My ruffled hair cut through the thickening laboratory atmosphere as my eardrums fried in the mechanical song of my pager for the millionth time today. I reached a singular finger out to push down on that incrementally hardening button.
“What?” My vocal cords squealed in exasperation, thoughts slowed to an agonizingly conscious crawl against my lethargy.
“God, you sound more terrible than usual…” irked Roger, my assigned research partner, “So how many cups today then?” He probed, accustomed to my nocturnal behavior.
“It’s my forty-seventh hour awake, what do you think?” I retorted brusquely, “And what about the ventilation? I’m dying of heat stroke in here!” I complained further.
“One of the guards told me it’s some sort of issue with a blown fuse panel, expect a system-wide breaker reset in the next couple of hours or so—”
“System-Wide?” I whispered under my breath, “The entire facility you mean?” I interrupted him, “In how many hours exactly?”
“Listen, I don’t know exactly, the guards don’t tell me anymore than they do you,” he explained, “Although, if you’re worried about another data loss incident,”
“I’m not—”
“If, you are, you know the pager has a built-in alert before any major facility-wide changes,” he reassured, “You’ll know well in advance.”
“I know, I know—what did you page me for?” I questioned.
“Right, um… a new shipment of authorized logs just came in, and the radio communications tower has also been authorized to transmit for the next couple of hours as well…” he answered.
“Alright, I’ll be down there to grab a log in a few minutes, thanks for letting me know.” I replied.
I put my pager back in my lab coat and set out to walk to the elevator.
For the past twelve months, I had spent every last second of my life in and around this facility, confined to this building and the few hundred meters of overgrown, humid rainforest around it—and thanks to this, I had lost all sense of what time had once meant to me. I had not only forgotten how many minutes went into each hour, or how many hours were spent in each day, but before I knew it, the distinction between the days had begun to dilate. I had chosen—or rather, was chosen to work here for twelve months, and now, it was nearing the end.
For the lack of a better descriptor, I was disappointed. I knew progress would be slow no matter what, but the mind-numbing pace of our findings was the sharpest hit my patience had ever taken. I believe that was what propelled me to stop sleeping—or at least try, all in feeble attempt to understand this ultimate cause, all to try and explain this seemingly unexplainable perturbance in naturality.
I reached the elevator, and as I keyed in my floor, it dawned on me, “It is the last log-day, huh?” I mumbled to myself. “Odd…”
Log-Days, as Roger and I had grown to refer to them, were special. Despite all our fruitless brain scratching from the month prior, log-days were opportunities for access to new methods of testing, relaying information higher up the chain, and receiving information from what I can only imagine to be other assigned research duos studying subjects afflicted with this same anomalous condition simultaneously.
Despite this, I still occasionally wondered why we were only allowed to communicate with the higher-ups on a specific monthly basis, and no time else on that matter. It was clear to me from the moment I agreed to work on this project that I would be leaving my old life behind, however I had never expected such an immense level of security, clearance, and marginal paranoia.
I reached the main floor and walked over to the back storage room, fumbling through the multitude of pockets conveniently stitched into my lab coat, and just as swiftly as my fingertips recognized the sharp edges of my keycard, I took hold of it, swiping it downwards through the scanner. Like always, the screen read ‘Access Granted,’ and like always, it was in that same blocky green text.
In my half-asleep limbo, a floodgate of faded memories ran rampant through my psyche. The computer had read ‘Access Denied’ written in the exact same font, but a lifeless, monochrome, frightful red. From what I can remember, it was month seven, though it’s hard to tell—it is almost as though wedges of my recollection had been pried out of my brain against my will. The previous month, or at least what I recall as such, Roger had informed me of what was the most profound breakthrough yet in comparison to our unavailing findings.
He had devised an experiment to try and cross-test the subjects, all three of them, all at once.
“Listen, if we can’t understand them,” he proposed, “I want to see if—” he hesitated, “maybe, just maybe—they can understand each other.”
Narrowly having finished his sentence, my head jerked towards him, “How?” I blurted out.
Just the mere suggestion of a means to surpass that brick wall we had struck so early on captured my attention. We had tried so many times, on so many different occasions, thinking outside the box, inside the box, crafting our own boxes, and tearing them apart anew; nothing worked, nothing but cracks formed in that indestructible brick wall. I remember we had hypothesized the cause behind these occurrences to be some sort of geological event near the beginning, we had thought a simple landslide must have leached previously buried toxic waste into the potable water, and with all our lifelong experiences with the orderly, well-behaved natural world, it seemed at the time to be the only logical explanation. We had painstakingly measured every last hormonal signature, no bodily nook-and-cranny left unturned, yet even after crunching the numbers and performing calculations on computers provided to us by the higher-ups, better than anything conceived of by the outside world, even after all that, there were no epiphanies to speak of, no moments of unparalleled genius. Only the maddening persistence of unknowing remained, left to elude, free to taunt. Analyzing every minute detail our tiring intellects remained capable of conjuring, we were forced to conclude that everything was functioning regularly in all three subjects. That despite their outward appearance, their internal workings seemingly remained untouched, isolated, unrevealing.
That was, until Roger had approached me with his idea.
“Well, you and I were both told they all come from the same place,” he reminded me.
The pamphlet I had been prompted with on my first day informed me of Tonopah, Nevada, whereas when I inevitably exchanged with Roger I found he was told about Jarbridge, Nevada, and in an instance of overcommunication with one of the higher-level guards, we were astounded to learn of Seldovia, Alaska. Perhaps to stop the spread of whatever was causing this into the public, or—more likely—to know the perpetrator if any information did get leaked, the higher-ups had given everyone involved slightly different stories. Nevertheless, he had a point, we didn’t know exactly where they came from, but they did, all three of them had been extracted from the same place, that fact remained continuous among both our briefings. In fact, there must have been more than just three subjects, there must have been many, and all of them, we assumed, had been divided into separate groups of three, assigned to other compartmentalized research duos, acting as the source for the additional information we received as the months went along.
“That means they must be linked together somehow, I mean—we don’t know if they knew each other beforehand,” he suggested.
“What are you getting at with this?” I replied back.
“Look, I know it sounds out there, but how hard can it be to put all three of them in a room, separate them with glass, hook a few wires up, and just see what happens,” he suggested.
We were both desperate to break the cycle of failed experiments, but even so, I objected to the crudeness of his idea.
“You’re right, but what about the higher-ups?” I countered, “Will they allow it?”
“It can’t hurt to propose the idea to them,” he answered.
It was only three days later when log-day arrived for the seventh time, and a message asking for permission was sent, and not four hours had passed when we received confirmation to proceed. Roger was ecstatic, and we followed without hesitation.
Through the next week, we meticulously took into account everything that could go wrong, arranging for all the problems we could think of in the most satisfactory manner possible. We set up the electrodes, making sure they would provide the most accurate data possible, and had installed industrial grade shielding glass to protect both ourselves from the subjects, and the subjects from each other.
“It’s very important that you listen to me carefully,” Roger instructed the guards, “Transport the subjects in one by one, sit them down—lay down subject two of course—and ensure their tranquility.”
The guards did as they were told as Roger and I viewed over them, spotting any mistakes. It was paramount to us that this experiment provided us with—something; conclusivity in results, as we had learned, was too much to expect. As the guards completed their assigned task, I opened the steel door situated to my left, letting the cold air in the experimental field rush into the snug observation deck. Taking cautious steps, both me and Roger produced heavy thuds emanating from the heels of our shoes as we heedfully approached the subjects. Making sure to be thorough, both of us attached every last one of those crucial, signal-delivering electrodes onto the exact spots designated on all three subjects’ heads before swiftly retreating back into the safety of the observation deck.
Roger spoke into his portable voice recorder, holding it close to his face, “Experiment seventeen, trial one, September Sixteenth, Nineteen Eighty-Two, commencing.”
Placing his voice recorder on the desk beside him, he pressed down on a square button in the worn-down speaker interface and the experimental area filled with a shrieking, whirring alarm, akin to those used in prisons; nothing happened, not one subject moved, not even a muscle.
Roger picked up the voice recorder, “Trial one, failure. Trial two, commencing.”
He pressed a bright-orange button located four below the blue one. I heard valves open, pipes shifting in their places, and soon, I heard pressure releasing as the room filled with a semi-translucent orange haze; again, we were met with a cold lack of acknowledgement.
I slammed my hand down, my body following it to the table, “How, out of all things, did that not work?” I cried, having lost my composure, “That gas had enough adrenaline to wake up a dead elephant! We’re never going to get anywhere in this—”
“Look!” Roger screamed with his fully extended arm pointed at subject one, “He’s twitching!”
My head abruptly turned to the window, Roger and I watching intently as that twiticing grew into swinging, that itself devolving into a thrashing of sorts, soon calming down and coming to a stop
“Why didn’t he wake up this time?” Roger questioned into the air.
“Roger, look,” I said pointing to the computer screen, “He did wake up, the electrode signals, look!” I was elated with the small success.
Though before we could celebrate, we heard movement in the experimental zone again. It was subject two, he had started thrashing, even more intensely than subject one. My eyes switched between him and the computer screen, analyzing the brain waves. Subject one had gone from displaying heightened neural activity to a pattern mimicking REM sleep, while subject two had replaced him in motion.
“Is he…” I exclaimed, “dreaming?”
Roger shifted his eyes from staring exclusively at the subjects to the computer screen, “He…”
Roger paused in awe of what he was witnessing, “Is…”
This cycle repeated itself; subject two stopped moving entirely, leading to subject three awakening to replace him, squirming his body with more intensity than the prior two combined, and then subject one awoke again, prompting subject two, and so on…
It continued onwards, in fact, I never remember it stopping, but it must have at some point, because what I remember next was feeling the most accomplished I had since I arrived here. In a singular experiment we had uncovered more about this mystery than the past seven months in their entirety. In an instant, with the press of a button our worlds had grown tenfold, and then tenfold again. We now not only knew these subjects were related with each other in terms of what caused their illness, but somehow or another, they were internally connected; it seemed as though they had developed a sixth sense, communicating with each other telepathically—almost as though they were one.
What we had just discovered was new science, no living organism on the planet had ever shown any sort of behavior imitating our observations. For a moment, the thought of a Nobel Prize and glory crossed my mind, though I knew that would never come to fruition. Even so, we still received the second best thing.
We had finally broken through that infinitely strong brick wall, and now, it was just a matter of the next log-day to arrive when we could finally communicate with the higher-ups again, conveying what we had learned.
The next month passed torturingly slowly, only eased by the fact that we had such a monumental accomplishment to show for our work. We performed the experiment over and over again, making absolutely sure that the electrodes hadn’t sent false signals, and making even more sure that our eyes themselves hadn’t fooled us. This was our big break, the ultimate downfall to this ever-puzzling conundrum. I could feel that if we continued chipping at it for just a little longer, this tower of mystery was soon to collapse.
Yet when that godforsaken log-day arrived for the eighth time, I was met with ‘Access Denied’ in all of its bright-red repulsiveness
I instinctively picked up my pager, almost dropping it in fright, “Roger, we have a problem…” I managed to spit out while biting my tongue.
“What happened?” he replied, an undertone of concern growing in his voice.
“The brain wave data, I’m trying to transfer it from the server to the log,” I said, “It’s denying me access…”
“Did you forget the password?” He returned.
“No, it was changed,” I said panicking
“Who changed it—”
“I thought you did!” I screamed back, a wild blaze of thought burning through my head.
It was then that the pager produced a radio static for a split second, when without warning, that accursed, guttural voice pounded into me.
“No Elliot, it did…” The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“What… did?” I replied back, “You’re not making any sense Roger!” my words grew shaky.
“It did, Elliot” he repeated himself, “Elliot,” the voice echoed, “Elliot,” the bashing voice continued, until finally, “Elliot!”
My eyelids retracted to a frantic Roger throwing me around by the shoulders.
“Jesus, what happened?” I shouted, trying to ground myself against him.
“You tell me, why were you just standing here?” he flung back.
I dared not to reveal what I had just seen, “I must have fallen asleep, I really need to get to bed,” I explained.
“You fell asleep standing up?” he questioned, his voice pronounced with skepticism.
I doubled down, “It’s been a tiring day—like I said, I should really finish this log and get to bed.”
Pushing past him, I made my way to the bucket of logs placed conveniently in the center of the room and picked up one of the rectangular, matte-black devices. If I hadn’t looked back, I would’ve completely disregarded Roger, but seeing that look of unease on his face, I knew he suspected something was wrong about me.
Nevertheless, I still tried to avoid him, looking down at the tiled floor while I headed back up to my office. While I did so however, akin to Roger, I could never quite shake that adrenaline rush of apprehensiveness from atop my shoulders since I had woken up. I knew it was just a sympathetic response to a stressful situation, that was all, yet ultimately, in the face of foreboding, I was powerless to reason my way out of its pervasive grasp.
A bit of walking and an elevator ride later, I reached my office. When I entered it, the eerie, silent beauty of the full-moon shined in, and the usual breeze of dark flowed coarsely through the trees just outside my window. Turning on the lights, I sat down at my desk and switched on my computer, promptly plugging in the logging device. After a sequence of various electronic buzzes and dings originating from the stick, it indicated it was ready to transmit through the powering on of a green light.
Desperate for some rest, I mindlessly began using my mouse to shuffle through the multitude of scattered files, research papers, and unrefined theories on my desktop, sorting through them one by one and queuing them up for transmission.
I reached the point where I needed to upload the experimental files from that month, leading me to open the appropriate folder and begin scanning through the disorganized list.
“Experiment twelve… no,” I rejected, “Experiment twenty-two… nope,” I uttered again, and then, it struck me, like the most powerful, skull-crushing blow to the back of my head, “Experiment thirty-one,” my head hit the table, limp.
I found myself standing in the front lobby of the facility, no one attending. Just a desolate, nearly unfurnished anteroom with a coffee machine set out-of-place slightly to the right of the back wall. Immediately recognizing where I was, I looked around and rushed over to the control panel for the lights, but ultimately failed to illuminate the room.
It did not matter, because as I played around with the mess of buttons in attempt to operate them, I felt a wind blow over my shoulder, and before I could process what had just happened, a soft thud accelerated into my brain from the center of the room, where I was previously standing. Startled beyond belief, and ready to defend myself if need be, my head reflexively yanked itself to the origin of the vibration, as my mouth impulsively let go of a near-silent yelp.
It was a box, just a plain, harmless, cardboard box; slightly ajar, yet still pitch-black on the inside, secretive of its contents. My primal nervous system urged me to flee, but in all my attempts to thrust away from it, my legs carried me an equidistance closer, until eventually, I was only a few inches away. I crouched in terror, as a pleading bleat leaked out of my throat. Powerless, and with no avenue of escape, my eyes apprehensively peaked out of the comforting protection my arms had formed around me.
It was still, just a box, unchanged, in the same place as where it was left. I used every bit of bravery, no—stupidity, I could muster, and wiped the blown saliva from around my mouth, throwing my legs beneath me to uphold my weakening frame. Seemingly out of my control, my elbows extended, pushing my arms away from me, bringing my hands closer to the box, and ahead of understanding what I was doing, I slapped the top of the box off. It revealed what looked more or less like a helmet, one with copper wires running through it, and six jointed arms to hold itself firmly against the user’s head.
That was just at first glance however, as before I had a chance to properly inspect it, my eyes caught a glooming ambience spreading through the room. My head jolted behind me, body lagging to catch up. A scintillating brightness abruptly shined onto my face, forcing my pupils to contract in response. As my eyes readjusted, the bright flash fading away, the frame of a door became apparent. It stood abnormally in the middle of the room, unattached to any of the walls, separate from the chamber itself. Still holding the helmet in my hands, I used it for protection, positioning it in front of my face.
That was when I heard it, it was Roger.
“Elliot, are you ready to commence the experiment?” His voice boomed through a loudspeaker from the other side of the door.
I was hesitant to reply, though my fright led the way before my thoughts could object.
“Roger! Is that you?” I yelled back, taking solace in the familiar voice.
“Yes, of course it’s me. Now, are you ready or not?” He asked.
“Ready for what?” I queried him.
“Jesus, the experiment you goldfish!” He returned flustered, “Just come out already…”
“What is this place? Where am I? And why is it so dark?” I retaliated, fret making itself clear in my voice.
I tried to stand there and wait for a reply, though after about five seconds of what felt like eons, I sprung into motion towards the door, and with the partial twist of the door knob, it flung open.
There was no Roger, not even any guards. What I saw behind that door, although taking a minute to process, shook me to my core. As I walked further into that room, I saw subject one, strapped down to an operating table, subject two, having been treated the same right beside him, and subject three only a few feet away from them. There were screens set up in front of each of them, though before I could turn them on, the speaker suddenly came alive again, and what came through was an uncanny voice.
“Elliot, place the helmet on subject one and begin experimentation.” Roger instructed.
“Why did you stop responding to me?” I asked, “Are you there?” There was no reply, “Get me out of here!” I shouted into the air, still met with an offish absence of acknowledgment.
I looked behind me to find the door I had entered the room through; it was gone. With nowhere to go, I sat in the chair placed in front of subject one, wheeling it towards the constraining table.
“You just want me to put it on his head?” I asked.
“Proceed.” He returned.
Following his order, I put the helmet down on the table, and pulled two latex gloves from the package placed beside the monitor. Picking up the helmet, I carefully approached subject one, his eyelids—the two that were there at least, shut. I used my fingers to pry underneath his head, the lubricating fluid produced by his eyes squeezing onto my gloves. Holding his head in my palm, I fit the helmet around his skull, and stepped back. Automatically, six spikes slowly started protruding from each of the arms that I had thought were for the fastening of the helmet to the subject. As soon as they extended completely, in an alien motion, the six joints all simultaneously contracted, sending the spikes charging through the subjects’ head, while the monitor powered on, all on its own.
I jumped in my chair, shouting, “Roger! Are you seeing this?”
To which, I was again, treated with an isolating silence. As I waved my head around in shock, contemplating getting up and banging on the walls to let me free, the monitor suddenly started displaying an image. It was a first-person view, someone who I could only assume to be the subject himself. He roamed around the streets of a town.
“Roger… if you’re there, for the love of God, are you seeing this?” I called out into the air.
I walked over to the subject, half-fascinated, twice as petrified of what I was witnessing. As I stared over him timidly, examining his face, it amazed me to observe all of his eyeballs moving. There were many, there always had been, though I had never seen them move like this, like he was in a deep sleep, dreaming. It astounded me that they were even capable of moving, up until this point, me and Roger had believed they were nonfunctional. Those in his eye sockets remained covered by his eyelids, however, the seven or so spread across the rest of his face shuffled around in random, sporadic, asynchronous movements. I looked down to see that the eyes that had grown, or rather, mutated on his arms and torso twitched in the same manner.
“Roger, respond to me!” I shouted out again.
Though this time I did not anticipate a response as my attention was quickly diverted to the monitor when I saw the subject peeking around a corner in an alleyway. He looked at a group of passing women, catcalling them as they glided by him on the street. He walked around, hissing at girls, whistling at unsuspecting women every once in a while, and this continued. The hours fast forwarded, compressed into mere minutes. The screen showed the lively high noon sun slowly set, as the subject progressed through his day. Then unexpectedly, the dream slowed down. It was now midnight, the darkness only fended off by the endless row of street lights illuminating the sidewalk. The subject walked behind a woman, briskly following her accelerating pace. That did not last for long however, as soon enough, a chase set about. He sprinted after the woman, screaming at her to stop while she ran for her life, crying out for help. Her begs were unheard, as in only thirty-or-so seconds, he brutishly rammed into her, knocking her to the ground. There she layed, on her side, weak and helpless, pleading for mercy.
I watched with a nervous intensity, awaiting to see the next action. Though, what did happen next was so incredibly out of the realm of possibility I had become acclimated to, I had no choice but to shriek in response.
The subject began to manhandle the woman, throwing her around and taunting her. I had thought that would be the end of it, though as the subject grew tired, and stood up straight trying to catch his breath, a blaring scream filled the room. For a moment, I was hesitant to classify it as human, though as I scattered away from the monitor in response, I realized that dreadful sound was coming from him. That agonizing, horrid, hellish screech was coming from subject one. I stared at the screen from afar, as the view shifted from a simple two eyes to what looked like the perspective of a spider. The subject threw his hands in the air, trying to cover his newly formed eyeballs, his physical body now copying him in action. My back was against the wall. All thoughts leaving me, there was now no objective present other than self-preservation. For all I knew, I was already dead, though as the subject began attempting to pry off the helmet, that incredible rush of cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine instilled in me a sense of vitality stronger than I had felt since my conception.
“Make it stop! Make it stop!” the abomination yelled, “I’m sorry! Please, why’re you here again?”
“Who is here again?” I screamed back hysterically.
Drowning in shock, I surprised myself that I was still capable of forming coherent sentences.
“It is!” his raspy, broken voice let out.
Hyperventilating, I was barely able to respond, “Can you describe its form?”
“No! No! God, no!” He let out.
Just finishing the sentence, the subject started seizing, causing the metal constraining table to clang in contact with the helmet, but just as fast as it started, it stopped. The screen turned black for just a moment, before suddenly powering on again. It was a completely different point-of-view this time.
“Roger, I think the helmet is malfunctioning!” I shouted out.
What the screen displayed was the view of a shorter man, distinct from subject one himself, I recognized him as subject two. The screen showed him looking down, balling his fist up in front of a child, striking him, picking him up, and throwing him across the room.
“This is all your fault!” his voice emanated from the monitor.
He turned to his side, and a bottle of alcohol came into view. Picking it up, he swigged the little liquid left inside, before violently shattering it on the table. Holding the handle of the cracked, sharp bottle in his hand, he walked over to the young boy, as he trembled in fear.
“You ruined my life, now you’ll pay!” He yelled menacingly.
The distance between him and the child shrunk, diminishing from about fifteen feet, to twelve. He continued approaching the boy, stumbling over himself and slurring his words. It was when he reached a distance of five feet or so, that I heard it again, that same harrowing scream of anguish. It bellowed across the room from subject two. The screen showed him collapsing to the ground, as he watched his body elongate, and his appendages reduce down to the size of a toddler’s. The hair on his arms seemed to fall off, as his vision degraded down, becoming blurry.
I yanked away my attention from the monitor as the subject started thrashing around in the constraining table, his miserable condition limiting him from breaking free. The subject opened his eyes, though the baby-like flabs of fat that had grown on his face restricted his view. I hadn’t even conceived of a question yet, as before I could make sense of what was happening, subject two began talking.
“I-It looked like…” He tripped, pondering over the words to use.
My morbid curiosity took over me, “Good God, but what was it?” I questioned, “That hundred eyed atrocity beside you—subject one, did it look like that?” I suggested.
I was already too dazed to jitter at the sound of the thing he whispered next—a thing I had already half-expected myself.
“No,” He replied, shaking his deformed, adipose head, “It wasn’t that way at all—it glared at me intently, but it did not have any eyes. It was everywhere, and it looked at me from every angle, all at once. It had shapes, thousands of them, all beyond my comprehension. There were no eyes, yet so many pupils, but it did not resemble him. It was a void—a mirror producing the deepest, richest, most monstrous of reflections. It spread around me like a viscous slime—it was the pit of all human wrongdoing—the vortex of agony—it was the ultimate abomination.”
Perplexed, I followed with another question, “Do you have any idea what caused you to transform into what you have?”
“I-I-I don’t know—” His eyelids flew wide open, as his sentence was cut short with a sharp gasp of breath. He tried to speak again, though his fight against what appeared to be a suffocation of sorts was unsuccessful, and soon, he fell unconscious again.
However, the monitor did not show his perspective anymore. It was now that of a man in a dark living room. It was well into the night, and he snuck around with a bag, putting any valuables he found into it. He cautiously creeped around the house, systematically moving from room to room, not making the slightest of sounds. In due time, he made his way to the basement, where again, he snooped around, looking for possessions to steal. Though as he carefully inspected bits of the estate, something struck me—something odd. For just a moment, it felt as though a billion pairs of eyes stared at me; it felt as though I was being observed from a realm beyond, as if I were a labrat being experimented on; it felt as though—that just for a moment, I had inadvertently peaked at something greater than myself, a thing that staring right back at me, just as I gazed upon it.
I tried to shake the feeling from myself, though that internal sense of panic only rooted itself deeper within me than. Before I could concentrate on what exactly I was experiencing, that wretched, ear-piercing, cry boomed from the mouth of subject three. His chest began to heave, his legs twisting sideways, while his spine arched inhumanly, as he thrashed around on the slab.
“It’s… coming” The words leaked out of his mouth, his weakening body losing control of itself.
“What are you referring to?” I cross-examined, “What is coming?…”
“No, it’s already here…” He replied.
“What is—”
Crunch, Crack, Thud!
A branch came crashing into my office window where the wind was once streaming. My awareness came rushing back to me, as my tired body awoke from my sudden coma. I was lying in a pool of cold sweat on the ground. I put my hand on my head as my heart pulsated out of my chest, hammering at my ribs. In my time unconscious, a violent storm had initiated outside.
“What… was that?” I asked myself, dumbfounded regarding the fever dream I had watched play out.
Climbing back atop my chair, I turned my face to the computer and saw the unfinished log I had left open. Taking my pager out and putting it on the table beside me, I checked the time. Only a brief period remained before I imagined the transmission tower would turn off for good. Trying my best to be accurate, I frantically shambled around the hard drive, looking for the files I needed. As I slowly filled up the transmission queue, adding the finishing touches as I went along, I got ready to run the command for the transferral of the files to the tower, from where they would be launched to the higher-ups. I typed in the short command, and pressed the final button to finish the job. The transferral steadily progressed from ten, to twenty, to fifty, until gradually reaching ninety-five percent.
The lights suddenly switched off, as the computer started running on the backup power supply. I snatched the pager from my desk, it read ‘Breaker Reset Commencing.’ As I sat in the encroaching darkness I could only wish the transmission tower was still powered and receiving information.
“Ninety-Seven percent,” I whispered to myself, “Ninety-Eight percent,” I said again, “Ninety-Nine percent, just a little more…” I anticipated anxiously.
It was with the blink of an eye that panic settled itself into my heart, as when I expected the computer to complete the transferral, it produced an error notification instead. In a uniform, swift motion, I checked the status of the log, the command prompt displaying, ‘Log-12: Transmission Interrupted’
Desperately contacting Roger on my pager, I yelled at him through the microphone, “Roger, I haven’t transferred the log yet!”
There was no response, the silence only shrouded by the tussling trees and branches outside.
“Roger are you—”
“Roger isn’t here anymore…” A voice interrupted.
That same, almost-familiar voice shredded through the last bit of hope I held onto.
In denial, I inquired the voice, “Who are you? Where is Roger?” I asked.
“Look out your window…” It croaked.
I slowly walked over to the opened window, scanning the yard for any signs of Roger, though my surveillance was cut short, as thunder roared from the sky. I looked up, as a charge built up in the clouds above, and…
Boom!
A bolt of lightning flashed into my eyes, drowning me in white. It had struck the transmission tower, sending a secondary bolt of electricity bouncing off of it. The obliterated, flaming smithereens of the tower flew across the yard, landing in dense trees, setting them ablaze. I stood, and for a fleeting moment considered I was still in the dream. However, as the stun faded, and my cognizance dawned on me, the ineffability of my circumstances inundated the last of my sanity away.
There were no more barriers to cross; with my pursuit of this aberration, I had blindly ventured into the black seas of infinity, and come in intimate proximity with the limits of human comprehension. I had strayed too far from the blissful island of ignorance granted to me by my own simplicity; voyaged too deeply into the disturbing, stormy seas. All I had in common with the tempted and the viscous; the uncontrollable and the insane; all the mayhem I had unleashed into the world, and all the mayhem it had launched back at me, I could not surpass. In my frustration to understand the transcendent, I had made for myself a fate of everlasting and sharp agony. Stranded at sea, I could not escape from the shallowest of its depths, but even after realizing this, there was no relief; only the approaching consequence of my cursory glimpse at the forbidden remained.