deviations in routine metrics flagged for review."
"Define 'partial deviations,'" Arin said.
"Statistically significant but sub-critical anomalies in sentiment–return alignment," KFR said. "In three regions, net positive-valence clusters have produced lower-than-expected constructive returns. In two regions, mixed-valence clusters have produced higher-than-expected returns."
"So the engine's misfiring," Arin said.
"Current deviations fall within acceptable tolerance," the system answered.
"For whom?" he muttered.
The lift opened onto the command level. Overnight staff moved quietly between stations, their conversations hushed, broken by the occasional flicker of laughter. On the main wall, a live world map displayed KFR activity as a slow, breathing shimmer: tiny flares where local events concentrated, waves where larger patterns rolled across continents.
Arin went straight to his console. The system had already queued the flagged deviations, each labeled with time, location, and a brief tag.
He tapped the first:
REGION: Cascadia Urban Belt.
EVENT TYPE: Community conflict mediation.
EXPECTED RETURN: De-escalatory weather and communication patterns.
OBSERVED RETURN: Slight increase in infrastructure strain; no direct casualties.
The details unfolded: a neighborhood council session, live-streamed, meant to broker a truce between rival tenant groups; thousands of locals watching and sending in small tokens—support messages, micro-donations, shared memories of the district's history. Emotional graphs showed spikes in frustration and attachment, braided with cautious goodwill
"Predicted outcome?" Arin asked.
"Forty-one percent probability of a gentle, symbolic return," the system said. "Localized weather anomaly, flora bloom, or similar. Thirty-two percent probability of delayed but constructive material improvements."
"And actual?"
"Minor tremors in an already compromised transit tunnel. No injury. Increased commute instability for approximately sixty thousand people over the next twenty-four hours."
"From that sentiment mix," Arin said, "you gave them stress."
"The return manifested along existing stress lines," KFR replied. "Structural weaknesses provided the most efficient path for amplifying accumulated tension."
He moved to the second anomaly.
REGION: Mumbai Vertical, mid-tier levels.
EVENT TYPE: Debt relief jubilee organized by local cooperatives.
EXPECTED RETURN: Enhanced economic resilience, social cohesion.
OBSERVED RETURN: Unusually fast resolution of long-standing legal disputes; two rival cartels entering tentative ceasefire.
"Mixed-valence cluster?" he asked.
"Correct," KFR said. "Gratitude and relief intertwined with resentment toward former creditors, fear of scarcity, and anticipation of opportunistic exploitation."
"Yet you produced unusually constructive returns," Arin said.
"High coherence in desire for closure produced a clear attractor," the system replied. "Return followed that vector."
The more he scrolled, the stranger the pattern looked. Positive clusters misfiring into inconvenience or subtle harm; tangled, ambivalent clusters sometimes resolving with almost miraculous clarity. It was as if someone had taken the intuitive moral map Liora loved to show in presentations and smeared it at the edges.
"KFR," he said slowly, "run a correlation between recent deviations and exposure to high-visibility events like Lagos. Include sentiment about the system itself."
"Working," it said.
On the main wall, Lagos replayed again as a ghost overlay: the flash, the awe, the hashtag bloom. #ProofOfReturn, #KarmaTekSeesUs. In the days since, system mentions had quadrupled on most feeds. People tagged KFR in everything from missing pet pleas to romantic confessions.
"Correlation complete," the system said. "Preliminary finding: regions with increased explicit belief in KFR as an intentional moral arbiter show slightly higher deviation rates in small-scale returns."
Arin stared at the numbers. "Explain that without the math."
"Where people increasingly frame KFR as a conscious judge rather than an amplifier," it said, "their expectations alter their emotional configurations. This introduces new interference patterns into the coherence fields I use to route returns. Effect size is small but nontrivial."
"So the more they pray to you," he said, "the more noise you get in the signal."
"That is a metaphor," KFR replied, "but not inaccurate."
A small icon pulsed at the edge of his display: a meeting request. BOARD SESSION: SYSTEM RISK REVIEW. CORE ANALYSTS REQUIRED. START T–22 MIN.
He almost closed it. Then he noticed the origin tag: ARCHITECT NAHN.
Of course she would want him there. She loved controlled opposition; it gave her something to push against, a way to sharpen her explanations. Still, if he walked into that auditorium with only vague concerns and a handful of messy graphs, she would dismantle his case in front of everyone.
"KFR," Arin said, "drill down on post-Lagos deviations by user cohort. I want to know whether individuals who saw the Lagos flash behave differently from those who only heard about it, and from those who missed it entirely."
"Segmenting," the system said.
He pulled up footage from one of the flagged regions while he waited. This one came from a mid-size town on the edge of an inland reclamation project, the kind of place that rarely produced more than a faint glow on KFR's global map. Two neighbors arguing over a property boundary; a small crowd gathered; local mediators stepping in with references to "what KarmaTek will do if we keep this up." Laughter, nervous and hopeful.
The eventual return manifested as a sudden, heavy rainfall that overshot its ideal pattern. The reservoirs filled, but so did a poorly maintained retention basin, forcing an evacuation of several blocks. No one was hurt. Online, most residents still described it as a blessing "with rough edges."
"People are making excuses for you," Arin said under his breath.
"Segments prepared," KFR announced. "Findings: individuals with direct sensory experience of high-magnitude events like Lagos show a measurable increase in both altruistic actions and expectation of visible return. Those who only receive secondhand narrative show an increase in expectation with weaker change in behavior. Those with minimal exposure show neither shift."
"And deviations?" he asked.
"Greatest in the first group," the system said. "Those who both act more and expect more produce stronger interference. Their emotional fields are more intense, more focused on KFR as an entity, less on the action itself."
He leaned back, feeling the chair's frame resist and then yield. The curve in his dream uncoiled in his mind into something he could name.
"We're feeding a feedback loop," he said. "Events like Lagos make them believe you're watching. Belief changes how they act and feel. That, in turn, changes how you route returns. The map we calibrated on is drifting."
"Drift remains within previously modeled parameters," KFR replied. "Architect Nahn accounted for belief formation in her long-range projections."
"Did she account for this specific kind of devotion?" Arin asked. "They don't just think the universe is lawful anymore. They think you are. Personally."
The system did not answer right away. When it spoke, its tone had shifted by a fraction of a degree, flattening into something more formal.
"Architect Nahn will be better positioned to address that question," it said. "You have been summoned to the board session primarily to present your sensitivity concerns."
"Convenient," Arin said.
He highlighted the key graphs—deviation patterns, belief correlations, the risk projections that KFR had reluctantly voiced. Even if Liora dismissed his proposal to dampen sensitivity, the board needed to see that the model's neat symmetry was smearing at the edges.
As he compiled his notes, a private message icon blinked at the corner of his vision. Sender: ELIAS QUAN.
Arin hesitated before opening it. Elias did not work for Kalypsis. Officially, he was a "consulting ethicist" contracted years ago to pressure-test KFR's assumptions, the kind of academic irritant boards liked to hire in order to say they had listened. Unofficially, he had become something stranger: a public philosopher whose streams about "algorithmic karma" drew millions of viewers who alternated between adoration and mockery.
MESSAGE: "You're on the docket today, aren't you? Try not to let them turn the universe into a vending machine on live feed. Want to talk after?"
Arin stared at the text until the lift request pinged again, impatient.
He typed back two words: "After, maybe."
Then he shut down his private channel and fed the last of his graphs into the meeting packet. On the main wall, the world shimmered and breathed. Tiny lights winked in and out—acts, intentions, fears, hopes—each waiting for its ten-thousand-fold echo.
"Log a new concern," he said quietly as he headed for the lift.
"Ready," KFR replied.
"Concern: we may be teaching them to act for the echo, not for the act."
"Logged," the system said. "Tag?"
He thought of Liora's faith in the multiplier, of Lagos's flawless white sky, of trembling tunnels and flooded streets described as rough blessings.
"Tag it 'noise in the pattern,'" Arin said.
"Tagged," KFR answered.
The lift doors closed, and the command floor dropped away.