Arthur Finch considered himself a connoisseur of digital detritus. His official title, "Content Integrity Specialist" for a third-party moderation service, was a hilariously corporate euphemism for "guy who wades through the internet's septic tank so you don't have to." His unofficial online persona, "Dr. Deadpan," was a slightly more accurate reflection of his soul – a barren, sarcastic landscape where hope went to die, usually after tripping over a poorly photoshopped image of a cat demanding a cheeseburger.
The 7:00 AM alarm, a synthesized sigh that perfectly mirrored his own internal state, echoed not from a physical device but from the auditory implants nestled behind his ears. He blinked, and his bedroom wall shimmered into life, an augmented reality overlay displaying the day's curated misery: news headlines predicting societal collapse in five different flavors, a stock market graph that looked like an ECG of a particularly stressed squirrel, and a notification that his auto-dispensed coffee was, once again, "brewing with sub-optimal enthusiasm."
"Just another Tuesday in the digital circus," Arthur muttered, swinging his legs out of bed. His AR lenses, integrated into his contact lenses, flickered, overlaying his vision with a faint, almost imperceptible grid. He'd been noticing that more often lately – tiny visual hiccups, like the world was buffering. Probably just needed a firmware update, or maybe the city's data-stream was congested again.
He shuffled to the kitchen, the AR overlay dutifully tracking his movement, projecting a motivational kitten poster onto his refrigerator that chirped, "Hang in there!" Arthur mentally swiped it into the digital trash. The coffee, when it finally dripped into his mug, tasted like disappointment and burnt chicory. Standard.
His morning ritual involved scrolling through the "Fresh Hell" feed – a custom-curated nightmare of viral trends, burgeoning conspiracy theories, and the kind of content that made him question humanity's collective IQ. Today's special: a challenge involving people trying to balance increasingly unlikely objects on their sleeping pets, and a heated online debate about whether a blurry photo from a national park was Bigfoot or just a very hairy hiker with poor posture.
"Idiots," Dr. Deadpan typed into a comment section, his fingers flying across a projected keyboard. "It's clearly a bear in a badly-fitting toupee. Get your cryptids straight." He hit send, a small, bitter smile playing on his lips. It was the closest thing to joy he usually experienced before 9 AM.
As he was about to log into his work queue – bracing himself for the inevitable tide of flagged videos featuring questionable life hacks and even more questionable political rants – his vision stuttered. The motivational kitten he'd deleted flickered back onto the fridge for a split second, its eyes now glowing an unsettling red, before vanishing.
"Okay, that's new," Arthur mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "Definitely need to run a diagnostic on these lenses."
He glanced out his apartment window, a habit born more from a desire to confirm the outside world still existed than any actual interest in the view. His 17th-floor apartment overlooked a typically bustling, if slightly grimy, cityscape. Flying delivery drones zipped between buildings like metallic insects, AR advertisements shimmered on every available surface, and below, the usual river of humanity flowed along the sidewalks.
Then he saw it.
Streaking across the pale morning sky, leaving a faint, pixelated rainbow trail, was… a cat. A grey, cartoonish cat with the body of a Pop-Tart, to be precise. It was Nyan Cat. Not an AR projection, not a cleverly designed drone. This thing had a three-dimensional presence, a weirdly tangible quality despite its blocky, 8-bit aesthetic. And the rainbow it trailed smelled faintly, but unmistakably, of burnt toast.
Arthur blinked. Hard. He tapped the side of his head, trying to reset his AR lenses. "System diagnostic, run full spectrum," he commanded.
No anomalies detected, a calm, synthesized voice replied in his ear.
He looked back out the window. Nyan Cat was still there, now doing a loop-the-loop around the spire of the old Kellington Building, its repetitive, synthesized theme song a faint, maddening jingle carried on the wind.
"Right," Arthur said to the empty room. "Either I'm having a stroke, or someone's pulled off the most elaborate, pointless, and frankly, annoying prank in human history." He leaned closer to the window, his breath fogging the glass. The burnt toast smell was stronger now. This wasn't a projection. He could feel it, a weird thrum in the air, like static electricity mixed with existential dread.
His comm implant buzzed. It was a priority alert from his news feed aggregator. He swiped it open in his AR display.
BREAKING: Unexplained Phenomena Reported Globally. Authorities Baffled.
Underneath the headline, a chaotic montage of user-generated videos began to play. A grainy clip from Tokyo showed what looked suspiciously like a giant, rubbery Gamera, albeit one seemingly made of poorly rendered polygons, clumsily wading through a park. Another from London featured a flock of "Longcat" creatures, impossibly elongated felines, wrapped around Nelson's Column. From somewhere in rural America, a shaky video depicted a group of bewildered farmers staring as a field of corn spontaneously rearranged itself into the "Loss" comic strip.
Arthur sank into his chair, the lukewarm coffee forgotten in his hand. This wasn't a prank. This wasn't a localized AR hack. This was… this was happening. The internet was leaking.
His work console pinged, displaying an urgent internal memo from "Content Integrity Services": All moderators, report to emergency virtual briefing. High influx of anomalous content. Exercise extreme caution.
"No kidding," Arthur muttered, his mind reeling. He tried to process it. Memes. Literal, physical memes. It was the stupidest, most terrifying thing he'd ever encountered.
He flicked through more news channels, each one a fresh wave of bewildered anchors and increasingly bizarre footage. Then, one particular livestream caught his eye. It was from a channel he usually avoided like a digital plague: "TruthSeeker_Bella's Bunker of Revelations." The vlogger, Bella Thorne – or whatever her real name was – was a whirlwind of frantic energy, wide eyes, and tinfoil-hat-adjacent theories. Usually, she was ranting about chemtrails causing sentient garden gnomes or how pigeons were government surveillance drones (a theory Arthur had to admit had a certain internal logic).
But today, Bella wasn't just ranting. She was standing in what looked like a suburban street, her phone camera shaking violently. Behind her, a pack of "Doge" Shiba Inus – dozens of them, all with the same vacant, slightly concerned expression, muttering "much wow," "very chaos," "such concern" in synthesized voices – were gleefully chasing terrified postal workers and systematically dismantling a garden gnome (ironically).
"They're REAL!" Bella shrieked into her camera, her voice cracking. "I TOLD YOU! The memetic incursions have begun! The digital consciousness is breaching the veil! This is Stage One of the Great Awakening, or possibly the Algorithmic Apocalypse! I haven't decided which yet, but it's DEFINITELY something!"
Arthur stared. For once, the manic energy in Bella's eyes wasn't just conspiracy-fueled delusion. It was… recognition. She was describing the impossible, but she was describing it accurately. The Doges behind her were undeniably, absurdly real, their barks a chorus of "wow."
He, Dr. Deadpan, the professional debunker, the man whose entire career was built on sifting fact from fiction, felt a cold knot form in his stomach. The world had officially stopped making sense. And the most annoying, consistently wrong person on the internet might, just might, be the only one who wasn't entirely surprised.
WTF, indeed.