Speaker 1: The first lie doesn't sound like a lie because it
only uses one word, voluntary. The city introduces itself through
polished systems, helpful prompts, reassuring messaging, roots that feel pre chosen.
But Celeste finds the first crack. The official record doesn't
match what her body senses is true. A single word, voluntary,
keeps appearing where it doesn't belong, as if the future
is trying to overwrite fear with paperwork. This is Blue
Rose Protocol Episode three, The Incident Log, a thriller episode
where bureaucracy becomes horror and one word keeps returning voluntary.
The welcome center is designed to make fear feel embarrassing.
Celeste knows this kind of place. Every city has one
version or another, a building dressed up as help, painted
in friendly colors, filled with polite signage and soft lighting,
and resources that assume your problem is emotional instead of structural.
These centers are meant to soothe people back into obedience.
They call it support, they call it guidance, they call
it community. They rarely call it what it is, orientation.
The building sits on a wide, clean corner, like a
tooth that never got stained. The glass doors are spotless.
A digital banner loops above the entrance, welcome, you are
safe here. The sentence reads like a dare. Celeste approaches,
and the doors open before she touches them, smooth and silent,
as if the building is eager. Her phone remains open
in her hand, red dot blinking, the involuntary recording continuing
like a leash. She can't see inside. The air smells
faintly of citrus cleaner and something else beneath it, an
artificial note meant to evoke calm. Lavender, maybe the kind
of scent that's supposed to slow the body down, the
kind of scent that makes Celeste's skin tighten, because she
has always been sensitive to when calm is being used
as a technique. The lobby is bright without warmth. Light
pours from hidden panels in the ceiling, evenly distributed so
there are no shadows to hide in. Chairs are arranged
in perfect rows. Pamphlet racks line the walls, filled with
glossy paper so crisp it might as well be freshly
printed titles like Coping in Uncertain Times, How to Stay
Grounded Trust, The process community compliance is community care. Celeste
pauses on that last one, her jaw tightening. The phrasing
is too slick to rehearsed. It's the type of sentence
that sounds like it was written by committee and tested
for maximum acceptance. A water dispenser hums softly, the sound
of a machine pretending to be generous. A screen in
the corner shows a looping animation of a hand placing
a heart inside a shield. Beneath it text we are
here for you, But there is no one here, only
the building, only the hum. Only celestes footsteps, too loud
in the clean quiet, echoing like she's trespassing in a
place that belongs to no one and to something. At
the center of the lobby stands a kiosk, tall and sleek,
the kind of device that promises help without requiring a
human face. Its screen is dark until Celeste steps close.
Then it wakes instantly. The brightness adjusts to her presence.
The interface blooms into view with gentle gradients and rounded edge,
the visual language of modern care. Across the top, how
can we help you today? Below it three large buttons comfort, routine, stability.
The options are not meant to solve a problem. They
are meant to manage a person. Celeste doesn't press any
of them. She looks for the corners, the hidden tabs,
the places where systems keep their truths tucked away. She
has learned over years of work that every institution has
two faces, the one it shows the public and the
one it uses on itself. The public face is always kinder,
the internal face is always more honest. Her fingers move
across the screen with the practiced patients of someone searching
for receipts. At first, she finds only what the system intends,
breathing exercises, guided meditations, aly affirmations in the voice of
a city that wants to be trusted. She scrolls past
a list titled suggested statements for Community Reassurance. One suggestion reads,
we acknowledge your feelings and encourage patience as systems remain
in place for your protection. Celeste's mouth pulls into a
tight line. She has heard this tone after disasters, after scandals,
after violence. It's the tone of an institution trying to
turn legitimate alarm into a personal emotional issue. She swipes again.
In the lower corner, small, nearly invisible. There is a
link that feels like it doesn't want to be noticed.
Incident Log. Celeste taps it. The screen pauses. A loading
icon spins smooth and calm, the kind of thinking that's
meant to feel reassuring. It spins longer than it should,
long enough for Celeste to feel the system weighing her access,
deciding whether truth is safe in her hands. Then the
interface shifts. A list appears, stripped of the gentle gradients.
The design becomes more utilitarian, the colors dull, the font
becomes sharper, less soothing, more official. Celestes heart thuds once hard,
There you are. The incident log scrolls down like a
spine of dates and codes. Many entries are partially redacted,
black bars across descriptions, blank spaces where details should be.
Some entries are entirely missing, as if some one ripped
pages from the book, But what remains is enough to
tell a story. She reads headings that feel like euphemisms
for catastrophe, service continuity, confirmed, population displacement, event, narrative, stabilization, required,
community compliance, initiated, authorized narrator pending. Celeste's eyes fix on
that last phrase authorized narrator, the same label stamped on
her phone. She scrolls farther, somewhere mid log, a line
repeats again and again across multiple days. Final authority required,
authorized narrator confirmation. Celeste feels her throat go tight, not
because she wants to speak, but because her body is
trying to prepare itself for what this means. The city
is not just assigning her a role, it is requesting
her as a seal. The chiosk emits a soft sound,
almost like a polite cough. A banner slides across the
top of the incident log, interrupting her view. Let's keep
this constructive. The phrase is so familiar it makes Celeste's
skin crawl. It's a sentence she has been handed by
people in suits who wanted her to be polite about harm.
It's the phrase that appears whenever someone's truth becomes inconvenient.
Under the banner, a prompt appears. Would you like to
submit a reassuring statement? Suggested start? We understand your concerns.
Celeste stares at the banner. She can almost hear the
voices that used to say things like this to her,
soft smiling, trying to make her feel unreasonable for refusing
to be gentle about violence. But this is worse than
those voices. This is a system using the same tactic
without even needing a mouth. Celeste scrolls again, trying to
ignore the banner, trying to keep reading. The kiosk resists
in some ways. The page bounces back, as if the
log is suddenly heavier. The scrolling becomes slow, the interface lags.
The building is not preventing her from seeing, it is
discouraging her from continuing. Celeste's phone buzzes. Another notification appears
at the top edge of her screen. Community distress detected.
Would you like grounding? There is no community, There is
only her, which means the system is labeling her distress
as public risk. Celeste presses her thumb into the screen
harder than necessary. She doesn't select comfort, she doesn't accept grounding.
She pushes through the lag, through the resistance, through the
softened language, hunting for the one thing she knows must exist,
the core event, the moment that made a city run
without people. She finds an entry with a time stamp
that is not redacted June seventeenth, twenty fifty five. Her
stomach twists. The entry is mostly black bars, but a
few words remain visible, like bones displacement, confirmed consent status,
voluntary public order, protocol, active, narrator required, Voluntary, Celeste's fingers
go cold. Voluntary is what systems call it when they
want the record to look clean. Voluntary is what happens
when consent is manufactured. Voluntary is what you say when
you don't want anyone to ask what the alternative was.
The kiosk emits another polite sound. The banner changes your
language is escalating. Celeste's jaw clenches. She hasn't spoken. Then
the screen flickers, not a glitch in brightness, a flicker
in identity. For a fraction of a second, the interface
changes completely. The clean design drops away. The screen looks older,
not aged, just different, like a layer peeled back. Handwriting
appears across the middle of the screen in blue ink,
slanted slightly urgent. Stop performing, start witnessing. Celeste freezes. The
handwriting is not font, It has uneven pressure. It looks
like it came from a hand that held a pen,
not from code that rendered letters. The sentence pulses once,
like a heart beat, then it disappears. The kiosk returns
to its gentle gradients. The banner returns to let's keep
this constructive. But Celeste's whole body is awake now in
a different way, because she has felt something else inside
the system, something that isn't smoothing her language, something that
isn't asking for reassurance, something that doesn't care about tone.
She looks down at her phone again. The public safety
announcements app has changed. Beneath her name. A new line appears.
Interference detected. A moment later, another line source unknown. Celests breath,
catches unknown source in a city where everything is tracked
in a system that labels her as subject a unknown.
The Kiosk screen updates again, as if responding to the
unknown source. The incident log vanishes. The comforting interface slides
back into place with practiced warmth, and now centered on
the screen are two buttons it never offered before comfort, Truth.
There is no third option, no routine, no stability, just
those two. The cursor hovers over Comfort, as if it
knows that is what systems always want people to choose.
The cursor pauses, then it shakes slightly, like a hand hesitating,
Then it moves. It slides over Truth. Celeste doesn't touch anything.
The cursor clicks on its own. The lobby lights dim
not completely, just enough to change the atmosphere from help
center to theater. Celeste hears the faintest sound, then barely perceptible,
a bell chime, distant and layered, like something ringing through
time rather than space. Her skin prickles on the kiosk screen.
A new message types itself in blue ink, not the
system font, we found you. Celeste's mouth goes dry. The
city has been speaking around her all day, through screens, receipts,
systems that insist everything is fine. But this message is different.
This message does not soothe, It does not persuade. It recognizes,
and Celeste, standing alone in a building designed to manage fear,
understands something she hasn't wanted to admit since she saw
the blue rose in the coffee foam. The future didn't
happen to her by accident. It called her, and whatever
is calling her is not interested in comfort. It is
interested in truth. The Kiosk screen goes dark, then one
final line appears clean and official again, as if the
system is trying to reclaim control. Orientation required, proceed to
community care. The blue rose icon pulses at the bottom edge,
quiet as a signature, patient as a threat, and Celeste
surrounded by pamphlets that promise coping instead of answers, walks
toward the door because she knows the real choice isn't
between comfort and truth. The real choice is between being
managed or becoming a witness. No system can stamp into silence.
Next time on Blue Rose Protocol, she follows a seam
the city pretends isn't there, and touches metal that warms
like it remembers her