The house was quiet as a grave. Three days, Reuben stalked the empty rooms, the only sound the reverberations of Emily's ultimatum and the hurt silence of Miriam. He tried to work, to get lost in the world map of the System, but the data streams were so static. The humming of the servers was a travesty of the life that once filled the home. He'd chosen, and the price was a hollowness so profound it was as though a new organ had grown in his chest, one that was made entirely of absence.
It was this split state that the alert came in. Not the usual, detached warning of a pathogen, but a shrieking, multi-level alert from the Human Conflict Module.
[CATASTROPHIC SOCIETAL COLLAPSE: DANFORD REFUGEE CAMP]
[IMMINENT PUBLIC HEALTH DISASTER]
[TRIGGER: RESOURCE SCARCITY -> CIVIL UNREST ->
