Screen Static

Alice Herring pressed her nose against the glass window of the Cartoon Network security office. The monitors inside glowed with familiar characters from Regular Show, her absolute favorite cartoon.

"Dad, can we really go inside?" she asked, adjusting her brown ponytail.

Jimmy Dale Herring chuckled and showed his badge to the guard. "Perks of working in tech support. They called me to fix their computer systems."

The family walked into the control room filled with dozens of screens. Alice's eyes widened as she spotted Mordecai and Rigby on one of the monitors.

"Mom, look! It's them!" Alice pointed excitedly.

Tracy Herring smiled at her daughter's enthusiasm. Maddie, Alice's older sister, rolled her green eyes but grinned anyway.

Suddenly, the audio crackled. Mordecai's voice came through choppy and distorted. "Righ—by, we ne—d to—"

The blue jay's words cut in and out like a broken radio.

"That's weird," Alice frowned. "Why does he sound like that?"

Static Signals

Rigby's voice joined in with the same choppy distortion. "Duuude, what's hap—ning to my voi—ce?"

Alice stepped closer to the monitors. The brown-haired raccoon's words sounded like a radio stuck between stations.

"Jimmy, this isn't normal computer lag," said a woman with short auburn hair who emerged from behind a bank of servers. She wore a blue technician uniform with the name 'Sandra' stitched on the pocket. "I'm Sandra Chen, head of digital systems here. These characters are stored on our main servers, and something's corrupting their audio files."

Jimmy pulled out his phone and started recording the glitchy voices. "The sound patterns remind me of data compression errors."

"But Dad," Alice interrupted, "if it's just computer stuff, why can't you fix it like you always do?"

Before Jimmy could answer, all the screens showing Regular Show flickered. Mordecai and Rigby froze mid-sentence, their images pixelated into blocky squares.

Sandra's face went pale. "The video files are corrupting now too. At this rate, we'll lose the entire episode library by tonight."

Maddie looked up from her phone. "Wait, so Alice's favorite characters could actually disappear forever?"

Tracy squeezed Alice's shoulder as her daughter stared at the frozen, glitching screen in horror.