Every system has someone whose job is to keep it from collapsing. Someone who watches the failures before they cascade, patches the cracks before you ever feel them, and holds the line so the rest of us can go on believing things are stable. Dr. Marcus Virel has been doing that job for a very long time. He earned his doctorate in control systems engineering. He does not write code the way Mara does. He understands something harder: how entire systems hold together, and what h

The system has no interest in someone moving through life on autopilot: consuming, complying, repeating. That person requires no maintenance. No correction. No attention whatsoever. It is only when you begin to stir that anything changes.