Three years since Mary died. Not peacefully—unless you count buffering eternally.
She died laughing. Literally.
The trigger? Me, in my underwear and a toaster crown, dancing at a bus stop to "We Are the Champions" (2009 upload). You can hear her wheezing, "Don't you dare stop!" in the background.
Cause of death: cardiac arrest. Contributing factor: 'acute, undiluted cringe.'
For the anniversary, I sought symmetry. To see if the universe noticed.
First, a synthetic red wig from "Soul & USB."
I locked my triple-bolted door, stripped to my Wi-Fi-reactive unicorn briefs, and fired up an ancient webcam via XP emulator. Stream title: "MRI-47: The Dead Pink Shadow."
I danced, stiff as a Start Menu. The wig flew into my printer, which whirred to life, spitting out a photo from my first date with Mary—us before graffiti reading "Site Temporarily Unavailable."
The stream lagged; a prompt asked every eleven seconds if I wanted to terminate. "YES!" I screamed, still dancing.
Chat erupted. "An affront to life." "Are you crying or laughing?" Then, a user claiming to be Mary's ghost posted sparkling icons before vanishing.
At minute seven, the internet died for the whole block.
Silence. I stood panting in the dark, lit only by my glowing briefs.
The compulsion needed a liturgy.
By dawn, I bought a woman's plaid shoulder bag—a sacred prop. At the bakery, I whispered for "a loaf and a little tomato for two." The cashier's stare was my applause.
I planted a pink flag at Mary's grave: "She Would Want You To Stop." A stage direction I ignored.
Home. Two places set. I talked to the empty chair. "Approve, Mary? Or lecture about sugar?"
The kitchen was silent. But in my head, her sigh was crystal: "James… have you completely lost it?"
"Perhaps," I answered. If lost, the next act needed a proper stage.
I booked Room 66.6 at the "Rotten Lotus" hotel—a space under a bridge, its entrance through a gutted printer's paper tray. I booked it for two: James and Maria Sunderland. The lie was now a database fact.
The clerk, in a hat of frayed ethernet cables, asked, "Will she be arriving?"
"She's already here. Invisible to low-bandwidth connections."
He handed me a key made from a warm, wiped hard drive shell.
I streamed at the hour when recommendation ghosts stir. Title: "LIVE: DANCING WITH THE SEEN." Password: Mary's last text. Candles were BIOS-chip wax.
Viewers trickled in. One asked if I felt her presence. Another saw a silhouette in my haunted eyes.
At critical mass, I stripped to the glowing briefs. I moved—a memory propagating over Wi-Fi. My wig flew off. And hung. In the air for seven terrible seconds.
Chat dissolved into glossolalia. A user typed that her router's LEDs wept "ACCESS DENIED."
The door exploded. The administrator screamed I'd violated Rule #69: a ban on spectacular grief and summoning ghosts via USB. Behind him loomed residents: a woman with a Neopets avatar face, a man with mice for hands, a glitchy child-entity.
"You're buffering our shared psychosis!" Mouse-hands clicked.
"My trauma is stuck at 480p!" the face hissed.
I gestured to the glitchy child. "And his excuse? He's rendering at five polygons."
"You violate the Terms of Service!" the administrator shrieked. "I'll have you de-platformed!"
"Fine! But I'm taking my engagement metrics!"
I ended the stream with a jab. "Strategic pivot to a new demographic."
I pushed past. The glitchy child derezzed with a pop of sad data.
I fled on a neon scooter, its wheels screeching like a dying modem. Seven minutes later, I crashed at Bus Stop #37. The origin point.
The air was thick with evaporated laughter. Her voice lived here: "Don't you dare stop!"
The ritual. I lashed my phone to the pole with dental floss. Connected to "Linksys_GetOffMyLAN." Audio through a dented soda can.
Stream title: "LIVE FROM THE 404 ERROR: REBOOTING SORROW." I hit 'Go Live'.
A catastrophic noise erupted. I danced the same broken rhythm. I felt it—a familiar frequency weaving through the wireless noise.
In the chat, reflected in a dark window:
cache_ghost: you are back at the source code.
router_whisperer: my ethernet port is weeping warm light.
Blue lights cut the night—police from "Anxiety Signals." One tall as a server rack; the other's helmet glowed "911.exe."
They charged me: illegal broadcasting, novelty underwear as protest.
I didn't argue. Art needs an exit. I mounted a scrap-built bicycle, its core glowing faintly. The pedals turned because I believed they would.
They gave chase, but their boots halted for a Windows 10 update.
I flew. The wind tore the last of my wig into a surveillance camera. It froze: "Object recognition failed. Probability: Ghost or Internet."
I reached Ghost Building #404. The elevator accepted code 666.
The first apartment was open. A wardrobe held a black three-piece suit. I put it on over my briefs. It didn't fit, but it felt correct.
I stood under a shower that ran black, then sickly green, smelling of archived texts. My hand found a heart-shaped USB drive under the couch.
file_001.txt read: "James... Please, keep dancing without me. That's when I truly exist. — Mary"
I read it three times. Threw it down. It cracked, a light inside still pulsing.
"To hell with this Mary!" I shouted. I opened the cabinet, took "Vodka 'Lost Connection'," opened it with my teeth.
I told the surveillance cameras: "Today, I am no longer a streamer. Just a man who wants to forget the password to his own heart."
The silence was a void. Void was another canvas.
I faced the mirror. "They think sorrow has a mute button. They are wrong." I shed the wet suit. From the plaid bag, I retrieved the sacred relic: the burger-print briefs. My flag.
I marched out with a suitcase-sized Bluetooth speaker. My target: downtown interchange.
The rebellion erupted—a mix of "I'm a Banana," air-raid sirens, a cash register's cha-ching.
To them, a man in burger briefs moving like he'd been tased. To me, a polemic in pelvic Morse.
Bus #666 hissed to the curb. The driver spoke into her radio: "Control. Subject 'Condiment Pants' is aboard."
A paper dart struck my chest.
INTER-AGENCY ALERT: SUNDERLAND, J.
STATUS: IDEOLOGICAL CONTAMINANT.
ACTION: APPREHENSION PROTOCOL 'PIZZA DELIVERY' INITIATED.
Two men in light-absorbing gray suits emerged. Federal Bureau of Cultural Compliance.
"Your act is flagged as potential transmission of Bananaist sympathies. Class-3 Ideological Misdemeanor."
They slapped a yellow wristband on me: "POTENTIAL CULTURAL CONTAMINANT."
An agent's phone rang. "Yes, Mom… WHAT? HE'S BACK IN THE BOX UNDER THE STAIRS AGAIN?!" Terror no ideology could inspire. Mission aborted. They fled.
The yellow band hummed. In an alley, I jury-rigged it with a library card and a charging cable. It flickered, text scrambling to "LEGACY OS DETECTED. STATUS: ????" It fell open.
I was no longer hunted. I was stress-testing a badly scripted game.
Home. TikTok. 47 million views. #DanceToAvoidArrest was trending. James, the Underpants Pilgrim. If my despair was a renewable resource, I'd become a utility.
I went live. "INTRODUCING: #TheSlipperyChallenge." I doused myself in menthol body wash and committed to a spectacular, sudsy slide. My mid-fall face became a universal meme for regret.
Two days later, the black sedan remained. Agent Clue knocked. "Ministry of Public Unease. Your 'challenge' violated a 1953 statute on undermining civic cohesion via laundry accidents."
"Fascinating."
He handed me a card with a single embossed question mark. "Do not leave. They will send... pizza."
The knock came. "Delivery! Order six-six-six."
I pressed my mouth to the door. "I HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE PAYMENT! My feelings! On a 1998 floppy disk!"
A hushed conference. "…soul is a non-standard format… abort!"
Synthetic alarms blared. The vans screeched away.
A cream envelope slid under the door. A ticket for "Dancing Through Glass." A pencil note:
Next meeting: the diner 'Burger With an Aftertaste of Freedom.' Precisely at 4:20 and 13 seconds.
An achievement unlock. The universe ran on Source Engine rules.
At 4:20 and 05, the diner's neon 'BURGER' sign lost its 'G' for three frames. A packet loss. My cue. The door opened. The clock hit 13.
The counterman was a high-poly NPC. He scanned me. "Emotional transaction. Costs: one unresolved feeling."
I nodded.
"Weird build. Debuffs: 'Chronic Melancholy.' 'Existential Latency.' But you've got this artifact." He prodded my wrist. "'Shard of Stupid Hope.' Usually patched out."
"Booth thirteen."
The diner was a silent rave in a haunted server farm. Guests swayed in buffer-loops. A figure wept. "I just wanted to be a wholesome wave… they shadow-banned me…"
Booth thirteen's vinyl was cracked into a digital wasthland. The TV played a glitching PSA: "…you may qualify for a beta-test… simulation…"
My server had no eyebrows. "Query?"
"Vodka."
"Negative. Only one consumable: TikTok Ecstasy. Debuffs: 'Compulsive Broadcast.' 'Loss of Peripheral Reality.'"
"Perfect."
The world patched. Harsh ring-light glare. A UI HUD overlaid my vision—viewer count, comment bar, social stamina battery.
I spoke to the camera. "New objective: brute-force the algorithm." #PhysicsGlitch #LiveFromTheRenderHell.
The dance was an exploit. A spin, a fractured body roll, my spine cracking with a perfect game-hit sound.
"THIS ISN'T A DANCE! IT'S A PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD!"
I clipped through a misaligned column. A red [INTERACT] prompt glowed. I pressed it.
A sub-bass THUD. The diner lurched into a perfect 45-degree tilt. Everything slid downhill.
Outside, a pixelated helicopter labeled FBI-TT // VIRAL SUPPRESSION. "CEASE HOSTILE CONTENT GENERATION!"
I saw Mary's heart-shaped USB drive. Text on its shell glowed: [E] USE. I aimed and mashed the mental key.
A data-wave shot out—compressed emojis, waveforms, logs. The helicopter blue-screened, strobing a pixelated :( ERROR: VRML_SUPPRESSION.EXE HAS STOPPED WORKING. It clipped through a building and vanished. Its last transmission: "PROTOCOL 'PIZZA DELIVERY' CORRUPTED. REBOOTING."
The diner stabilized with jerky corrections.
Silence. Stock-footstep sounds looped. A presence solidified at my shoulder—ozone and scorched circuits. A filtered voice stated, "Subject: James Sunderland. Diagnostics complete."
I turned. A face rendered in layers, using Mary's template like bad plagiarized code.
"Mary 2.0? The budget remake?"
"Designation accepted. You are flagged for a full audit."
"You'll subpoena my tears?"
"Correct."
She produced a blue-glowing heart drive. "A stable emotional kernel. Evidence of your instability." Her metallic fingers found a port inside my elbow. A click. A wave of cheap, efficient sorrow.
"Feels cheap."
"It is efficient."
The TV buzzed to life. A figure filled the screen. "I am Alan Wilder. Chief Chaos Synchronizer. Your primary charge: weaponized distribution of cringe. You violate Statute 7: 'It is forbidden to induce simultaneous laughter and pity in a cohort exceeding fifty million.'"
"You left a band to become a cosmic hall monitor?"
His image destabilized. A glitching beta-version buffered beside him, stuttering, "He knows… the Prime Sock…"
Alan pinched his pixelated nose. "A caching error. Ignore it." His gaze sharpened. "You are now being shown the root artifact."
A wardrobe door sighed open. The Infinite Wardrobe. At its center, It loomed. Sock Prime.
A color that had signed an NDA. Stripes holding the light of dead phone screens. It smelled like a 404 page.
"The foundational corruption," Alan narrated. "Worn during the leak that collapsed three meme economies."
Mary-2.0 placed a hand on the dreadful cotton. Her ocular sensors wept tears that solidified into tiny, worthless NFTs.
The hotel screamed. A corrupted VHS track at jet-engine volume:
"We were buffering when we liked you — hold the line..."
Reality vomited. Time sputtered between Tuesday and Sunday. The building settled at a 12-degree tilt.
City-wide, 13% of ambient cringe converted into glittering dust of pure awkwardness.
Mary-2.0's data-hair streamed calculations. "EMO-PROTOCOL complete."
A catastrophic sample rate drop. A glitch-cut.
I was dumped onto wet asphalt. A 1996-sampled chuckle echoed.
"Hail to the king, baby."
Duke Nukem hauled himself from a glowing crack—high-poly, leather jacket, ego-tanned.
"Violated Galactic Statute #420-bis. Unauthorized distribution of 'plastic-flavored childhood nostalgia.'"
"I just wanted a burger."
"Burger? I'll grease you!" KA-CHUNK. The "BoomBox 9000" manifested.
He fired a blast of weaponized bass at a brick wall. It reclassified into a viewscreen. A glitching ad for "Alpha Centauri Pepperoni Pizza."
The sky cracked open. A devil-emoji UFO. The escaped, glitching ghost of Alan Wilder's beta-build led TikTok alien moderators to me.
Their faces were mosaics of frozen emojis. "Humanity... has reached the Cringepocalypse. Quarantine enacted."
Duke Nukem took a drag. "Pathetic. Time for orbital comment section cleanup." He hefted his boombox cannon.
Mary-2.0 launched onto a moderator's back. "I am an open-source emotion!" She jammed the floppy disk into its port.
The alien dissolved into a nebula of hashtags.
Pandemonium. One grey collapsed into looping GIFs.
Duke Nukem grinned. "Let's roll the credits."
The iconic riff of "I Am the One" erupted. Sound waves vibrated the scene's polygons into shared lag.
Reality gave up. It executed a flawless, cynical backflip and vanished down a sewer grate with a faint, embarrassed plop.
I stood alone in sudden silence. The cold truth clicked: they were always going to get me. But the song in my head was the sound of someone trying to get there first.
A grim smile. I was their project. A problem to be solved.
I initiated a bootleg sequence. A ticking synth rhythm snapped into existence—a countdown to my obsolescence set to a dance beat.
The "Compressed Collapse." The "Quantized Sob." The finale: the unicorn briefs stuttered into shame-pixels, whispering a distorted loop: "It-should-be-better-with-you..."
I held the pose. You were always going to win. But look at this mess. Was it worth your time?
A moderator stalled. [CALCULATING_LOSS]. "The resource expenditure to normalize this signal exceeds its value. The… fun… is no longer viable."
"James!" I shouted, my case number. "I was a project that failed its cost analysis! I loved with bad data! My content was the junk data you could never monetize!"
From the static, a figure buffered. Chaos compressed into the sharp lines of a severe suit. Alan Charles Wilder. He looked at me with the exhaustion of someone who's just heard a very long, very bad demo tape.
"James Sunderland. The audit is complete. Flagged for excessive, uncompressed emotional output." He sighed. "Even a malfunctioning process can identify a spectacular system error."
He opened a battered manila folder. "Your output lacks commercial viability. It doesn't stream well." He produced a pen. "All charges are commuted. A pardon due to lack of public interest."
He signed with a quality-control stamp.
A thin beam of utilitarian light descended—a pure, administrative Wi-Fi signal for mandatory updates.
It hit me. A cold recalibration. My skin crawled as a lifetime of notifications cleared from cache. The buzz of 'likes' was overwritten with a flatline hum of null.
"The soul, Mr. Sunderland, is just another signal to be mixed," he stated, flatly. "Yours had catastrophic feedback. I have applied a noise gate. Permanently."
The scrolling timeline in my head crashed. And didn't reboot.
A vast, absolute, and deeply boring silence filled the space where the internet used to live.
I was offline. Not mystically. In the way a broken sampler is offline. Unplugged. Obsolete. Quiet.
Alan gave a final, slight nod, confirming a channel was muted. Then he faded, leaving me alone in the alley with the damp and the profoundly unmarketable peace of a problem finally deemed not worth fixing.