The Eternal Beep

The fluorescent tubes hummed their migraine frequency, spitting relentless, shadowless light. Offensively cheerful Muzak ricocheted off linoleum scuffed by the drag and sigh of countless weary soles. Gary propelled himself and his basket towards the checkout sector by sheer inertia.

The basket’s weight seemed less physical than existential: a bottle of cheap Merlot, its glass cool and unforgiving; a microwave meal labelled ‘Homestyle Comfort’, suspiciously beige under the harsh lights; generic painkillers. Each step grated. An overpowering urge simply to stop. Cease moving through these canyons of choice, past shouting colours of special offers assaulting his periphery. He’d survived the visual noise. Now, the final gauntlet: the self-checkouts.

The Judgment Stations, his mind supplied. Lined up under their own halos of invasive light. Automated priests of convenience where confession often ended in error messages. He didn’t select; he drifted towards the nearest available blue glow, resigned. His reflection flickered, unwelcome, across the dark screen – a stranger looking worn thin.

He lifted the Merlot, the dead weight settling in his grip. Preparing to face the machine’s appraisal. The first synthesized beep echoed slightly, sharp and sterile. Less a start than an immediate warning.

He scanned the Merlot. The machine registered it with a polite, indifferent beep. Gary placed it carefully in the bagging area to his right. A pause, pregnant with technological judgment. Then, the synthesized female voice, smooth and utterly soulless: "Unexpected item in the bagging area." A red light pulsed, a steady, relentless beat.

"For..." Gary started, biting back the curse. Standard procedure. Always something. He lifted the bottle to replace it, perhaps more firmly this time, ready for round two.

Scan. Place.

"Unexpected item in the bagging area." Red light. Voice.

He sighed, a plume of weary air. Fine.

Remove everything, start again. He reached for the Merlot

– ifted the Merlot its weight familiar and vaguely depressing, preparing to meet his judge. The first synthesized beep felt less like a start and more like a warning.

Gary blinked. What the hell?

He was holding the Merlot, before scanning it.

Had he just… skipped? Like a faulty video feed?

He shook his head sharply, blaming the lights, the hour. Focus. Scan.

The polite beep. Place in bagging area. Pause. "Unexpected item in the bagging area." The same synthesized drone. The same relentless pulse of red. Infuriating stability.

He reached again for the bottle, annoyance turning to grim resolve–

– ifted the Merlot, its weight familiar and vaguely depressing, preparing to meet his judge. The first synthesized beep felt less like a start and more like a warning.

No.

His hand froze mid-air. His breath caught. That wasn’t fatigue.

That tiny, almost silent skip in the world, the visual snap-back – it had happened again.

He looked around, a frantic edge to his movement now.

Far down the aisle, a woman with a squeaky trolley wheeled past, a transient figure he was suddenly, sickeningly sure he’d seen before, making that exact same turn. His skin felt cold. This wasn't right.

A prickle of unease, deeper than annoyance. He forced his hand down, forced himself towards the scanner again, a knot tightening in his stomach.

Scan the Merlot. Hear the beep. Place it gently, so gently, in the bagging area. Hold his breath. Wait.

"Unexpected item in the bagging area." The voice. The light. The failure. Again. And as he reached, automatically this time, a certainty colder than the cheap glass neck of the Merlot bottle flooded him.

It wasn't just wrong; it was repeating. All of it.

This exact minute. A choked gasp escaped him. Real. The world outside the harsh halo of the checkout light seemed to blur, sounds distorting – the polite beep suddenly felt like a nail hammered into his skull, the Muzak warped, slowing sickeningly for a half-second. He gripped the checkout stand’s cool metal edge, knuckles white, the sharp angle biting into his palm, trying to anchor himself as reality fractured.

Trapped.

It wasn't the machine breaking down. It was everything. He stared at the bottle in his hand, poised again at the start. He knew the beep that would follow the scan. He knew the voice. He knew the light. And he knew, with a certainty that felt like ice flooding his veins, they would keep coming.

–ifted the Merlot… Certainty. Cold, absolute. For one cycle, maybe two, Gary stood locked in place, the Merlot heavy in his unmoving hand. He simply watched the minute unfold, the beep, the placement he didn’t make, the inevitable voice, the silent lurch back. His mind, a frantic engine moments before, was terrifyingly quiet. Then, something else took root in the quiet: a jagged shard of will. Not hope. Just a raw refusal to remain passive.

This time.

–ifted the Merlot… He began. Methodical.

Hypothesis One: Placement sensitivity.

He lowered the bottle with excruciating care, millimeters above the scale, releasing it like a sigh.

"Unexpected item in the bagging area." Flat. Indifferent. Red light pulsed. Failure. RESET.

–ifted the Merlot…

Hypothesis Two: Speed dependency.

He scanned fast, a blurred motion. Slammed the bottle down. The machine barely registered its presence before declaring:

"Unexpected item…" Failure. RESET.

–ifted the Merlot… Hypothesis Three: Scale obstruction/calibration.

He scanned normally. Placed it. Failure. Before the reset claimed him, he craned his neck, examining the bagging area scale. Spotless.

He tried placing the bottle dead center. Center placement attempt. Failure. RESET.

Front corner placement. Failure. RESET.

Back left, nudged infinitesimally. Failure. RESET.

His internal log resumed, voice flat, brittle.

Attempt approx. 8: Back Left Placement. Result: Negative. Machine status: Unknowable. Does it… register intent? Or just… exist to fail me?

He tried scanning the barcode at extreme angles.

Diagonal scan. Failure. RESET.

Inverted scan. Failure. RESET.

His eyes snagged on the scratch near the scanner, the Idaho shape. A fixed point in the temporal blur. He placed the beige meal first, then painkillers, then Merlot.

Item order permutation. Failure. RESET.

Attempt approx. 15: Help Button Intervention.

He jabbed the blinking icon the instant the screen allowed. Synthesized chirp: "Please wait for assistance."

Hope, treacherous and unwelcome, flickered. He waited. The air felt thick. The lights seemed to buzz louder now, a physical pressure on his temples. Far off, the squeaky trolley made its turn.

Tick. Tock. Time mocking him. Almost…

RESET.

Assistance, like salvation, operated on a different timeline. Useless. Perfectly useless.

Attempt approx. 20: Payment System Bypass.

One bizarre loop, the bagging area error didn't trigger.

A jolt, sharp as electricity. Maybe? Different failure point?

He lunged for the payment terminal, jamming his card in.

"Card error. Please try again."

Panic flared. Fumbled for another card.

Too slow.

The familiar nauseating lurch. RESET.

The cruelty of that brief detour was exquisite. Back to the Merlot. Back to this failure.

He selected ‘Cash’. Displayed the total. He reached for his wallet. The cash slot remained sealed. Impassable. A system designed for flow, creating perfect stasis. Failure. RESET.

Attempt approx. 30: Direct Communication.

Logic shredded. He started muttering again. "Come on, piece of junk."

Then louder, voice cracking. "What’s the secret? Is it the wine? Are you judging my life choices based on this cheap plonk?!"

It felt insane, talking to it, yet what was left? Appeasement?

He tried scanning, placing, then bowing slightly.

Bowing attempt. Failure. RESET.

He tried scanning while reciting the error message back at it, mimicking the tone perfectly.

Vocal mimicry. Failure. RESET.

His own reflection looked hollow-eyed. Was he going mad? The lights definitely felt hotter, the air thinner, charged with static.

Attempt approx. 45: Temporal Mimicry.

If the loop repeated perfectly… He tried recreating his posture, arm angle, from the loop where the card reader had briefly worked. Temporal voodoo.

Failure. RESET.

He tried tapping the screen where 'Pay Now' would be, while placing the Merlot.

Tap-and-Place coordination. Failure. RESET.

He noticed the slight depression on the keypad's '5', traced it with a finger.

He counted the ceiling tiles again – still seven by nine. Solid. Real. Unlike this repeating hell.

Attempt approx. 60? 70? Irrelevant. Final Rationalization: Utter Absurdity.

Maybe the solution was designed to be illogical. A cosmic joke demanding ritual. He had to try peak stupid.

Scan the Merlot. Okay. Place it… while humming the first bar of the offensively cheerful Muzak tune and simultaneously using his other hand to tap the picture of the organic bananas he’d accidentally hit loops ago.

A sacrifice of dignity to an insane god. He executed the bizarre sequence with frantic precision.

Placed the humming, tapping Merlot. Waited. Breathed. Held.

"Unexpected item in the bagging area." Identical failure.

The sheer, unwavering consistency of its refusal, even against calculated absurdity, struck him not with anger, but with sudden, terrifying clarity. Hopeless. It was utterly, definitively hopeless. A sound ripped from his throat. Rough, ragged. A single, barked laugh, completely empty of humour. It echoed for a bare instant, stark against the Muzak, before the world dissolved, the lights buzzed violently in his vision, and he–

–ifted the Merlot…

The laugh’s echo died, leaving a vibrating silence in his head. Sanity, a frayed string, snapped. Raw nerve took over. As the sterile beep sounded, thought dissolved. Gary threw his head back and howled, a long, ragged sound that morphed, without pause, into a bellowing, mangled verse of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” aimed squarely at the scanner eye.

"Bismillah, no! We will not let you go!" Scan. Place. The world shimmered at the edges of his vision.

"Unexpected item in the bagging area." Calm. Steady. Utterly unmoved. RESET.

–ifted the Merlot… He tried whispering the song this time, a sibilant threat. Failure. RESET.

Words were ghosts. Action remained. He slammed his fist down hard on the plastic console next to the screen. A dull thud absorbed by cheap plastic; the machine didn’t even vibrate. Only a jarring shock travelled up his own arm, stinging his knuckles. Pointless. The loop completed with cold indifference. RESET.

Next cycle, he shoved hard against the bagging scale after placing the Merlot, trying to force it. It didn't give. Failure. RESET.

He tried blocking the scanner eye the instant after the beep. Failure. RESET.

Violence was a joke the machine wasn't listening to.

Maybe the cage wasn’t the machine; maybe it was the space. The horrifying thought spurred him. After the drone of "Unexpected item," he ignored the bottle and lunged sideways, towards the main aisle's indifferent shelves. Three quick steps. Air felt different, thinner. A dizzying gulp of possibility– Snap. Spatial whiplash. Brutal. Nauseating.

One instant lunging, the next standing static, hand hovering, the initial warning beep drilling into his ear.

The store lights seemed to flare violently, then settle, leaving trails on his retinas. Bile burned his throat. He tried again, slowly, walking left. One step. Snap.

He was back. Right. One and a half steps. Snap.

Back, the slight dizziness lasting longer this time, the store swimming back into focus. Tethered. An invisible leash anchored to this precise point of failure.

Panic wasn’t just clawing; it was consuming. Thoughts fractured, scattered like static. Again. No. Hit. Break. OUT. Why ME?

A flash: sun-dappled wallpaper from his childhood bedroom, instantly gone. Meaningless. The air felt wrong, thick like water. The lights buzzed now, a tangible vibration under his skin. He scanned the Merlot, placed it – pure muscle memory. His eyes, however, scanned frantically, locking onto the only human shape that wasn't a ghost: the attendant, far off, straightening newspapers. Then, reliably, impossibly, the woman with the squeaky trolley made her turn in the distance.

She's real. The attendant is real. Hope, irrational and fierce, surged through the static. Contact.

Maybe ten seconds. Twelve at most. After the failure, before the reset. He needed her attention now. His hand shot into his pocket – keys, lint… yes! The grape. Small, squashed, pathetic. A missile of pure desperation.

His plan: wait for failure, aim, throw just as the attendant looks up. Make her see. Make her react. Scan. Place. "Unexpected item…" Now!

Adrenaline spiked, time seemed to stretch. He drew back, aimed with the focus of a sniper, threw the small, dark missile. It flew true. The attendant was looking up, her gaze sweeping… sweeping… Her head started to turn towards him! Towards the checkout! She saw–!

–ifted the Merlot… Silence. Not outside, but inside his head. The static was gone. The frantic energy vanished. The grape felt heavy and whole in his pocket. The attendant was absorbed in her newspapers again, oblivious. It hadn’t happened. The hope, the throw, the near-connection – erased utterly. Leaving only a vast, silent, aching void where his last desperate strategy had been. Despair, pure and absolute.

–ifted the Merlot…

Despair had scoured him, leaving only numb autopilot. He was a ghost performing the loop’s catechism by rote. Scan Merlot. Beep. His hand, moving towards the bagging area, dragged limply across the glowing touch screen, fingers accidentally brushing a bright yellow icon – Organic Bananas – near the edge.

He didn’t register the contact. He placed the Merlot down, the movement loose, automatic. A sigh shuddered out of him then, pure physical exhaustion. He stood, waiting dimly for the voice, the light, the inevitable reset.

Silence.

Not the tense pause before failure. Not the sickening skip back. A profound lack where the error should have been. The absence hit him like a skipped heartbeat, a terrifying vacuum in the loop’s rhythm. He remained frozen, braced for the lurch. It didn’t come. Seconds dripped away, measured only by the distant, jaunty Muzak. He stared at the screen. Merlot registered. Price added. Scan next item. The prompt glowed, steady, impassive.

Could it…? He hesitated, glancing wildly around for a half-second. The squeaky trolley woman wasn't where she 'should' be. He cautiously touched the Merlot bottle in the bag. No red light. No voice. A tremor started in his hand. Slowly, tentatively, like defusing an invisible bomb, he reached for the beige meal. He scanned it. A normal beep, clean and sharp – mundane, yet shocking. He placed it in the bag. Silence. His breath hitched. He snatched the painkillers, scanned them. Beep. Placed them. Silence. Accepted.

The screen shifted: Total Due.

Payment options glowed. His fingers felt thick, clumsy on his wallet. Card out. Inserted with exaggerated care.

Processing… Approved.

The word flashed, followed by a brisk, cheerful chirp from the card reader, offensively normal. The machine whirred, loudly printing the receipt, the mechanical grind and tear slicing through the store's ambiance like sounds from another world.

He took the card. Tore off the receipt – a flimsy, bizarre trophy. His movements were robotic, disconnected. He bundled the items into the rustling plastic bag. Transaction complete. Receipt clutched. Bag secured, its handle cutting slightly into his fingers, a grounding sting of simple reality. He had done it. The accidental ritual – banana icon, sigh, whatever it was – had worked. He was free. Of the machine, anyway. He stood dazed, bag heavy, staring blankly ahead.

He turned from the machine. Took a step, then another, plastic bag rustling, receipt clutched tight. He didn’t look back. One foot in front of the other, moving with stiff purpose towards the wide glass doors glinting under the fluorescents. Almost there. He reached them, anticipating the familiar hiss and slide of escape. Instead, solid, unyielding glass stopped him cold. The automatic doors remained shut. Silent. Impassive.

Gary stood inches from the barrier, the bag heavy in his hand, staring blankly at his own tired reflection trapped in the glass.