It began as a idle curiosity, a late-night download of a fan-made, hyper-detailed 3D model of 742 Evergreen Terrace. But by hour three, Marcus had stopped seeing polygons and textures. He had fallen into it.

He closed the program. The screen went black. For a long time, he just sat in his own silent, dusty apartment. The Simpsons’ house was a lie of comfort, a digital tomb. But as he got up to make a cup of coffee, he caught himself humming the closing credits theme. A sad, quiet little tune.

The model was dead. But the echo, he realized, would live in his bones forever. He had looked too deep, and found only himself staring back.

He knew this house better than his own childhood home. He knew that the orange sectional couch was bolted to the floor in animation, but here, in this fanatic’s shrine, it had a leather normal map and a physics engine. He could see the individual dust motes on the bookshelf that held no books, just a single pink donut box. The silence was the first wrong note. There was no canned laughter. No saxophone wail. No “D’oh!”