Speaker 1: I worked as a research associate at the Eisenloyd Perception Lab,
a mid tier government funded facility that specialized in human
cognition and the mechanics of visual processing. If that sounds complicated,
it really wasn't. The goal of our work was simple,
to understand how humans interpret reality, what our brains notice,
what they ignore, what they fill in. It was all
supposed to be theoretical. It wasn't supposed to be dangerous.
I'd been there for almost five years. I was never
the smartest in the room, but I was careful, methodical,
and that made me valuable. Where the other researchers were
eager to push boundaries, I was the one always pumping
the brakes. I had spent my entire career arguing against
unethical human tree, shutting down projects that went too far.
I thought that was enough to keep us out of trouble.
The project started with an anomaly, a stray frequency picked
up by one of us spectral imaging scanners, something just
outside the normal range of perception. At first, no one
took it seriously, probably a glitch or a center error.
But when the same frequency appeared in multiple data sets,
the lead researchers got interested. They started running tests simulating
the frequency into artificial visual patterns, tweaking the light spectrum
until it appeared. The color had no name at first.
It wasn't something you could just describe because our brains
had never processed anything like it before. It wasn't blue
or red or green, and between colors, it was outside
of them. One of the researchers, doctor mirrh Lang, jokingly
called it Hyperion, after the Greek Titan of light. The
name stuck. I was skeptical from the beginning, not because
I believed in the supernatural or anything. I just didn't
trust something that shouldn't exist. It wasn't like discovering a
new species of bird. This was a fundamental change to
our understanding of light itself. That should have been a
red flag. But the others were fascinated. When they ran
simulations of hyperion. They saw things. The color would move
in strange ways, triggering after images that lasted too long,
shapes that seemed to exist in the corner of your
vision before vanishing when you tried to focus. It was
like the color affected the way human's perceived reality. I
told them we needed to slow down study it more
before exposing human subjects. They ignored me. We started with rats.
The results were inconsistent. Some rats stared at hyperion for hours, motionless,
as if they were in a trance. Others mutilated themselves.
One chewed through its own leg in under fifteen minutes,
gnawing all the way to the bone. The reports framed
it as a neurological overstimulation response. I called it what
it was, a really bad idea. I took my concerns
to doctor Lange. She was the one who had been
the most excited about hyperion, and I thought if I
could get her to listen, I could get the projects
shut down before it escalated. She wasn't interested in my concerns.
It's just the color, she had said, exasperated, it's not
doing anything. The animals just don't know how to process it.
We'll see different results with higher cognitive functions. She meant humans,
I argued. She overruled me. The trial was already scheduled.
They would be exposing volunteers the hyperion within the week.
I should have walked away, should have quit, should have
gone public, should have done anything then to sit there
and watch, But I stayed. The human trials started small,
ten volunteers, all local students from the nearby university, all
paid to sit in a room and stare at a screen.
We ran the test like any other perceptions study, show
them hyperion for a few minutes, monitor their brain activity,
take notes on any after effects. At first, it seemed harmless.
The subjects all had different reactions, but nothing extreme. Some
called the collar beautiful, some said who was unnerving. One participant,
an art major, stared for almost three minutes before breaking
into tears. When we asked why, she just kept shaking
her head, whispering, it's everything. It's always been everything. We
should have slowed everything down then, and there been more
measured at the very least, took more precautions, but Lang
was ecstatic. She insisted we expand the trial, longer exposure,
more volunteers, wider demographic testing. She wanted data, wanted to
to find one made hyperion so different. That was when
the real problem started. After the first full day of exposure,
some of the volunteers started experiencing the lingering after images.
They described it as an overlay in their vision, like
the color was still present in the corners of their
eyes even after they left a lab. Some couldn't stop
seeing it. One subject, a physics student named Elliot, called
us at two in the morning, crying, telling us that
hyperion was still there even with his eyes closed. We
told him to come in for further testing. He never
showed up. Campus security found in the next night, standing
in the middle of the street, staring up at the sky.
His retinas had burned out. The paramedics took an away
with a look on his face haunted me. He hadn't screamed,
he hadn't fought them, He had just stood there, his
expression blank and unfocused. Hyperion wasn't just an anomaly. I
tried pulling the plug and the experiment. Lang refused. We
don't even know if it was hyperion, she argued. It
could be unrelated. It's not I snapped. You saw his eyes. Lang,
This is wrong. We need to stop, she sighed, rubbing
her temples. We don't even know what it is yet,
we need more data. I lost my temper. Geez, Mirra,
this isn't just data. It's doing something to them. It's
affecting them. She looked at me and just shrugged me off,
made a dismissive hand gesture, effectively telling me to leave.
And I did. I just had a feeling this wasn't
going to stop, not after Elliot, not after everything. I
don't think she was malicious. I don't think she was
trying to hurt anyone. She was just like everyone else
in that room, eager to understand. That's what scared me.
She didn't look disturbed by what had happened. She looked fascinated.
She kept talking about the need for more data, kept
insisting Elliot's breakdown could have been an unrelated psychotic episode.
The worst part, she was so calm, so logical about it,
that I started second guessing myself. Maybe I had imagined
the way his voice sounded over the phone. Maybe I'd
misinterpreted the look on his face. Maybe I was being
too emotional and paranoid. Then she told me what they
were planning next, a final experiment. I didn't go home
that night. I sat in my office, lights off, the
soft hum of the service filling the silence. My notes
were spread out in front of me, dozens of reports,
detailing every exposure, every reaction, every irregularity. The pieces weren't
forming a complete picture, but there was a pattern, something
we weren't seeing. I could feel it just out of reach,
like a word sitting at the tip of my tongue.
Lang had already made her decision. The final trial would
move forward no matter what I said, no matter what
arguments I threw at her. She just wanted to understand.
Maybe she was afraid of not being able to do so,
be lying if I said I didn't feel the same way.
The color had changed, something unlocked something in their minds,
and she wasn't willing to walk away from that discovery,
no matter the cost. I thought about walking away myself,
thought about packing up, quitting, leaving the research behind. I
even reached from my phone once considered calling someone the
University and Ethics Board, held even the press. But I didn't,
not because I was afraid, but because I still wanted
to know. That was the worst part. I wanted to
see what would happen. The final experiment began at exactly
eight a m. In the morning. The observation room was packed.
Everyone gathered around the monitors in heavy silence. There was
no eye chatter, no nervous excitement. Everyone knew what we
were doing was dangerous, even if they refused to say
it out loud. I stood at the back of the
room arms crossed, watching the screens flicker to life as
the test chamber powered on. The subjects were sealed in
four identical chairs, each one fitted with a biometric sensor
and hugged up to f MRI scanners. James Walker, Julia Henley,
and two others. I didn't recognize their names were in
the file, but I hadn't bothered to read them. It
didn't matter anymore. Langs sat at the control panel, expression unreadable,
fingers hovering over the interface. We're beginning now, she said,
voice steady. She pressed the button, and the screen in
the test chamber filled with hyperion. I didn't look. I
kept my eyes locked on the brain activity readoubts, waiting
for something, anything they would justify shutting the whole thing down.
For the first few minutes, nothing seemed out of place.
The vitals remained stable, their brain patterns fluctuated, but stayed
within normal ranges. If I hadn't known what I was
looking at, I would have thought they were just staring
at a blank screen. Then James's fingers twitched, just once,
a subtle jerk of movement, then nothing. The others followed.
Julius breathing became shallow. One of the other subjects hands spasmed,
like they were reaching for something that wasn't there. At
the ten minute mark, their motor functions began to slow.
James had stopped blinking, Julia's chest barely moved with each breath.
The other two were completely still. The pupils had contracted
to pinpricks, barely visible against the whites of their eyes.
At fifteen minutes, their vitals remained normal, but their brain
activity spiked, not erratic or chaotic, but irregular. The readoubt
was incomprehensible. The neural pathways weren't following standard cognitive function anymore.
They weren't reacting the way any normal humans should have.
I felt my pulse hammering in my throat the same
sick way to my stomach i'd felt when Elliott had
called me, begging for help. At twenty minutes, the first
subject collapsed. His body went limp, head longing to one side,
vitals flatlining almost instantly. The alarms blared across the control panel,
but he was already gone. A second later, the subject
next to him followed. I felt my stomach drop. Lang
was shouting orders. Security rushed into the chamber, dragging the
remaining two subjects away from the screen, shutting the system down.
But James and Julia were still breathing, their hearts were
still beating, their eyes were still open, and yet they
didn't move, not once. The following day the decision was
made for us. They came in without warning, government officials,
security personnel, people I'd never seen before in my five
years at Eisenloyd. They cleared out the offices, boxed up
the equipment, wiped the research servers clean, no explanations, no discussions.
We were handed non disclosure agreements, told in no uncertain
terms that the work we had done never existed, that
eisen Lloyd would be repurposed for a different project, that
none of us would ever speak of Hyperion again. And
we didn't, not because we weren't allowed to, but because
nobody wanted to. Lang stopped returning calls Mason Quick Research. Altogether,
a few people from the team took new jobs at
other labs, but most just disappeared into different careers, different lives.
We scattered like survivors of a shipwreck, pretending that if
we just stayed quiet, if we just moved on, then
what happened that eisen Lloyd wouldn't follow us, but it did.
At first, I told myself I was fine. I found
a new job for a start up in optical processing,
something safe, something far removed from the mess that we
had left behind. I convinced myself that maybe, somehow we
had shut it down in time, but the guilt didn't
go away. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw
James and Julia sitting motionless in their chairs, their minds
still firing, still active, still locked in something we couldn't understand.
I thought about Eliot, the way he had been, where
we found him, in the street, staring into the sky
with eyes that no longer worked. I tried to push
it down, to move on, and then one night Lang
called me. It was late, two maybe three in the morning.
I was awake, but barely caught in that fog between
dreaming and reality, and at first I almost ignored it.
When I saw that the phone call was from Lang,
a jolt of adrenaline shot through me, like my body
already knew before my mind caught up. I answered, and
the fourth ring Lang, there was silence, not even breathing,
just dead air. I sat up, running a hand through
my hair, Lang, what the hell, it's the middle of
the night, more silence, Then finally I heard her inhale sharply,
like she had been holding her breath. I need to
see you, she said, Her voice was low, almost the whisper.
I frowned. Now, yes, now, something in my gut twisted.
Why what's going on? I can't talk about it over
the phone, she said. I exhaled through my nose, already annoyed.
You realize how suspicious that sounds. Right, christ Lang, if
this is about hyperion, it's over. We lost, we got
shut down. We did everything we could. She didn't respond
right away, and for a moment I thought she had
hung up. Then she said, voice quiet and unsteady, I
don't think it's over. That made me go still. She
exhaled shakily, and for the first time I realized how
afraid she sounded. I've been running tests, she admitted, so softly.
I almost didn't hear her. My grip on the phone tightened.
You've what There was a pause, not officially off the record,
just following up. Geez Lang, I snapped, you're telling me
you kept working on this after everything, After I had
to She cut me off, her voice rising slightly desperate.
You don't understand something is still happening. I let out
a humorous laugh. Yeah, clearly, you ran trials on something
that cooked people's brains. What did you expect that it
would just stop? She didn't react to my anger. Lang
never back down from a fight. She was always the
first to argue, the first to push back. But now
she just let the silence stretch, and when she finally
spoke again, it was a whisper. I don't think we
discovered hyperion, she said, I think it discovered us. I
swallowed hard. What the hell does that mean? A longer
pause this time, then finally just come over. I almost
didn't go. I sat in my car for a long time,
turning the key, staring at my hands, gripping the wheel,
debating whether or not I should just throw my phone
into the river and drive in the opposite direction. But
I went. Lang lived in a small apartment downtown, as
small and out of the way, place not fit for
someone making as much money as she did. I'd been
there a few times before, back when we were still
at Eisen Lloyd, back when we still talked about our work.
I knocked once, and the door unlocked almost immediately. Liang
glugged like she hadn't slept in days. Her hair was unkempt,
dark circles bruised beneath her eyes, and her hands trembled
as she stepped back, motioning for me to come inside.
I hesitated, Lang, just look, she said, already moving toward
a desk, She flipped open her laptop and pulled up
a series of images. At first, they didn't make sense,
just a mess of lines, paragraphs, and data points. But
then she pointed at one specific chart, tapping the screen
with her fingernail. This is a brain scan from one
of her last test subjects, taken three days ago. My
stomach lurched. You're still tracking them, not officially, she said,
but I've been monitoring the scans. I stared at the screen.
The patterns and the chart were wrong. They weren't random
bursts of electrical activity. They were deliberate repeating. Okay, I said, slowly,
What am I looking at? Lang clicked to another slide,
pulling up a star map. My blood ran cold. The
patterns in the scan they matched, not randomly, not approximately exactly.
I looked at her, throat dry. What the hell is this?
Lang didn't answer. She clicked again, pulling up another image.
I took a slow step back. That's impossible. Lang was pale.
I thought so too. I ran a hand through my hair,
my pulse hammering in my ears. So what are you saying?
That hyperion is what some kind of I don't know,
she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. We stared
at the screen, the glow of the day to reflecting
off the walls, casting the room in cold light. I
could hear my own heart beat too loud in my ears.
I could feel my skin crawling as I looked at
the images again, trying to make sense of something that
wasn't meant to be understood. Lang sat in front of
her laptop, staring at the screen, fingers resting on the
keyboard but not typing. The blue glow washed over her face,
hollowing out her already exhausted features, making a look almost skeletal.
I was standing in the doorway, trying to process what
I had just seen. None of it made sense, but
the look in her eyes told me she wasn't done yet.
I exhaled through my nose, rubbing her hand over my face,
trying to steady myself. That's not why you called me here,
I finally said, is it. She didn't answer at first,
her fingers twitched like she was considering what to say.
I saw her swallow, hard, shoulders tinting before she spoke no,
she admitted, that's not why I called you. I waited
for her to continue, but she didn't. She just sat there,
staring at the screen like she was afraid to say
it out loud. Lang. I took a step forward, my
pulls starting to climb. Tell me what's going on. She
reached for a mouse, scrolling through something I couldn't see yet.
I think it got out, she said, voice barely above
a whisper. The words hit me like a cold slap
to the face. My hands clenched at my sides. What
she nailed sharply exhaling, slowly, forcing herself to stay calm.
I found the file circulating online, she said. At first
I thought it was a hoax, someone trying to recreate
it theorize about it. But then I checked. She motioned
toward a screen, lips pressing into a thin line. It's real,
the actual sequence. Someone leaked it. I felt my breath catch.
How long ago hesitated? Twelve hours maybe less. The floor
felt unsteady, beneath me, and Lank's jaw clenched. She opened
another file, clicking through a series of news reports, but
she wasn't looking at the screen. She was looking at me,
watching my reaction. I stepped closer. The first article was
from this morning, Police investigating reports of multiple self inflicted
deaths in an apartment complex. Three individuals frown, deceased in
their rooms, no sign of struggle, no known connection between them.
I scored down authorities in Tokyo responding to a surge
of unexplained suicides. Locals report seeing people walking into the
street into oncoming traffic, seemingly unaware of their surroundings. Another
one coastal towns reporting an increase in drownings. Witnesses described
victims walking into the water, ignoring bystanders, disappearing beneath the
waves without resistance. I felt my stomach drop. My voice
came out tight, like my throat was closing up. This
can't be real. Blank clicked on a live stream. It
was some security camera feed, grainy and low quality. A
man stood on top of a parking garage, motionless in
front of a laptop screen. He wasn't blinking, His hands
were relaxed, at his sides, his face completely neutral. Then,
without hesitation, he turned and walked straight off the edge.
He didn't scream, didn't react, didn't flinch. The feed cut
to black. Lang exhaled, leaning forward, hands covering her face.
It's happening. I was shaking. It hasn't even been a day,
I know, she whispered. It happened faster than anyone could
have imagined. The leaks spread through some coding forums, obscure
research boards, private archives. Someone had cracked the format, posted
the raw sequence, and people curious, stupid people had opened
it without thinking. They saw hyperion and never looked away.
We watched it unfold in real time. Video clips surfaced
people standing still in front of screens, eyes wide, bodies
are moving for minutes, hours before finally turning and walking away.
Some were found later dead in their homes, sitting peacefully
in front of the monitors, bodies untouched, unmarked. Others vanished entirely,
no notes, no last words. The worst part was how
quiet it was. No panic, no violent outbursts, no struggle,
just a stillness. And then they left. They walked into
the ocean, into forests, into caves and abandoned places, anywhere
that swallowed them whole. They went down subway tunnels and
never emerged. They walked into traffic without so much as
a scream. Lang and I tried everything to stop it.
We contacted people in government, tried to get servers shut down,
tried to warn anyone who would listen. By the time
the world even realized what was happening, it was already
too late. It was inevitable, and it wasn't slowing down.
Lang gave it her all. She still believed there was
a way to contain it, to stop it from consuming everything.
She spent every waking moment chasing solutions, theories, some scientific
explanation that could fix what we had done. But even
she knew the truth. One day, I called her. She
didn't pick up. When I got to her apartment, the
door was unlocked, laptops still running, data still open. She
had walked out somewhere in the middle of the night.
No sign of a struggle, no note, no goodbyes, just gone.
There's nowhere left to run. The world is going quiet.
More people disappear every day. No one knows how many
are left. No one is counting anymore. I've been sitting
in my apartment for hours staring at the gun on
my table. I don't want to go the way they did.
I don't want to walk into something. I don't want
to see it again. I keep hearing Lang's voice, I
hear the echoes of every subject we tested, every person
who vanished. It's everything, It's always been everything. I'm sorry.
I should have stopped this before it started.