Speaker 1: Being a prison guard isn't easy. You have to maintain control,
control of routine, of unpredictable people, of yourself. In a
normal prison, there are so many factors to consider, gang affiliations, smuggling, fights,
and occasionally escape attempts. A lot of people think the
job is about strength, about control through sheer force, and yeah,
maybe in some prisons that works, but not here. I
work in a prison that's above a normal prison, the
place people send things that can't go anywhere else, things
that aren't supposed to exist. Some of them used to
be people, some of them never were. Some of them
no one knows what they are. Not real scientists try
to study them, administration tries to classify them, but at
the end of the day, we're all just keeping them
locked up and hoping that's enough. My job is to
make sure the vault stays closed, and I do this
through a strict routine and following my guidelines to the letter.
When you get started here, there's one prisoner that every
new person gets assigned, the phaser. Peeking into a cell,
you'll see a man mid forties looking ordinary as Ever, however,
periodically he will flash with a bright light and blink
to another section of the cell. He was caught toying
with telepatation technology, and from the lack of usage in
this facility, I can imagine it's still far from being
perfected reminder of the consequences of dabbling too much into
the unknown. It would be oddly relaxing to watch if
it wasn't for the horrific screaming during and after he blinks,
though sometimes it's just muffled sobs when he's exhausted, so
it's not too bad to watch. Then sometimes he's lucky
and he doesn't blink for a few hours or even
a day. But some days are bad when it's just
non stop with how unpredictable and unstable he is. Sometimes
he just disappears. The empty cell will alert us if
he's gone too long, then someone is sent to investigate.
He never actually leaves the cell, not once has he
ever teleported out of the room, let alone the facility.
Whatever they line the wars with is effective, However, it's
what we do that is observed. When I was alerted,
I waited outside and observed, noting down any anomalies until
he blinked back. But some have the more proactive new
recruits ones looking to prove themselves rush in, armed and ready.
The lucky ones get the scare of their lives, and
the man blinks back in with a sudden flash, scaring
the hell out of the green recruit. Wherever the phaser goes,
whatever he sees must be horrifying. I would have thought
he simply blinked forward in time, delaying when he appears
to us in the facility, But the look in his
eyes after a delayed blink tells a thousand stories, ones
which he'll never share. The unfortunate outcome is when a
guard stands where he appears without fail contact with a
blinking entity, even if just brushing his arm as he
blinks back, always favors the one who blinked. The guard
simply bursts into a huge red mist. Since getting cleaners
inside is an impossibility, the phaser has to clean it up.
Looking back, this all feels like a test to see
if a guard is ready to handle the oddities contained here,
a litmus test for new recruits. Being too passive can
lead to catastrophe. Being too proactive can also lead to catastrophe.
Sometimes even a middle ground can be detrimental. You're tested
every day with your split second decision making skills, and
it feels like this is how they gauge us on
our response. The phaser is one of many prisoners dangerous
by circumstance, a repercussion of dabbling too far into untreaded
waters and being eternally punished. However, some prisoners are dangerous
by choice. In society, we've heard of people pushing themselves
into great feats. Archers who can hit a bull's eye,
then split that arrow with a second one lift us
geared to the max hauling weight that matches large vehicles.
But what if someone took it further? Prisoner X has
a laundry list of protocols. To simplify it, he essentially
turned his body into a living weapon, chemical, biological, technological, mentally,
he dabbled into every extreme to make himself the most
dangerous person alive. Through multiple surgeries, the scientists tier have
removed a large portion of his internal weapons and contingencies. However,
he still has many that simply cannot be under his skin.
Is nigh unbreakable, hardened through means which our scientists are
still trying to figure out. Prisoners often have a running
theme of not talking, so there's still a lot unknown
to us, but this makes him resistant to tasers and fire.
I'll go too for prisoner subjugation. Instead, we have to
periodically drill a small hole into his neck, not an
easy feat with how thick his skin actually is, and
put on a collar with a reinforce syringe filled with
enough sedatives to put down an elephant. However, we still
need bodies to escort him from his cell to where
he needs to be. To say he is resistant to authority,
he is an understatement. One time he tried to make
a break for it. He waited for the cusp of
when he needed redrilling. His skin had hardened for his
neck to resist the needle just enough for him to
knock it away head down, just tackling the wall to
alter its angle. It took almost three full squads to
finally subdue him, many casualties taken. Despite his arms eternally
being bound, he was still proficient in killing in many
other ways. I was fortunately on a different shift, but
the deaths up to security and increased how often he
was drilled. Luckily, not all prisoners as strictly evil, so
I hear for being too aspirational. One man sits in
a cell, low security and minimal luxuries, which is a
lot compared to the many others living conditions here. We
call him the tinkereer because the Southern posed title of
technomancer was too ridiculous for us to use. At first,
he was a menace, nothing too threatening, but he would
tinker with anything he could get his hands on. Guards
found their combs missing from their belt, only to have
a strange signal beam out at everyone's radios. Uppida's would
have strange bugs, only to find a signal was sent
to disrupt them. Though there were many anomalies on a
near constant basis, some potentially catastrophic. When it fell into
the category of technology shenanigans, it was easy to know
who the corporate was. Often we'd storm up to his cell,
subdue him, and search the area, and each time we'd
find the makeshift array he'd made with the scraps he'd
found and destroy it, giggles coming between his grunts as
a guard held him down. Something we noticed, though, was
that when he did play with his tech, he would
have please stay in his room and tinker. This gave
us an idea. Periodically we'd bring in a broken piece
of technology a laptop, tablet, phone, etc. Obviously, we'd remove
anything that could cause issue, parts that could access the internet,
or simply remove a key item like the CPU. From here,
we'd bring it to him under the guise that we
wanted it fixed, and he'd tinker with it for days,
sometimes weeks. When he'd finish, we'd search his room in
case he held any parts, often finding them and unbeknownst
to him, destroy it all. We once booted up a
fixed laptop hed given us, adding back in the CPU
and battery, only for it to be an almost completely
different device set up for functions. We couldn't even comprehend
the brainchild of the madman of technology, but we kept
up this routine because doing this satiated him. This wasn't
on any of the books. We guards often found our
own means through on ground observation to come up with
makeshift routines to make our lives easier. However, one guard
didn't get the full memo. He saw the tinker as
the guy that fixes things and brought him his phone
that wasn't turning on despite the facility being deep underground,
jammed up to the max for any outward signal by
location in technology. Within hours, a nuclear code was sent
and almost worked in setting off multiple missiles. A nuclear
warning was even sent out in Hawaii, which outwardly was
reported as a false flag, but we were close to
a real catastrophe. The guard was swiftly dealt with and
the Tinkrewer's band from fixing tech for months, but he
wasn't unhappy with this. Every time we checked on him,
he still giggled about it thinking about what he did.
This tied him over until he was eventually allowed to
fix broken tech again with much more restrictions from then on.
There's one prisoner which I like being put on shift
for causes no issues, needs no maintenance, just need to
keep an eye on him and no doubt any anomalies,
which there are never any of. This is because he's
stuck in a perpetual state of stasis. The story goes
that a strange signal was picked up in the basement
of a residential building. When a filled up team was
sent to investigate, they found him in this state, frozen
in time. Around him was an array of strange tech
computers linked together in complicated ways, and a bulking machine
mostly destroyed due to him not being able to cooperate
in any sort of questioning. It was up to the
investigation team to piece together what happened, and boy did
they find a strange story. Through logs on his computer,
they discovered that he had in fact found the first
legitimate means to travel back in time. Very illegal. We
have a few prisoners detained for even attempting to start
that project. But he might have succeeded somehow. He cracked
the code and put together the haphazard machine that lay
destroyed around him. But it's what he did with it
which is possibly the strangest thing I'd ever heard. Instead
of going back to make riches change a mistake in life,
old history in a groundbreaking way, visit a prolific historical figure,
or hell, see the dinosaurs, he instead went back in
time to kill his own grandfather. Guy was obsessed with
the grandfather paradox. It's strange how genius lovel intellect has
a correlation with absolute insanity. We only know this from
going through the logs on his computer. He detailed his
plan and specifically who he was after one Charles Vernon.
We checked the database and a mattress found Charles Vernon
had died in the late nineteen forties. No record of kids,
which means if it was his grandfather, he had successfully
killed him and stopped a parent from being born, causing
him to become a paradox. However, he didn't simply disappear.
Despite all the information we could find, so much more
is left a mystery. It's inconclusive whether the state he's
currently in is because of the paradox, a side effect
of time travel, or self inflicted after getting the answers
he wanted. It's also unknown what happened to the machine,
whether it was a one time used kind of deal
or something he set up so that it could never
be used after him. But we're working hard on freeing him.
He studied a lot and tests are always being ran,
and whether we could reverse the condition he's in, because
throughout all the logs there is nothing on how we
built the actual machine. So the scientists are hoping to
unfreeze him and prying this information out of him. One
or another. The science is above my pay grade. However,
I sometimes imagine what could have been done if one
went back with ambition, though someone going back with chaotic
contentions would be a terrifying thought. Maybe that's why he
never documented how it was made or why the machine
was destroyed. A large amount of duties are sectioned off
between different squads. What this means is that duties I've
mentioned which are in my rotation may infrequently or never
show up for other squads. We have no idea how
the criteria for this is made, whether it's some inner
system of threat level or group based competency. God knows
what kind of demons others deal with. Hopefully I am
in a good rotation, But one duty which is universal
between all groups is playtime. For this duty, I dressed
up in civilian attire, very young, coded and drove to
a town called small Haven. Now, the facility is located
remote from any civilization, so this town itself is in
a town per se. It's actually an entire level of
the facility, widened enough to create a dynamic, functioning town
and tall enough that a realistic skybox could be made.
Every one in the town is an actor playing their
part twenty four seven, never breaking character. Or for one prisoner,
a child, she lives with a family. Though they are
technically actors, knowing that the town isn't real, they are
her biological relations. All in all, she lives the perfect life,
goes to school, plays with friends, visits extended family, which
were also moved into the facility town. The reason for
her detainment is simple. If she gets mad, she goes
nuclear not in a hyperbolic way. She has enough internal
energy to flatten entire countries plural. It's too big of
an explosion to contain or isolate. Even if set off
remotely from the furthest point of land dead set in
the middle of the largest ocean, the tsunamies would devastate
large portions of continents in all directions. We can't get
into space without risking hitting levels of stress that would
set her off before exiting the atmosphere. So she's stuck
in this facility under the guise of having moved to
a nice little town to start fresh. There are contingencies
set in place to make sure she never leaves. The
outer limits of the town are all abandoned factories or
run down ghettos, all designed psychologically to make them undesirable
to go to. Though abandoned might be the wrong turn
to use, considering how many trained snipers are stationed there
around the clock, all armed with long range sedatives. Even
the ghetto's population are all trained militia, scary looking people
to deter her wandering through and armed to the teeth
with contingencies. She once wandered close through the outer limits
with no escorts near by. It was reported that she
wasn't trying to make a break for it, but they
still implemented a fail safe. She was subdued, and when
found by her parents, she was told she fell asleep
wandering too far. Luckily she bought that and there hasn't
been an incident since. She has no idea what is
truly going on, and when I was selected for playtime duty,
it was my job to check on her. How this
duty works can be complicated with how closed off the
town is from the real world. Getting information reliably to
and from small Haven it is difficult. Every so often
a guard has to role play into town to check
on things. Sometimes we're an out of town counselor sent
in by the school administration to check on all the students,
sometimes for travelers car having trouble so stuck in town
for a few days. Seeing a new face also keeps
up the facade of the town's legitimacy. Hiding the fact
that it is cut off from any real civilization. My shift, however,
was different. This was the first drafted long term visit,
and I was lucky enough to be the first participant.
Despite working in a facility in which you're physically tested
every day, with some guards covered head to toe in
unsightly scars, I've been relatively untouched, though there are given
items to look after ourselves, in which I do the
bare minimum. I guess I just have to admit it.
I have a serious case of baby face. This hasn't
been an issue, but it must have been noticed because
it tied directly into my assignment. I was sent in
as a new high school student finishing off the last
part of the year. I was given a strict schedule
to shave and make sure I blend it in. Alone,
I would stand out as slightly older, but amongst the crowd,
I blended in well enough. The education departments were mixed
through aw years, segmented between elementary and high school, so
despite being years apart in the schooling system, I was
able to observe the prisoner on occasions. In class, I
was instructed that I did not need to participate in
learning unless observed by the prisoner, which never came up,
and so I used that time to take meticulous notes
on anything I observed. I learned her name was Emily
and that she got on well enough in school. However,
there was a planned event. Since I was new in town,
Emily's parents invited me over for dinner, keeping up the
facade of a friendly, welcoming town. Alongside me was an
actor who posed as my mother. I handed over the
envelope containing the script to my mother and we studied
it together for hours to make sure everything lined up.
My mother played a single parent and I had lived
with my father for most of my life. However, she
came back into the picture through letters, and I had
decided to reach out and live with her for a
bit to mend our relationship. A believable story, and when
there was so small it would be hard to poke
holes in. We drilled the script, adding information for us
to sync up with in case anything else came up.
The meal went well because it was under the guise
of meeting new people. He managed to detail their family
life in a public setting. Overall, they reviewed well, and
I noted how stable everything seemed. However, unexpected to Emily's parents,
my mother pulled them to another room to crack open
a bottle of wine, something the kids couldn't participate in.
This left Emily and I alone for an in depth review,
away from the pressures of keeping up appearances with her parents.
This is something we struggled with in previous reviews, since
leaving a child alone with an adult stranger was something
hard to set up. Since I was perceived as a
youth rather than an adult, I was to extract any
useful information with this precious time frame. It started slow,
regoing over icebreakers, but this time in a more personal way,
asking how she really felt about life, about school, about
apparent's She opened up more than at the dinner table,
all of which was positive. The small Haven project was
still going strong. However, Emily went quiet after a while,
with a deep look of contemplation on her face. Rather
than pray, I let the silence hang, letting the pressure
of social cues ease her into opening up. However, rather
than throwing some thought provoking question back, she threw a
curveball straight into my face. I know it's all not real,
she said, plainly. If I had a drink in my mouth,
i'd have spat it. Out. Huh, oh, what do you mean?
I stuttered back. I had been composed before this, in
control of the conversation, following my orders to the letter. However,
this was vearing so off script that I spat out
a question, hoping to steer things back to normalcy. I mean,
it's a simulation, right, this town, it's all avasad, No,
she muttered. I froze. My first instinct was the gaslight
the hell out of her, make her feel crazy for
even thinking that, even though she was one hundred percent right.
But then a spark in my head told me that
if I argued against the point, this could cause unease,
which could turn to frustration anger, something I was instructed
over and over to never cause. So instead I probed,
what makes you think that? I asked curiously. I know
something's inside me, something I don't understand, something no one understands,
she said, solemnly. Ice ran through me. She was to
never know about a condition. It was theorized that the
stress of keeping it in check could trigger her like
being constantly conscious of needing to breathe. She carried on
in my silence, I know everyone's an actor, pretending to
be part of this town. Even my parents. They're my parents,
I know that, but they keep up a facade. This
was dangerous, and it was getting worse with every word
she spat out. She knew too much, but there was
no denying the conviction in a voice, she was certain
there was no going back now. So instead of trying
to contradict it, I went for the answer I desperately
wanted for myself. How do you know? I asked, not
some set up to flip the narrative. I needed to know.
Did someone talk? Did she sneak out without people knowing?
This information was vital? Whatever is in me, this energy,
it's changed. At first I heard buzzing. My parents thought
I was sick, pulled me from school for a bit.
But then it like famed into words. But they weren't
from people's mouths, It was from their heads. There when
all hopes I could reverse this, she could read minds.
As if this couldn't get any more terrifying. I wanted
to ask so much. My mind jumbled with so many questions.
I couldn't even stutter the first lines of the question. However,
she picked up on this, of course she did. She
could hear everything I was thinking and answered before I
could say anything. Don't worry, I don't mind it, she said,
with a hint of glee. I coughed to clear my throat.
What do you mean, I asked. I needed confirmation, this town,
this life. I don't mind it. My parents are here,
my family are here. They love me. I know that
for a fact. That's the one thing that isn't a lie.
They're doing this for my safety, so I don't mind it,
she said, matter of factly. I eased up at this,
just accepted the situation. With everything in the open. We
ended up just chatting the whole time, talking like real humans,
something she probably liked and hadn't had in a long time.
Just before the parents came back in, she told me
to keep a new developments a secret, something which I
agreed to. Besides, she'd know if I lied with absolute certainty.
Since then, I've been the first recurring volunteer for playtime duty.
The story evolved that I've reconnected with my mother and
live in a split custody between them. My actor mother
is now family friends with Emily's parents, and so we
have a reason to see them when I come to
town to visit, and Emily and I have developed a
bond which is valuable to the prison. Playtime gives me
a much needed reprieve from the hectic nature of the prison,
but I'm always kept busy. Lately I've been put on
feeding duty. The prisoner is the man in the hole.
His cell is simple, nothing extraist fitted to hold him,
at least what we can see, despite his strange quirk.
He never leaves his cell, though it's sometimes hard to tell.
No one in my team has ever fully seen him.
Every time we visit his cell, there's always a new
hole somewhere on the floor, wall, even ceiling. The location
is always random. This is despite whatever is logically on
the other side. Beside his cell is another unoccupied room.
Under and above are other levels of the complex, yet
the adjoining rooms are never disturbed. The holes look almost cartoonish,
rubble piled up around the hole or the edges frayed
up in an exaggerated manner, But the hole itself is
unnatural dark, regardless of how a light source is pointed
at it. When he speaks, it echoes like is far
deeper than what should be possible. They're closer to dimensional holes,
and when a new one appears, the previous one is gone,
not even a single scratch to indicate any wrongdoings. We
only knows in there because he would chatter to us
when we bring him his food, though we're always just
instructed to leave it on the floor and leave. Studies
have been done to figure out what the holes truly are. Items,
cameras and people have been sent in to investigate, but
whatever enters never leaves. If connected to a tether, it
is severed upon entry and swiftly lost, So for the
time being it is just a management and observation job.
One time we thought he escaped, a routine inspection was
sent with catering to deliver. However, no hole was found.
It was reported, and as the backup team was dispatched,
the guard found where he was. Giggling was heard from behind,
and when he turned he saw the edges of the
keyhole frayed out. Little giggles could be heard from the
tiny void. God knows how they do it, but the
external team have an uncannyability to detain these wild individuals.
They are either hyper elite individuals formed to make a
god squad, or piled up with enough tech to take
down civilization as we know it. Either way, they get results. However,
there's one prisoner which is an exception Frank, because rather
than being detained, he simply turned himself in. We still
don't know where he's truly from. When asked, he gives
a different answer each time, always in a sarcastic tone.
But there are theories. Some are basic, like some form
of extraterrestrial origin. Some think he's some sort of genetic
freak given god likabilities through the genetic lottery. The most
interesting to me is that he's from a higher dimension,
fourth or fifth. Maybe either way, it's incomprehensible what he
can do. Teleportation, flight, spontaneous combustion, if you can name it,
he can probably do it. Because of this, he's entertained
in a cell. Nothing can hold him, trust me, We've tried.
So he just wandered the facility looking for things to do.
A guard once took the last doughnut, and, unbeknownst to him,
Frank suddenly decided that he wanted it now. If Frank
had asked, the guard probably would have given it to him. However,
Frank skipped the altercation entirely and went straight for retribution.
Frank turned the guard's head into a rose from this,
we discover that having a rose for a head is
guaranteed death, though it's technically unconfirmed since we only have
a sample size of one. When medical had a look,
it was intricate. It wasn't just the simple swap. The
roots of the rose had blended seamlessly with the veins
and arteries of the neck, extending down throughout the body.
Now why did Frank turn himself in? Well, that question
has another tangent to really put things into perspective. See,
this facility is hidden, hidden, hidden, so many layers of
secrecy on top of more secrets, along with people eliminated
along the way, just to make sure this place isn't
known about, isn't able to be found, and isn't able
to be tracked. It would take generations of descending to
follow all the trails in order to find this place,
sifting through so many dead ends and false leads. So
when Frank strolled up to the front door, it was
a big deal. Frank's reason for doing all this is
the only thing he said that I believe he was
bored and what sounds more fun than to mess around
in the most secret advanced place on earth? To him,
this was a playground, and we were his new playthings.
At first, it was an issue. His mischief often got
people killed. When curious about a prisoner, he'd released them
just to see what they could do. When we were
doing important procedures, he'd disrupt them just to get a
rise out of the staff. He once flipped gravity in
the whole facility just to see what would happen. God
knows who decided on the solution, but whoever did deserves
only the best in life. See. What got him to
fall in line was to hire him as a guard. Now,
he's not really a guard, not in the structural hierarchy sense.
He was given a special title, a uniform, and a
list of duties. However, the duties are a placebo replacing
the blinker fluid in a car kind of thing. But
whenever he finished the task, grand praise is given. We
found that making him feel important and blowing up his
ego keeps him too preoccupied to cause chaos. He's always
awarded employee of the month, despite that not really being
a thing. Here He's given an office with a fancy
door plaque, which I'm pretty sure he does nothing with,
and at the end of every month he's given a
large paycheck with a bonus if he does well, which
he gets every time. We're not even paid for this job.
The past ups is given are just printed pieces of
paper with some made up letterhead and lots of numbers.
But he eats it up, acting grateful, talking about how
he'll treat his family when he gets some time off.
He doesn't have a family here, by the way, I'm
pretty sure that with a thought he could turn the
entire complex into a block of solid gold. He has
no use for money. There aren't even shops here, but
the whole charade just works. So we never put a
pin to his happiness balloon, and it's came in handy
a few times. There are a few guards he's taken
a liking to. He had a stint where he acted
like a sitcom character and chose a few guards at
random to I assume b side characters. The friendship was
entirely one sided, but with enough improv he was satiated. However,
one of the side character guards was having an issue
while detailing a prisoner. They slipped their bonds and was
about to cause mayhem usually a death sentence in here,
when suddenly Frank came in and swiftly put a stop
to the situation. Right now, he's not an issue. However,
I fear that one day he'll tire of this roll
and he'll switch back to causing mischief or worse. A
lot of prisoners scare me, in fact, that an understatement.
Every day our lives are put on the line during
the most menial of tasks. However, one prisoner simply worries me.
If a prisoner loses a life here, all that is lost,
these potential discoveries. They are both held captive for the
safety of the world and studied for the betterment of progress.
But there's one prisoner here which, if incapacitated or worse,
could spell the end of the world as we know it.
The first prisoner. I've not been entirely truthful. More of
a live omission. I speak of this building, called it
a facility and such, but in reality, the building itself
was an anomaly that made this whole project possible, a
building semi sentient and fully self sufficient. It was a
smaller building at first, but its unnatural properties were soon discovered.
When built upon, each room tethers itself to all others
in a conscious way. If we want a room to
be a cell, we have to build it as such.
Even when we use the simplest of materials, its function
is enhanced to what the room is desired to be.
It's difficult to grasp I don't fully get it myself.
I'm paraphrasing from what I pieced together from the technical jargon.
I was fared, but it's how I've come to understand things.
It's heart, if you could call it, That powers the
whole facility, producing more than enough power for all the
containment cells, along with the many experiments running within the structure.
This was all kept under wraps. We didn't know any
of this until issues started coming up lately. Concrete has
been crumbling in the far reaches of the building. Cell
doors aren't locking as tightly as before. Fortunately, the prisoners
haven't fully grasped how strained the building is, but with
enough force, escapes are possible. We have set up measures
to keep things in check, but it's through staff, and
this introduces a lot of elements of human failure. When
observing the degradation myself, it's always in the lowest levels
of the compound, or the furthest reaches of a floor.
I have a theory that the building is strained, bloated
beyond its limits. We are constantly adding more flows, more rooms,
more functions, and whatever this anomalous building is is finally
struggling to keep up, but we cannot stop. Every day
there is an influx of new prisoners, fresh from the
external team, threats that cannot be left unchecked in the
outside world. They need to be put in containment, and
this is the only place that can hold them. The
prison started as the first anomaly, the first prisoner, but
when its term has ended, it could spell danger when
everything we've collected gets out