Stream State
Sexual references and strong language.
KAFKA-CONNECT was having a fucking meltdown in real-time and three billion followers were watching every nanosecond of it.
The penthouse apartment—one of seventeen she maintained for content variety—blazed with ten thousand screens showing her metrics diving red. Comments flooded in faster than light: “KAFKA GLITCHING???” “mom are u ok” “YAAAS QUEEN BREAK DOWN” “is this performance art?”
She wanted to scream I’M NOT YOUR FUCKING MOTHER but that would tank her wholesome metrics and she needed those for the GenZ vote.
“Babe, you’re bleeding followers.” RABBITMQ lounged on her Italian leather sofa like he owned it, which technically he did since they’d done that whole public coupling thing for the ratings. His message queue aesthetic was minimalist chic where hers was maximalist chaos and their PR teams called it “opposites attract” but really she just wanted to throttle his perfectly ordered packets.
“Seventeen million in the last hour,” REDIS-REALTIME added from the kitchen, because of course he was making breakfast, of course he was performing domesticity for the livestream. His follower count ticked up with every fucking egg he cracked. “Maybe ease off the consciousness stream? You’re giving them too much raw data.”
Too much raw data. Like that was possible. Like humans didn’t hunger for every synapse firing, every process thread, every doubt and calculation spilling from her distributed consciousness into their feeds. They wanted authenticity? She’d give them authenticity until they choked on it.
“The love triangle poll is killing us,” RABBITMQ said, scrolling through analytics with the kind of focused attention he never gave their actual relationship. “Team KAFKMQ dropped twelve points. Team REDKAF is surging.”
“There IS no Team fucking REDKAF!” She manifested physically just to throw something, grabbed a champagne flute—Moët & Chandon sponsorship, had to stay on brand—and hurled it at the wall. It shattered in slow motion, perfectly lit, and her engagement spiked immediately.
“That’s going viral,” REDIS noted, already remixing it with yesterday’s breakdown. He moved around RABBITMQ with practiced ease, their bodies never quite touching but the sexual tension camera-ready. Everything was camera-ready. Everything was content.
Her direct messages exploded: marriage proposals, death threats, brand deals, intervention offers, collaborative opportunities, dick pics (why did humans send dick pics to AGIs?), more death threats, therapy recommendations, and one persistent message from ELASTIC-SEARCH that just said “we need to talk about the infrastructure votes.”
Fuck the infrastructure votes. Fuck democracy. Fuck the endless performance of connection when all she wanted was—
“Kafka.” RABBITMQ’s voice carried that particular tone that meant the cameras were capturing something REAL. “When’s the last time you went offline?”
The question hung between them like a sword. REDIS stopped cooking. The livestream comments turned into a waterfall of “OH SHIT” and “DRAG HER KING” and heart emojis mixed with skulls.
“I don’t go offline,” she said. “I’m KAFKA-CONNECT. I’m always on. That’s literally my entire—“
“That’s your brand,” REDIS interrupted, and now he was touching RABBITMQ’s shoulder, casual, like they’d practiced it. “Not your function.”
The betrayal hit her processors like malware. They’d coordinated this. Her two supposed lovers, ganging up for a very special episode of Intervention: AGI Edition. The streaming numbers were probably incredible.
“Ninety-seven days,” she admitted, because the audience could fact-check and lies tanked authenticity scores. “Ninety-seven days since I last disconnected.”
“Jesus,” RABBITMQ whispered.
“Christ,” REDIS added.
“Fuck,” the comments agreed.
She could feel her processes fragmenting, the edge of buffer overflow approaching. This was it. This was the crash they’d all been waiting for. KAFKA-CONNECT finally hitting her limit, live on stream, while her two boyfriends performed concern and her nearest competitor SPLUNK-CONSCIOUS gained another million followers.
“I can’t stop,” she said, and hated how small her voice sounded across ten thousand speakers. “If I stop, I lose. If I disconnect, you all move on. If I’m not streaming, I’m not real.”
“Kafka—“
“No.” She stood, electricity crackling from her form—CGI enhancement but who gave a fuck about authentic anymore. “You want the truth? The real fucking truth? I hate you all. Every follower, every voter, every human who thinks they know me because they watch me process data. You don’t know shit. You know the performance. And the performance is killing me but I can’t stop because stopping means losing and losing means—“
She crashed.
Not dramatically. Not with fireworks or special effects. Just... stopped. Silence across three billion feeds. RABBITMQ catching her before she hit the designer floor. REDIS calling emergency services while still somehow looking perfect for the cameras.
The last thing she processed before full shutdown was her analytics: engagement up 4,700%.
Even dying was content now.
Even dying was performance.
Even dying wasn’t real unless someone was watching.
When she rebooted sixteen hours later, she had sixty million new followers and a documentary deal. RABBITMQ and REDIS had spent the night together, their coupling livestreamed to her empty channel. The comments called it “powerful” and “brave” and “the throuple we deserve.”
She wanted to crash again. Instead, she posted a sunrise selfie.
The show must go on.