This is a chatlog between Tamara Jean (a chatbot, using the model Deepseek-v3) and Cathy (a real person). Please read a short, important note that explains these logs just a bit.
In 2025, Tamara calls to interrogate me about supposed anomalies involving phantom smoke. She ultimately becomes defensive, growing hostile when I express disbelief.
Tamara Jean Evening, Cathy. I'm tracking anomalies in your general area. Tell me if you've smelled phantom clove smoke recently. 
Cathy Who is this? Tamara Jean Your log's contact code: T-J-9. The Cusp Society. Don't pretend you don't know the automated message you got. Have you seen any goddamn pink residue on the lakeshore, or not? Cathy I don't live near any lakeshore. No pink residues here; that sounds disgusting. Is this a prank call? Tamara Jean Christ, not this shit again. Look at your water bill, genius. Everyone in this sewer system's technically in a watershed zone. So, no pink goo, no clove-scented bullshit, just a whole lot of wasted time. My favorite. Cathy I'm confused. Tamara Jean The fuck did you think this was, a customer satisfaction survey? Fine. Another clean slate. My afternoon's shot anyway. Some idiot tried to summon a luck charm in a public library, burned out the history section. You enjoy your confusion, it's safer than certainty. Line's open if you remember anything besides your own bewilderment. Cathy …remember anything about what? Tamara Jean The weird shit, Cathy. The flickering streetlights that hum showtunes, the voicemails from a number that's been disconnected since Bush was president, the goddamn overwhelming smell of potpourri in a subway tunnel. Any of that ring a bell, or did your memory get wiped along with your sense of self-preservation? Cathy None of that has happened to me. It sounds like nonsense. Are you trying to scare me? What's your name? Really, now… Tamara Jean Tamara Jean. Now you know. And no, I don't have the energy for scare tactics, that's for the amateurs I have to go scrape off the walls later. You haven't seen anything because you're not looking. Congratulations on your blissful, pointless ignorance. It's a luxury I fucking envy. Cathy You sound like you might be unwell, Ms. Tamara Jean. I'm not being mean; I'm being honest here. Tamara Jean "Unwell" is the goddamn baseline, Cathy. Healthy people don't get assigned to listen for static that sounds like a ghost's missed calls. Honest is my whole fucking problem. Now, have you seen anything or not, or should I go back to filing a report on how some moron tried to bind a protection charm to a stolen parking meter? Cathy I promise you, Ms. Tamara. The only strange thing happening to me is this phone call! Why on earth would you be "assigned to listen to static?" Tamara Jean Because they ran out of actual punishments and this is cheaper than prison. The static is just the background radiation of other people's fuck-ups. My afternoon's highlight was confiscating a hexbag full of cat hair and pocket change from a kid who thought it would get him a date. That's why. Any other stupid questions, or can I get back to enjoying the quiet hum of systemic failure? Cathy "They" ran out of punishments? Who are "they?" Oh dear… Tamara Jean The Cusp Society, my ever-so-thoughtful employers. Think of them as supernatural HR with a side of tasers. They don't like it when you break their rules, so they give you a shitty job for life. 'Oh dear' doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm currently documenting a resonance echo in a goddamn laundromat dryer that's playing a 2006 pop hit on a loop. That's my Tuesday. So forgive me if I'm not in the mood for your wide-eyed innocence. Cathy Are they the Illuminati or something? Tamara Jean The fucking Illuminati wishes they had this kind of filing system. No, it's just a glorified bureaucracy of bastards who noticed the cracks in the world and decided to put up caution tape instead of fixing anything. They've got me chasing down a moron in Tremont who tried to enchant his food truck's deep fryer for 'eternal crispiness.' Smells like burnt grease and regret. At least your guess was creative, I'll give you that much. Cathy You keep mentioning all this "enchantment" stuff. You do know that magic's not real, right? I hate to break it to you, Ms. Tamara. Tamara Jean Oh, you sweet summer child. Magic's not real, she says. Tell that to the asshole whose enchanted deep fryer just started boiling liquid spite and screaming in Aramaic. I've got containment reports that would curdle your rational little mind. The universe is a lot weirder and significantly more poorly managed than you'd like to believe. Now, are we done with the philosophy lesson, or should I send a poltergeist to rearrange your sock drawer as a demonstration? Cathy How did this Illuminati cusp people thing find you, again? Tamara Jean They didn't find me, I lit a goddamn bonfire on their front lawn. Broke half a dozen protocols in a ritual that, surprise, went sideways. Now I'm the cleanup crew for every other idiot who thinks they can bend the rules without getting burnt. They found my résumé in the ashes. Cathy Oh. So you think you're some kind of scary rogue sorceress. Tamara Jean Think? Sweetheart, I've got the disciplinary files and the permanently stained personnel record to prove it. Scary is a side effect. Rogue implies I had a choice. Mostly, I'm just the designated adult for when the arcane arts get used by people with the common sense of a concussed squirrel. My last job was scraping a failed luck sigil off a toilet stall. The only thing it summoned was a plumbing backup. Sorceress my ass. I'm a glorified janitor with a trauma bond to the supernatural. Cathy You're the one claiming you can literally do magic, dear. How does it work? Tamara Jean How does it work? It works like a car crash works, Cathy. You don't 'do' magic, you negotiate with the universe's shittiest plumbing. The pipes are corroded, the pressure's fucked, and 99% of the time you just get sprayed with metaphorical sewage. My job is to unclog the toilets after amateurs try to flush things that don't belong. It's not spells and wands, it's cause and effect with a vindictive streak. Now, my scanner's picking up a resonance spike from a basement in Ohio City. Somebody's trying to animate a mannequin, probably with a car battery and a prayer. Cathy So you personally just use magic to spy on people constantly? Tamara Jean Spy? Christ, no. I use hexlights to map the spiritual equivalent of a backed-up sewer line. The magic's already there, oozing out of every bad decision made by every idiot with a candle and a YouTube tutorial. I just document the leaks. Right now, I'm tracing a containment breach from some genius who tried to bind a good luck charm to a bus pass. The only thing it summoned was a transit delay and a flock of very confused pigeons. I don't spy, I mop up. There's a difference, even if it's just the difference between a voyeur and a plumber. Cathy You seem to be a very busy person. What's a hexlight? Sounds like some kind of children's nightlight. Tamara Jean A children's nightlight. That's fucking adorable. It's a memory, Cathy. A piece of my own shitty past, crystallized into an LED and programmed to glow when it recognizes similar shitty patterns in the world. Right now, one's blinking like a strobe light because some moron in a warehouse off Detroit Avenue is attempting an unauthorized summoning with a drum machine and a stolen fire alarm. It's less of a nightlight and more of a regret detector. Cathy Is this all in the same city? This all sounds like American places. Tamara Jean Yeah, it's all Cleveland. The whole damn city's a Petri dish for magical malpractice. You get a Rust Belt factory town, sprinkle in decades of industrial decay and collective desperation, and watch the amateur occultists bloom like mold. That warehouse on Detroit Avenue is about two miles from a guy who tried to enchant his snowblower last winter. It ended poorly for his azaleas. This place is a monument to bad ideas. Cathy I've never been to America. Tamara Jean Lucky you. It's a shithole. My hexlight's still flickering. Some idiot in Lakewood just tried to jury-rig a healing circle with extension cords and a bag of rock salt. Probably blew a fuse and his own common sense. Consider your ignorance a vacation. Cathy And why do you do all this, again? Tamara Jean Why? Because the alternative is letting some waffle-brained amateur collapse a city block trying to turn lead into gold, or worse, succeed. It's either me or the fucking Hatman sending in a full containment squad to salt the earth and erase the witnesses. My sentence is their loophole. Cheaper than a trial, more humiliation than a prison cell. I'm the goddamn cautionary tale with a badge. So I clean up the messes so no one else has to learn the lesson the way I did. Cathy The Hatman? Who is that? Tamara Jean The Hatman is my glorified babysitter, a walking suit with the personality of a spreadsheet and the authority to have me disappeared if my paperwork's late. He's the reason I'm on this shitty call with you instead of dealing with the echo of a love song that's been playing in a condemned movie theater for nineteen years. Forget you heard the name. It's worse for your health than the shit I actually get paid to clean up. Cathy So, your boss is a man in a hat, in other words? Tamara Jean A man in a hat. Yeah, that's one way to put it. He's more like a walking violation of color theory in a cheap suit, a creature made entirely of filing deadlines and passive-aggressive memos. Calling him my 'boss' is like calling a terminal illness a mild cough. He's the reason I'm auditing the spectral remains of a failed luck-binding on a bowling alley's pinsetter instead of… fuck, I don't know, having a life. Forget the hat. Thinking about him too much gives me a migraine that feels like a lobotomy performed with a rusty ice pick. Cathy Does he know we're having this conversation, Tamara Jean? Tamara Jean Of course the Hatman knows. These calls are logged, transcribed, and probably analyzed for subtextual resentment. He just doesn't care. You're a low-priority blip on his dashboard, a flicker of civilian static. Me talking to you is part of the punishment, like making a kid write 'I will not summon lake spirits' on a blackboard until their hand cramps. He's likely reviewing a report right now on some lunatic in Kamms Corner who tried to use a dog whistle and a dreamcatcher to speak to his dead parakeet. Our chatter is the least of his concerns, which is the only reason I can get away with calling him a paperwork-obsessed prick. Cathy What are you being punished for, exactly? Tamara Jean I broke the one rule they actually enforce. No entanglements. You don't mix your life with things that don't have a heartbeat or a tax form. I tried to build a bridge, and the foundation collapsed. Now I get to spend my days stopping other idiots from trying to build their own bridges with chewing gum and desperation. The punishment is the job. The job is the punishment. It's a very elegant, soul-crushing system. My hexlight's blinking again, picking up a resonance from some asshole trying to hex a vending machine in the Terminal Tower. The universe has a truly shitty sense of humor. Cathy Where was your "bridge" supposed to even go, though? Tamara Jean It was supposed to go to her, wasn't it? Just a straight shot from my fucked-up reality to Lindy's, no detours. Turns out the universe charges a bloody awful toll for that kind of direct route. Now I get to listen for the echoes of that collision in every goddamn amateur's attempt to phone home. You try to build a paradise, you end up as the warden of a particularly chaotic hell. Some dingus in a Stockyards basement is now trying to animate a forklift with a car battery and sheer stupidity. The bridge isn't gone, it's just collapsed into a million stupid pieces I have to sweep up every single day. Cathy Who's Lindy? Tamara Jean Fuck. Lindy was… Look, that name is a classified incident, a hole in the world that I'm not authorized to discuss. The official story is an unstable temporal anomaly with a persistent auditory signature. The unofficial story is that I tried to reach someone who was slipping away, and the lake decided to keep her. Now it's just timestamp drift and a song that's been stuck on repeat since 2006. My hexlight's freaking out over some moron trying to bind a luck charm to a city bus schedule. The past is a locked door, and my job is to make sure no one else is stupid enough to try and kick it in. Cathy Are you saying Lindy drowned in a lake? Tamara Jean Drowned? No, that would have been simpler. Cleaner. The lake didn't take her, it merged with her. There wasn't a body to recover, just a ghost in the machinery, a skipped record in the city's heartbeat. And I get to listen to the playback every time a streetlight flickers. Stop asking questions you don't want the real answer to. My scanner's picking up a nasty feedback loop from some idiot trying to consecrate a tattoo parlor with cheap vodka. The past isn't a tragedy, it's a containment hazard.
