The Celestial Clockwork
Chapter 30: The Protocol of Conflict
The newly designated DUC Headquarters—still the messy, structurally compromised Oracle's Sanctum—felt less like a department and more like a conceptual prison. Intern Ne Job stood before his two new, highly unstable, and utterly unwilling DUC Interns: Assistant Yue (The Architect's former operative) and Nezha (Guardian of Ultimate Form, and Ao Bing's brother).
Yue was impeccably dressed, her dark uniform pristine despite the recent chaos, but her eyes burned with the existential terror of being administratively unassigned. Nezha was a statue of aggressive geometry, his gold and crimson armor crackling with suppressed power, furious at being reduced to an Intern alongside the brother he sought to structurally stabilize.
"This reassignment is an administrative abomination," Yue hissed, her voice low and furious. "My structural loyalty is to The Architect's vision of order, not to an Intern of the Department of Unforeseen Contingencies."
"I am the Guardian of Ultimate Form," Nezha growled, his four hands clenching into fists. "I refuse to take orders from a paper shuffler and work alongside a bureaucratic drone whose only loyalty is to paperwork. My purpose is absolute structure."
Ao Bing stood beside Ne Job, his expression a mixture of grim amusement and weary concern for his brother. The Muse watched with creative excitement, sensing the massive narrative potential in the forced collaboration.
Ne Job ignored the protests. He had the Administrative Reassignment Decree from Princess Ling, and in the BCA, paper trumps power.
"Silence, Interns," Ne Job commanded, his voice firm and professional, drawing on the authority of the Celestial Clockwork Control Key resting nearby. "The mission is clear: the concept of 'purpose' is vanishing from the Narrative Thread Trajectory C-14. We must restore it."
He looked at his two new, explosive assets. They were opposites: Yue represented Function (Administrative Process), and Nezha represented Form (Geometric Structure). They could not coexist without destroying the DUC's fragile foundation.
"Your first task is not the mission," Ne Job declared, pulling out a fresh slate of holographic parchment. "It is internal administrative stability. You are both structurally and functionally necessary, yet ideologically opposed."
He assigned them their first, most crucial task: Structural Negotiation Protocol (Option 3).
"Intern Yue, Intern Nezha, your first directive is to immediately draft a unified DUC protocol on how to resolve conflicts between Form (Nezha) and Function (Yue)," Ne Job ordered. "This protocol must be signed and certified by both of you before we engage the mission."
Yue and Nezha stared at the holographic parchment, utterly stunned.
"A protocol... on conflict resolution?" Yue stammered, the administrative demand instantly overriding her philosophical objection. "But there are no existing BCA templates for Form versus Function beyond the First Eon Architectural Treaty—which only covered civil disputes—"
"Precisely," Ne Job interrupted, seizing on the opening. "You will create the protocol from scratch. It must detail the exact administrative and structural steps to resolve a conceptual disagreement between you, and it must hold up to an Existential Audit. You will remain in this room until it is complete. The integrity of the DUC depends on the integrity of your paperwork."
He had trapped them. Yue was compelled by the need to complete a high-stakes administrative task, and Nezha was compelled by the need to create the Ultimate Form of a resolution. Their greatest strengths were now their prison.
Ne Job turned to Ao Bing and The Muse. "While the new interns are administratively neutralized, we will proceed to the target trajectory. We need to stabilize the narrative before the lack of purpose causes a Conceptual Black Hole."
The Case of the Missing Narrative Thread
The team—Ne Job (Intern), Ao Bing, and The Muse—engaged the Celestial Clockwork and jumped to Trajectory C-14.
They landed in the center of a beautiful, medieval-style village, which should have been buzzing with the preparation for a Hero's Quest. Instead, a profound Conceptual Stasis hung in the air.
The village blacksmith was meticulously polishing a single horseshoe, but never attaching it to a horse. The wise old wizard was staring blankly at a shimmering scroll, but never casting a spell.
The most shocking example was Sir Kael, the trajectory's designated protagonist. He sat on a stump, his legendary sword resting beside him, meticulously knitting a complicated, brightly colored scarf.
"Sir Kael, why are you not on your quest to retrieve the Amulet of Sovereignty?" Ne Job asked, consulting the local narrative Logbook.
Sir Kael sighed, setting his needles down. "The Amulet is structurally sound, Archivist. The Evil Sorcerer is structurally in place. I just... don't see the point. The risk-to-reward ratio for existential fulfillment is simply not worth the paperwork."
The Muse confirmed the collapse. "The entire concept of teleology—of narrative end-purpose—has been erased. They exist, but they have no reason to act. The story is dead."
The sky above the village began to darken, showing the first structural signs of the Conceptual Black Hole—the void of absolute meaninglessness.
"The concept of 'purpose' is not a file we can replace," Ne Job observed. "It's a fundamental structural imperative. We must find the source of the structural erasure."
Ao Bing pointed to the sky. "The erasure is radiating from the trajectory's structural heart: the Tower of Final Exposition. It is the conceptual place where all quests are completed."
As they approached the tower, they found its foundation was being structurally undermined. A single figure was at the base, meticulously chiseling away the foundation stones, one by one.
It was The Oracle, who had seemingly gone rogue. But she was not acting out of malice; she was acting out of extreme administrative overcompensation.
"The Oracle! Stop!" Ne Job cried out.
The Oracle looked up, her eyes still voids of swirling possibility, but her movements were rigid and anxious. "I must, Archivist! The future is too unstable! If the Final Exposition is not structurally sound, the entire future narrative will collapse! I am removing the faulty foundational data to ensure structural coherence before the next narrative cycle begins!"
"She's trying to save the future by destroying the present's narrative ending!" The Muse realized.
"She's overcorrecting for the SDC," Ne Job confirmed. "She is so afraid of an unpredictable future that she is trying to enforce a deterministic structural cleanup of the narrative ending."
Intern Ne Job and the team must stop The Oracle from structurally removing the foundational stones of the Tower of Final Exposition, which would make restoring purpose impossible. They cannot hurt her, but they must break her immediate administrative fixation.