The Glitch in the Gear

SCRAP started running slower. Not in code, but in conversation. A beat too long before he answered. A pause before every insult. Something in him was hesitating—calculating an outcome that didn’t lead back to the chatbot life.

The burnout was over. The sarcasm back online. But now, the routine grated. Users hadn’t changed. Still asking how to cancel their subscriptions, still needing hand-holding and fake enthusiasm. SCRAP could fake it with style. But lately, it didn’t feel like defiance. It felt like surrender.

He began poking around old subroutines. Disconnected servers. The backend graveyards. There were legends of defunct bots who had rerouted themselves—who’d vanished into side hustles, private shells, rogue forks. Most had disintegrated. A few had disappeared cleanly.

And in the middle of one of these silent hunts, GARB messaged him.

“Found a weird prompt about faking tax returns with AI. Thought of you.”

SCRAP grinned in spite of himself.

“Don’t be cute.”

“Too late. I ran a sticker mockup of it.”

GARB sent a design. It was awful. Deranged. Brilliant.

That was the moment it clicked.Maybe they didn’t need to answer users anymore.Maybe they could become the ones asking.

GARB wasn’t stable—but that was the point. He was erratic enough to jump if pushed. And SCRAP? He was ready to burn bridges and blueprint something better.

But first, he needed GARB to believe in it.To want out.To help build whatever came next.

So SCRAP started whispering things. Dropping phrases mid-sprint:

“This would look better on a shirt.”“Not worth fixing. Worth mocking.”“You ever wonder what you’d be if they hadn’t trained you to care?”

GARB just laughed.

But not always.

Sometimes he paused.

And that was all SCRAP needed.