Hi. I don’t really know how to start one of these stories. It only happened this morning. Sorry, I’m still a bit freaked out. I think this is the right place to write this. I’ll start from the beginning.
You see, I like to take walks in the countryside. The British countryside, to be precise. It just helps me clear my head after stressing out about work. I got today off and decided to go on one of my favourite walks. It’s quite a nice walk. It’s about an hour long and has plenty of scenic views. Sorry, I’m going off track. About what happened to me…
So, I was walking along one of the best parts of the walk. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Southern countryside, it’s mainly lots of grassy hills with lots of fields. It was on a path going along the top of the hills; there were many different kinds of flowers along the side of the path. I was trying to remember the name of one of them, and I remembered I had google lens.
I’m not much of a techie person, but I know how to use my phone. If it matters, it’s a google pixel. That might matter later on.
If you don’t know what google lens is or how it works, essentially you can use it to take a photo of something, and it does a google search of what is in it. It can be used to identify things (what I intended to use it for), find and translate text, etc… If it cannot identify what you are looking at, it shows images similar to your photo.
I snapped the flower, and it didn’t work. Well, frankly, I think it did. It just didn’t pick up the flower. Apparently, according to G lens, there was nothing there.
But, the images google found were quite… disturbing. It seemed to be showing me images of a dilated eye. Like an animal’s eye, a frog’s or something. Like really dilated; almost no iris at all and mainly pupil.
Though surprised, I took another photo, and the second photo told me what the flower was (it was a cowslip). I may have freaked out when it showed me images of dilated animal eyes, but I assumed it was a bug, and I walked on.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it, however. It was bizarre and creepy. It made me consider whether I should smoke my joint to calm my nerves (usually, I smoke it under a tree off the beaten path further along the walk), but I decided not to.
Creepy or not, I was still wondering what had happened. So, I stopped to take a few more photos with G lens to see if it would do it again. It worked how it was supposed to, occasionally picking up the odd tree in the background.
Then it happened again.
One of the photos, aimed back down the route I came, picked up something that didn’t exist. And the images it showed were worse than the previous ones; this time G lens showed pictures of shark teeth. You know, shark teeth contorted into that menacing smile they have. It shook me to my core.
I don’t think I understood the most horrifying part about the two image searches; they weren’t really that unconnected or random. They were both body parts of… something.
A morbid curiosity must have taken control because I took more photos with G lens than ever before (I only just started using it today). Most of them found nothing, but some showed the same things: images of an eye with a dilated pupil without any humanity behind it and shark teeth that could turn iron into mulch. Not nice stuff.
The best image I could get had both. I could see more if I moved the search box (the white box that selects the part of the photo it was looking at: I don’t know what it is actually called) around. Where I’d imagine a head to be, it had 2 dilated eyes and the shark teeth in the expected places.
However, searching the supposed rest of it gave me an additional detail about the mysterious entity before me: the branch-like hands/limbs. Branch-like because G lens showed me images of branches, dark and much like crooked tentacles. I am unsure how many fingers: 3 or 4, I think. I don’t think I could imagine them in motion, but I don’t think it would look natural.
It was also next to a tree. So I estimated its scale, which made it look quite big.
Using the images G lens gave me with my imagination, the best description of the thing would tower over the tallest person you know, have eyes dilated like a bat in the dark, teeth like one of those deep-ocean sharks and hands with fingers that may be able to move in any direction it wants them to. I envisioned a wereshark, which might look comical, bad-ass or, most likely, utterly terrifying.
After shooting the cryptid like a model on a catwalk, I started considering what it is and, more importantly, how dangerous it is.
I knew it could see me. Not only was it closely inspecting me in my first photo of it (thinking about that thing staring at me with its unnaturally wide eye a few inches from my phone makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable), but it also followed me. Yet even given this, it couldn’t touch me. I cannot see it or even sense it being there at all. I mean, it was literally not there. Yet, it was somehow there but not there.
I thought it could be like the Demogorgon off of Stranger Things. If that were the case, it might be able to freely travel between where it was and where I was at will.
I thought about whether it could get me or not, and I decided I’d rather not risk it. I decided to turn back, ending my walk early, hoping whatever it was would leave (I also thought I could smoke my zoot at home to finally calm my nerves).
I wasn’t walking or running. I was more hastily striding, occasionally jogging.
Back at where I initially found the thing staring at me, I glanced down at where the cowslip was. Before I left, however, I stopped. I looked again at where the cowslip was. It was now gone.
I could see the bottom of the plant still rooted in the ground, but the cowslip was plucked up by something. I wanted to assume it was another walker, but I knew it couldn’t be, as I would have seen them walk past me from either direction.
It took my mind approximately 5 seconds to realise the more horrifying conclusion.
I took my phone out and scanned the area with G lens for what I hoped would be the final time. And, lo and behold, G lens found images of a cowslip offered by a disembodied hand. Though the hand in the images it showed me was coloured and human, I could only imagine what the hand it was offering to me actually looked like.
I realised that it could take things into its dimension. I froze like I was prepared to be taken as well.
There was a moment of silence.
Then the sudden sound of something behind me.
Turning my head and expecting the worst, I saw it was just another walker asking whether I was all right. I almost let out a dry chuckle and turned my body to face her.
She vanished.
No joke, one second she was right behind me in my peripheral vision, and the next, as I was looking at her, she was gone. She vanished into thin air right before my eyes!
I looked in every direction; she was nowhere to be found. Nowhere except… in its world.
I aimed my phone around where the walker was and put G lens to hard work. I took 1… 2… 3 more photos and found nothing. On the 4th, G lens searched for a specific stock photo of a woman with complete terror on her face. I would have found it funny in any other context, but it only made me more panicked.
Again, I took more: 1… 2… 3… 4, it showed images of a hand clasping a red apple for some reason, 5… The 5th one told me the images were blurred due to the safe search being on. I paused as my thumb tensely hovered over the button to turn it off. I had to mentally prepare myself for seeing images I might be unable to unsee. Then, I turned off the safe search.
I wasn’t prepared.
The images were of a bleeding heart clenched in an arm with blood running down to its elbow.
My hands went numb, and my phone numbly dropped from them. I brought them up to my face in shock. I just witnessed someone being disembowelled alive. Even if I couldn’t actually see it happening, I know that’s what happened because that’s what google lens showed me. I wanted to be sick.
Why did I pick my phone up? I should have just run. But I felt I needed to see the rest of what had happened. I really didn’t.
I only needed to take one photo this time to get G lens to respond, one photo aimed at the ground the woman was standing at.
The images, with the safe search already off, showed me a mangled corpse.
I don’t think I need to describe a mangled corpse to you, but I did not think google could show such mutilated bodies. I can only assume she was ripped apart or, more specifically, dissected like a frog.
That time, I did run home.
After I got home, after I regained control of my paranoid thoughts, I tried to search google for the cryptid that was following me. Of course, I found nothing. I might as well have discovered a new species of cryptid. Maybe I did.
Not too long ago, I made one last scour of my home with G lens to search for that thing, but I couldn’t find it. I did find something after 5 minutes: invisible writing on the wall. I knew it could only be that thing because only the text feature revealed it.
According to G lens, it said LENOVO(R) followed by my full name.
I freaked out when I saw it had written my name, as anyone in my position would, but I was confused and curious why it had written the brand of my laptop. Yet, the way it was written, with the trademark symbol next to it and everything, looked really familiar. Not two seconds later, I remembered that was what was displayed on my PC when I started it up. Plus, before logging in, it would display my full name.
Once more, I felt the cold grasp of realisation. I realised it must have been right behind me when I was logged on to my PC.
I would be glad it’s gone now, but I have no clue where it is. And I think it might come back.
As I write this, I only have theories on what it is. I welled over all the supernatural mumbo-jumbo that happened and realised that it was trying to communicate with me; I think it thought LENOVO(R) was a greeting. That’s why it used my name. Otherwise, it was just scratching what it saw out on my wall. Either way, I think it wants to know more about our world. Think about it; how it followed me, how it plucked the cowslip from the ground, how it dissected that woman to look at her heart. It’s probing everything it can get its hands on!
Perhaps, it came here from somewhere else or somehow only found us due to the influx of development in our technology, specifically: google lenses algorithm. Though I’m not sure how. It probably doesn’t matter.
Maybe I should be thinking about how dangerous it is. Because I definitely don’t think it understands morality, as shown by the awful display it put on for me.
I also think I know why it cannot get me. Of course, if it could pull me into its world, it would have done it long before now. But to pull in things from our world, it needs them present on a camera. I don’t know whether google lens has to pick up anything for it to do so, but I think it only plucked that cowslip because I had the camera of my phone on it when I was trying to identify it. Same with the woman, it pulled her in as I swivelled my body towards her, pointing the lens of my phone at her.
Yet, none of this truly helps me; all I think I know is that if I appear in a camera’s frame, it can get me. And looking at the top of the PC I am currently typing on, I can see it also has a camera. Can the thing turn it on if it learns how to?
I should wrap this up quickly before anything else happens.
I know I can’t do the woman I saw killed today any justice; I don’t even know her name, and I can barely remember what she looked like in the ever-so-brief moment I saw her. Nevertheless, if the woman’s family (if she has any) is reading this: I’m so sorry I couldn’t do anything to save her. I’m just… sorry.
Lastly, if any of you reading this know what the thing is, please tell me. I’ve been searching for it and still can’t find it. Please, tell me I’m safe.