I work as a security guard in a facility that’s isolated. The nearest town is fifteen miles away, but because of the road and terrain, it takes well over two hours to reach it.
Because of this, those of us working at this facility live in a set of barracks just off-site. The surrounding area is a sort of self-sustaining economy with its fair share of gas stations, stores, and indoor and outdoor activities.
It’s sort of like a small town, but there’s only one place you would find human employees. The purpose of the facility in the center of this town is to temporarily house residents that are immigrating from one country to another. They’re kept in these pods that are mostly made of glass so they can be monitored at all times. Eventually, the same kind of bus that drops them off comes by again to either take them back to wherever they came from, or to another facility that helps them start life in our country.
Most people hired for this job aren’t the humanitarian type. It’s not that they specifically look for people who don’t fit that profile, but that they need people who are obedient, detail oriented, and by the books. Following orders with precision is what keeps you alive in a job like this.
The hazards are hard to explain. They’re different each time, but usually involve a specific ability or attribute that one of the residents has. The methods we’re taught in regards to dealing with them have been refined and polished by decades of trial and error. We don’t have nearly as many deaths as we used to, but that’s only cause of the sacrifices that got us this far to begin with.
One rule we’re required to follow, is that we must report anything that seems strange. This is meant to be taken in the most broad and literal way possible.
Not following this seemingly simple rule has gotten many of us killed. For example, an old friend of mine named Isaac was dating a coworker named Samantha. This was pretty significant for him, due to the fact that his parents were strict (arguably abusive) to the point where he was never allowed outside, and never allowed to talk to anyone besides themselves. As you could imagine, Samantha was not only his first real partner, but likely one of the few people he had in his life to live for.
Anyways, it’s important to note that she was on his mind often. You’ll see why I’m mentioning this.
Fast forward to a week after they begin dating. Isaac is posted at Pod 72. Across from him, on the other side of the hallway, is Pod 71. He sees an older woman staring at him. Not too uncommon in this line of work, but what’s strange is how still she is. The wind doesn’t even seem to affect her hair. She stays that way, perfectly still for about an hour.
At some point, Isaac decides to let his stare linger on her for a good minute. She doesn’t take notice of any guards walking past her pod. She’s fixated specifically on Isaac.
Another hour passes, and he still doesn’t report this, despite knowing the potential risks. Despite the fact that something felt wrong. Isaac is staring as well, waiting for her to move. Long moments pass of the two of them making eye contact, until finally, one guard in particular walks past the pod. The resident takes notice of them, before returning their attention to Isaac.
Isaac’s curiosity is peaked. She hasn’t looked at anyone else, even though dozens upon dozens of guards have passed her by. What was special about this one?
Isaac glances to his left, to see which guard momentarily caught the woman’s attention. It was Samantha. His stomach drops. Immediately he returns his attention to the resident. She’s still staring, but now she’s raising her eyebrows as if she just gained some sort of leverage.
Concerned for Samantha’s safety, he finally calls a supervisor on his radio, saying he has something to report. The supervisor comes by, and has a roaming guard cover his post while Isaac follows the supervisor to his office to explain the situation.
Our site manager, a self proclaimed psychic named Sigjakio, takes a look at him after he explains the situation.
Sigjakio apologizes, telling Isaac he reported it just a few minutes too late. Apparently this resident is attempting to hijack Isaacs mind, through a process not even the site manager fully understands. Isaac has two and a half hours to say his goodbyes to everyone, before choosing his preferred method of death.
He supposedly chooses to have a heroin overdose, and Sigjakio happily obliges. Isaacs chosen inheritors are sent 20k each.
This is just one example, and one of the tamer ones. However, I chose to recount this one cause it seems relevant to what I’m about to tell you.
Due to the nature of this psycho-hazard, Samantha was warned not to think too much about Isaac, so as to avoid having her mind taken by the same resident. Since the resident couldn’t be identified based on Isaacs description, she couldn’t be dealt with directly.
Samantha disappeared a few months ago. It was unclear whether or not this incident was related, until now.
Every 23 hours and 14 minutes, I get a letter from her. Well, I’m not sure if I can call it that. Who’s to say they’re sent by her, let alone intentionally?
The appear on my desk, in my personal barracks room that only I should be able to enter by use of a biometric scan. They seem to be pages of a journal, and they arrive one page at a time. One page a day. Sometimes it’ll take a week for me to get just one complete journal entry.
Checking my security camera, the method of delivery is still unclear. My desk will be clean one second, and the next second, the new piece of paper for the day is just sitting there, like it magically appeared. The timestamp indicates that this is the case, so I guess I believe it.
Technically there’s no proof that they’re being sent by Samantha, but I’ll be sharing what she (supposedly) wrote, just in case she wants the message out there. Now, this goes without saying, but nearly every word I’ve said here is classified, so don’t be putting this on any Internet forum boards for thousands to read. Looking at you, Tiffany.
Without further ado,
The following is a transcript of what I’ve received so far from Samantha in writing:
Entry 1:
The resident who’s staring at me matches Isaacs description. I’m not sure if this happened to him too, or if he just didn’t notice, but I can hear her voice in my head. Or a least a voice that matches hers. It’s far away, like she’s having a hard time getting through.
I’ll document what happens from here on out. I know she’ll be put to death soon, since I reported her. They do still have to run the tapes back to prove it was her, but the second they confirm what they need to? She’s done.
Entry 2:
By the time I clocked out, her voice was pretty loud. I don’t speak the language, but she’s talking constantly in one long, never ending ramble. It’s driving me insane.
When I went back to the barracks though, I realized the further I went away from her, the quieter the voice in my head got, until finally I couldn’t hear it anymore. I think I’m out of range. I’ll report this in the morning. Hey, it looks like I have a good excuse to call off. Thank god.
Entry 3:
It’s 4am, her voice is back and loud as fuck. Oh my god, I can’t move my right arm. I need to get far away.
Entry 4:
In my panicked and half asleep state, I must’ve taken the wrong road. I’m not going up the mountain like I normally do to visit home. Instead, I’m on a long stretch of road across flat land. The voice gets louder when I stop for too long, so I have no choice but to keep going straight. Feeling just now returned to my right arm, so I feel like it’s too dangerous to turn back at this point in time. Fuck sake.
I came across one of those busses that bring the residents back where they came from. I slowed down, turned off my headlights, and kept my distance. If the supervisor in that bus spots my car and writes down my license plate number, I’ll be terminated for sure.
I tried stopping to let the bus get further ahead of me, but whenever I do, I hear the voices get louder. I’m just following behind, hoping that when the sun comes up, I won’t be seen from their blind spot.
Entry 5:
Well. This is it.
I started off writing these notes down to keep me awake during the drive, but now I realize I’ve been documenting my own disappearance. I should’ve taken my chances with the mind taker, because this is so much worse.
How did I even get here… I guess when I saw the road splitting? Everything was getting distorted, and it looked like the empty landscape was beginning to double, triple, multiply exponentially until I found myself staring at an incomprehensible mess of hundreds of translucent images of the world overlapping each other.
Since I couldn’t even tell if I was still on the road, I attempted to hit the brakes. I was so disoriented that I ended up slamming the gas instead. Suddenly the world flickered, and I found myself in a completely different landscape.
The empty plains of sand split in half by a singular road, was now replaced with a civilian intersection full of other vehicles. There was a gas station nearby, what looked like a cafe, and a regular looking apartment complex up ahead.
I collided with a pickup truck coming from my right. I remember time slowing down as I saw it coming. My initial confusion upon the change in scenery and the bus disappearing distracted me for too long. I hit the breaks, but my car still smoothly glided across the road. As the truck got closer, I wondered to myself what this was about to feel like.
Were my legs gonna get crushed? Would I be permanently disabled after this? Would I even be alive?
The sound of my car smacking into the truck was deafening. I felt sprinkles of glass bounce across my face as I squeezed my eyes shut. I think my head slammed against the steering wheel. My car kept going. It kept going for what felt like two minutes. By the time I could think clearly again, I realized my car was still moving. Despite the mountain of airbags in my face, I could see out the corner of my eye that I was in the wrong lane of traffic now.
I slammed the breaks and shoved my arm under the airbag to my right, just barely able to put the car in park. Oh fuck. I forgot about the other guy.
With some effort, I pried open my door and ran outside. I was prepared to run two or more miles down the road, but the truck I hit was only a few feet away from me. I guess they weren’t joking when the say how much adrenaline dilates your sense of time…
As I ran towards the truck, a blue Porsche came out of nowhere. The driver slammed the breaks, inches away from hitting me. It looked kinda like the car that belonged to my friend Natalie before she quit.
I continued towards the truck. I couldn’t see inside the window cause of their own airbags. I pulled on the door handle, calling out to the driver, asking if they were ok. They were dead silent. A white Toyota Corolla pulled up nearby, and a man jumped out and ran towards the truck. What a minute…
“Corey? Is that you?”
The man ran to the truck and tapped on the door frantically. He tried the back door, then went over to the other side. That was definitely Corey, but I hadn’t seen him in months. His entire friend group was taken out by a resident who killed people by going into their dreams. I didn’t know the details of how it worked, but there was no escape aside from staying awake.
Because of this, he ran, hoping that putting some distance between him and the resident would protect him. It was kinda the inspiration for my plan to escape the mind taker, but I guess we made the same mistake in the process.
Natalie came out of the blue Porsche. I guess that really was her.
“Where are we? What’s happening?”
She yelled. She noticed the blood trailing down from my forehead and grabbed my face.
“Holy shit, Samantha, are you ok? What happened to you?”
Corey came to join us.
“I can’t get the truck open. Natalie, do you still have that crowbar in your trunk?”
Natalie stared at him for a moment.
“You… I thought you were dead. Weren’t you trying to escape the dream guy?”
Corey gave her a weird look.
“I still am. Where did you come from? I didn’t see anyone else on the road. It’s been empty for like an hour.”
I was really tripping out now. Natalie was wearing the same clothes as the last time I saw her, and Corey’s ID card had a faint green glow, indicating that he’d only been clocked out for less than 16 hours. Did I just go back in time?
Another truck materialized out of nowhere. It flickered into existence like it was decided by the flip of a light switch, and came to a screeching halt just as quickly as it arrived, seconds away from flattening each of us.
Adrian, another coworker of mine, stepped out of the truck and approached us. Same stoic demeanor as ever. He took one look at us and said,
“I see. This place exists outside of time. I’m guessing the rest of you took the wrong road as well?”
Natalie stood frozen in astonished silence as the realization sunk in. Corey on the other hand was still confused.
“Uhh, can you explain what you mean by that?”
Adrian spoke as he nonchalantly strolled towards the red truck.
“Natalie sped off angrily after quitting, and ended up taking the wrong route as a result. A few months later, Corey sped off in an attempt to get far away from the influence of a resident that had the ability to kill him, and in his panicked state, he took the wrong road as well.”
He ripped off the door of the red truck with almost no effort. He was tall and muscular, and pulled off feats like this often, so we weren’t surprised.
“Months after that, Samantha, in a similar situation, needed to escape and ended up here the same exact way.
That’s most likely the order in which y’all showed up.”
He continued saying as he reached his hand into the truck. Corey nodded.
“He’s right. Natalie’s car was already there when I got here. I saw the red truck appear next to me at the same time as Samantha, and then you a few seconds later. But who’s in the red truck? Who came at the same time as Samantha?”
A quivering hand reached out and grabbed Adrians. Adrian helped him balance as he stepped out of the vehicle. It was a pale, lanky man with short hair, and big round eyes that I could recognize anywhere. It was Isaac. He was supposed to be dead.
“Who is that…”
Natalie said, confused. He was new, arriving shortly after Corey left. I took a step back, afraid. It was at that same moment I realized that we were the only people here. All the other cars around us were empty, and the traffic lights were inactive. No people came and went out of the shops, and the surrounding grass was overgrown.
Also, it was subtle, but this world I found myself in had this blue tint. It made me think of the way flashbacks are depicted on television.
My ears were ringing, and I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying when they talked. I started hyperventilating, and walking away, back where I came from. I went past the intersection, expecting to see everything overlap again before I ended up back in the desert. The scenery shifted like a glitch in a video game, but only slightly. The ringing in my ears grew louder, and I passed out.
Entry 6:
I woke up in the back of Adrian’s truck. Isaac was holding my hand, asking me if I was ok. I was still a little freaked out by seeing him.
Fuck. He probably got to everyone else before I could explain my situation with him. I only agreed to help him lose his V card about a week ago, just so he’d stop pressuring me about it. Come to find out, not even a day later he was going around telling everyone we were dating.
“Hey babe you alright? Do you need anything? That was pretty scary huh?”
“Uhh… I have to make a phone call.”
I said, climbing out of the truck. Natalie, Corey and Adrian were sitting around a campfire in a grocery store parking lot. This place was pretty much abandoned too, but it seemed like they managed to find some food.
Natalie: You’re awake. How ya feeling?
Corey: We’ve just been driving around a bit, trying to find someone. This town seems completely abandoned.
Natalie: Our GPS’s are telling us we’re somewhere in Texas, in the United States, which obviously can’t be the case. We’re trying to get some better signal so we can figure out what’s going on.
I remembered my phone vibrating for a second before passing out. I must’ve gotten close enough to the portal, or whatever brought us here to get signal for a moment.
I checked my phone, and saw that I had a message from an unknown number. It said:
“Samantha. This is Sigjakio Stephens. This goes without saying, but I’m obviously gonna have to terminate you for this. But I’m not heartless, I’ll get you guys out of here. Listen, you’re gonna need to follow my instructions very carefully, and be quick about it.
You do NOT wanna get trapped in this timeline. It’s the number one most brutal timeline I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot. I’ve seen hundreds. Some residents I’ve seen who have been rejected for one reason or another, they decide they’d rather be put to death than sent back to where they came from.
I’ve used my clairvoyance to peek into the lives they’ve lived up to that point, and it makes me tempted to shoot myself in the head just to avoid the slightest possibility of me getting dragged into their home world by some contrived set of arbitrary circumstances, even though I know that’s unlikely.
And still, despite everything I’ve seen, yours is so awful that I’m breaking protocol just to tell you how to escape. So please take me seriously and read through these next messages carefully:
Here’s step one.”
The messages ended there. Whatever else he sent after that failed to go through. I grabbed Adrian by the collar.
“Adrian! Adrian we need to go back! We have to go back to where we came from! At the intersection! Where is it?!”
He put his hand on my shoulder.
“Calm down. Let me look at what you were reading just now.”
Isaac jumped out of the trunk of Adrian’s vehicle.
“Hey fucker?! Get your hands off her! And she doesn’t have to show her your phone if she doesn’t want to!”
Corey held him back.
“Dude chill, it’s fine.”
I had already given my phone to Adrian by that point. Now I was trying to calm Isaac down before he did anything crazy.
Adrian, unfazed by the commotion around him, was still fixated on the phone. Eventually, he furrowed his brow. The closest thing to a look of fear I’ve ever seen him express.
“Alright,”
He said as he handed it back to me.
“We need to go back to the intersection we met each other at. Maybe there we can get a signal from our timeline, and get the rest of the messages Sigjakio tried to send you. Make sure you keep your phone charged.”
Natalie and Corey looked at each other.
“I’ll explain the situation when we get there. Samantha, you ride in the front with me so you can keep your phone charged. The rest of you, in the back.”
I climbed into my seat quickly. Isaac was standing outside my door, pouting.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you whe-“
I slammed the door, pretending not to see him. The others yelled at him to hurry up and get in the trunk. For fuck sake. Adrian, please get us out of here.
_______
The entries end there. I’ve since received a few more pieces of paper, but it cuts off abruptly. I won’t share those for now, if at all. If what I’m reading is true, then that would mean we’ve been lied to about several deaths that happened at the workplace.
From what I can gather, I’m assuming the residents we take in, that we’re told come from other countries, actually come from other timelines. Possibly ones they’d like to escape. The buses that take them to and from ours must have some sort of mechanism that allows them to navigate through different timelines with intention and accuracy, but those who drive straight down the route they take will default to ending up wherever Samantha is.
Entering that timeline will also bring you to a specific point of time within it, regardless of when you entered said timeline. This is why Natalie, Corey, Isaac, Samantha, and Adrian are together.
This also means that at some point in the future, I go down the wrong road as well. I know this because my name is Adrian. I drive a red truck, I’m tall, I’m muscular, and I’m often told I’m hard to read.
Nobody else that’s employed here matches that description, and I’ve been here longer than most people. I can’t imagine why I would willingly go into the worst timeline, so I’m skeptical. It’s entirely possible that what I’ve been reading up to this point has been fiction, but it doesn’t explain how the pages magically appear on my desk.
I suppose I could be forcibly dragged into the unfavorable timeline at some point in the future. That would explain my presence there in Samantha’s entries. Perhaps whoever’s sending me these are taunting me before forcing me into the place? Maybe it’ll happen next time I’m driving.
Well, if that is the case, I guess it can’t be helped. If I go missing or pronounced “dead” as well, you will all know why. You could say I’m putting this out there as a precautionary measure, since it’s quite possible the boss knows I’m thinking about this stuff already.