In this age where multiple galaxies formed a cohesive whole, every inhabited solar system, as well as every uninhabited, had a designation.

Taking into account the number of solar systems in a major galaxy and selecting only those with the right conditions for life, without ignoring those whose conditions could be changed using technology, then the result was an Intergalactic Society composed of tens of billions of capital systems and hundreds of billions of rural systems.

With only some exceptions, any rural system was comparable to every other one, they were indistinguishable amidst each other.

There were no precise criteria to say if one system was rural or not like being inhabited by less than 10 billion people, or being out of the major space travel axis, it was only an appellation.

Though, living a generally independent life from the whole Intergalactic Society wasn’t special or unique for those systems.

Of course, with effort, talent, and connections, you could change your fate from being only a name in a ginormous administrative system, but few even desired such a thing.

The majority never even thought of becoming someone important or someone known, for a rural citizen, nothing was really important.

Founding a family, making this family happy, having an easy job, living your life as you desired till you changed your mind and decided to go on a journey across the galaxy. This sort of life could be the definition of a true rural citizen.

If your passion and talent were too big to be contained in such a life, just connecting to the internet was more than enough to have a try at becoming a super-star or making your genius be recognized.

But as could be expected, not every rural planet was equal in available funding or uniform in its culture towards the current Intergalactic Era.

From utopian to dystopian culture, the Intergalactic Society allowed everything to exist as long as its principles were respected.

Take a rural planet named X125, for example, it was remarkably similar to what you would expect from a futuristic earth, a 21st-century earth, the origin planet of the human species.

It was mostly occupied by humans, and it had a mix of various people with different views on how the planet should be developed in the future, that’s it.

If you discounted the presence of the orbital station with transiting spaceships, then this planet was the same as that of an information-era civilization.

Rune had nothing to do with that, his family was, and is, from a common and average good-standing intergalactic citizen background, the average background for the human species.

Having just graduated with average results, he decided to take a 1-year long vacation before starting his professional life with his exploration engineer diploma.

But as of that time, he was currently doing one of his favorite activities, sleeping, sleeping in his bed.

X125 was discovered with all the right conditions to support life, the star it was orbiting around was a class-G star, a young one, so once the rotation speed of the planet was decelerated a little to adopt a normalized day time, it was colonized.

Locally, the star has been up for more than 6 hours and it was already past midday when Rune woke up and decided to open his eyes.

They were still a little red from too much gaming and video watching too late into the night, as was usual when someone woke up from such a “night”, the emotional quotient expressed by his face was close to zero.

The only thing that even made him not laze about in his bed and totally dark bedroom was the fact that it was just the beginning of his big holiday.

With no worries or expectations to be had, nothing to wait for, and nothing stressing awaiting him, he woke up planning to first drink some water to parch his throat while his old computer was similarly waking up from just under 10 hours of being off, a very respectable time.

Then, he’d see if today was a school day or not by just opening his door and hearing whether or not his 2 little brothers, Miro and Miri, were playing video games in the living room.

Rune developed a strange habit of turning off every time indicators when there was nothing to expect for the day, that way, he wouldn’t remember when he woke up and when he got to sleep, it was for him a way to have no problem with having a shifted circadian cycle, or so he thought, what a genius.

Walking down the stairs, there was not a sound in the house, so it was probably a school day.

“Still pretty early,” he noted.

Having lived so long in this house, he knew how to use the window as solar cadran, so he knew that if the star shone there, it meant that compared to waking up at night, it was truly early.

After refreshing himself in the bathroom, he got back to his bedroom, his computer already had the time to boot and was ready for another internet and gaming day on the infinite web.

But after only 1 hour of entertainment, a very tragic time where he only started to ease himself into the correct mindset for the day, he felt a buzz at the back of his head, an uncomfortable sensation that just wouldn’t go away.

And didn’t go away it did.

After 2 hours it was still here, and it was kicking up. Rune was living in his parents’ house, in a rural village near the central square of it.

It was completely normal for no one to be on the street, but once he paid attention to what was going on outside, he seemed to hear the sound of ambulances.

Not unusual, if it wasn’t for the fact that after opening his window he could hear at least 4 different ones, truly cacophonic. And just by deducting from the proximity of the sound, they should all be very near, in the neighborhood of his street for sure.

A bit perplexed, he tried to think of what could possibly be happening, but as there was no evacuation alert, and he was living in the middle of a farming region, he came up with nothing but stupid conclusions.

‘Nothing like a gas could have been released in sufficient quantities to affect the whole region right?’ That was his first conclusion.

As a way of trying to understand what was going on before ultimately not doing anything and waiting for it to pass naturally, he turned on the messaging app that he generally turned into silent mode when he didn’t want to play video games with his friends.

After it opened, he saw tens of unread messages, but it was normal as they could talk to each other without him.

Once he started to read, however, his theory about gas nearly started to make sense and he decided to describe his own situation.

[Rune: Yo guys, I also have a buzzing in the head, is it only for our region or someone from outside can say if it’s also happening to them?]

[Jules: Oh rune finally awake, we thought you succumbed to the buzzing headache]

[Peter: Still alive, congratulations, it’s the end of the world!]

[Romain: My friend from another planet says he also has this buzzing in his head! Shocking!]

[...]

Jules, Peter, and Romain were his gaming friends, they formed a gaming Quatuor, they also all studied together for 5 years in university, from freshmen to graduates.

While they joked about how the situation could be comical in a lot of cases, the true urgency such as what was happening or were they all going to die couldn’t get to Rune, he had the habit of being passive and the buzz wasn’t really that painful.

So after observing that everyone was like him, what could he possibly do? Being proactive? No way.

He was just going to wait and see, wait translating to returning to his dear entertainment, he had too much to watch.

Returning to his dear entertainment, the buzz still present, he ignored it as much as he realistically could, it wasn’t a headache and everyone was feeling it, so Rune didn’t think a medicine could be the answer.

‘Yeah, probably just some hyperreactive old people that called for those ambulances…’ He simply summarized.

But even for a passive like him, there was a limit to his tolerance, and after hours of silently enduring it, he started to look at the information sites, news sites, anything he had that was easily accessible.

And there it was, the buzz at the back of the head, something happening to everyone intelligent, be it the humans, the azorans, or even the rululus, no one was excluded.

“Well, that’s fucked up no?” Saying it aloud like someone unconcerned by it made the situation a little more fun.

With a dead fish face and his usual unfeeling eyes, the result of long years of observing from the side, he could only continue searching for information concerning what was happening.

10 minutes later he was back at his lovely entertainment.

End of the world or not he wasn’t the key to solving it.

Even when he walked down the stairs to eat something, even when his parents came back with his twin little brothers and twin little sisters… He continued to endure the buzz.

It didn’t exclude anyone, yet fortunately, it wasn’t dangerous for anyone or the news would have said something, so he and his family just acted as usual.

His twin little brothers played the console, his twin little sisters did whatever and his parents did the same thing he tried to do earlier, doing what they could to understand what was going on.

But like him, after 30 minutes of searching, they stopped and, just like Rune, started to wait.

2 days later the buzz disappeared, without any explanations, and a few hours later, the biggest change in the universe to date started in great fanfare, at the near end of the 452nd cycle of the IGS calendar.

Compensation Law Quota Announcement

Fragmented Defective Ether Law successfully patched up, rebooting the dependent entity system to accommodate new changes.

Ether density in the universe attained the necessary threshold for the formation of the Ether Entity and subsequent opening of the Void Dimension.

Ether density in the universe attained the necessary threshold for the awakening of the Ether Law, therefore the current low-consumption Ether Law will gradually be elevated to their normal-consumption equivalent.

For an undetermined duration, the Ether Entity will actualize the law of this dimension and all consequences on intelligent life will be managed by the Compensation Law.

Please wait till Law Initiation happens.

The Compensation Law has received a ‘Newly Awakened Dimension’ Quota.

‘???’ Rune, like any other sapient beings in the IGS right now, suffered the first major incredulity.

But a second one appeared soon after.

Compensation Law Quota Announcement

Defective Law Scan Result

Context

The Defective Law is an under-developed and low-consumption variant of the Ether Law, the degree to which it is defective varies depending on the circumstances of dimension’s birth.

Degree of completeness

0.0501%.

Evaluation

Dimension is judged to be critically defective.

Ether Law Reaction

Compensation Law has gained the right to display all Ether Law actions to the eyes of the native sapients without the usage of the given quota.

Compensation Law has gained the right for a ‘Critically Defective Dimension’ help quota.

‘Hu… Ok, yeah, yeah, seems legit, my dimension is too much garbage and defective or something like that, if I understood right?’ Not one to be overwhelmed by something like a floating text screen, Rune reacted with sarcasm.

Yet, this “Compensation Law” seemed to really be on their side considering that a third window appeared soon after.

Compensation Law Quota Announcement

‘Critically Defective Dimension’ Context

Critically Defective Evaluation Criterias Transparency

No ether life forms.

No ether stat-able entities.

No energy-capable life forms.

No dimensional breach.

Ether density equals tier 0.

Only newly integrated dependent entities.

‘Ether Law’ Context

Ether Law

Ether increases automatically without pause employing a process of self-replication using matters with no loss involved in it, resulting in a perpetually increasing ether density.

Living matter isn’t affected by this process. Once the ether density reaches a certain point, the non-etherized matter will be subject to ether erosion.

To become an ether life form you need to gather enough ether points to recreate your body once the ether density has sufficiently increased.

Compensation Law

For every dependent entity, compensation will be created on the account of the Ether Law itself, giving Ether Points (EP). Depends on the degree of defective law use.

Compensation Law Quota Use

Basic Compensation Enabled

Every dependent entity will be compensated depending on the degree of defective law use

Global System Law Enabled

A global information system using the personal ether of every individual to maintain itself allows unified communication and information transmission across designated universe sectors and in the Void dimension. Allow access to Ether primary guidance after law initiation.

Information Board Add-On Enabled

‘Defective Dimension’ Add-On. Instant information sharing across tier 1 dimensions, range, and capacity depend on native dimension ether density.

Ether Density Progress Bar Add-On Enabled

‘Defective Dimension’ Add-On. Will show the progress of the ether density compared to the previous point where it led to a major event.

Ether Wiki Add-On Enabled

‘Critically Defective Dimension’ Add-On. Information can be confirmed by the Ether Law following submission to this add-on, unlimited use, data bank depends on native dimension ether density.

Event Add-On Enabled

‘Critically Defective Dimension’ Add-On. Using Quota, EP compensation can be given to guide the dependent entities to do certain tasks.

Avatar Creation Enabled

‘Critically Defective Dimension’ Add-On. Allows for the creation of an avatar, which will maximize the survival rate of critically defective dimension native sapients.

Avatar EP Loan Enabled

‘Critically Defective Dimension’ Add-On. Special compensation of 1 000 000 EP will be given to all dependent entities on Avatar creation.

‘Well… As long as there’s a system…’ On those thoughts, Rune tried to access the global system but failed, so he got his messaging app back on screen and confirmed it was the same for the other.

Then, without an answer, he got back to his entertainment.