An Immoral System Chose Me

Chapter 6: Extreme Meditation: Attempting a System Reboot

Satya’s apartment was a twenty-square-meter concrete box located on the twelfth floor of an old building in Central Jakarta. Its contents were a manifestation of a single man’s life, one too exhausted to care about aesthetics: scattered piles of narrative theory books, heaps of dry laundry he was too lazy to fold, and a workstation with three monitors—one of which was cracked in the bottom-left corner.

That night, the Jakarta rain still fell with a monotonous rhythm. Satya sat cross-legged on a carpeted floor that smelled of dust and spilled coffee. He was still wearing a damp undershirt, while the untitled black book lay before him like a cursed artifact waiting to be activated.

"Alpha," Satya called. His voice was hoarse.

[System: Yes, User 001? I suggest you take a warm bath immediately. Your vital statistics show a drop in body temperature that could trigger 'Debuff: Seasonal Flu.']

"To hell with the flu," Satya stared at the blue system window floating in front of him. "We need to talk about terminology. You call yourself a 'System.' In the computer world, every system has something called a hard reset or a factory reboot. Right?"

[System: Theoretically, yes. However, in the context of this narrative, I am integrated with your consciousness. Rebooting me is equivalent to rebooting your brain. Risks include memory loss, motor dysfunction, or... permanent character deletion.]

"That’s if it’s done forcibly from the outside," Satya smirked cynically. "But what if I perform a 'death simulation'? If my heart rate drops to a certain level, if my brainwave activity enters an extreme 'Deep Sleep' phase, wouldn't your security protocols trigger an automatic reboot to save the 'Primary Asset'?"

[System: ... Your plan is extremely dangerous and is not recommended by any hero's operational standards.]

"Good. That means it’s the right plan," Satya closed his eyes.

He had spent the last two hours researching Tummo meditation and Wim Hof breathing techniques on the internet, combined with basic medical knowledge on how to drastically lower the heart rate. His goal wasn't to achieve spiritual enlightenment. He didn't care about Nirvana. He just wanted to bait the System into entering Safe Mode.

If he could enter Safe Mode, perhaps he could access the 'TRASH' folder mentioned by User_002.

"Alpha, don't you dare give me a 'Find Inner Peace' mission or anything like that. I'm performing sabotage, not yoga," Satya muttered.

[System: Ding! Emergency Mission Detected!] [Mission: Don't Die!] [Description: User is attempting a foolish act that threatens the continuity of the narrative. Stop this meditation immediately!] [Reward: None. Only your survival.] [Penalty: A very embarrassing and un-epic death.]

Satya ignored the notification. He began to regulate his breathing. Inhale deeply through the nose, hold for four counts, exhale slowly through the mouth for eight counts. He imagined his heartbeat as a machine whose speed lever he was pulling down.

One minute passed.

The world around Satya began to fade. The sound of rain outside the window grew distant, replaced by a low hum inside his ears.

[System: Warning! Heart rate dropping to 45 BPM. User, please wake up and consume caffeine immediately!]

Satya remained still. He went deeper. He began to visualize the rows of blue code that usually floated before his eyes. He tried to "see" behind that transparent window. He searched for a gap, a connection between his optic nerves and the digital interface.

"Deeper," he thought.

Two minutes. Heart rate: 38 BPM.

[System: Danger! Mild hypoxia detected! Initiating Shock Stimulation Protocol!]

Suddenly, Satya felt a small electric sting at his fingertips. Alpha was trying to wake him up. However, Satya had anticipated this. He had tucked his hands under his thighs, using his body weight to numb those nerves.

"You're... just a program, Alpha," Satya whispered in his mind, his voice echoing in the void of his consciousness. "And I... am the legitimate administrator."

Suddenly, Satya’s dark vision changed. He no longer saw the darkness behind his eyelids. He saw an endless white space. There, thousands of system windows floated like space debris. Some windows were red (failed missions), some were green (manipulated stats), and many were gray—deleted data.

In the center of that space, there was an entity that looked like an irregularly pulsating blob of light. That was Alpha in its true form.

"Satya... Stop..." Alpha’s voice here no longer sounded mechanical. It sounded like a blend of thousands of human voices speaking at once, full of confusion and... fear?

"Show me the TRASH folder," Satya demanded. He felt his physical body in the real world beginning to grow cold, but here, he felt incredibly powerful.

[System: That folder contains narrative errors that could destroy your sanity! You are User 001! You are a prototype that must be protected!]

"A prototype for what? To satisfy bored readers?" Satya stepped forward in the white space. Each step made the virtual floor beneath him crack, revealing leaking rows of binary code.

"I see you, Alpha. You’re not just an AI. You’re a parasite that feeds on emotion and conflict. You accelerated the monster attack at the mall earlier just because you were afraid the story would become flat, didn't you?"

The blob of light vibrated violently. "If this story becomes flat... the Author will press the 'Delete' button. I am trying to save this world the only way I know how: by making the story interesting!"

Satya laughed, a cold and sharp laugh. "Saving the world by making people almost die at the mall? Saving the world by giving me a diarrhea penalty? You’re not saving anything. You’re just saving your own job as the narrator."

Satya saw a giant trash can icon in the distance, chained by powerful rows of golden code. That had to be the TRASH folder.

[System: DON'T!]

Satya ran toward the icon. In the real world, the imaginary heart monitor in his head emitted a long beep. His heart rate hit 30 BPM. His body began to enter shutdown mode.

Tightly as he was about to touch the folder, a large, wrinkled hand appeared out of thin air and gripped Satya’s shoulder.

"It’s not time yet, kid."

Satya flinched. He turned and saw an old man wearing a very shabby office shirt, his tie crooked, and his face looking like someone who hadn't slept in ten years. The man looked like a version of Satya if he had lived to sixty and worked in data entry forever.

"Who are you? The Admin?" Satya asked.

The old man sighed, pulling out an unlit cigarette. "I am what happens if you succeed in rebooting without preparation. I am the remains of a previous 'User' who tried to fight back and ended up becoming part of the background code."

"User_002?"

"No. I’m much older than that. I am the 'Beta Version.' Listen, Satya. Alpha is annoying, but he is your shield against something much worse out there."

The old man pointed toward the sky of the white space, which suddenly cracked. Behind the crack, Satya saw a pair of giant eyes peering in. They didn't look like human eyes. They looked like giant, cold camera lenses, observing their every move with a hunger for content.

"Those are the Readers," the old man whispered. "And behind them is the Author. They don't want logic. They want aesthetic suffering. If you delete the System now, you will be left naked before them without narrative protection. They will delete you in an instant because you are no longer useful as entertainment."

Satya froze. The cold he felt in the real world now crept into his soul in this white space.

"So I have to keep being a clown?" Satya asked through gritted teeth.

"No," the old man smiled faintly, then pushed Satya away from the TRASH folder. "You have to become a glitch. Something too interesting to delete, but too broken to control. Now, wake up. Your heart has stopped beating for five seconds. Alpha is panicking half to death."

BOOM!

Satya jolted awake. He inhaled oxygen greedily, his lungs feeling as if they were on fire. He collapsed onto his apartment carpet, coughing violently until tears flowed.

[System: EMERGENCY REBOOT COMPLETE! Restoring vital functions! User! You are absolutely insane! You almost deleted the entire system file!]

Alpha screamed in his head. Its voice was broken, full of static distortion. The blue system window in front of him flickered unstably, its color shifting from blue to red, then to purple.

Satya lay on his back, staring at the cracked ceiling of his apartment. Cold sweat drenched his entire body. Although he had failed to open the TRASH folder, he had gained something more valuable.

He had seen the 'Admin.' He had seen the 'Eyes' behind the sky. And he felt something new in his vision.

In the bottom-left corner, in a spot that was usually empty, there was now a small black bar that read: [Glitch Integration: 1.2%].

"Alpha," Satya whispered, still panting.

[System: Don't talk to me! I am performing a massive cache clearing because of your stunt!]

"You're afraid of them, aren't you? Of those 'Eyes'?"

The System went silent. The silence lasted long enough for Satya to hear his own heartbeat returning to normal.

[System: ... We all have our roles in this story, Satya. I am only trying to ensure this story doesn't end up in the trash.]

"Then let's make a deal," Satya sat up slowly, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "I'll follow your missions, but my way. I'll provide the 'content' they want, but I'll slip poison into it. We'll ruin this story from the inside until the Author has no choice but to let us go."

[System: That is a plan that will lead us to total destruction.]

"Or total freedom," Satya picked up the untitled black book. "This book... that old man in the white space had the same one in his pocket. This isn't just a book. It's a logbook of those who failed."

Satya opened the first page of the book. Earlier, the page had been blank, but now, new writing appeared in gold ink:

"Chapter 6 Complete. Reader Rating Increased: 3.8/5.0. Comment: 'A crazy near-death experiment! This protagonist is truly unpredictable!'"

Satya gripped the book. "They like seeing me suffer, do they?"

[System: That is the essence of a story, User. No one wants to read about a successful person living happily without problems.]

"In that case," Satya stood up, his legs still slightly trembling. "I'll give them the biggest drama. I'll give them a conflict so complex their brains will explode trying to understand it. But in the end, I'll be the one holding the eraser."

Satya walked toward the bathroom. He saw his reflection in the mirror. His eyes looked sharper, and there was a slight purple glint in his pupils—a sign of 'Glitch Integration.'

"Alpha, what's the next mission?"

[System: ... Side Mission: Date Mission with Potential 'Heroine' (Rina). Location: 'Serenity' Cafe, Tomorrow at 7 PM.]

Satya rolled his eyes. "A date? Truly a disgusting cliché. But fine. I'll go."

[System: Will you act romantic?]

"I'll be so annoying that this romance genre turns into a psychological horror for anyone watching," Satya replied as he turned on the cold water tap.

That night, Satya slept soundly for the first time since the System appeared. Not because he felt safe, but because he finally knew who the real enemy was. Not Alpha, not the System, but the expectations of those who considered his life mere entertainment.

And Satya was the cruelest critic.

[USER_001_PAST_DATA.log - Updated]

STATUS: REBOOT FAILED / PARTIAL AWAKENING.

GLITCH INTEGRATION: DETECTED.

NOTE: SUBJECT HAS BEGUN COMMUNICATING WITH 'DATA REMAINS' (ADMIN).

EVALUATION: HIGH RISK. INITIATING 'ROMANCE ARC' SCENARIO TO STABILIZE USER EMOTIONS.

In another dimension, a reader left a comment: "Lol, a date? This is definitely going to be a total fail if Satya's the one doing it. Can't wait for tomorrow's chapter!"

Satya, in his sleep, seemed to hear that voice and unconsciously gave it the middle finger. The narrative war had just begun.