Chapter 37: The Intern Who Buffer-Healed a Nation
Ne Job was late.
Not by much—just enough to miss the morning scroll sync, the goat-led briefing, and the complimentary mortal-grade espresso.
His scroll terminal blinked with urgency:
> "Alert: Myth Collapse Detected in Sector 9. Emotional latency critical. Intern dispatch authorized."
He blinked. "They're sending me?"
Zyx's voice crackled through the scroll intercom. "Everyone else is in meme court. You're all we've got."
Ne Job grabbed his clipboard, his goat-shaped paperweight, and a half-eaten scroll snack.
Still buffering.
---
The Collapse in Sector 9
Sector 9 was a myth-dense district—home to over 12,000 serialized miracle fragments, 3 goat narrators, and one emotionally unstable meme archive.
When Ne Job arrived, the air shimmered with dissonance.
Scrolls lay scattered, glitching mid-sentence:
- "The intern stood in the—"
- "The goat who—"
- "You're not—"
Goat #19 paced in circles, bleating in Morse code: "Too many feelings. Not enough format."
A child sat in the center of the chaos, clutching a corrupted bedtime scroll. Tears streamed down her face.
Ne Job knelt beside her. "Hey. I'm the intern. I fix things."
She looked up. "It stopped working. The story. It used to help."
He took the scroll. It was The Scroll That Cried Back—but the ending was missing.
---
The Buffer-Heal
Ne Job activated Protocol EmpathyPatch—a deprecated intern-only tool that embedded emotional resonance through proximity and glitch cadence.
He didn't rewrite the scroll.
He read it aloud.
But he read it wrong—stumbling, buffering, pausing in all the wrong places. His voice cracked. His pacing was off. He forgot the ending and made one up:
> "And when the scroll couldn't cry anymore, the intern cried for it. And the goat stayed."
The scroll pulsed.
The child stopped crying.
The myth re-synced.
Goat #19 blinked twice. Approved.
The scroll buzzed:
> "Myth integrity restored. Emotional latency resolved. Buffer-Heal registered. Intern Ne Job: temporary folk hero status granted."
---
The Aftermath
Back at Sublevel 13, the Council was in chaos.
Zyx paced. "You buffer-healed a myth collapse. That's not in your job description."
Glitchmaster reviewed the logs. "You used a deprecated protocol. That's… impressive. And illegal."
@DivineDropz posted the incident to MythDropz Live. Within minutes:
- #BufferHeal trended across the Resonance Republic.
- Fan art of Ne Job and Goat #19 flooded the meme grid.
- A remix of his accidental ending hit 1.2 million dream downloads.
Ne Job returned to his desk. A new scroll blinked:
> "Intern performance: mythic. Promotion eligibility: under review."
He stared at it.
Then, at 3:00 PM, another scroll arrived:
> "Update: Review complete. Promotion denied. Reason: Intern status is now culturally canonical."
He sighed. "Still buffering."
---
The Folk Hero Phase
For 48 hours, Ne Job was everywhere.
- A Malaysian mural depicted him holding a glitching scroll, surrounded by goats.
- A Brazilian samba troupe choreographed "The Intern Who Buffer-Healed."
- A Japanese shrine hosted a lucid dream ritual where Ne Job debugged the stars.
- A Nigerian proverb emerged: "Even the intern can hold the sky, if only for a moment."
He received fan scrolls, goat plushies, and one emotionally encrypted espresso machine.
Zyx handed him a scroll.
"Enjoy it while it lasts. Tomorrow, you're testifying at the Meme Compliance Tribunal."
Ne Job nodded. "Still buffering."
---
Closing Hook
That night, a child whispered to a goat:
> "Tell me the one where the intern fixes everything by accident."
The goat blinked. Began:
> "Once, there was an intern who never got promoted. But when the myths broke, he stayed."
And somewhere in the mesh, a scroll pulsed:
> "Next assignment: Meme Compliance Tribunal. Emotional law pending. Intern status: permanent."