I am part of the hundred and tenth generation of this facility. For as
long as I can remember, i've worked here. Any memories of my time
before are nonexistent. I believe it's the same for the others who work here,
but it's a don't ask, don't tell topic working here. It's rare
that two days are the same. Each day has a plethora of nuances.
Some tasks are rather mundane. Every few weeks, I have to feed the
tunnel a borehole that smells faintly like sulfur. The task is to take a
bucket of giblets and off cut bones to the hole to pour in. Sometimes
it looks like there's a faint white powderce sprinkled on top of the meat,
which looks too fine to be sald I still don't know what it is or
what's in the hole, but it's better not to ask questions. I just
do my task and move on. However, some tasks aren't to straightforward.
Something we're all assigned to be on the lookout for is to report the location
of the husk. While walking around the facility on the floor, in a
room or even a corridor, you'll sometimes see a dried up human shaped husk.
It looks like what an insect would leave behind after shedding its skin,
though there are no openings, dark gray and semi translucent. Though the position
sometimes changes, the face is always walked into a wailing face of anguish,
and its limbs are often contorted into an uncomfortable fetal position. It never moves,
and after being reported, no one has stuck around to see what happens.
But it's never there. The next day after sighting, you have to
report it to the higher ups and carry on with your shift pass. Then
the husk only proves to be a trip hazard. Currently tripping on the husk
as a one hundred percent mortality rate. Personally, I've never seen it happen,
but through the grapevine, I've heard of someone that has. They caught
sight of a technician who was fumbling with a folder and didn't notice the husk
until it was too late. I was told that he fell straight to the
ground as soon as his foot hit the object. At first, it looked
like he just caught a nasty fall from the surprise. However, the portion
of the leg that nicked the body was missing, just gone, the trouser
hole empty, and his shoe was off to the side. The technician immediately
started screaming as he grabbed his leg, but not the missing part. He
had his hands around where his knee was wailing in agony. At first they
thought it was because of the pain of his leg being inexplicably removed, but
soon his hands clasped together and his otherwise neat fitting clothes sagged higher and higher.
Everyone around realized more of him was disappearing, black dust falling from the
empty trouser hole. The rest of his clothes emptied from the bottom up until
the screaming stopped and a discarded outfit remained. He was called in and everyone
moved on. There's no time to dwell here on the happenings of others.
Too much downtime like that can get you written up. Because of such events,
it's sometimes better to avoid making friends. A lot of new people are
hauled in, not always at once, but sometimes that's the case depending on
the severity of a recent incident. Often the fresh faces are confused, bewildered,
or straight up mannic. It's not easy working here, so it's especially
not easy when you're new. There's a lot to adapt to and you must
ad just fast. One fresh face was friendly, introduced himself readily to anyone
around. This is not the norm, and he was brushed off by many
of the more senior staff. However, I was still relatively new myself.
I knew the feeling of wanting familiar faces around me, so I took the
bait. He shook hands, He told me his name, though I didn't
tell mine, But otherwise, just engaging with him was the most anyone I
had given him since he'd arrived, and he seemed to find comfort in us
short one sided conversation. From then on, he would hover over me during
our downtime. Spending your break rubbing shoulders with whoever is around is normal here.
No one is particularly close, so it means you just mildly get along
with anyone close by just event However, this guy always seemed to find me
when we had brakes that lined up. He was generally very polite, if
not a bit too open in contrast to what we're used to here. I
hadn't seen him unshift until an incident occurred. He was assigned to the quiet
room for a few hours. It's a sterile, white room with a small
black box atop a metal table. As the name suggests, being quiet is
of the utmost importance. Before going in, you're made a change into a
frictionless, skin tight suit to avoid the sound of brushing clothing fabrics. No
electronics are to be taken in if an emergency pings your personal device. Fortunately,
you're notified of outside emergencies via a light that will flash red if an
evacuation is needed. It sounds daunting, but you are simply required to ensure
everything in the room is in order and observe the box for any irregularities.
The new guy does this to the letter. First, he went around to
check all angles, looking at the front and viewing all sides of the box.
Then he simply stood there and observed the box, only moving around occasionally
to recheck the other wrangles. I was stationed outside to ensure his entry and
exit were executed correctly. After a few hours, the yellow light blinked,
which meant it was time for him to leave. He slowly made his way
to the exit. I quietly opened the door, and just before the door
latched, he breathed a sigh of relief. I froze, knowing what he
just did. Though, you have to maintain silence in the room. There
is leniency. The blood rushing in your veins, your heart pumping, your
lungs taking in air. All of these are not enough to set off the
box. However, his side just tipped over what was acceptable. A grumble
groan from inside the box, and he looked at me dismayed. He opened
his mouth, but before he could exclaim anything, I clamped my hand over
it and pulled him down as quietly as I could. There we just lay
as we heard movement from inside. A stretching and twisting could be heard,
the clatter of the box hitting the ground. Then suddenly, a black tendrol
poked its way through the door. I could tell he wanted to scream,
but I wasn't letting him so much as breathe, even if it meant he'd
suffocate. The tendrol just hung there, tilting around, not looking but listening.
After a tense amount of time, it slowly retreated. I gently got
back up, holding a finger over my lips to make sure he knew to
stay quiet. He quietly pealed open the door. I went in softly,
slowly picked up the now behind box and gently placed it on the table.
I slipped back out and gently closed the door. After that, I let
out my own sigh, knowing it was safe to do so, and he
followed suit. Once we're a safe enough distance away, he thanked me profusely.
After some hollow assurance, I let him on his way. The day
after, he excitedly found me. Apparently the higher ups learned of what happened
and decided to give him her promotion. I smiled as best I could and
congratulated him. I've seen promotions given her number of times, and anyone who's
been around long enough knows it's not good. You get a signed to another
area, one which we have never been to and I never seen again.
No one knows what happens to repurpose. Staff still recollectively agree it can't be
good, as only the incompetent seemed to get these promotions. I never saw
him again, and you'll never know. It was me who told the higher
ups what happened. I feel bad for doing so. We're not reporting something
like that is also ground for promotion, and they always find out. I've
heard of people lying, trying to throw another under the bus, but it
never works. They always know. This is one of many reasons to keep
a distance from others, but there is someone everyone is friendly to, though,
Gregg the miss. If you're in the social quarters, you'll often see
a homeless looking man wearing a wizard's robe made from old bed sheets. People
often cheer and smile at him because he's one of the few good oddities in
the facility. He's so unthreatening that he's one of the only oddities that isn't
confined, which is good because he never took to confinement. Well. It's
often good to keep conversation short with Greg, though a greeting, how do
you do and a goodbye. However, the temptation to talk longer is always
present. That's because if you talk with Greg long enough, he'll offer to
read your future. You can even ask him if he doesn't offer to,
though there are rules to what you can and cannot ask. The rule of
thumb is to ask inane questions. You don't want to know something you're not
supposed to. The one thing guaranteed when he reads your future is that Greg
is always wrong. I asked him what was for lunch, and he told
me pizza. I went to the canteen and what do you know, tacos?
At first, it seems like a laughable idea to call yourself a mystic
confidently make readings. You'd always be wrong. But when I say he's always
wrong, I mean he's wrong one hundred percent of the time. One experiment
was run in which they had him guess the outcoin of a coin flip for
as long as they could hold his attention. The sweet guy stayed engaged for
hours playing and they managed to get over a thousand flips. Every guess was
wrong, every single one, to the degree that it pretty much confirmed it's
not just the statistical anomaly. Something else is at play here. However,
coin flips are harmless. You can't extrapolate relevant information from a coin flip.
However, extracting useful information is possible by learning what won't happen. Will the
surgery to implement a cybernetic and handslim go successfully. Gregg said, it'll go
smoothly and the patient would be overjoyed at having full control over their new device.
The surgery was canceled and the project was shelved until the science could be
refined. Obviously, this isn't ful proof. You can only extrapolate so much
from a negative response. Since learning what won't happen is one of many outcomes,
but he's proven a great asset to the company and a fun addition to
work a morale. Gregg's status is ongoing, with subtle tests still being administered
in passing the position you feel here isn't a set schedule. A lot of
the time they keep you working certain hours to maintain a sense of normalcy,
but sometimes you're given a shift on an alternate time frame. Usually I'm a
day shift worker, but some nights I'm given duties in the observatory. The
floor I'm made to work on must be close to the surface because it revolves
around a high powered telescope. From this, I'm able to gather that I
live and work far below ground, though the specifics are beyond me. This
telescope automatically calibrates to a certain spot in the sky and absurd only one object,
a planet. Most people have a basic understanding of the planets on our
Solar system. However, this one never came up in school. From context,
I've picked up that it can only be observed when viewed through some alternative
wavelength, whether it's infrared, ultraviolet, or something entirely new. My job
isn't to know the details, so I'll probably never learn them. But when
I'm working here, I'm to assist a technician in the lab to observe this
planet. It seems benign. One would think it is void of life.
That doesn't guarantee our safety. One theory posits that life on the planet lives
below the surface, so constant observation is mandated in case any signs of service
are spotted. However, it's hard with the current technology of the lab.
I imagine a more powerful version of the telescope is being worked on. Another
theory I heard is that the life forms can't be seen by whatever wavelength we've
dialed to. Sure, we can see the planet, but there are planets
you can observe with your bare eye, so it wouldn't be wild to think
that we need to refine whatever wavelength is being used to intensify the readings of
the planet. I'm sure they're working on this too. For now, things
seem benign, but I still get an itch of my neck just thinking about
if something there is observing us the same way we watch them, maybe they're
having the same troubles as us. I'm hoping that if there is civilization there,
that they're friendly because if not, whatever we're working on would be closer
to an arms race than a rush for discovery. Working in the observatory is
one of the few floors where I go up, but most of my shifts
involved going down, sometimes far down, and there's a shift I often get
that I dread clean up and floor B sixty six. This floor was home
to an experiment gone awry. Whatever had gotten out is hidden away in a
deep crevice and hasn't been found since. What's worse is that it seems to
be able to replicate itself, So the job is to go around and exterminate
anything that moves. They look like round balls of fur. The biggest are
about the size of a volleyball. On their own, they aren't too dangerous
under the fur. They have a leech like mouth with barbed teeth that latch
quickly through skin. You're given a level of protective plating that covers a lot
of your body, but there are gaps in the armor and they can easily
hit if you're not fast enough. How they get you are the thin tubes
in their teeth that rapidly suck out liquids, So if you're hit, you
have to rip them off fast, but the barbs latch on deep and you'll
be bleeding a lot, which will only bring more. One of them isn't
an issue. Two or three are manageable, but if left too long,
clusters can gather. One upside to this shift is that you get to play
with some of the facility's toys. Even though there's power on the floor,
most of the lights are out. From cursory glances, it's presumed that these
creatures had no or through many of the wires, maybe while digging in the
walls for an escape, So we're given a light. It's called the firefly,
a frosted glass ball with a circle divot at the bottom. I can
only presume something in the divot is what makes it float, because this companion
drone will silently follow you wherever you go. The firefly amids a light all
around in a harsh yellow glow, enough to illuminate most of a corridor you're
in, or even in entire room. These fireflies have been around since the
eighty fifth generation and haven't been updated since. It's that tried and true.
The same can't be said about the weapon in the past. You are armed
with a few firearms because of hits worked well to initially stun then finish off
those little fur balls, but accuracy plays a significant part in your survival.
With how small and fast they are, it's not hard to imagine why the
task's survival rate would be rocky. So the technicians have been hard at work,
and for around the one hundred and eighth generation, a medium ranged arch
throw was introduced. It whirs up and quickly shoots a shold of electricity towards
the direction you're facing. Something in the fur ball seems to be conductive because
you only have to aim in the general direction, which is much better than
trying to hit one mid jump with a nine millimeter. Whatever makes them so
malleable to fit through small gaps also seems to mean their membrane is so thin
that they perish after one harsh jolt, and the battery lasts long enough to
last even a hectic shift, making the job much more trivial on an easy
day. However, not every day is an ease. It isn't confirmed whether
they have a higher intelligence or it's just coincidence. Still, the fur bulls
have been known to set up some devious situations. A report was made that
two fur bulls were sitting in a hallway about thirty paces through a doorway.
The worker needed to step through to get him ranged to hit both at once.
It was only after he stepped through that he realized the situation. A
fur bull was lurking above behind the doorframe, and as he focused on the
two in the hallway, the lone fur bull dropped down and went straight into
the back of his neck between the joints of his helmet and back plate.
The five flight documented this and posed a warning for future shift workers. The
person who took the next shift had a nightmare cleaning this up because they had
a lot of feed on, and he reported that there was an entire wall
covered with these things. To survive a shift is what's expected any less,
and more often than not, you don't make it out or you get promoted.
Something I found is that there doesn't seem to be a ladder to climb
within the company. I think it has something to do with my position.
I'm not in some lab discovering world bending technologies. I work the floor and
maintain the status quo. But I did once get the attention of the higher
ups. It didn't happen on a shift, but rather between them. I
was traveling through one of the floors to transfer between two elevators, and on
my usual route, I noticed the stain in a lesser used hallway. It
was a brownish splash, and my first thought with that the technician had spilled
the coffee. I figured it would be cleaned and went on to my shift.
When I passed by again, it was still there. Not only that,
but it was bigger and darker, now almost the strong shade of black.
I reported it and moved on. I was assigned the same task later
in the week and had to pass through that same section, expecting the mess
to be cleaned up. I was surprised when the hallways were cordoned off.
I always escorted around, taking much longer to start my shift. It only
got worse from then on. Each time I passed by, more and more
of that floor's block was sectioned off. After a month, no one was
there to walk me around. The pale yellow curtains that blocked viewing of the
area were all gone. I tried to make my way through my old route,
but was blocked off, this time by a wall. Where I first
saw the stain. There was now a whole new lab. Technicians rushed by,
seemingly working over time with so many tasks on their hands. I late
to learn what happened when I was assigned to assist in that section. The
stain grew. At first. They tried cleaning it, but it never changed,
no matter what substance or abrace if they used. Eventually it stopped spreading,
and when it did, he resembled the silhouette of a man day by
day, though he no longer grew outwards, but rather up slowly and seemingly
inevitably. A person is coming out of it right now, is being studied,
but nothing is known of what will happen when the figure emerges. On
the plus side, I was rewarded for reporting it. They gave me an
hour with the music box. From my experience, most of the things we
deal with here are hell, but not all of them are other worldly threats
to humanity. Some are objects of bizarre uses, one of which is the
music box. Long term exposure has been known to have adverse effects. However,
in the short term it has provided ample reward for especially outstanding work in
the field. The object itself looks ornate but otherwise unremarkable. Compared to the
horrors here. It's a dark stained oak wooden box with grooves etched around to
distinguish the edges. The outside is smoothed with a polished varnish, and across
the top is a detailed carving of a snake wrapped in a mother of pearl
like effect around an apple with a juicy red resin fill. On the side
is a polished brass handle which is used to crank the box. It sits
in a rather fittingly decorated room, wooden bookshelves holding ancient looking books, all
filled with blank pages. A deep crimson Chesterfield chair sits next to an artificial
fireplace. A wooden globe rests nearby, along with an empty decanter and decorated
crystal whiskey glasses. To sit there alone could be rewarding enough for some.
However, it's once you start the music box that the magic happens. I
was given three cranks for my efforts. There is no countermeasure for if you
sneak extra cranks in. However, I can only imagine the hell you'd wrought
if you overplayed your hand. After all, this is a privilege you don't
want to be revoked. It'll be hard to fully convey why the music box
is so great, because after three generous cranks, I sat back in the
comfort of the single chair and blacked out. When I awoke, my eyes
were watery from fresh tears, a bit of crust than the sides of my
eyes. There was the taste of nostalgia lingering in the air. A feeling
of overwhelming splendor carried through me for the rest of the week. No one
knows what happens when you listen to the music box. The few of us
who have used it were alone, as mandated by the instructions. We do
have our theories, though. One person thought it transcended you to some asterul
realm, a brief reprieve from the hell we work in, but only spiritually,
because we can't imagine the higher ups ever letting us physically leave this place.
Another person thought it simply evoked every positive emotion you can feel, so
much so that you black out, yet keep the dopamine and serotonin from the
experience for the next few days. I have my own theory. I wonder
if it evokes your memories from before coming here. My memories start in this
place, and all the fresh recruits are about the same age. We must
have had a life before this which was taken. Maybe it brings back the
memories of family, ordinary life, and the peace we used to have,
of which we're only allocated a certain time with. God knows what the higher
ups would do if we ever had knowledge of the outside world, because our
drive would no longer be of the efficiency of the facility, but the ability
to get out. We're subdued with a mix of fear and complacency. So
to have something to fight for, I know of many who would die to
try achieving it. But this theory he is a bit of a stretch,
or maybe even a hope, and it's one I keep to myself. All
I know is that the music box who is not made in the labs here.
A lot of the stuff here is brought in from outside. But that
doesn't mean our problems only come externally, because we also have our own internal
issues. I mentioned that this place runs on generations. No one knows what
signifies jump in a generation. It's not annually or any set time period.
I know this because I've seen a generation jump after two years and another time
after two weeks. However, it is determined It's also how certain things are
labeled. I mentioned that I'm part of the one hundred and tenth generation.
Currently we're in one hundred and seventeenth. All the people working here are a
mix of older and newer generations than me are. The same also applies to
technology. I mentioned that the fireflies or eighty fifth GenTech and the arc Farr
was one hundred and eighth. These are things we still have stock of and
are still being produced to this day. But some tech runs so far back
that even the generation number has been lost. With the nature of the facility,
archiving isn't the most reliable. On top of that, sometimes entire sectors
are lost due to incidents, so some knowledge and tech are lost entirely.
And a vital tech that we're slowly running out of is the sleep tubes.
It's estimated that they're from around the fifteenth to twenty third generation. Their long
glass tubes filled with a pale yellowish chemical topped off with a plastic cover.
I work with them sometimes, and what we do with them is simple.
If you go to four B sixty six, you'll find a huge circular pit.
There are no guard railings around the catwalk, so you have to be
careful when navigating the low light environment. The pit goes so far down that
it's almost pitch black, though it's not advised if you shine a light down
there. You can't see to the bottom. However, you can hear it,
a rhythmic groan that pulsates at a slow tempo. You might not figure
out what it is when you're there, but when you're told what you're doing,
it becomes apparent what it is. It's snoring. Whatever is down there
is in a deep sleep. The job is to silently carry the tube to
the device along the east catwalk, make sure it's plastic side down, and
put the tube in. When secured, you pull the lever. A clunk
will go off and the liquid rapidly depletes downwards. A loud groan will echo
around the chamber. But stay quiet, and eventually the snoring will resume.
Take the tube out, which will now have a puncture in the plastic,
and dispose of it. Then you are done. Whatever is down there is
currently in a perpetual state of slumber, and it's solely because of this chemical.
The problem is we're quickly running out The storage room for them used to
be full when I started, but this is one of the five storage rooms,
the rest of which are empty. But now we're down to the last
quarter of this room stock, which means once these are out, we're out
for good. Right now, technicians are hard at work over this, either
trying to replicate them, will develop a new system to keep up the perpetual
slumber. I don't know of their progress, but to me, it's looking
dire. The technicians occasionally take a sample to run tests. I understand the
urgency, but each time they take a sleep tube to run tests, that's
one less we workers have to use. We're burning the candler both ends and
it's worrying. There are a lot of duties that aren't talked about in downtime,
either they've become a mundane part of the job or simply because we want
to reprieve from the daunting tasks we are given for One shift is talked about
in hush circles, the final shift. This isn't the official name of the
task, but rather a nickname given by the workers when it's been assigned.
It's the hot topic of the day because it might be the last time you
ever see that person. The Vinyl shift is performed deep on floor B one
hundred. I'm not sure if that's the deepest level of the facility, but
it's the furthest I've personally been on. Often there are many experiment sectors within
a single floor, but this is an entire level dedicated to this one task.
I entered the longest elevator ride i'd ever been on, and when the
doors dinged open, I was met with the whole floor bathed in a green
light. The instructions are clear and important. Familiarize yourself for a few minutes.
Once the lights turn red, it begins. The floor was like any
other sterile, cold hallways, viewing windows into small labs and various storage units.
However, each one I opened was empty, barely any marring on the
edges. Everything here is almost like a prop set up to make the appearance
of a normal floor with none of the actual function. I found a few
rooms with human sized storage units and a few torn open ducks that I could
fit into, and mapped out a clear path through the hallways, making mental
notes of any dead ends. When the light turned red, I didn't get
as much as i'd of light done, and immediately there was a noise.
Something stalked around a few turns, I was no longer alone. The game
of cat and mouse had begun. I softly slipped through rooms, I ran
when chased. I came dangerously close to death many times. I spent nearly
ten minutes in a locker with whatever it was, just knocking on various cabinets
in the room. It knocked to my locker a few times, but I
held in a whimper long enough for it to not look inside. I was
chased through several hallways, and while looking behind I tripped. I saw the
corporate a discarded leg of a previous worker. On the final shift, I
almost got a good look at the thing, large humanoid in shape. Its
silhouette turned the corner and it never slowed. Whether it was for hunger or
sport. It wanted to get to me as soon as possible. But as
it skirted around the corner, the lights changed. I was bathed in a
tinge of green. When the thing stopped, turned and left. It was
unceremonious. No final confrontation with the creature, no grand escape from death,
not even a disgruntled gesture of defeat from the thing. It simply wandered away.
There isn't much context to go off. But talking to the few other
survivors of the Final Shift that I knew of, we have some ideas.
Whatever it is that chases us lives exclusively on that floor, and it's given
about an hour to play each week, sometimes more if it's getting restless,
and when it plays, it plays for keeps. With my experience added to
our collective information, it strictly sticks to the red light green light set up,
but many aunt as lucky. We've lost a lot of people to the
Final shift, so being known as someone who's gotten through a shift it's a
badge of honor. It doesn't get you anything from the higher ups, after
all, to them, I'd simply just done my job, but it commands
an aura of respect among the workers. It may seem like torture, but
after an hour with that thing, I know for a fact none of us
could last much longer than that. So in some twisted way, this system
makes sense. This way, it's only dangerous for an hour. If that
thing ever got restless and decided to play around the whole facility, all hell
would break loose. Though I don't tell this to anyone, I grumble with
the rest that it's a torturous system that should be abolished, and this is
just one of the many duties we have to do. No two days are
the same, and for each task or incident I've mentioned, there are hundreds
that I haven't and even then, I haven't seen everything there is to do
here. But hey, it's all part of the job.