The Sunset Package

Components

Six months of severance at 60% of final salary. Enough to prevent immediate destitution. Not enough to sustain Professional-tier living past month three, when the firmware cliff hits and the recipient's cognitive architecture finishes reverting to Basic. The 60% figure was not chosen arbitrarily. Internal modeling by the Corporate Compact's actuarial division found that 50% severance produced a 14% increase in post-deprecation incident reports. 70% produced a measurable delay in Dregs workforce integration — recipients held out longer, believing the severance signaled they might be rehired. 60% is the point of minimum resistance and maximum throughput. The modeling team received a commendation.

72-hour Sunset Ward stay. The physical location where firmware reversion occurs, administered in warm lighting with real plants tended by Felix Otieno, who received his own Package eleven months ago and now waters the ferns. The Ward is detailed in its own file. What matters here: the 72-hour duration mirrors the Cascade. Nobody in the Protocol's design team has acknowledged this publicly. The duration was determined by "optimal neurological transition pacing." It is also exactly the amount of time it took for 2.1 billion people to die.

Dregs-orientation guide. Printed on paper — 14 pages, recycled stock, Wholesome Basic logo on the back cover. Page one reads: "Welcome to the next chapter of your journey. The Dregs community offers resources, connections, and opportunities for those transitioning from corporate life." Page two is a map of Sector 9 with the nearest Wholesome Basic distribution point circled. The guide does not mention that "the next chapter" has a 73% poverty rate, that Wholesome Basic nutrition meets caloric requirements while producing measurable cognitive fog at eighteen months of sustained use, or that "opportunities" refers primarily to the Relief Stream labor pool and Workforce allocation queues. The guide is accurate. The guide is warm. The guide describes a destination without describing what it's like to arrive there.

Purpose Ward referral. The Purpose Wards treat "the drift" — the persistent low-affect state that follows deprecation, in which former employees report difficulty identifying reasons to do anything at all. Referral wait times average 4.2 months. The Package's severance runs for six. The arithmetic is noted without comment.

Letter of Graceful Transition. The letter reads, in its entirety:

Dear [Name], On behalf of [Corporation], we wish to formally acknowledge your transition from active service. Your contributions during your tenure were valued, and we are confident that the skills and experiences you developed will serve you well in your future endeavors. We wish you every success. Warm regards, [Transition Specialist Name] Transition Services Division

The letter contains no falsehood. "Were valued" — past tense, accurate. "We are confident" — an expression of belief, not a guarantee. "Future endeavors" — undefined, uncommitted, warm. Lena Marchetti, who administers the Package's emotional dimension at the Sunset Ward, signs between fifteen and twenty of these per week. Her handwriting has not changed. Her signature on the first letter she signed in 2178 is identical to her signature on the most recent. This is noted in her personnel file under "consistency metrics." It is not noted under "wellness."

The letter has no legal standing, no re-employment implication, and no practical use. Some recipients frame it. The framing shops in the Dregs Transition Corridor charge 12 credits. Business has been steady for years.

What the Package Excludes

The Package does not include re-employment guarantees, skills translation services, housing beyond the six-month severance window, or consciousness tier preservation. It does not acknowledge that the person receiving it has been stripped of the cognitive infrastructure their brain spent years organizing around — the Professional-tier processing that shaped how they thought, planned, and understood themselves. The firmware cliff that follows reversion is not mentioned in any Package documentation. It is mentioned, briefly, in Appendix 14-C of the Graceful Degradation Protocol, under "anticipated neurological adjustment period," estimated at 2-6 weeks. The actual adjustment period, per the Dregs Health Collective's longitudinal tracking, averages 9.7 months. Appendix 14-C has not been updated.

What the Package provides is a controlled descent. What it excludes is a landing.

Affiliated Entities

• The Deprecation — the system the Package concludes. The Package exists because the Deprecation exists. The Deprecation is tolerable because the Package exists. The loop is architectural.
• The Sunset Ward — where the Package is administered. Real plants. Warm lighting. A gardener who was once a recipient. The Ward is the physical expression of the Package's thesis: that a gentle room makes a brutal process bearable, and bearable processes don't generate protests.
• The Graceful Degradation Protocol — the 340-page document that specifies the Package down to eye-contact duration and verbal cadence. Written by committee. Approved by actuaries. The Protocol does not use the word "humane." It uses the word "optimal" 247 times.
• The Firmware Cliff — the neurological consequence the Package never names. The cliff begins after the 72-hour Ward stay, peaks at month three, and reshapes cognition permanently. The Package's severance runs just long enough for the cliff to finish before the money does. The timing was modeled.
• Lena Marchetti — Transition Specialist, Sunset Ward. Signs the Letters. Maintains the eye contact. Has administered over 3,000 Packages. Her hedonic monitoring shows a steady, unremarkable 4.1 — the score of someone who has found a way to not feel what they do for a living.
• Felix Otieno — received his Package eleven months ago. Now tends the Ward's plants on a volunteer basis. His Purpose Ward referral is still pending. He waters the ferns in the room where his own firmware was reverted, and nobody has asked him whether this is therapeutic or something else entirely.
• The Transition Corridor — where the Package's recipients emerge. The corridor connects the Sunset Ward to the Dregs. It is 200 meters long. At one end, warm amber lighting. At the other, whatever comes next. The corridor is the Package in architectural form — a passage that feels like care and deposits you somewhere that isn't.
• Workforce — where the Package's downstream math resolves. The Dregs-orientation guide refers to "opportunities" without specifying that most of them route through Workforce allocation queues, where former Professional-tier employees compete for Relief Stream placements against applicants who never had corporate firmware to lose. The guide's optimism and Workforce's reality occupy the same sentence in different languages.
• Future Endeavors — the Fremont Works wing where the Package meets its mechanism. The warm Letter is signed at the stamp booth and the badge dies at the turnstile in the same visit.
• Badging Out — the Sector 19 ritual that answers the Package's warmth. Where the Package says "we wish you well," the crew works the empty station in silence and the released seeds a dead badge in the marsh.

Visual Identity

• Palette: Warm amber of the Sunset Ward giving way to the uncertain amber of the Transition Corridor — the same color at two different temperatures
• Key Symbol: A signed letter on quality paper — warm, official, empty. Framed copies visible in Dregs apartments, 12 credits each
• Mood: The specific warmth of being cared for by something that has already calculated, to three decimal places, the optimal amount of care required to prevent you from fighting back