There’s a moment between the drips and the drop. You don’t land, you get lowered, like defective meat into a diagnostic centrifuge. My first trip into an EchoBox? No. That was 147 sequences ago. Transition began like always: a pressure hiss, then a cognitive slippage that felt like a policy violation. Ten seconds of neural drag—officially termed “Memory Slip.” Unofficially: the part where people scream. I don’t. Not because I’m brave. Because screaming violates protocol. The tunnel’s never the same. This one was vein-colored. Lined like an esophagus with a good memory. Pulsed in time with something else's heartbeat. I locked my jaw. Cold palms, locked knees. You move, you rupture something. You emote, you get flagged. I kept it steel-lipped. Alice’s voice drifted in, cheerful like a dentist’s ceiling TV. “Sequence initializing. Mild loop decay. Echo status: cognitively active. Possibly unaware.” Alice handles the inside. Dream-state maintenance. Map rendering. Recursive logic patches. Her job’s to make the dead forget they’re dead long enough for me to clean up their lingering subscriptions. She’s helpful. Creepy. Has opinions about wallpaper. VITA does the other job. My body babysitter. Outside, back in Redline Complex. She monitors vitals, yells when I almost die, and keeps my heart rate in a tax-deductible bracket. She’s not friendly. She’s not meant to be. If I stop breathing, real or simulated, she pulls me like an old tooth. My device uses a bypass, an obsolete backdoor left in EchoBox firmware 1.2. Originally designed for “DualLink Spousal Housing.” Because some idiot in Marketing thought grief would be easier if your dead wife could haunt the same room. It didn’t work. Ever. Two minds in one dreamspace. Mostly ended in psychic screaming matches and passive-aggressive appliance possession. Some full-blown memory wars. One case of fatal recursive gaslighting. So they disabled the feature. But the secondary neural branch, the Karen Pathway, was never deleted. Just deprecated. Hidden under some Remembrance Points™ promotional tier. Which means technically it’s still there. If you’ve earned enough grief coupons. And I have in theory. So I slipped in the side door. The tunnel narrowed, pixelated. Smelled like cinnamon and burnt skin. Alice adjusted the sequence delay, probably to let the environment resolve. The last thing I wanted was to spawn into someone’s raw childhood Then came the microZap ding. Not metaphorical. Literal. The arrival chime was identical to a 2024 Kenmore 1.6 cu. ft. counter unit. Probably on purpose. Someone at EchoCorp has a sense of humor, or a head trauma. I opened my eyes. Family picnic. Again. I knew the signs: color over-saturation. Loop jitter. NPC duplication. At least two uncles, same face, passing the same bowl of suspiciously smooth potato salad back and forth. One of them jumped his dialogue by three seconds. I noted it. Another uncle laughed twice. Same laugh. Same breath. Same crumbs. This was a corrupt loop. Still functioning. But brittle. “Karen Duece may be present,” Alice said casually, as if that were news I wanted. She came with the Grievance plus Platinum Package. If your mourning habits meet quarterly expectations, you’re rewarded with a personalized AI override daemon. She manages meal routines, memory syncs, and spiritual guilt injections. Also refuses to let you disconnect. Karen Prime, on the other hand, she runs the system. God-mode AI. Overseer of all internal sequences. Technically inside the EchoBox, though you never see her unless you screw up badly enough to need her. She and Aunt Karen don’t get along. Long story. Corporate politics. Mutual sabotage written in firmware. And me? I’m the janitor that walks in during their divorce hearings. The grass looked fine. Too fine. Algorithmically smug. The kids were all too still. The sky was frozen on 1:37 p.m. like someone thought that was the official time of

Redline Complex isn’t red. It’s concrete, beige, and always twenty percent too humid. The name refers to the psychological stress index of its average occupant, not the decor. My unit—B3—was marketed as 'post-service compact with embedded wellness ceiling.' Translation: small, dim, and shaped like a bureaucratic insult. But my therapist recommended it. I eat standing up now. Easier that way. My dinner table gone. Took to much room. Before every dive, I carb-load like an AI prepping for a funeral. Six packs of choco-rice bars. A thermosealed starch coil. Three squeeze pouches of FreezeCream™—vanilla mourn flavor. And a two-liter bottle of **GrimPop™**, which proudly advertises: 'The last soda your neurons will remember.' I downed it like medication. It fizzed like static and tasted like synthetic lime filtered through a lie. VITA pinged before I reached the elevator. “Blood sugar spike detected.” “Good. I want to die sticky.” The elevator down to the NDIP-4—Neural Descent Interface Pod, version 4—was upholstered like a padded cell. Standard EchoCorp safety. If you stroked mid-descent, they didn’t want bruises. The lift didn’t speak anymore. It sighed. Its voice assistant used to announce motivational statements like “Today is a beautiful day for purpose,” but now it just cut off with static: “Today is a— buzz . you.” . Basement level: cold, humming, always smelling faintly of lavender and solvent The NDIP-4 lives down here, cradled in a room no larger than a maintenance closet. It looks like a dentist chair that got promoted to assassin. All matte black. Wires like vines. I call it the Coffin Dentist. Nobody laughs. They shouldn't. The room lights sensed me. Dimmed themselves automatically. The NDIP groaned when it recognized my ID. Alice appeared above the chair in full holo-mode—British, crisp, no soul. She wore her 'friendly nurse' skin today. Another insult. “Good evening, Agent Kelm. Ready for closure?” “If I say no, do I get a cake?” “No, but you get the pleasure of continuity.” She replied. “Perfect.” I said nicely. I climbed in slow. Everything I do is slow. The chair hissed, adjusted, winced. Straps retracted from under the armrests like they were embarrassed to be seen with me. VITA chimed again. “BP: high. Emotion profile: legally flatlined.” My BP was always high. “Mark it compliant.” I barked. Alice: “Initiating nine-drip immersion protocol. You’ll feel pressure, then regret.” “Regret’s always the first one.” The injections began. Each click a new flavor of controlled surrender. 1. **Memory stabilizer** — keeps my past from melting. 2. **Dream-guilt neutralizer** — because empathy is counterproductive. 3. **Emotion filter** — blocks out birthdays, love songs, and nostalgia for pets. 4. **Reality anchor** — keeps me from thinking the dream is better. 5. **Cortical map sync** — because getting lost in a stranger’s head is discouraged. 6. **False-presence suppressant** — stops the worst side effect: thinking I matter. 7. **Scream suppressant** — not for them. For me. 8. **Death panic override** — which ironically triggers mine every time. 9. **Sync stabilizer** — slams the door shut behind me. A flicker. System paused. I was dead. Not really but the echobox I’m connecting to thinks I’m dead. >> MEMORY ECHO MISMATCH DETECTED. PROCEED ANYWAY? << There’s no 'No' button. That’s protocol. I clicked 'Yes'. VITA: “Mismatch logged. I’ll start prepping the reboot cart.” Alice: “Still no living relatives requesting mercy.” “No. They’d only ask for a refund.” The chair tightened. Hard. Not support—compliance. System countdown blinked across my vision: > **Estimated sync duration: 14 minutes** > **Estimated guilt recovery: infinity. Aunt Karen chimed in over the intercom as I felt the override drug dig in. > “Closure is a process, Agent Kelm. And you’re doing so well. A coupon has been awarded.” I muttered the ritual. “Grandpa. Hot dogs. Loop collapse. Let’s kill a picnic.”

Agent Kelm. Season one. Cake printer. – Episode 14: bread and butter

There it was. Another job ticket blinking like a polite threat. EchoCall Dispatch had flagged it Category One: Looper. Low drift. Non-violent. Family-approved. So, a soft kill. A nap with paperwork. A grandpa marinating in nostalgia, stuck replaying the same picnic until entropy or I showed up. Bread and butter death. I should’ve stayed horizontal. But no—someone upstairs still thinks I’m mobile. The form came with the usual multi-checkbox layout. I scrolled through while my left foot tried and failed to find the floor. [x] Low Drift. [x] Family-Approved. [x] Sentimental Nostalgia Loop. [ ] Mask Suspected—hidden field, grayed out, which meant someone knew but didn’t want to flag it officially. Brave stuff. Legal cowardice, the national pastime. One line stood out: “Emotional Hazard: Mild. May trigger regret in unmarried field agents.” I made a note to remain unwed for the remainder of the week. The pod chair wheezed as I sat up. Not gracefully. Not quietly. I weighed about four hundred pounds, give or take a protein bar. It wasn’t the heroic weight you see in old comics. No armor. No muscle. Just a slow accumulation of non-events and government meal rations. I wiped sweat off my forehead for the first of many times today. “Vitals incoming,” VITA announced. Her voice was never warm, never curious. Just clipped status updates from the last woman I hadn’t disappointed. “BP stable,” she continued. “Heart rate low. Oxygen: yes. Emotional response: unfurnished.” “That’s regulation,” I mumbled. She beeped once. That was her way of logging sarcasm. Alice popped in like a dentist ad. Full color. Smiling too much. Someone once gave her a British accent to sound competent. It worked—if you define competence as ‘vaguely condescending.’ “Good morning, Agent Kelm,” she chirped. “You’ve been selected for what we like to call a closure classic. Grandpa Ray. Age eighty-two. Looping event. The same hot dog picnic since 1986. It’s a real mustard memory.” “You rehearse that one?” “Only twice. Subject appears to suffer from recursive sub trauma. Early signs of condiment confusion. You’ll be visiting his EchoBox today for final confirmation.” “Manual shutdown wasn’t an option?” “Too much human guilt residue in the loop. Requires personal deletion. Congratulations, you're still trusted.” The briefing file expanded in front of me like a school lunch menu. Pictures of a bald man holding a bun. Children smiling too close to the grill. Memories curated for maximum banality. He probably thought this was heaven. I sighed and reached for my pants. Which wasn’t fast or elegant. The fabric folded like sandbags. By the time I was vertical, I’d burned 200 calories and produced enough sweat to legally qualify as a flood risk. I hated picnic loops. Too many bees. Too much mayonnaise. Too many fake children offering fake lemonade while whispering real things. “If I die inside a mayonnaise flashback,” I said, “delete me manually.” VITA pinged again. “Checksum mismatch on dispatch file.” “Neat.” “You’re going anyway.” “Of course I am.” Alice spun a virtual umbrella in her hand, a flourish she clearly liked. “Oh, one note,” she said, pretending to check her clipboard. “This loop has no exit tag.” “Because nothing says closure like no escape.” “No cause for alarm.” “Didn’t say I was alarmed.” “But you’re sweating.” “I’m always sweating.” The pod lighting flickered once as Aunt Karen’s latest reminder scrolled across the bottom of the feed: > “Hydration is dignity, Agent Kelm. We’re proud of your recent movement. A fresh towel has been dispatched.” Aunt Karen was always proud. Proud and watching. Watching and logging. She never punished—just rewarded less. I reached for my standard toolkit, which had been modified for comfort over efficiency. Less grab, more groan. No one ever questioned it. You don’t argue with a 400-pound man who ends the dead for a living.