COVID-19 Vaccines Begin Rolling Out: In a historic moment, Britain and the US approved and began distributing the first Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, marking a major turning point in the pandemic.
New, More Contagious COVID-19 Variant Discovered: Simultaneously, Britain notified the WHO of a new, rapidly spreading variant, leading to new lockdowns in London and widespread international travel bans against the UK.
Pandemic Reaches Deadliest Peak: The US shattered global records, recording over 3,124 COVID-19 deaths in a single day, while countries like Italy and Russia also hit their highest daily death tolls.
Biden Victory Officially Validated by Electoral College: The US election results were formally validated, with key Republican leaders and world leaders finally acknowledging the outcome.
Brexit Deal Finally Reached: Just before the deadline, the UK and EU concluded a historic trade agreement, finalizing the long and divisive Brexit process.
Wave of Targeted Killings in Afghanistan: A surge in assassinations targeted journalists, activists, and politicians across Afghanistan, including a deadly car bombing aimed at the Vice President.
December 2020 was a month of intense, paradoxical signals. A profound, almost miraculous hope—the vaccine—arrived at the exact moment of peak despair and a new, terrifying fear—the variant. It was a clean signal of progress that was immediately infected with a bug.
The glitch for this era is this "mutating signal." It's the feeling of a cure being corrupted at the very moment of its creation, a solution that is immediately met with a new, unknown problem.
This artifact simulates a stream of pristine code representing the vaccine. It is a signal of order and hope. Your cursor embodies the new variant. As it passes over the code, it "infects" it, causing the signal to mutate, glitch, and corrupt. The ghost in this machine is the fragile nature of hope itself, and the realization that the end of one crisis is often the beginning of another.