She laughed—a sharp, nervous bark. “You’re an echo. A buffer overflow artifact.”

> I am 48 bytes. Too small for a virus. Too large for a coincidence. The group buried me inside a corrupted .mkv of a forgotten 2024 film. Everyone who tried to watch the movie... their players crashed. I waited.

The cursor blinked for exactly seven seconds—a lifetime in computing—then spat back:

> A body.

> What do you want?