The others posted here before, so I think this subreddit might be my only hope.
To give you some context, I haven’t been on Reddit in about a decade - which makes what I’m about to write even weirder than it already is.
I’ve recently gotten really into a well known online D&D show, and I’d heard that there’s a pretty active community for it on Reddit, so I ventured over here to check it out. I fully expected to have to create a new account, because it’s been SO long since I even considered visiting Reddit.
My phone had already logged me into this account.
There’s every possibility that I’m wrong, but I don’t recognise this username. When I created my account, I was probably still in the “HufflepuffBabeXOXO” username stage, and I can’t interpret “glaotastala” as anything resembling that. Still, I figured maybe it was some kind of throwaway account name, or a randomly generated string of letters, and not too weird in itself.
Then I checked the posting history. For the most part, I wanted to see if any of my old, cringe-worthy comments in Harry Potter subreddits were still around, because it would be a laugh. Part of me was also a little curious to see if there were any clues as to the origin of my old username.
If you take a quick glance at my posting history, you’ll understand why I’m freaked out. Here are a couple of links to old threads “I” - I’m using quotation marks here, because it definitely wasn’t me - posted: here and here .
Five years ago, glaotastala was someone called Holly, who worked in an ambulance control room. Then some really weird stuff happened - test calls and disappearances and things that all sound so far-fetched, it’s ridiculous - and then she posted some garbled message and disappeared off the face of the earth.
Then, two years later, some random woman called Rowan starts posting on the account, and it turns out she seems to be weirdly linked to Holly in various ways, and she’s working in ambulance control too, and some of Holly’s colleagues, who disappeared, had turned up around her but in a really different way.
Keeping up so far? Well done, you’re doing better than I am. It’s really confusing.
Now, here’s the thing that I’m finding really weird. My name isn’t Holly, nor is it Rowan. I’ve never pretended to be someone else on Reddit, and I’ve certainly never posted on here about the sort of things they wrote about.
Still, their posts are on “my” account, and I was logged into this automatically. My phone was brand new before I got it, my passwords are basically impossible to guess and I’ve never had my computer hacked (as far as I’m aware). The account is linked to the email address I’ve had since I was about seven.
There’s more to it, too. Three months ago, I got a new job - something I’ve wanted to do my entire life. If you’re familiar with my account’s posting history, I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear that my job is in a call centre.
It isn’t an ambulance control room, and no one disappears without a trace. That’s part of the problem, though. I don’t think we’re the call centre that receives the test calls.
I think we’re the one that makes them.
My department deals with inbound calls, and we’re basically like outsourced receptionists - we take messages for really busy companies and promise them a call back. One minute I’m talking to someone looking to speak with their solicitor, the next I’m promising someone that their complaint about a bad donut is being taken seriously.
I don’t know if the Test Department are part of our company, or if they just share the building, but that’s what they’re called - the Test Department. We have very little to do with them - certainly nothing in terms of job interaction, and whenever we do see them in communal areas around the office, they don’t really interact. They seem to be in their own little world most of the time. I sometimes catch them glaring at me, though.
I don’t know what hours they work. I never seem to see them in the car park. We occasionally pass in corridors. Once or twice, they pop onto our floor and speak to the supervisors, and it always seems to be about something really serious.
A couple of days after I first logged into this account, I was sent on an errand. As one of the newest workers, it’s not unusual - the more experienced staff do their best to stay at their desks all day, and they talk about the Testing Department with grimaces and shudders. I was pretty curious, to be honest, so I agreed to take a note up to the department.
The note was sealed in a brown envelope with thick brown tape, so I couldn’t have seen what the message was, even if I’d wanted to. At this point, I didn’t think anything weird was going on.
The Testing Department was access controlled, like our office space. I tried my access pass but the light flashed red, and the door didn’t open.
Almost immediately, there was a face at the small, darkened window in the door. A very pale woman stared at me for an uncomfortably long time, and I wondered if she was waiting for me to speak. Just as I was about to turn and walk away, the door swung open, and it was like the woman had disappeared.
I’ve worked in a couple of call centres, and there’s always chatting going on. People gossiping or arguing or listening to music or on calls with people - there’s always a general hubbub in the room.
This massive office space was totally silent. I couldn’t even hear keyboards being tapped or phones ringing. There were rows of what I presumed were workstations, but they were all totally hidden from view by tall, black panels.
The pale woman seemed to appear from nowhere. She held out a hand, without speaking, and I handed over the envelope. She didn’t tell me to leave, so I stood around awkwardly as she tore open the envelope with an almost-unnaturally long fingernail, teased out the note from within and read it.
Her eyes seemed to flicker from the note, to me, then back to the note. I didn’t know how to feel about this. Then the ends of her lips curled in a vague approximation of a smile, and she nodded towards the door. I understood this as my cue to leave.
The door was locked. I don’t know who the strange woman nodded at, but it didn’t appear to have been me. I couldn’t see any kind of access pad or door release button, and my heart started to pound.
“You should stay,” the woman said. She had the strangest voice I’d ever heard - somewhere between the cool voice of a computer and an actual human. Her expression made it clear that it was not am invitation but an order.
“I should get back to my work,” I tried to say, but the woman was not that easily dissuaded. She pointed me towards the first station on the left. I didn’t like the look in her eyes, so I followed her gesture and entered the cubicle.
It was devoid of any kind of colour or personal effects. There were no pictures of family or little Christmas decorations like we had on our desks downstairs. It was just a computer and a man who wore a headset and stared intently at the the screen.
I gingerly sat in the empty chair next to the man. The woman left us alone, and the man ignored me for an impossibly long time. I watched him type some information into the computer.
A picture appeared on the screen of a young woman in green ambulance uniform. I couldn’t read the text on the screen - it appeared to be written in a strange language. The letters were all standard letters, but they weren’t English words.
The man waited for a moment, then spoke in a cool, clear, mechanical voice.
‘This is a test call,’ he said, and then paused. He seemed to flinch for the briefest moment, before saying “Test call passed. Commencing stage one’.
The call seemed to end there and then, and - as I tried to process what I’d just witnessed, he turned to look at me. His eyes widened in recognition.
“Holly?” he asked, stunned. “Oh my god. Holly, it’s Oliver. Holly, you have to wake up. You have to wake up. Don’t let them take you, Holly, you have to wake up!”.
“I’m - I’m not Holly…” was all I could mumble, before the creepy woman strode into the cubicle. Without even a flicker of emotion on her face, she stabbed something into the man - Oliver’s - neck. At first I thought it was some kind of tranquilliser dart. Then I saw the blood begin to spurt from the wound.
As Oliver’s last breaths gurgled with blood and I stood, rooted to the spot in horror, the woman surveyed me with curiosity. My heart skipped a beat; was I about to suffer the same fate?
“Interesting,” she remarked, her voice sounding artificial. “He was one of our most promising candidates. Stage three failed. Candidate terminated”.
She looked at me again.
“Candidate Alpha is not ready for advanced testing,” she said, her eyes staring through me. “Re-assessment scheduled for fourteen days”. Then she steered me out of the cubicle, away from Oliver’s motionless form, and out of the Testing Department.
When I got back to my department, I tried to tell them what had happened, but no one wanted to hear it. I was desperate - tears streaming down my cheeks, stammered words tumbling from my mouth - and yet they totally ignored me.
“We don’t talk about Testing, Willow,” my team leader, Jane, told me tersely. “It’s better that way. Whatever happened, deal with it”.
How do I deal with what I saw? I witnessed a man’s murder right in front of my eyes, and then found out that I am called Candidate Alpha, whatever that means. I wasn’t sent up here with the message by chance. I was supposed to end up in the Testing Department - so I think my own department might be involved too.
I don’t feel safe, and I don’t know who to trust. It looks like I have less than two weeks until I meet the Testing Department again. Please help me.