Office of Anomaly Experimentation: 661.1
 |
| Dept: Research |
Date: 27/07/19██ |
| Subject: RPC-661 |
Authorization: 2C & 2R |
| Staff: Dr. Honcik, Dr. Merodak, Agent Vuong |
Test Purpose: Agent Vuong has been tasked with testing research personnel's new method for semi-cognitive entry into XD-N01. Once entry can be verified, Agent Vuong must then actively transcribe the details of her surroundings.
Begin Log: Wet… The ground feels wet. I'm standing on a pier, stretching to my sides, and in front of me deep fog. Everything's wet, but there is no water anywhere near me. Behind, there is a dried, empty ocean. It is pure black with small streaks of blue, like lighting against a blackboard. This world is fuzzy. There's not enough detail where it should be.
I look deeper into the fog and see a city skyline off in the distance. It looks like it could be a mile or two. I'll start heading there.
[Approximately thirteen seconds pass]
I've made it to the city. It's huge, with rooftops above and below the ground I stand on. Every corner is above one section, and below each, there is another. Still farther off, I see the bell tower of Schwarzwald. It's bent and twisted to the side as if its neck has creased to stare at me through its window. Its eye will not blink. His gaze penetrates the fog with unseen tangible emotion. I can't stand to look at it. The sky is full of stars, shifting and turning with the speeding clouds. The longer I look, the more faces and hands there are among the stars, shrill screaming growing louder. But as soon as I look away, they're gone, and the quiet returns. The tower is looking up like me, and the fog clears right above it — I see a black sun through the hole in the sky. An outer ring of bright fire burns around the corpse, trickling somewhere beyond my sight-line.
An unnatural breeze can be felt. Constant yet forceful, the wind sways back and forth in opposite directions. Two armies giving way to each other at the ticks of a clock. The city appears to be a mixture of Victorian and Gothic stylings with no discernible end. Buildings like cathedrals and chapels sprout up in odd, hurtful angles. They are occupied solely by light and smoke, spilling from chimneys and windows and blotting the shifting sky. Each window I look through though has no correlation to its outside, with its contents and orientations as erratic as the city itself.
Each window is lying to me. They have no reflection, and I can't be seen. I am not alone on these streets. Shadows of shadows stalk me just out of sight. The windows have shown me where to look. I can't help but think of my reflec…
End Log: Mission status — Success
Immediately follow Agent Vuong's recognition of her baseline self, a -1.5 drop in reality coherency was observed around the testing area as she returned to full consciousness. Dr. Merodak believes the coherency drop could be due to the sudden attempted reunification of the subconscious and conscious minds while in XD-N01. Containment protocols have been updated to reflect these findings.
Office of Anomaly Experimentation: 661.2
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| Dept: Research |
Date: 31/07/19██ |
| Subject: XD-N01 |
Authorization: 2C & 2R |
| Staff: Dr. Isaac, Dr. Merodak, Agent Vuong |
Test Purpose: Agent Vuong must attempt to make contact with RPC-661-1 through -364 instances believed to reside in XD-N01. Secondarily, the agent must ascertain the dangers posed by the various other entities in the dream-space.
Begin Log: [Gasp] The air is rotten. Old and putrescent, the atmosphere is thick. I can barely find my way through the miasma. A small fillet of light passes through a nearby window, revealing the outline of a building. As I make my way out of the structure, I realize it's a barn, worn by age yet standing. An antique, far past its prime with stacks of rancid grain leaking from its seams.
My sight rises, and before me, I see a titan. It rears its head against a precarious sky, posing in the shape of a city.
The unnerving horizon, broken by the outlines of buildings too tall to stand, is populated by a growing discord of lights and sound. Schwarzwald, yet again, stands above its peers. The corpse-sun sits directly above the prolific structure, perhaps locked in place: enshrined by death. I am just on its edge, in-between the woods and the arterial alleyways of the city. A lone willow looms, isolated against its siblings. Each branch reaches down around the neck of a boy, clad in robes and cages. Bodies sway slowly to the breathing beat, unmoving. Their eyes are unblinking, fixated on me — a hundred little mirrors beaming through an unstable sea. Their chests become blotched and abstract paintings, unfinished drawings, sketches, and blank pages the lower I look. I'm calling out to them, but my voice drowns in the heavy air, filthy apostates. Still, the ones that are able to move point to the tower. A heavy gaze contorts its way from above, a crushing presence against my eyes. It looms over, His eyes seeing from the tower.
On the streets again. They pulsate in a curious syncopation with the breeze. A sickening wet thud adds to the cacophony, over and over again, rhythmic yet disordered. Soft and damp, accompanied by scraping metal and a dull pounding. Whispers, low and rushed, echoes in an unnatural sense. A man, lowly and terrified, is mumbling as if to himself. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of… whose gift is this? The wages of sin is death… undeath. It is death! No… no, no that can't be right. Faith in the Ilim is the gift..?" I see him now. He is just a young man, facing away from me. A member of the academy, kneeling in front of a twisted lamppost.
[Agent Vuong pauses for several seconds.]
He is ramming his head against the broken iron of the post. Every plunge goes all the way through his skull and collides with the cage still fixed to his head, metal screeching in uncaring apathy. Each joust ever as forceful than the last, never breaking stride in his barely coherent ramblings. I'm calling out to him, but he doesn't appear to be able to hear me or have the wherewithal to answer. The noise won't stop, and the veil of silence keeps crumbling. The commotion is beginning to draw a crowd. A group of beasts speed past me, their porcelain figures creating a white blur. The method of their movements is unsettling to my eyes.
A man in robes carrying a two-stringed guitar beckons me over. His face is obscured in shadow, covered by a helm fashioned from a bull's skull. As quickly as he appeared he vanishes, leaving behind three queens. One old, one beautiful, and one child walking forward in a circular pattern around me. They distort rapidly beyond recognition, before ascending towards a shimmering moon beyond the woods. Several other vaguely familiar faces shoot past me, undoubtedly members of the academy. Every one of them ignores my calls. In their hands, they hold all manners of viscera. Like worker ants or drones, they move hurriedly with great purpose — down alleyways and at impossible angles beyond my comprehension to see.
One of the immense beasts stops to observe the murmuring student. Its sweeping spindly frame encapsulates the scene and blocks my sight, not unlike a snake encircling its meal. Its jaws quickly snap, and I hear bones crack. The boy continues to mumble through his now torn neck, uncaring still. An awful gurgling overpowers the sounds of the busy street as he refuses to be silenced. The beast snaps down again, severing the boy in two at the torso. The gutter swells in bloody black ichor, enveloping the two. The entirety of the scene is washed away by coming tides, and I am alone again. The breeze grows in both strength and the frequency of its syncopations. The tower stares at me once more — it understands He sees.
End Log: Mission status — Success
Dr. Merodak concluded testing after 4 hours and 23 minutes of exploration. Based on additional reviews of the documentation, research personnel have begun to correlate some of the entities observed within XD-N01 with otherworldly and extra-dimensional beings documented in baseline reality. However, the lethality of the denizens of XD-N01 remains inconclusive. Further testing with CSD personnel is being considered.
Additionally, Agent Vuong's review of the document has led to a curious discovery. Several uses of archaic terminology used by the agent throughout the log were unknown to her prior to entry. This may be due to a subconscious bleed-through effect directly proportional to time spent inside the dream-space. Containment protocols have been updated to reflect these findings.
Office of Anomaly Experimentation: 661.3
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| Dept: Research |
Date: 03/08/19██ |
| Subject: XD-N01 |
Authorization: 3C & 3R |
| Staff: Dr. Isaac, Dr. Merodak, Agent Vuong |
Test Purpose: Agent Vuong has been tasked with exploring the diverse structures inside XD-N01. Primarily, she must attempt to reach the Schwarzwald school building, and identify any additional structures with similar counterparts found within baseline reality.
Begin Log: The whispers of the dream fill my head, and a restful peace overtakes my body. The lifeless woods welcome me with a gentle rustling of dead branches. Eternal night blurs my vision again. The ageless fog distorts the world around me, pushing me like a branch in the river's current towards the city. Intangible forces draw me to His gaze.
Cautiously I enter the city. Memories of the pale beast and the boy make me shudder. I feel as though my thoughts are not my own now. Memories make my mind a meal, a dinner bell to the watchers, and soon I see the beasts. Parasites in our holy land, looking to pilfer our feast. Who said that? I feel as though my thoughts are not my own now. The Bull faced man passes by, accompanied by another: one in a black suit. Their odd presence recenters me.
As I make my way towards the deific center, the guiding lampposts shift colors, warming the darkness and making it dance. A soft cardinal flame grips my consciousness. It lights my way towards a sunken abbey, between and beneath. The street is devoid of life: a faint silence foreshadowing her fate. As I enter, a warm reception of beautiful architecture greets me, far more beautiful than the wearisome outside. A grand library filled beyond my senses with copper and gold statues. Several floors extend above the entrance, far more than could be seen from the outside, another lie. A colossal well marks the center of the foyer, adorned in a mound of corpses made of flesh and black stone. Its decaying structure contradicts the rest of the elaborate scene, faceless and unnamed.
The busts and statues draw me closer with their alluring oddities each angle, and turn, bending into itself and outward. The central columns rest on the back of vaguely human effigies. Their various appendages wrap around the supports as if they were not sufficient and needed to hold the building themselves. Their arms, wings, and legs are embellished with black diamond eyes that trace my every movement. I walk deeper into a fathomless hole made itself manifest through the archive, and their features twist until they are nothing more than spheres and circles. Still accentuated by wings and eyes, but wholly alien in form. Despite the deafening silence, I can hear that I am not alone here.
The books embedded between the bricks tempt me to open them; they beg and scream, their presence different from that of His gaze through the tower, but not entirely foreign. The spine of each book is devoid of any identifiable markings or descriptors, instead populated with biting eyes. I grab a large red book from one of the lower rungs of the bookcase. Each page is full of unintelligible scribbles. My eyes begin to throb with aggressive anguish as I struggle to piece together the writing. Suddenly, the markings take on a life of their own and begin to form a word, not one I can read, but one that transcends the page into the peripherals of my understanding.
"Hello?" It says to me. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end at the intrusion of the word. Run, you fool! I slam the book shut and make my way towards the main door of the library. Sounds of rushing water drown out my footsteps. From outside the building, the tide comes yet again. The presence I felt inside the books flees from its rising ichor. The purging well breaks the torrent of the flood and provides me a brief respite.
The abbey is gone. Its remains, the books, busts, and stone, are strewn about the streets. The blood of the dream, the students, gather among the rubble. Silently, they cull the fleshy brick and stone and scurry off again, living blood opposite to that of the tree. As before, they ignore my attempts to call them. However, while I stand close to them, I see their minds. A cosmos in the eye of all of us, we are connected. They see me now too. He sees me now, I know I am a small piece inside a great beast. Unable to feel my tiny movements or perhaps apathetic to them, but now I feel His hunger — unending craving. The author of this world pangs of hunger.
[Dr. Merodak notes an elevated heart rate and an increase in REM sleep effects.]
I turn to see Him behind me, completely aware of my existence: through the sky, from the tower at the academy. The windowed eye unfurls, revealing muscly sinew — and the man. It's not an eye but a mouth, fit to eat God's flesh, and I have brought its jaws down upon me — I
End Log: Mission status — Failure Agent Lost
Immediately following the conclusion of Recon 661.3 Agent Vuong entered into a catatonic state. She was transferred to Site-008 where she perished after three days of intensive care. Autopsy of the body revealed the cause of death was from heart and lung failure due to swelling of the inner brain. The swelling was caused by teratoma tumors comprised of optic nerve endings on the stem of the brain.
Consequently, the lethality rating of RPC-661 has been upgraded to Orange. Dr. Merodak has also concluded that testing of XD-N01 must not last longer than four hours at a time, and tests must be performed no more than once per week. Further testing documentation has been upgraded to level III clearance and above. Containment protocols have been updated to reflect these findings.
Office of Anomaly Experimentation: 661.4
 |
| Dept: Research |
Date: 09/08/19██ |
| Subject: XD-N01 |
Authorization: 3C & 3R |
| Staff: Dr. Honcik, Dr. Merodak, Agent Boucher |
Test Purpose: Agent Boucher has been chosen as Agent Vuong's replacement due to his experience as an avid lucid dreamer. He has been tasked with making contact with RPC-661-365, who is believed to reside in the Schwarzwald bell tower.
Begin Log: I taste the salty air. My clothes feel damp, and I am on a noxious pier. The waxing tide eases my anxious mind. The black sea is low, revealing its naked body — a series of ancient corpses along the ground, washed away but not forgotten, untouched by rot. Luminescent maggots slither among the various carcasses of unidentifiable creatures, eating what dissolution can not.
The woods behind me give way to the grotesque city. My neck strains to gauge the size of the monolithic cathedrals and spires, and higher still the black sun sits: waned in comparison to the growing city below. It keeps growing, eating at the void around itself. The lost sun, once-mighty, is a dead meal to a blind animal — was it ever a god, or just a lying titan? His lumbering breaths and beating heart are underscored by the tower. Schwarzwald reaches up to the diminished repast.
I am in the city now, and hardly a second has passed as I traveled. I can feel its hunger around me, an eye for the cosmos — no, a mouth in disguise. The buildings and bodies of the native cast here are as one. Hundreds of voices harmonizing together, comprising the roar of the perfect beast, bodies conjoined and subdued to one Will only.
A section of the adjacent alleyway catches my eye. A familiar mix of clean greys and whites conspicuously blends with its surroundings. Text-less signs appear as I remember them — Site-002? Not a doubt in my mind as I cautiously traverse the alleyway's contents, quickly shifting from rock and wood to metal. Her voice bleeds into my mind momentarily — a sleeping colleague, I remember? I bend my Will against the curiosity before me, as I must not let it devour me. My goal still looms overhead, Schwarzwald.
My destination is the mouth of this world, so I follow its breath. The wind pushing and pulling its way to the apex guides me. The world shifts around me, a perjurer to my ambition. I challenge the egregore and make myself Seen. The path attempts to lead me to ruin, to the stomach, to the bones of its foundation. I press forward still. The breeze becomes a black downpour at the base, accompanied by eschar rain. The gutters of the streets are vast as rivers, scabbed over by blood and bile. The tower itself extends far beyond my capacity to see at such proximity. The simple sight of it gives me conniptions. I cast my view downward as I reach for the door. As my fingers brush the ornate embossing, I surge with revelation. The tower hides behind a fleshy coat, not of its own making, but as a new face. It is a sunken anchor here. The cornerstone of this world, and yet, the ichor of His deceit — He eats away at it. Unwilling to acknowledge the ebbing of its footing.
I cast open the doors and enter the main hall. Except, it is unrecognizable to me now, a barren antique stone structure with stairs leading both up and down. Streaks of parasitic veins run from the entryway, reaching to the floors below — fracturing an endemic base. The wild flood lays stagnate on the floor, high enough to hide my lower legs from me. It flows freely from the ceiling and the upper stairwell.
Fully aware, He floods the lower levels. An audacious invitation upwards, I pray my keepers to prepare their efforts to wrest me from this nightmare, the morning sun, I do not know what host will stand before me. His unified Wills rest atop this Ilim, I parallel his ascension in only the most minute manners. Can this be a man anymore? I pass quickly upwards still, struggling to ignore the host of visions each floor offers me. A group of phantoms brandishing the triangle — wishing to understand the nature of eyes — spirals hopelessly against the infinite: only several stages up. They are a picture painted a thousand times over with only the slightest variations. Some of them adorn themselves in blue capes, others are fleeing a burning world, yet others still press onwards in the pursuit of untold knowledge. I am one of them, varied only slightly by my host's gracious call.
[Dr. Merodak prepares a syringe of epinephrine at the believed request of Agent Boucher]
Higher still, I enter a floor covered in a red mist. The sound of beating wings fills the air. I strain to see the alary creature before me, but my focus shifts as the ground beneath me begins to crack and wane. I flee from the rampant destruction beneath me, only just making my way to the stairwell as the floor buckles and breaks. Impatient of my time here, He opens the passageway past the never-ending floors. I just make it to his archway as a deafening crash is heard below. The red fog turns to a burning blue as I slam the door shut behind me.
I now stand at the foyer of the sepulchre of Empedoc. His name no more. Hordes of faithful disciples prostrate themselves before the toran. They are a mix of students of the academy, phantoms from below, and weak spirits. Too lowly even to become part of the body of the dream. Their foreheads touch the floor, creating pools of the veiny flood from below. They are like an arm-stretching beneath the archway towards their sovereign lord.
I enter the presipest.
In the center of the room stands a man. The eye of the nightmare sees all from here: it is unchallenged. Streaks from the dead sun leak through the roof and leech into the floor. They move past the stagnated waters that plague this incubus. Does he notice me? Glory be to He, the new God! His head is wrapped in bandages, old wounds in stained dressings. The swelling of his mind presses against his headpiece. Vestigial mouths and eyes wrap around the copper bars, corroding their restraints. The pupils of the eyes split again and again until they are like stars. Several vertical rungs burst upwards from his girth, forming what appears to be a cracked crown. The nature of his being contorts, frail extensions of the arms, fingers, and torso make Him a Polypheme. Still unable to control the eyes. He turns to me with a gaze so dominant I fall to my knees before Him. He slithers his way towards me, the lower end of his stomach distends into a black pustular tumor with bones and wet sickly growths extending past his form. The perversion of the snake, a slug. Blasphemy!
[Agent Boucher begins to experience an intense increase in REM effects, Dr. Merodak injects him with the epinephrine]
I cannot be here! The voices of thousands enter my head, the chorus lead by the mouth and eye. Their presence is so heavy my features turn in on themselves as if the individual points of my being sense the looming demise. My footing is adrift in the ichor, and I am a meal to Him. Another brick in the new world. He knows I wake. The corpse of the black sun sees my blight. Within its visage, there is a true world. The morning light breaks the eternal night, interloper, and I have been whisked away.
End Log: Mission status — Success
Agent Boucher's speech mannerisms varied sporadically from his baseline self immediately following his entry into the dream-space. Dr. Merodak has theorized that distinct individuals may be more susceptible to the bleed-through subconscious effects of XD-N01, or that its effects are growing in strength and intensity.
All subsequent testing of RPC-661-XD-N01 has been disbanded following recon 661.4. Due to its supposed ability to assimilate the minds of its inhabitants, Authority personnel have categorized it as a possible Class V higher-dimensional entity. [See Addendum 661-03 for further details]
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