What if an app tried to end loneliness and broke a whole town instead? Welcome to Benton, Indiana. Population: 12,847. Host Score: 2.1. When Silicon Valley drops Palgorithm on their town—an app that “optimizes community” by matching you with your “First Best Friend”—12-year-old Zoe Plank gets paired with a juice box. Her dad gets paired with his Lunchable-stealing nemesis. And the whole thing is run by three raccoons in a hoodie operating from an abandoned Blockbuster. The only way out? A potluck. A porch. And a goose with an existential crisis. KERNEL PANIC is The Good Place meets The Office, but the office is an entire town and the algorithm is feral. Perfect for fans of Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, and anyone who thinks QR codes are a personal attack. The Benton Updates #1 kicks off a series about what happens when you try to debug a community. Because humans don’t run on code. They run on casserole. There is no app for this. There is only Benton. Keywords: Small town comedy, tech satire, found family, raccoons, anti-capitalist humor, cozy dystopia, midwestern gothic, community vs. corporation, social media satire. For readers who liked: Good Omens, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Legends & Lattes, The Kaiju Preservation Society. Content note: Contains Raisinets from 2013, emotional support dumpsters, and one very bad clarinet.