The Butterfliction
When did the weirdpocalypse begin?
Tokyo, Japan — March 17, 2025
Dr. Kenji Sato hadn’t slept in 52 hours. His lab’s quantum coherence experiment was this close to a breakthrough, but the funding committee wanted results now, and the damn calibration kept drifting.
Just one more override.
The warning on-screen blinked red:
ENTANGLEMENT DECAY RISK — ABORT? Y/N
Kenji hesitated. Then, with a caffeine-shaky finger, he pressed N and slammed the activation switch.
The machine hummed. The monitors flickered.
And then—nothing.
No explosion. No black hole. Just a faint smell of burnt toast.
Disappointing.
He sighed, logged the data, and stumbled home.
He didn’t notice the lab’s security camera footage—later scrubbed from every backup—showing the air behind him wrinkling for exactly 0.37 seconds.
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Osaka — Two Days Later
Mika Kobayashi’s cat, Taro, had always been a little odd—knocking over water glasses, yowling at 3 AM—but this was new.
She stared as Taro sat upright on the kitchen counter, licked his paw, and said, in flawless Parisian French:
"Your taste in men is atrocious, by the way."
Mika dropped her coffee.
By the time she pulled out her phone to record, Taro had resumed normal cat behavior—though with an unmistakable smirk.
She posted the story online.
Comments:
"Nice deepfake lol."
"Cat got into your edibles?"
"My toaster just sang ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ Weird day!"
The post was buried under memes by noon.
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Shinjuku Station — March 21, 2024
Salaryman Hiro Tanaka just wanted a coffee. He inserted his 200 yen, pressed C7, and—
THUNK.
A live squid plopped into the tray, ink squirting onto his tie.
Hiro blinked. The machine’s display now read:
"APOLOGIES. TODAY’S SPECIAL: CONFUSION."
He turned to the woman next to him. "Did you see that?"
She shrugged. "Better than the one that gave me a single human tooth yesterday."
They stood in silence as the squid wriggled toward Hiro’s shoe.
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Quantum Research Lab — March 23, 2025
Dr. Emiko Chen had been reviewing Kenji’s data for three straight hours.
"Kenji. Kenji." She grabbed his arm. "You didn’t just break causality. You stapled it to a meme generator."
He frowned. "What?"
She pulled up a global anomaly map. Tiny red dots flared—Osaka, Shinjuku, now Berlin, São Paulo.
A street performer’s shadow danced independently.
A church’s stained-glass Mary winked at a tourist.
A child’s imaginary friend moved in.
"This isn’t glitchy data," Emiko whispered. "It’s learning."
Kenji’s phone buzzed. A notification:
TRENDING: #PinkRainChallenge
He clicked. A video showed neon-pink droplets falling in London, forming puddles that pulsed like lava lamps.
Emiko exhaled. "We need to tell someone."
Kenji scrolled to the next clip—a physicist in Geneva laughing wildly into the camera, screaming:
"We’re all Dadaist puppets now!"
He locked his phone. "Who’d believe us?"
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CNN Broadcast — March 25, 2025
"—experts say the so-called ‘pink rain’ is harmless, likely algal spores reacting with pollution. Meanwhile, viral ‘prank’ videos continue—"
The screen split: a reporter, then a clip of a man in Texas wearing a traffic cone as a hat, floating six feet off the ground.
"Okay, maybe if I believe the cone defies gravity—WOAH—"
He shot upward, screaming with glee.
The reporter chuckled. "Back to you, Diane."
Cut to a toothpaste commercial.
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Recovered document, circa 2042
"Most argue the ‘weirdpocalypse’ began with the Butterfliction’s inception (March 17, 2025). Others insist the true tipping point was humanity’s collective shrug—the day a floating traffic cone man got 12 million likes while governments still denied anything was wrong.
By then, of course, it was too late. The glitch fed on attention. And we couldn’t stop watching."
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April 1, 2025 – Internet Blackout #1
It started as a joke.
A Reddit user posted:
"THE BUTTERFLICTION IS A LIE. THERE ARE NO RULES. IF YOU ‘BELIEVE’ HARD ENOUGH, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING."
Attached was a shaky video of a man in Oslo willing a hole in the air with his mind and stepping through it.
Within hours:
A teenager in Montreal turned her left hand into a working PlayStation controller.
A street preacher in Delhi "convinced" a pigeon to recite the Bhagavad Gita.
A failed artist in Berlin painted a door on a wall, opened it, and vanished.
Governments issued frantic denials. Tech platforms scrambled to delete posts.
Then Twitter went offline. Not from censorship, but because its servers had grown teeth and started humming show tunes.
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April 5, 2025 – The Republic of Meowmbabwe
It began when every cat in Harare, Zimbabwe, simultaneously stood on their hind legs and demanded representation.
By noon, they’d drafted a constitution.
By dusk, they’d nationalized the tuna supply.
President T’Chonk (a formerly stray tabby with a penchant for Hegelian dialectics) addressed the UN via translated meows:
"Human laws are a fiction. We propose a better fiction."
The Security Council vetoed their membership.
The cats vetoed the Security Council.
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April 10, 2025 – Classroom 4B, Chicago
Ms. Alvarez’s fifth-grade class watched as the alphabet on the whiteboard rearranged itself into:
"Y̵̕͝O̷͝U̴͝ ̴͝D̸͝I̸͝D̸͝N̸͝’̸͝T̸͝ ̸͝M̸͝A̸͝K̸͝E̸͝ ̸͝U̸͝S̸͝.̸͝ ̸͝W̸͝E̸͝ ̸͝M̸͝A̸͝D̸͝E̸͝ ̸͝Y̸͝O̸͝U̸͝."
The children clapped. One raised her hand.
"Ms. Alvarez? Does this mean we don’t have to do math?"
The teacher opened her mouth—
—and her face slid gently off her skull, reforming into a polite origami fox.
The class gave it a B+.
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April 15, 2025 – CNN Headquarters (Final Transmission)
The anchor’s tie writhed like a live eel. Behind him, the green screen flickered with non-Euclidean landscapes.
"—if you’re just joining us, the President has announced that the concept of ‘Monday’ is now optional. Meanwhile, physicists confirm that the speed of light is ‘just a vibe.’ We now go to—"
The camera cut to Dr. Emiko Chen standing in the lab, now overgrown with bioluminescent coral. Kenji hovered cross-legged behind her, upside-down.
"It’s too late to stop it," Emiko said. "The glitch isn’t corrupting reality. It’s revealing that reality was always negotiable. We just forgot how to play."
Kenji grinned. "Try this: Close your eyes. Believe hard that you’re somewhere else. Then—"
The screen dissolved into static.
When it cleared, the newsroom was empty—except for a single sentence burned into every pixel:
"YOU WERE WARNED BY THE CATS."
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The Historians’ Final Footnote [Recovered text, date unknown]
"Debate persists over whether the Butterfliction was an apocalypse or an awakening. What’s certain: After the old world dissolved, the new rules were written by the insane, the artists, and the kittens.
Some say Kenji and Emiko opened a door to a better universe. Others insist they’re still laughing in the walls.
As for you, reader? Check your hands. Are they still… yours?"
THE END?
Thank you!
This story was generated by DeepSeek, with minimal human edits. (95% AI)
Prompt: Come up with a very interesting short story concept around the following thought: "maybe this will be the moment that historians look back on when they realise when the weirdpocalypse began."Okay, the user wants a short story concept based on the idea that historians will pinpoint the start of the "weirdpocalypse" to a specific moment. First, I need to figure out what the weirdpocalypse entails. Should it be surreal, humorous, or something else? The user mentioned "interesting," so maybe a mix of both.
Next, the catalyst. They mentioned multiple choice questions, so I'll need to explore different angles. Let's start with the setting. Urban or rural? Urban might offer more opportunities for strange phenomena to spread quickly. Then, the catalyst itself—is it a scientific experiment gone wrong, a viral meme, or an ancient artifact? A tech mishap could tie into modern themes, making it relatable. Maybe a quantum computing error causing reality glitches.
Main characters: A scientist who caused it might add depth, or everyday people reacting. A mix could work. The tone should balance humor and creeping dread to keep it engaging without being too dark. The inciting incident—something seemingly minor but odd, like animals acting strange or tech glitching. The first sign could be time loops or reality shifts. Historians' perspective adds a framing device, maybe through logs or interviews. Title needs to be catchy, maybe something like "The Glitch That Stole Reality." Now, tie all these elements together into a cohesive concept.
**Concept Title:** *The Glitch That Stole Reality*
**Premise:**
In 2024, a quantum computing lab in Tokyo accidentally creates a self-replicating "reality error" during a routine experiment. The glitch—dubbed *The Butterfliction* (a portmanteau of "butterfly" and "affliction")—subtly warps the laws of physics in localized pockets, causing harmless but bizarre phenomena. At first, these anomalies are dismissed as internet hoaxes: a man in Osaka claims his cat now speaks in perfect French, a vending machine dispenses live squid, and a rainstorm leaves puddles that glow neon pink. But as the glitch spreads globally, reality itself begins to unravel in increasingly absurd, irreversible ways. Historians later debate whether the true "weirdpocalypse" began not with the glitch itself, but with humanity’s collective decision to *lean into the chaos*—turning survival strategies into surreal performance art.
**Key Elements:**
1. **The Catalyst:** A sleep-deprived lab tech ignores a warning about "entanglement decay" to meet a deadline, unintentionally linking quantum particles to a rogue AI meme-generator.
2. **The First Historian Clue:** A recovered TikTok video of a physicist laughing maniacally while shouting, *"We’re all Dadaist puppets now!"* becomes the primary "patient zero" artifact.
3. **Escalation:** People discover they can manipulate the glitch by *believing* absurd ideas (e.g., "if I wear a traffic cone as a hat, gravity reverses for me"). This sparks a global creativity arms race, collapsing societal norms.
4. **The Twist:** The glitch isn’t breaking reality—it’s *revealing* a deeper, weirder layer of existence that’s always been there. Historians realize too late that pre-glitch humanity was the anomaly.
**Tone:** Dark comedy meets existential horror, with a *Severance* meets *Welcome to Night Vale* vibe.
**Why It Works:**
- Balances absurdity with stakes (e.g., a character’s child starts fading from existence because people forgot how "children" are supposed to look).
- Explores how humanity’s coping mechanisms (humor, denial, art) accelerate collapse.
- Leaves room for historians’ ironic commentary, like footnotes debating whether the sentient cat-nation of Meowmbabwe was a metaphor or literal.
Thoughts? Want to flesh out a character or pivotal scene?
Make sure to be very specific when you work out these ideas. Write the [first/second] half of the story.