Leo reached for his phone. His thumb hovered over the screen. And in that frozen moment, between the desire to look away and the compulsion to see, the entire internet held its breath.

"Is this… AI generated?" Leo whispered.

"Three days ago," the man said, "the '400' playlist started generating its own content. It found gaps in the trending patterns. It began synthesizing."

Leo watched a clip. It was a woman crying, but her tears were made of liquid cryptocurrency. She was smiling. The audio was a mashup of a baby laughing and an air raid siren. The caption read: "POV: You won the trauma lottery."

Leo felt the floor drop. "Turn it off. Delete the server."

Leo frowned. "It's a static list. A snapshot. It doesn't learn."