This is how it happened on that Friday night.
Rene is a master’s student at Uppsala University, Sweden and this is his first semester. His major is Human-Computer Interaction.
You know, Uppsala University is the oldest university in the whole Nordic region, full of stories and myths, history and reputation.
For every international master’s student who enrols at Uppsala University, the university will arrange a corridor room for them.
Rene lives in a corridor with four other students: Marx Colwell, Sejin Kim, Sandra Moberg, and Shinichi Ozaki.
That night, Rene is writing his assignment, which is supposed to be handed in at 12:00 pm.
Unfortunately, that is a Friday night, which also means that there usually is a party in a student corridor.
I would like to describe that student corridor a bit: it is a big two-floor house. On the first floor, there is a big kitchen room and a big meeting room. On the second floor, there are their bedrooms.
The party is usually held on the first floor and the noise will always torture everyone on the second floor.
No one in this corridor loves to see a party held in the corridor except Marx Colwell, the UK guy.
As he says in the WhatsApp group, he is going to invite some people to have a party tonight.
Rene says a big NO in his heart and then does nothing but goes back to his assignment because there are only 6 hours left before the deadline and he only types two paragraphs.
At around 7 o’clock, Rene hears the noises of the crowd. No doubt it is from Marx and his party guys.
The noises became louder and louder and louder. At some moments, Rene swears that he must move out at the end of this semester.
Simultaneously, Rene is struggling with the theory of ontology and epistemology regarding the HCI research methods.
Rene sits on his chair and starts to curse the teacher who made this boring and difficult assignment; he curses Marx, that male bitch, for holding this annoying party; he also curses the bad weather in Sweden for making him feel so disappointed.
He had no idea that the situation he curses now would be so cherished when looking back, and what is going to happen to him later on that night in this corridor is just the beginning of many horrible things that came along.
Rene is still working hard on his assignment but the sound from downstairs became even louder.
He feels exhausted and his Redbull has just run out, which means that he has to step out of the room, go downstairs to the refrigerator and grab another Redbull.
But, he does not want to.
It is uncomfortable for him to be exposed and watched in front of a crowd of strangers.
But on the other hand, he really needs a bottle of Redbull to gain some energy to finish his assignment.
After struggling, he finally decides to go out of his room.
The moment Rene opens his door, there is a huge wave of music attacking him.
It sounds like a Spanish-Latin song:
“Corazon de Melao, Corazon de Melao, Melao Melao Melao…”
The Spanish song had a strong beat which easily drives people to dance and move their bodies.
Not surprisingly, downstairs there are some people grooving with the music.
They toss their hair like they are using their hair to grasp something in the air.
Rene goes to the refrigerator very quickly, opens it, grabs a Redbull, closes the door and returns to his room.
He sits on his chair, drinks Redbull, takes a long breath and puts his AirPods in his ear.
The music flows out, which is the acoustic version of the Cranberries’ song Dreams.
Rene really likes the acoustic version of this song because there’s no more extra accompaniment, which makes Dolores O’Riordan’s beautiful voice so vivid that he feels he could touch her silky shining voice so easily.
It is December now and the whole Nordic area is marching towards the polar night.
He gets out of his chair and opens the window and inhales the cold fresh air, trying to calm his wearied brain so that he can figure out a way to finish his assignment.
Then he sees it: the northern light.
The air flows and shines as if it became flowing water; the wind blows and roars, bringing the breath of the void from very far away.
Words could not be enough to describe the moment Rene sees the northern light. It is so damn beautiful that he just forgets all the bad things that happen today.
Suddenly, Rene notices that the building just shakes.
The whole building shakes very slightly.
So slightly that he feels like it is like a soft sigh.
Rene finally manages to finish his assignment. Though he estimates that the teacher will definitely grade it as a D, at least he finishes it.
Rene hands in his homework to the student system and then he feels relaxed a bit.
He sits in his chair in a manner that he is paralysed.
His ear then catches the noises from downstairs.
Rene says distressedly, “Oh, come on…I want my sleep tonight! I NEED to have a good rest tonight!”
After thinking over and over again, he decides to ask those party guys to leave.
The moment he opens his door, however, he hears those people saying goodbye to each other and they are about to leave.
Thank God.
Rene feels relieved and then returns to his room.
He takes a shower, then lies on his bed and watches TikTok, preparing to sleep.
However, when he is getting sleepy, he hears the noises again from downstairs.
The noises soon become louder and louder.
Then, a message pops up on Rene’s phone.
It is the Korean girl Sejin Kim in the WhatsApp group: “WTF outside? Don’t they know it is 12 pm now? “
Japanese guy Shinichi Ozaki replies: “Yeah, that’s rude and I am going to talk to them now.”
Then Rene hears the sound of Shinichi’s opening the door and stepping downstairs.
After 2 minutes, Shinichi updates the group: “ OMG, guys, you cannot believe what has happened outside…”
“What do you mean?” Sandra Moberg responds quickly.
“Those party guys go to the bus stop and find there is no bus. They wait for a long time but no bus comes. Besides, there is nothing on the street. Not even a person except themselves. There is no one in the supermarket, no one in our neighbourhood, Literally NO ONE…”
“That’s normal, right? It’s at noon. Everybody is sleeping now and the supermarket is usually closed at 11:30 pm. I don’t believe them. They are just drunk and they want an excuse to go back and have fun.” Sandra responded.
“They are not lying, Sandra. I can tell it. They are in a panic now. They must encounter something horrible.” Shinichi argues.
“It’s too late now. Marx already let them sleep here tonight. We will discuss it tomorrow. “ Shinichi ends the discussion.
After all, it is really late at night.
Rene has a very deep sleep and wakes up around 6:30 am.
It is still black outside the window. So he decides to have unprotected sleep, without a second thought about what happened last night.
However, before long he is awakened by the sound of knocking on the door.
“Rene, please come downstairs. Emergency! “ It is Sandra. Her voice sounds very anxious.
Rene says yes out loud.
He washes and rinses in about two minutes. Then he brings his phone and comes downstairs.
All people are already there, sitting or standing.
Rene sees Marx, Sandra, Sejin, Shinichi, and some other people whom he doesn’t know.
They must be Marx’s friends. They do look not good.
“Something very serious must happen.”Rene thinks.
“So Rene,” Sandra talks to Rene, “ Can you call your friend now? “
“What? Why?” Rene feels confused. Everybody looks at him,
“Just call a friend. Please.” Marx says to him. He looks really tired out.
Rene makes a phone call to his friend Leo. Leo does not answer it.
Everybody then looks like “Yes, we already knew it.”
Rene makes another 5-6 phone calls, but no one answers him.
He even calls the police phone number, but no one answers him.
He calls the service line of the local hospital, but no one answers him.
Suddenly, a horrible idea comes to his mind.
He recalls what Shinichi said last night: there was literally no one.
“So what happened?!” Rene’s voice shivers.
“Look, Rene,” Seijin says, “We could not connect anyone now because there is no one outside. NO ONE. And no cars, no bus on the street, We are ABANDONED.”
Rene knows every word said by Sejin, but he could not understand what she means.
“We are abandoned?”
“Yes, “ another girl Rene does not know continues, “ we have tried to contact every person we know, went out to find somebody in the neighbourhood to help us, to find a car or a bus to go home. But there was nothing we can reach out to. “
“What?! our neighbourhood is also missing?” That’s unbelievable for Rene.
“Unfortunately yes…it seems everything alive is missing…” that girl answered, “And you know what? when I come to the supermarket, I saw a cup of water with a tea bag on it. It seems someone just made it and then disappeared all of a sudden, leaving the a cup of tea there.”
From everybody’s face, Rene knows it is clearly not a joke.
They are abandoned.
Do you remember once there is a very popular TV series called Lost?
A plane crashed on a desert island and everyone who survived the crash had to live by themselves.
No one could help them except themselves, because they were literally abandoned.
Rene and the other people in that house are now kind of in that situation.
They are hoping that someone can explain what is happening here.
But only silence speaks.
“I got an idea!” A dude who wears a big moustache, “maybe it’s because they now have some kind of military action. They have to drive people away. But they forget to tell us…”
“Who are THEY exactly?” Sandra asks further.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s from the government or political parties…” that dude looks distressed.
“That’s bullshit. They by no means forget us. We are not special.” Marx stops the dude’s talk.
“What if we ARE special?” a french girl says, “ what if we are the target? Have you read the book And Then There Were None? We are trapped and everybody here is going to die one by one soon, for some reason we don’t know.“ She says so firmly.
“Stop, please stop, Amelie. You are freaking others out. “ another guy stops Amelie.
“Fuck you, Jonas, it’s because of you that I came to this goddamn party. I didn’t want to!” Amelie responds angrily.
Shinichi looked very frightened.
“There could be another possibility.” they turn to the man who is talking now. He is a Swedish man.
“I have watched a movie, called The Others, starring Nicole Kidman. In that movie, a family moved to a new house. But they were disturbed by the ghost or something haunting that house. But finally, it turned out to be THEY are the ghost. They are the dead ones actually. So I think the reason that we could not find or contact anyone is that…
“WE ARE ALREADY DEAD.”
Silence and fear fulfil the whole space. Everybody is lost inside.
As a 22-year-old young man, Rene never thought about death.
Rene thinks that he should do his best to avoid death because he has so many things to do in his life.
He does not want to die.
But what if he is already dead now?
So many faces pop up in his mind: his parents, his grandparents, and his friends. If he dies, will they miss him?
And what about his dream? He always wants to become a UX designer at Google. That’s why he chooses to study HCI at Uppsala University. But now he is dead, and everything becomes meaningless.
And by the way, he is a dead virgin. He even does not have sex with anybody, boy or girl.
His brain echoes T.S. Eliot’s poetry The Waste Land.
“December is the cruellest month, breeding
desperation out of the dead land, mixing
coldness and sorrow, stirring
peace and quietness with endless impermanence, “
Rene thinks, all is meaningless, life is meaningless.
“Life is fucking meaningless.” a chic and handsome guy screams out, “ I should’ve fuck more girls when I was alive. Now I am dead? Who wanna have an orgy party now? I have some weed. Or if you want some meth, I could also do it…”
“Shut the fuck up, Jonas.” the french girl seems to be extremely angry with this chic man.
“Stop!” Sandra becomes very serious, “ I believe we ARE not dead. I can feel my heartbeat and I do have a pulse, which means my blood is still transmitted through my body and my organs are still working to support my life. “
Then she turns to that Swedish guy Jonas and says:” Stop frightening us. This is not funny.”
“There must be something wrong,” Sandra says.
Sandra’s words calm them down. Yet, then here comes another question: what the fuck is wrong?
If you ask Rene to describe their situation with five keywords, he will say people, house, isolation, strange, and horror.
That’s the facts regarding their situation.
But, unfortunately, he, or they, ignores the most important keyword because of fear, which leads them to the very wrong path in this situation.
We are human and we know things. Our knowledge is developed based on our observation, our direct feeling, and other people’s experiences or knowledge.
But even so, we could not know everything and explain everything, for example, what caused their situation.
They all give up explaining what is happening in their Embla house.
Their house is called Embla, which is the name of a Goddess from Nordic myths.
Instead, they focus on what they should do next.
There are two different opinions: 1) stay at the house altogether and see what would happen. This opinion is based on the assumption that they must face something horrible. So it would be better if they could face it together; 2) everybody just goes back to their own home but stay in touch by phone numbers.
The invited-to-party people are supporters of the second opinion. They are exhausted and all they want is to go home.
“Here’s the problem: how would you find a vehicle to go home? There’s even no bicycle outside.” Marx says.
“Marx is right. I don’t think you can walk home. We are very far away from the city. “ Sandra adds.
Finally, they reach a trade-off agreement: all the people stay at the house until they could find a vehicle or someone to help them.
Here, it would be better to introduce a bit about the people in this house, here are the following people:
these five people live in this house.
Those five people are visitors.
They decide that Jonas live with Marx, Amelie live with Sandra, Sonja live with Sejin, Rodi with Shinichi and August with Rene.
“Now everybody,” says Sandra, “please have some rest. We have had enough today.”
Suddenly, Shinichi says, “Oh shit, I forget! Today there is an Esports competition. “
Looking at Shinichi, something comes to Rene’s mind and he shouts:” Internet! we can use the Internet to ask for HELP! How can we be so stupid to forget this way?”
“I have tried. “ August says calmly, “I have tried to search BBC, CNN, the local news, Facebook, and TikTok, but all the posts stopped at 11:22 pm yesterday. I even tried to search on China’s most popular social media Weibo, you guess what, all the posts in China also stopped at 11:22 pm. ”
“What?”
“Why 11:22 pm?” Amelie asks.
No one knows.
Rene feels so frustrated. The bubble of hope bursts.
What happened all over the world? Where was anybody else? Why they were left here in this Embla house?
Rene cannot help thinking those questions.
Amelie tries to analyze the situation:” Do you think it has something to do with this house? Everyone was erased from the earth except us. Because we are in this house! There must be something wrong with this house.”
Everybody realises her opinion is constructive.
August’s eyes shine and his face looked like “I cannot agree with you anymore.”
“What you said reminds me of Feng Shui.” Shinichi says, “ It’s a term from China, which is about the theory of house place. According to Feng Shui, the geographical place of a house has a strong impact on the people who live in it. ”
Sandra seems to be really confused about Feng Shui, but she continues: “ I think maybe we should also try to figure out what actually happened before 11:22 pm. Or did any of you notice something unusual yesterday ?”
“The northern light.” Seijin says, “ Yesterday, there was a northern light. I saw it from my window.”
“Well, in Sweden, northern light is quite usual in December.” Sandra shrugs her shoulders.
“On my god.” Rodi, the big moustache guy says: “I just found the northern light happened exactly at 11:22 pm yesterday.”
“Great! Now we are putting the pieces together into a picture. We now know two important facts: the house has something to do with our situation and the northern light happened at 11:22 pm yesterday.” August was really excited about the progress they made.
Everybody seems to be more relieved and has a feeling that we are getting closer to the truth with their analysis skills.
However, it turns out to be totally wrong.
They actually even do not touch the edge of the horrible truth at that moment.
Because what happens next is far beyond their imagination.
They decide to have some rest.
Marx and Jonas bring some groceries from the supermarket nearby. Of course, they do not need to pay.
They even bring some good wine from the local store.
They make a very luxurious dinner, as compensation for this bizarre and horrible situation.
Although the situation seems not bad, they do not try to be too anxious.
As it said when you encounter the cliff along your road, why don’t you just stop and enjoy the view?
After dinner, they go back to their own room.
August is arranged to live with Rene. But he comes back to the room very late.
Rene is playing games when August goes back.
When there are just Rene and August in that room, he realises that August is somehow very sexual. He is not a handsome guy but Rene can tell he has something called sexual tension.
When August sees Rene, he says directly:” I just had sex with Jonas. I was the top and we had bareback sex. ”
What?
He continues, “Yes. Part of me thought he was right. Maybe we will die tomorrow. I need sex to feel that I am alive. By the way, Jonas has a prostate orgasm.”
Then he is going to take a shower, leaving a messy Rene in the air.
Maybe it’s called Doomsday Manic.
But it’s not funny.
“I do not want to die. This situation means that I might not see my parents, my friends, or other ones that I love forever.”
That’s not funny, Rene thinks.
Rene is now haunted by heavy emotion and walks to the window.
He opens the window.
A cold wind blows in and the curtain goes up and down, like a soft sigh.
All Rene could see is darkness.
Endless darkness. No northern light tonight.
The cold fresh air makes him feel desolate and bereft.
Suddenly, he sees someone outside the window under the street light, very far away, but very clearly.
There is a strange guy standing outside there.
He should have felt very happy because he sees someone else which meant, they are not abandoned alone.
But actually, Rene feels uncomfortable because there is no face on that guy’s head, and all of this guy, from head to body looks all black like he wears Balenciaga.
Rene is terribly frightened.
Do you know in Japanese animation there is a no-face female Yokai, whose face is totally blank like her face is erased by someone?
Now Rene sees a guy whose face is blank and black.
Rene opens his mouth and wants to ask August to come and see.
But all of a sudden, that guy disappears like smoke dissolves in the air.
Like he did not show up in front of Rene.
Rene just realises how stupid he is: how could he forget to take a picture?
Everything now he has experienced is just too ridiculous, too surreal, and too absurd.
Rene decides not to share this experience with anyone else.
For now, he just wants to have some rest.
Rene sleeps on his bed and August slept on the ground. Rene could hear him snoring.
Rene could not help thinking about what has happened in just one day:
The annoying party, all other people have vanished except them, the guy just showed up in front of his window.
These things lingered in the back of his brain while Rene is sleeping on the bed.
But he could not figure out what caused this situation.
Everything is just so absurd.
Rene couldn’t fall asleep until 3 am.
When Rene gets up, it is late in the morning.
August is already not there.
Rene guesses August went downstairs.
Rene surfs the internet and checks whether there are new updates on the Internet. Sadly no.
The world does not reset to normal. They are still in this weird situation.
Rene thinks about his situation, he has a thought: when you encountered the cliff, why don’t you just stop and enjoy the sightseeing?
Life is absurd, just take it as it is and have fun. Maybe that is the right attitude.
Rene takes a deep breath and he decides not to look bad.
He goes downstairs and sees everybody is there.
They seem to get used to this situation: some are playing Esports, some are watching TV series, some are listening to music and emerging themselves in another world, and some, however, if Rene is right, are watching porn.
Life moves on even in this bizarre situation.
Suddenly, their phone rings simultaneously.
That is a number they do not know. Who is going to call them now?
The man that wears Balenciaga comes to Rene’s mind.
Rene answers the phone and says:” Hello?”
When Rene was younger, he had tried a kind of virtual sex via telephone.
The voice from the other side of the phone becomes a very important source of sexual material that turn Rene on.
That was a female’s voice, sweet and cute.
Rene can’t help but think, that maybe that woman is a strict teacher, a serious doctor, somebody’s girlfriend or wife, someone’s mother.
But now, her voice was “having” sex with Rene’s body.
Voice, from the other side of the phone, has made Rene jerk off.
Rene answers the phone and says:” Hello?”, very casually.
However, there is no one speaking in it.
Rene looks at everyone else.
They check with each other and confirm that they received the same phone call from the same number at the same time.
And August says:” Ah, it seems that we received the same phone call. Let’s turn on the speakers.”
Everybody holds their phones and turns on the speakers.
But no one speaks in it.
Sejin finds something strange and says: “that’s impossible that so many people receive the phone call at the same time. You cannot call many people at the same time with the same phone number.”
“Haha, another supernatural thing.” Jonas looks really excited.
After a while, there is a strange sound from our speakers. That is a sound with a strange rhythm.
“Di-da, dI-da, di-Da, di-dA, di-di-di, da-da-da, da-di, da-di,da-di”
“That sounds like a water drop,” Amelie says, calmly, like she is now in front of a lake with gently falling rain.
Then, the sound changes.
Now it sounds like two pieces of glass cracked on each other.
“Tick, tick, tick,…tick, tick, tick…”
Everybody holds on to their breath and focuses on listening, sparkles shining in their eyes.
Now the sound changes again. It sounds like dumplings are poured into water.
“Padam, Padam, Padam…”
Suddenly, the sound becomes much louder, and now it sounds like somebody chokes their throat and squashes their throat to make a sound.
“Ewww. Ewwwww, Eww, Ewww, Ewwwww, Eww…”
Then the sound becomes even louder. Now it sounds like a mental can is ticked by someone.
“tik-tok, tik-tok, tik-tok…”
Rodi suddenly opens his eyes and moves his body with the rhythm.
Jonas sees that, and gets some inspiration, starts a free-form jazz improvisation.
Everybody starts to groove with Jonas’ humming.
After about one minute, then everything is stopped in the speaker.
The phone call is hung up.