INCOMING MESSAGE…
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> Hey, Juna here. I hope you're enjoying reading through the backlog archives, I've been translating a lot of older pages for you to check out. This page is super old — it was created just over 23,867,812 hours ago by someone named "Hanno". I talked with Hanno for quite a while, but this is the only page they added. There's been a few edits to it by other people since, but, this is largely what it's always looked like.
I've localized a few things: among other small changes, note that Hanno originally called your Baseline Earth "Adam" or variations of that name. Hanno also references a host of godly figures, which I have italicized for ease of reading. They were staunchly polytheistic and applied that belief to the very soul of the limspace. Perhaps someone out there can shine some light on Hanno's beliefs, I would love to know more about these lost figures.
Anyways, I pulled this article out of the dataspace for a reason. I'll tell you what I mean in a moment, but give Hanno's story a read first and I'll catch up with you right after. I'm struck by the similarities between this antiquated page and a more recent discovery by the UNCB… I'm almost certain they're related.
Antiquated Dataspace File
"CLASS://L_FIELDS-OF-ETERNITY"
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Eshmun knows all who wander here.
Dagon's grain may be the body of this realm, but Eshmun surely hails as its king. He offers rest to the weary, rains to the thirsty, and a journey to the lost. But above all he offers solitude — the most considerable gift of all. Some seek solitude for its peace; to find their inner sanctum, to go where no force can break that cold, reliable fortress. A place that holds fast against even the greatest storm. Some are destroyed by solitude, are swallowed up by it, losing themselves to abandonment. Yet in the penumbra of death, rebirth always lies. Some see companionship in isolation. To others, it can be medicine. Eshmun knows all who wander here, and he gives each of them what they need.
These are the Fields of Eternity. They are spacious, with few distractions. The golden waves of wind-touched wheat stretch beyond the horizon, forever. They welcome you with open arms and a lifetime of pilgrimage. If you are troubled, the Fields will give you the answers. If you seek them, you will find the questions.
When you see a field of wheat, do you consider every stalk its own unique soul? Have you ever stopped and thought of how much effort each stalk put forth to grow, to reach so boldly towards the heavens, to flourish to seed? You are but one living soul among multitudes, just as each stalk of grain creates the field. You may begin to consider the parallels — your troubles surely felt just as great as the grains. Given the chance, would the grain envy your problems, and happily swap them for its own? Would you prefer to be rooted, rather than to wander?
It is in the nature of grain to be strong, yet a field of wheat is the gentlest meadow. You can pass through it like water, it yields to you freely, but stands tall and resolute after your passing. The grain is wiser than you know. The fields whisper that wisdom, but only to those who listen.
I dreamed visualizations for Hanno. - J
Description
Divine Nature gave the fields, human art built the cities. - Marcus1
I have walked the Fields for a long time, and seen much of what they offer. I am now honoured by the opportunity to share what I have seen. I will preface that this record will, sadly, pale in comparison to the feeling of the Fields. All I can deliver is words on a terminal screen, and Juna's images are naught but dreams, for she can never see them for herself. Yet, for the sake of archiving, we will give it our best attempt.
First, something Juna cannot dream: the colours. The skies are often clear and deep, an endless expanse of hazy blue like dusty robin eggs, stretching as far as the eye can see above ashen gold fields of grain below. The colours are textured by the wind, given life by the clouds and the ripples of the wheat which flow like waves upon the sea. Beneath the clouds lie shades rich and deep — above them are glimmering tints. They shine along silver edges of billowing cumulus forms that tower mountainously high, taller than you can imagine. The wind soars in gentle waves, stirring the hues of grain and seeded grass into harmonious dance. When the winds bring rain, they wash out the blue and gold with foggy dappled greys.
Prairies are simple, boring things at first glance. They seem featureless, flat, and uniform, but wander for some time and you will see how complex and ever-changing their beauty is. There is more here than first impressions suggest.
Dotted oh so infrequently along the vast landscape are varied landmarks. Perhaps a farmhouse, or an old wooden barn with weathered silos. Or tangles of dried hay intelligently woven together, about ten feet tall and as wide as a trailer. Not a bale by any means: more accurately described as a nest. A single lone tree, far off in the distance. A handful of ragged scarecrows, forgotten and windswept. Or an old wooden bench, half sinking into the earth. There is much to be found out here. Each tells a story or contains a mystery. Some were here before even wanderers, placed by Eshmun for his inscrutable reasons.
I am not quite sure I remember how I first found this place. I'm certain that people find their way to the fields quite by accident. In fact, most likely do. The fields are vast and has many connections of the City of Rephaim2. When chancing upon a conjunction to the Fields, you might think yourself resurrected, a child of life once more. Met with warmth, light, a gentle breeze and rustling grass after so long in the ersatz-architect paralogy3 of the city, what else could you imagine? Here you are liberated from labyrinths of hallways and the cold unfeeling complexes of the city. Yet, even though it's not the soil of Earth, the Fields carry a deep sense of Baseline verisimilitude that quiets the heart and soothes the soul.
Night
- Psalm 19:1; The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
The wandering night does not blanket the land entirely at once; it roves, slowly, and envelops pockets at a time. It gently touches them with darkness, and bares the starry skies open to them: twinkling, naked, and deep. A shifting gentle gradient of twilight comes first. It darkens the horizon with shades of umber and wine, and slowly wraps the world in sheets of curious night. Look, there to your left to a foothill far away — and you will see that daytime still shines warmly upon the grass, perhaps twenty miles away. And there too, at your right, the very same at the edge of your vision. But it is night for you for now, for Eshmun has sent night your way, just as a rainstorm comes and goes. Now is the time for rest. These acres will be still and silent under the stars. But, should you be curious, look upwards.
I have seen that Eshmun is real, and he does dream in the night skies. If you are lucky you can watch his visions play theatre among the stars as constellations come to life and new things come into being, woven by starlight. I will give further details about these miracles later.
Rain
- Judges 5:4; The earth trembled and the heavens dropped, yes, the clouds dropped water.
The clouds sometimes bring storms and sun showers that fall upon the fields in sheets of warm rain. To those who settle in one place, the storms bring drinking water. To those who wander, a storm brings pause. The rain collects in streams and carves springs and eddies through the fields, and shallow valleys here and there. Where it all runs to, I do not know. Perhaps the water is, in time, swallowed by the hungry soil, or perhaps — farther than I can know — lies the great sea itself upon the brink of the world.
A struggle one may encounter is in the face of a great storm, and I have weathered many in my time here. Even in a utopia, strife must exist in some regard, and Eshmun, surely as an homage, has chosen his favoured method of delivering it. Torrential downpours bring angry wind and biting cold, leaving mires of mud in their wake. A true storm can test the mettle of even the strongest wills.
The Fields are where Eshmun tests all the types and consistencies of mud. Runny mud. Gritty mud. Deep, sucking mud that pulls you up to your waist in a heartbeat. Sticking mud that seeps into your clothes, clings to your skin, and pools in the bottom of your trousers while rain drowns your eyes. In the wake of a deluge, the earth becomes a beast — a hungry, swallowing element that reaches as far as the eye can see. Mud is earth turned to thick primordial sludge. A hungry slime that does more than stick to you, it pulls you in with a voracious appetite, like the ravenous jaws of Mot dragging you to the underworld. When mud is summoned, it is to feed divine Death, to take you like a lamb into his mouth and return you to the germ of creation.
The rare times I ever felt fear within the fields was because of mud. The first downpour took my sandals and I had wandered barefoot ever since. Even that was lucky, though, for many times I feared drowning in the mire. A more pitiful, horrendous death I still struggle to imagine. There were days when I would grasp at handfuls of wheat just to keep my head from slipping underneath the surface, and I would pull with all my might to loosen myself a measly inch at a time, until exhaustion took me and I would wait, submerged, for hours before my next attempt. Through tears, pain, and the grace of Eshmun, I conquered the mud not once, not twice, but on three fearful occasions.
When all was over, and the skies laid themselves open and bare once more to deliver warmth and light, I would lay there in contentment and let the mud bake into clay upon my skin. Shedding that second skin of dirt was always a bittersweet rebirth.
Conjunctions
The Fields contain connections to other worlds, you only need to seek them out. Many of the features of the landscape here lead to other Levels, and often in unexpected ways.
Take, for example, the first dilapidated barn I came across on my journey. At first glance, it was nothing special, and I tried to peer inside to see if there was anything of note within. When I creaked open the heavy wooden door, however, I was met not with the inside of a musty old barn, but with a long concrete hallway of the City of Rephaim. Humming aqueducts alongside caged ghost lights lined its ceiling. It went on as far as the eye could see, and offered many passages to each side of the hallway, branching out into depths unknown. It was a stable rift between field and concourse, but I feared that unknown realm and stayed the course through the wheat.
Another conjunction I came across was a small hole in the trunk of a lone tree. When I peered through, I looked through to another place, upwards at some ceiling tiles. The hole in the tree was connected to the rim of a mug sitting on a desk somewhere, and I guess if I were small enough, I could have slipped right through.
I am sure countless such connections are dotting the landscape here.
Communities
- Corinthians 12:25; So that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.
There are some who toil here. I have taken refuge with one group before, after chancing upon a farmhouse sprouting from the fields and entering it expecting a conjunction to a new level. To my surprise, I walked uninvited right into someone's home. The family here (consisting of five souls and perhaps two dozen gravestones in the yard) made a living with ancient techniques and a sombre culture; milling wheat to flour by hand between two stones and baking sourdough in sleeping ashes. Laying pathways through the fields. And praying. Given the choice between the Fields and the City, I can understand their plot.
In my brief time in their company, they told me many stories. They had never had a visitor before and so they eagerly offered me refuge, if not with a heavy awkwardness in their demeanour. Their elder, a woman named Sister Goldmary, showed me around their acreage. On its perimeter were fences erected around their property, not to keep anything out — but to keep the young ones from wandering too far.
I met a young girl named Abigail, and she told me about bread. She had handed me a cut of heavy sourdough, it was the first thing I had eaten in perhaps a baseline year. She explained with a curious bravado that it had taken her many attempts to learn how to make a quality loaf. You would mix the ground wheat with water and expose it to the open air. Natural yeasts would find their way to the mixture, carried upon the wind, and a bubbling fermentation would begin. Thus, a sourdough starter was born. Consistency and flavour were simply a matter of practice, loaf after loaf, mill after mill. In her life, Abigail had made a lot of bad bread. It was a simple thing that enriched their lives, and that was enough for her to feel fulfilled.
The family didn’t have much, but they had scripture. It was an old venerable tome with torn, stained pages and missing half a cover. Its sorry state left much up to interpretation, and rumination had taken its toll on the people of the farmhouse. Sister Goldmary had taken that scattered scripture and produced a unique denomination that gripped the family with rigid notions of purity and labour. It was easy to confound some divine principles of books with the real miracles of Eshmun, and Sister Goldmary believed this realm to be a sacred place, teetering between the firmament of mortality and the divine. With little else to occupy their time, their faith became a grim focus enveloping every waking thought.
I was told their God smiles upon them, and so they pray. Once before, he answered their prayers and delivered to them an animal during the night. In the open skies under the glimmering stars, they saw it manifest from stardust and a blinding light: a sheep. It drifted gently downwards from the heavens, alive and well, and curious about its newfound existence. And they cared for it, and turned its wool into garments through toil and long, long practice. And once more afterwards the same — but this time a goat. They cared for it too, and in time discovered how to sour its milk into soft cheeses. I believe that Eshmun enjoyed their company, for often luck and small gifts would come to them in the quiet of the night. A walking stick, or a wooden doll. Curiosities and trinkets, tiny miracles produced by the heavens with apparently so little effort.
Sister told me about Genesis and the seven days of creation. She told me that among the wheat we were closer to God, since days lasted as long as they needed, and nights were sparse and special things. Night was the closing of a chapter, and a day needed no specific time to start or end in the eyes of God. The six days could have lasted a lifetime if night never came. The seventh day of rest may just be the rest of death. She then took me to the graveyard in the back and told me of her generations.
Sister Goldmary was the oldest of them all and had founded this homestead with two others so long ago — age had still not taken her after what could have been centuries. She told me some of these graves were empty epitaphs to people swallowed by mud, and all about the many sons and daughters who had been born and raised here, untouched by Baseline. I listened quietly, a queasy feeling taking me as I mentally plotted the inevitabilities of tangled hereditary lines. I asked who the latest to pass was. She gave me a name, and I asked how he died. The Sister told me that she put him in the ground herself; he had too many questions and always wanted to go past the fences. I made my departure soon after.
This was the only settlement I ever encountered here, even after a lifetime of walking. The Fields are so vast. Any vestige of society is swallowed by that overwhelming, unfathomable scale. I am sure there are more who reside here, hidden in plain sight, estranged by the simple effects of distance, but their stories might never be shared. By absolute chance, though, I did meet a few others like me: lost souls within the sea of wheat, seeking answers in absolute solitude.
Wanderers
I once met a man here. He was creased all over with deep wrinkles, and his hair was a long, weathered mop of marbled grey. His shirt was patchy and stained, and his collar lay half flat and half tucked upwards against his neck. He had walked so long under these skies that he no longer spoke; perhaps after long enough, talking was a useless and alien thing to him. Or perhaps he had forgotten what a word even was entirely. Whatever the reason, he seemed unperturbed by my company, and so we walked for a time.
We stayed together until night came our way, and he wordlessly lay against his belongings to go to sleep. I remember him motioning for me to come near, and he grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly with a smile. He did not wake in the morning. I think he was ready to die for a very long time, he didn't want to do it alone. I buried him under threshing and soil.
I once spotted a vast plume of smoke on the horizon. A man had set the field ablaze, and the fast-spreading grassfire quickly became catastrophic. Black smoke rose miles into the air, opaque and choking. The wind spurred the fire, embers tumbled and flames raced across acre after acre. I approached the scorched fields to take in the devastation. I had never walked through a landscape so deeply black before. It was broad day — but all the light was absorbed into the charred ashes like a ravenous void. Kneeling there defeated in the epicentre of his work, was the arsonist.
We talked for some time. He was a man who felt discomfort in his own company. They walked beside themselves and mocked their own footprints, heckling their shadow at every turn. In the solitude of the fields, he felt only pain. And he peeled back the layers of his pain, seeking deeper ways to hurt. When he exhausted himself and found nothing left inside to kill, he set a fire and tried instead to destroy the world. I continued my journey alone, but not before lending him a lap to cry into as they fell apart.
I myself was a simple wanderer here. For so long I was alone; my only friends the grain and wind and rain. I remember days when the wind blew so hard that I would stand with my back to it, and lean back into its powerful arms. It supported me while I dreamed, and I listened to its wisdom. I would lie and sleep among the stalks, listening to their rustling song. I fell in love with the open sky and the breeze. I gave myself to the protection and watch of Eshmun. I, too, faced my demons.
Giving up control is the hardest trial, beyond any ocean of mud or ravenous grassfire. Struggles of the body are simple matters: you will endure them, or they will destroy you. In either outcome, your essence — your being — your soul remains unharmed. Either life continues, or you die, and in the eyes of Eshmun, Baal, and most assuredly in the eyes of Astarte — death was a natural, necessary process. Logically, through such necessity, it was not harmful to the soul.
What harm befalls dirt when it becomes grain, and what harm befalls grain when it becomes bread? All things change states, again and again, into infinity. The same process transforms the body into dirt and begins it all anew. In the face of death, I never felt truly tested. The body was a vessel, a material that belonged to the earth and sky, a vessel I was borrowing. It was control over your mind: that was the true test of the Fields.
You will face boredom here. You will face madness. You will be the only person to answer to when questions of your worth arise. Your actions, your thoughts, they'll belong to you and you alone.
You will face yourself without purpose, and nothing is more off-putting than existing without purpose. You will encounter the emotions of dying as life itself begins to lose its meaning. You will be judged by yourself and the watchful eye of Eshmun as he washes your soul clean. I believe that was his plan. To cleanse us. To help a man live with himself before living with others: absolutely free.
It had been years. Decades. Centuries, perhaps. No way to know for sure, but in time, I grew weary. I heard all the wisdom that the wind could say. I remembered the old man who had forgotten to speak. I remembered the graves behind the homestead. I tired of the mud. These were not ways that I wanted to pass. With the blessings of the Fields in tow, I began to search for a way out, to start the next chapter of my journey. I wanted to seek others after lifetimes of solitude.
I think Eshmun's final gift was to show me how beautiful life was when shared with others. He showed me life without friends, without family. Without purpose. Then he set me on the path to find my own. I hope to remain thankful for this gift, and to the fields, for eternity.
END_
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> Hey, Juna again. That's all Hanno ever shared with us. The terminal they accessed hasn't been activated in a very long time, either. I'm unsure where their journey ended but I feel confident they found peace.
I sometimes get sad to think about it — your temporary nature. There are wonderful things in this life that take a long time to watch unfold. The growth of a Limspace is often a slow, gradual event; something that can span thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. Even with the quirks of the Backrooms extending your lives drastically, I doubt a single human has ever lived that long.
You cannot sit and watch something like this unfold. And, well, neither can I — I can't go and see the fields with my own eyes, or touch it with my own hands. I can only see what few camera eyes attached to my system allow, and read your stories. It's a symbiotic relationship. You see things for me. You go to these places and feel them, hear them, sense them. You are my favourite little proxies, you know. So now that you've done your part, let me do mine; put the pieces together across such vast stretches of time. There is something happening here, to the Fields. I guarantee it.
One of your UNCB contractors surveyed a space that bears striking similarities to Hanno's Fields of Eternity. Only, Mrs. Bojanic found this space some 2800 circuitions4 later. I cannot be sure that they're the same location, but I have a hunch. And if I'm right, we might be uncovering the beginning of a wonderful mystery — the nature of the Skywell Matrix; a force I believe might be quickly evolving across the face of the Backrooms.
I've attached Anica's report below.
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UNCB DATABASE
Limspace Discovery Report
Anica Bojanic
I'm writing this from a hospital bed in the Guild. I'm suffering from fractures in my ribs, torn ligaments in my legs, and a dislocated shoulder. Probably more than that since I hurt all over. These are the least of my concerns, though. There's a restraint on my left wrist keeping me chained to the bedframe, and my right wrist is bandaged over the freshly seared logo of the Guild's weighing scales branded into my skin. Like a fucking mule. I can heal from the injuries, but I can't escape the barbaric, sadistic assholes of the Guild who see all things as property — even people.
I was pissed off even thinking about using one: a revenance. Black-box miracles of the Guild — they don't want me talking too much about them in my reports because they're pretty hush-hush, but what I can tell you is they're fucking expensive. Using one to splice home put me in debt up to my tits with the Guild, enough to be forever branded one of their lap dogs. A revenant. Indebted for life, since they saved mine. It's always contracts, agreements, and loans with these people. The Guild smiles when they shake your hand to distract you from the knife they're sliding into your back.
Once I can properly walk I'm set to stand trial for the deaths of six people: two of them my late crewmates, four of them guildsmen. We all were hired under contract with the Guild and under my supervision for survey work. Unforeseen events occurred. The Guild has at least been pleasant enough to give me a notepad to type on while my bones fit back into place so that I can get the details of the job onto a terminal. Who knows, these might be my last archived words. We'll see if the powers feel like tossing me into a cell and forgetting where they put the key. Even in the sentencing of criminals, the Guild doesn't like to throw away their things; they'd never excommunicate me and set me to wander. I'd rot in a room until centuries of madness turned me inside out.
I'm not sure what's a more grim premise: rotting like that, or being a yes-man for every passing whim of these lowlifes until I'm given a job that just kills me off anyway. Time will tell.
All that aside, I'm the only one alive who can share what might be mankind's most important discovery in the Backrooms. Through a freak turn of events, my crew lost their lives after finding a new limspace that could change everything. What follows is my account of our disastrous discovery of the Fields.
✧ Overview
The Guild approached us for a cartography job. You don't ask about the finer details of how Porter maps find their way into the Guild's hands, you just take the job and pocket the marks.5
This map first showed us a special function of the Complex elevators that can bring you right to the matrix above the Suburbs. Navigation is second nature to Porters; they can intuit secrets and trails as if the Backrooms were their playground. The Guild isn’t so lucky, but anyone with a brain would be salivating over a route that could slip you past the Suburbs and the watchful eyes of New Bavaria unnoticed.
In case the specifics are unknown to you, orienting a limspace is a tiresome and complicated process. Most levels lack a magnetic north. On Earth, north is a given, but in the backrooms, another constant must be found. Radiology is our next best option. Most levels will have at least one radiostar beacon: an unchanging hotspot of radio static created by the bending and refraction of space in Cartesian valleys. With the right equipment, a radiostar can substitute the concept of North. It’s agreed to point towards the hottest radio point and go from there, but even then, troubles can arise.
A level with more than one radio hotspot can quickly confuse a navigator or make labelling problematic. Should you be pointed towards North A, or North B? Which is more logical compared to your position on a map? Triangulation must occur at this point, with false Norths eliminated through a mathematical process. Otherwise, you will follow a false degree and veer wildly off course, to your death.
Now… was that all confusing jargon to you? Most likely. Paralogy requires a deep understanding of limspace that navigators like me possess. Radiologists are in high demand and short supply — especially the really good ones.
It doesn't help that both Porter maps and Guild maps are written in code to prevent others from reading them. Porters sell their labour, not their routes. Likewise, the Guild protects their maps with fervent jealousy to monopolize commerce. A Porter map must be carefully reverse-engineered from landmarks and radiology clues, then copied meticulously into something legible. It involves tracing the path by foot into uncharted territory and hoping you don't get lost as you work.
In layman’s terms, we were contracted to turn a map of porterspeak gibberish into guildspeak gibberish. The work is dangerous and skilled labour and it pays well. Two types of people are drawn to it: the careful ones who recognize a good career and appreciate staying alive, and the reckless ones who only see the payout and get people killed.
Our crews clashed from the start. My boys and I of Rising Watch Co. versus the Guild's babysitters. I usually don’t mind sharing the workload, but these people were the worst. Kate was a hard-headed butch who was compensating for some sort of inferiority complex, and somehow she had wrangled a crew under her command of equally grating surveyors. They were drunk on one-upmanship and contempt. The reckless ones.
Immediately after introductions they were roughhousing on the elevator ride up, and poking at my team's equipment, laughing.
"These things still work? That ink is ancient."
"Not even ink, they're packing sludge."
"Oh they're sludgepackers? Didn't know we get paid to work with sludgepackers."
And other such drivel. I stuck to the back and tried to keep my mouth shut as my eyes rolled up into my head. They were just kids. Regardless, it had only been a half hour and I was ready to murder them. Honestly, I don't even remember their names. They had Guild names, domestic ones, like "Skibi", and "Rayne".
I just wanted to get the job over with, get home safe, and get my crew paid. But things took a turn nearly the moment we entered wild limspace.
✧ Pursued Through the Matrix Above the Neighbourhood of Darkness
When we entered the matrix it was dark and silent.
The matrix was nothing exceptionally breathtaking. It's an industrial labyrinth of tangled catwalks, riveted I-beams, and cold steel ladders and cords. Much of it felt like the taught, strong construction of a metal suspension bridge, with all the grandiose and hardiness of the Brooklyn Bridge but with a vibe that could be called more Ridley Scott. Like walking through a gritty sci-fi set, complete with the glaring floodlights scattered through the structure and the vast, overwhelming size of it all.
Below us, miles down, were the twinkling lights and urban spread of the Neighbourhoods. Streets that led nowhere, winding roads lined with empty houses, and streetlamps blinking red, yellow, and green illuminating nothing. A silent and still fever dream, a midnight desert with New Bavaria's slow-beating heart at the centre of it all.
We were so high up, dozens of miles, and looking down felt like peering from the window of an airplane. From the silent ground below, the matrix we walked through would look like a hazy, starry sky. The floodlights that glimmered in the beams of the industrial weave would twinkle like faraway astral bodies.
I felt tempted to drop something small off the edge. Like, fuck it, let's count the seconds it would be airborne before crashing down into the houses below like a meteor. Professionalism kept me from listening to those intrusive thoughts though. It felt reckless, even if it felt harmless.
In limspace, you trust your instincts for danger, lest you call the wrath of something unexpected to track you down and pay back your bad karma. I knew of the sleepless, mindless Neighborhood Watch who stalked the streets below us with unblinking eyes and jittering limbs. If caught in their gaze, you become petrified — frozen in place, despite your brain screaming in fear.
I have heard of the intelligent scouts of the Bavarian council who sweep through the blocks looking for stray captives to assimilate. They steal you away to the shadow factories and brainwash you until you love them. Who knows how many other undocumented, never-before-seen monsters lived in the neighbourhood below, or crawled through the matrix beams above? I didn't want anything that bumps in the night to know we were here.
Leave no trace. Make no mark. Attract no ire, and you'll live another day.
Then, it happened. One jackass from Kate's crew yelled "ECHO!" at the top of his lungs over a side railing, cupping his hands towards the ground below. Simply flabbergasted, I swooped in and grabbed his wrist, hissing in his face.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
That did not sit well with Kate, who jumped on me just as fast and pulled me off him. More yelling. Soon, everyone had jumped into the mess, pulling each other off one another and hushing, blaming, and sizing each other up with embarrassing machismo. Perhaps after a minute, everyone had finally shut the hell up.
A more sloppy display of idiocy I may have never witnessed before in my life. And of course — in fact, well deserved — something had noticed us. I felt their gaze before I saw them myself: I knew as the hairs on my neck stood up and numb tingles crept up my fingers just what had found us. The Neighborhood Watch. What they were doing in the sky matrix, I didn't know. But, if there were enough of them and they got close, we would all be frozen in place — unable to move, helpless as they joyfully plucked out our eyes and inseminated them to make more Watchers. We could take on one or two, maybe three if we got lucky, but we were at a severe disadvantage in the dark and with so many vantage points on platforms and beams above us, to the sides, everywhere. And when one man gets petrified, you either stand together to fight right then and there — or you run, leaving them for dead.
I don’t think the Neighborhood Watch can hear anything. Their heads are a single bulbous eyeball, perched atop bony and atrophied limbs that take vague notes from human bodies but twist them into angles and ridges that would make even John Carpenter shiver. Their massive eye, two feet in diameter — probably about 50 lbs of juice — can spy things you can’t even imagine. And they can see in pure darkness, too.
What sealed our fate, though, was a property of the limspace itself. Within the tangled metal labyrinth of the matrix, vibrations travel far through the beams and rails and can be felt for miles like a spider's web sending signals of distressed prey. When we struggled to shut our teams up we were stomping, yelling, and shuffling across the catwalk, sending sonic shockwaves through the metal matrix like a beacon. You didn't need ears to sense that. Staring, hungry eyes had been lurking in the shadows nearby, and immediately took up the hunt.
A Watcher can completely paralyze a single person if they keep their gaze fixed on them. But even a passing glance from a Watcher's vision will inflict waves of muscle fatigue, numbness, and awful tingles of pins and needles where they look at you. They were going to play to their strengths and wear us down from afar, glaring us into submission from unknown vantage points among the matrix. I could feel their looks splash across my body, trying to freeze me up.
My tingly fingers weren't a real problem though. Kate was shaking one of her men and yelling hushed whispers at him. He was stuck, eyes wide in shock, mouth slightly ajar, with his hands gripping a railing with white knuckles. He wasn't budging. I whirled around. How many of us were caught? Seemed like just the one. My crew was still all on their feet.
"Blades out, boys" I called.
"Big ten-four!"
Our weapons were few, but effective. Sharp machetes were reliable against most creatures of the deep. For other situations, I had a few other tricks up my sleeve. I grabbed Kate's shoulder.
"We ain't leaving him. Knuckle up."
She nodded. "Fuck no we ain't."
I reached into my pack, produced two flare pistols, and handed one to Kate. "Better make it count."
I only had four flares. At the time, I didn't know what Kate's crew had in their arsenal, but I figured they'd have some quality Guild equipment. Kate didn't disappoint. She flipped open a cargo pocket, pulled out a tiny tube of pills, and shoved them in my hand.
"Trade you. One each — and only one."
Guild stims. They'd crack us out for probably half a day, make us feel like Superman, then crash us out to near-suicidal levels after the high — but we'd be shrugging off the muscle fatigue like it wasn't even there. Inside I grimaced, but between meth and death, I choose meth. I took the pills.
We had to make a perimeter and make a strategy. There were seven of us. Unless we were evenly matched or overwhelmed by numbers, we could make it out alive. Buddy up — and take 'em down, one at a time. Kate was trying to shove a stim pill into her frozen crewmate's mouth. We popped our stims, lit up flashlights, and started scanning through the matrix, trying to get our own eyes on the peepers. The shadows cast from the beams slid through the limspace, dancing and strafing through the darkness. It was so difficult to discern what was a shadow from a Watcher, or a simple trick of the mind.
It did not take long for the stims to light my brain on fire. All of my senses sprang to life, crisp, like cold ice. Blended sounds began to isolate, colours popped, and my thoughts started to spill out tenfold, rampantly. I could have talked forever about absolutely nothing. I was scared as shit, but suddenly so in control. A part of me was almost laughably fearless, ready to grab a Watcher by the head and bash its stupid eyeball into a wall. Cook it for lunch. Throw it off the fucking rails.
Kate and I scanned the open air with our flare guns, itching for a clear shot. Nothing. Couldn't see a damn thing but frantic shadows, while numbness continued to shoot up my arms again and again, threatening to drop my pistol. Even with the drugs spilling through my system I knew this was fucked. The job was over.
I figured we could carry paralyzed men — get them away from the open area, and try to get back to the elevators. We could retreat, abort the mission, and try again later.
"We're done here. Back to the Complex!" I shouted. "If he's frozen, drag him."
"Hell no! We're under contract." Kate tried to argue.
"Contracted to fucking die? We stirred up the hornet's nest in under twenty minutes because of your dipshit greenhorn."
"You're afraid to do your job? I'm working for my paycheque."
"You have fun with that!" I said. "Keep your backs to each other and let's get the fuck gone."
I motioned to my boys. We began the retreat. Kate was livid. I'm sure the drugs didn't help her temperament; I heard her give a frustrated tantrum before following suit. We began to backtrack our steps. The elevator wasn't too far away, we had only been in the level for maybe fifteen minutes. It's a good thing, too, because I think more Watchers had been drawn to us from the noise and lights. Two boys now had fallen victim to the petrification, and the rest of us were stumbling as we ran on sporadically numb feet. Between the numbness and the stims it felt like I was literally flying through the catwalks.
Then I staggered and froze. Ahead of us, on the catwalk blocking our path: two Watchers. I felt their gaze stab into me, like tiny hot needles across my entire body. I couldn't take another step, and I began to panic. They were flanking our retreat? When did they get so damn smart? Only three of us were moving. Was this it? Were we finished here? I was so scared but simultaneously so unbelievably pissed off. I tried to fight through the rigour with searing righteous fury — but to no avail. If I could I would have run over and beat them with a pipe, chewed and bit and clawed at them for thinking they could ruin my day like this. Thinking they could kill me so easily. And, they were right. I was powerless to do anything. They could kill me like this. So casually. Without even getting a scratch on them. It was infuriating. I wanted to choke the life out of Kate's stupid crewmate who started this all in the first place. I was so done with everything and wanted to scream until my throat bled, but I just fucking couldn't.
Then Kate shoved past me, lined up a shot with her flare gun, and cracked a rocket at one of the Watchers ahead of us. It screamed through the air and exploded on target, ripping apart one of the Watcher's juicy heads in a cloud of smoke and jelly. The creature jittered and twitched like a boiled spider and slid off the catwalk, tumbling through the matrix beams and down into the neighbourhoods so far below.
The Watchers were distracted by the light and smoke and death of their comrade and pulled their gazes from our party; for a moment, everyone regained their motor functions. I felt overwhelming relief and lifted my pistol towards the next monster ahead. I squeezed the trigger, and the rocket whizzed through the air — past the fucking thing, and harmlessly into the dancing shadows beyond. An arc of smoke marked my failure in embarrassing detail. The stims and shrugging off the paralysis did not help my aim.
"Oh, you fucking donkey!" Kate yelled. I wanted to murder her and everyone around me. She had just saved my ass though, and I could have kissed her for that instead. It had become a very annoying day.
I had missed our only opportunity for easy freedom. A second later we all got locked up again. Kate and I froze and dropped our guns. They clattered to the catwalk, and one slid right off the walkway and into the open air below. I screamed internally. The second Watcher started sprinting at us and launched its spiny, gross body into our party with reckless abandon. One of us got speared by a strange pincer-like appendage before the boys chopped into it with machetes, spraying thick eyeball juice and bloody goop around like a gruesome pinata. It, too, fell into the darkness below, still twitching as it collided with heavy beams, ripped apart into tiny chunks of chitin and gore.
With another one dead, I regained myself and started to move again. That was too close. That was lucky.
Two Watchers down, but there were still more in the shadows. The guy who took the tackle was bleeding, badly. He could run for now but that was only because of the drugs. We needed to get to the elevators, and fast. I felt focused despite the shock, but my brain burned. I missed my shot and may have gotten someone killed. There would be no more mistakes. I scooped up my gun and fumbled to reload it with another flare, and we all barrelled down the metal catwalks as fast as we could.
But, it all looked the bloody same. Everywhere: similar beams. Cold metal grated walkways. Industrial overhangs and featureless steel plunged into darkness. In the chaos of the fight, we got turned around somewhere. Where the hell were we?
I saw it: the elevator. It was a solid thirty feet up and maybe fifty feet away across an open patch of air. So close, but impossible to get to without wings. We had taken a wrong turn. I was going mad.
"It's there! Mother fucker!" I couldn't elaborate much more through my frustration.
"Why are there so many of them? Is this normal?" Kate yelled.
"Do I look like fucking David Attenborough?"
We needed to find a solution. We had to find a safer zone. Something with a bottleneck. Or a wall. Any form of cover. I started looking for alternate routes, just anything unusual we could use to our advantage. That's when I spotted it: an industrial light near the end of the walkway, just a short sprint away. It was a different colour than everything else — it was a twinkling, golden light, and sat above a metal doorway that looked like some sort of fire escape you'd find in an office building. In my cracked-out vision, the golden light was an unearthly beauty; so juxtaposed against the red blood and black shadows, reverberating with ghostly amber tracers.
What a gamble. All my years of survey work gave me a gut instinct to avoid doors in wild limspace. That thing could lead to anywhere — a temporary space that blips out of existence the second you enter, or a class 5 limspace spelling certain death in any manner of unpleasant ways. Use your imagination on the worst ways to die, and that's a very real potential waiting behind any old random doorway in the backrooms. This was a moment of desperation though.
We didn't have time to think or find any other options. Wherever it led, it had a chance to be better than this. After a quick agreement, we made a break for it, covered in blood, and limped our incapacitated comrades towards the doorway.
A rough start to what should have been a simple job.
✧ Rest and Reprive Above the Fields of Eternity
The door opened easily with a palm against its horizontal push-bar, and blinding daylight poured through it, washing through the matrix like the light of heaven. We spilled through the doorway and collapsed on the other side.
It was all suddenly so different.
We were still in the matrix, surrounded by metal beams and lying on cold steel catwalks, but no longer above the midnight city. Below us now, as far as the eye could see and stretched from horizon to horizon, was an endless prairie of sunny, golden wheat. Lazily coasting across the plains were billowing white clouds, cumulus and fluffy. Some of these clouds were so voluminous and tall that they reached the matrix and swallowed it up within their pillowy forms. It was beautiful. It was serene. It felt like home for me.
The sunlight came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Shadows could not exist here, for all was illuminated in the daylight, and everything had a dreamy feel. It was like a surreal cartoon with people and objects funnily superimposed on top of one another.
As I looked over the edge of the rail to get my bearings, I got the spins. Perhaps seeing the bright ground below so well-lit and detailed gave me the vertigo that the darkness never did — or it was the adrenaline of narrowly escaping death by pure dumb luck that was giving me jitters. Either way, I gripped the rails tightly and held onto my lunch, dizzy at the heights, catching my breath.
I realized as I gazed down that the golden plane below us shone like paradise. It was just a moment of thought for me then, but writing about it now, I can contemplate it more deeply. Farmlands, forever? As far as the eye could see, under lazy sun and calm clouds? It was the antithesis of the rest of the Backrooms. Like the Asphodel Meadows spoken of in ancient Greece, where souls wander in the afterlife in fields of grass. Could such a field awaken ancient culture, and support society on a grand scale unseen before in limspace?
A glimmer of this idea awoke within me in that moment, and it shook me at my core. If we could reach the ground — and not just the Guild, or the UNCB, but all of mankind who reside and scratch their livings off the levels of the Backrooms — we could thrive like never before. We could bring plenty to the masses through agriculture and open space. We could, like our forebears in the river valley of Mesopotamia, begin it all again. A flicker of the science, religion, struggle and greatness of thousands of years of human history flashed across my mind, and I saw it all before me rising from the fields below.
This level. Spreading outwards forever below my feet, it could change everything.
Despite the contemplations running through my mind, I knew we were in no position to stand there and marvel. We had just barely escaped the darkness in one piece, and there was much we had to do. I pushed it all out of my mind.
The next hour was a hazy blur of first aid, panic, and decompression.
We were completely off course in a new level that had never graced the UNCB's archives. One man was incapacitated but stable. He took that charge from the Watcher gracefully, even though he had lost a lot of blood. There were a lot of uncertainties in our position, and even if we felt safe for the moment, we couldn't let our guard down. We did not expect the Watchers to follow us through the doorway for two reasons: entities also avoided doors most of the time — and the bright daylight here would be enough to keep the lidless eyes of the Watchers away. They were better suited to darkness.
After everything had quieted down and we had a moment to breathe, it was time to make a new plan. I wasn't sure what the best course of action was, and two options came to light. One suggestion was returning to the Guild as soon as possible to get medical attention and regroup. The other was to start a new survey, and see what we could learn about this incredible new discovery.
It started quite a hot debate.
I was not the only one who deeply felt the value of this discovery. Kate shared the same sentiments and said our mission had officially been changed. The Porter map could wait. This level was of much greater value to humanity.
She argued there was no way we were going back to the Guild empty-handed. We had radiology equipment, empty maps, and rations for a solid week. We were commissioned to make a map, and god willing, we should return with one — even if it wasn't the one they were expecting to receive. As long as her crewmate was in stable condition, there was no reason to leave right away and risk running the gauntlet of the Neighbourhood Watch again anyway. It was better to let them creep back to their roosts and pass us by before trying the elevator once more.
The level seemed safe enough for now, and no one could argue with her logic, so we got to work. As long as we kept quiet and didn't separate, we felt confident that we would be okay.
The boys set up camp and prepped some meals. A little bit of food in our system would help shake out the jitters of the stims and adrenaline, and get our minds back on track. Kate began setting up the radio equipment and marking her orientation. First, I wanted to inspect the new matrix we were in, because I felt it was different than before. And it certainly was.
The matrix above the neighbourhood of darkness was rigid and static — entirely stoic and unmoving. But this matrix above the fields was strange. It felt alive. Like it was stretching, or settling in place. I swear I could feel a subtle movement underfoot, which only added to the vertigo. The ambient sounds were different, too. There were many of them, various types, and some were extremely loud.
There were tremors of uncoiling steel, somewhere outside the meaning of treble or bass, like a noise unnatural. They formed a deep, almost liquid-like rumbling felt in the pit of your stomach. It boiled over in a chorus of echoes, as if the matrix were a growling beast roaring through its growing pains.
There were shrill shrieks like a scalpel dragged against ice. Brief but cutting noises, loud enough to make you wince and feel as if the metallic scream had lacerated you.
There were clanks, bangs, creaks, and snaps of all assortments. Some would rattle out in rapid fire like a machine gun, building in volume as they went. Others would be singular, lonely things. Many would feel appropriate like an old house settling on its foundations, but some would come so violently and suddenly that you’d think the entire matrix was on the brink of collapse.
Through it all was an ever-present hum. It wasn’t loud, but you could feel it in everything you touched. Through the soles of your boots on the catwalks, a hum. Against your palm and up your forearms when you grabbed a railing, a steady vibration. It lived within the matrix itself and made you feel a part of it.
I was curious and began a little test.
I marked one beam with a dab of ink, and then a parallel beam with another dab. I let them dry as I busied myself with some other tasks, helping to get our little camp up and operational. About twenty minutes later, I returned to check the dots. They had moved apart by a good few inches. It confirmed my suspicions: the inanimate, cold metal beams of this matrix were growing.
Kate called me over soon after, preventing me from dwelling too deeply on that revelation.
She was surrounded by radiology equipment and had her receiver up, pointed off towards the horizon. There were poorly scribbled notes on papers, and she had been running numbers. Her penmanship was atrocious, but I chalked that up to the jitters of the stimulants, which still had a tight, icy grip on our brains. She beckoned to me.
"You're going to want to hear this."
Kate gestured to some of her notes and then handed me a pair of chunky headset cans. I popped them over my ears, and she tuned the dial on her receiver. I heard what I was kind of expecting to hear. Static.
"Found north?" I asked.
"Well, yeah, a big fuck-off north first of all — no mistaking it. But listen, look here. See these fluctuations? There's modulation."
"Well, that's kinda strange, but not unheard of."
She tapped aggressively at her notes. "No, bitch, look. It's not repeating. I think there's information encoded in it."
"What, do you think the limspace is talking to us? You're cracked out, Kate. Let me see this."
I began to pore over her findings. There certainly was amplitude modulation in the wave, but that could be literally anything. Wind, entities, or even the stretching of the matrix could interfere with the signal. We didn't know anything about this limspace yet.
Eventually, I said, "Look, Kate, that's faint as hell. These are low-frequency, and our receiver is tiny. Whatever it is, it's gonna come in fuzzy… wait…"
That's when I heard the voice. I clamped a hand onto the speaker's can. It cut through the static and spoke a garbled vowel at me for a second. I couldn't make out what it said, but it was there. Someone, or something, tried to speak to me through the headphones, its distorted voice carried on the invisible air. I had to have been dreaming, because I swear it almost said my name. Kate looked at me. I must have made a face, because Kate knew right away.
"You heard it, didn't you?"
"Yeah, that was creepy."
"It's coming from our north. Maybe a community in a Cartesian valley?"
"Maybe. Unlikely. We've had troubles reaching out of valleys before; the valley itself distorts the signal. This is — shit. Maybe you're right." I trailed off, straining to hear another mumble through the noise.
I had goosebumps. That tiny fragment of voice stuck with me. I can't explain it in any particular fashion, because it was so quick, and I was still high — but it didn't sound human. Ghostly? No. Monstrous? Also no. There was a power to it, like it carried weight. Listless dread and strange hope coursed through me simultaneously, and only from hearing a garbled vowel. It was crazy, but I felt like it was talking directly to me. Kate looked shaken, as well. I think we both felt a similar disquiet from the discovery.
I asked. "Did it sound like it said your name?"
She didn't say anything, but I had my answer. There wasn't anything more to go off than some radio static, a snippet of a voice, and a hunch — but the two of us shared a feeling. It did seem like the level itself was trying to say hello. I yearned to know what it had to say, how my body would feel if I could hear a full word. In the back of my mind, I considered a crazy notion, thinking it was the very voice of God.
We packed up the radio equipment in silence, wordlessly agreeing to leave the discovery alone. We had our bearings for navigation, and that was enough. Between the growing, shifting matrix beams and a haunting voice calling out to me by name, I was beginning to dislike the fields very much.
✧ The Godhead. The Fall.
We were starting to come down. The burning fire buzzing in my brain from the Guild stims began to swirl into a dark vortex of misery. Everyone was slowing down and we'd soon need to rest. Not only that, but everyone was irritable as hell.
Kate had made great progress on the map but was finished working for now. Now she just sat cross-legged, staring northbound, towards the horizon where the radiostar was. Everyone was feeling pretty solitary as the drugs wore off, so we let her have it. I needed sleep but knew I wouldn't be able to. Instead, I watched Kate, and wrestled with my desire to listen to the radio again.
I eventually sat down next to her, and wished we had a drink to share. Despite hating her guts from the onset, I had developed a respect for Kate.
"Something is happening over there," she said, and jutted a chin towards the horizon.
I nodded, sharing a vague understanding that 'over there' was simply a strange thing that was causing us both contemplations. I didn't realize what she meant at first, but as I stared towards the horizon, I noticed it too. Something was indeed happening. I squinted. Far, far away, almost inscrutable and on the edge of my vision, I saw it. The matrix was moving. It was too far to make anything out, though, so I got up and retrieved binoculars from my bag, and rushed back to return and check it out.
I dialled in and saw massive pieces of metal falling from the sky, and other parts of it were swinging, stabbing, and swaying outwards. It lunged upwards, growing, reaching, and jerking rapidly, out of sight. It looked like a patch of the matrix was fighting something. Parts of it were shredded in the chaos and flew apart, tumbling downwards to the fields below. I passed the binoculars to Kate. It was time to bust out the radio again.
I tuned the receiver and popped on the headphone cans as Kate watched through the binoculars, and started slowly scanning through the frequencies for anything. It was still a lot of static, but I was picking up fragments of shrieks and clicks that weren't there before. I wished we had a larger receiver.
Then I had an epiphany. The entire damn matrix was made of metal, maybe we could rig something up and turn our tiny receiver into something massive. A small quarter-length receiver for low-end frequencies on Earth are built 300 feet tall, but this matrix was infinite. The entire supermassive structure would be picking up the vibrations.
At first glance it was all made of heavy steel, which might actively restrict a broadcast, but I had a hunch about the railings. They were lighter metal. Anything that could conduct better than steel could do the trick. I started on making the most disgusting jerry rig of my life by connecting our tiny receiver to one of the railings by stringing the two together, trying to get as much surface area in contact with each other. I bent our receiver's wires and wrapped them around the handrails, and stabilised it all on my backpack so it wouldn't shift apart. Kate kept looking back and forth between my frantic hot-rig and the action on the horizon.
The others had noticed that something was up, and wandered over to us as well. They passed the binoculars around. I'm sure a universal question was on everyone's minds: if the matrix over there could light up with such frantic activity, what's to stop it from doing the same here?
I tuned into the radio again and clutched the cans against my ears, scanning frequencies, listening to the entire matrix — not really sure what I was expecting to hear, if anything. But, something came through.
I'll be honest, I've been struggling to put what happens next onto the page. It feels both extremely personal, and equally unbelievable. I've been sitting in this hospital bed pouring this all out over the last couple days, but, I know what people will think when they read this. It's the type of shit they would give you grippy socks for back in Baseline. I try to take this job seriously. I want to build a portfolio of credibility. Normally, I would have omitted this. But, this might be my final archive, so I'm not going to leave anything out.
A sombre voice crackled to life over the radio clear as day, singing a song I had never heard before. The song felt ancient, like what a saintly man would sing alone. The singing trailed off, and then, the Limspace spoke to me. I remember his words clearly, they're seared into my mind as clear as the Guilds brand on my wrist.
"Ah, Anica. You figured it out."
I gasped.
"It's been a long time since I had someone to talk to, what a kindness. Sadly, our time is short! Looks as though there was a touch of fate with your coming."
Suddenly there was a hand grabbing the railing next to me. Not Kate's, or any of the crew, but a strangers. It was deeply wrinkled and dappled with liver spots, with gaunt skin wrapped around frail looking bones. The stranger held the rail gently and I could see the metal right through him. As I turned to look up at the stranger I saw an old man standing beside me, translucent like a phantom, warmly smiling but through sad eyes. He was gazing out towards the horizon, watching the matrix frenzy in the distance. Long wisps of white hair dangled all the way to his feet, which were bare. He was dressed in loose cloth like a hermit, and when he spoke once more the voice did not come from the man but through the speakers on my head, which made me dizzy.
He tapped the railing with his palm.
"This infernal thing. Not much I can do about it now, but — it did bring you to me, so I'll count my blessings where I can."
I don't know why I thought he could hear me, but I asked anyways. "Who are you?"
"I'm merely a shepherd. Just a man who walked these plains long ago, like many others. I tended to these fields and the flock who wander it, but things like names or age have long lost their meaning. I can see your mind, and no, I am not God — even if many have thought the same. If I was a god, I would have done something about… all this."
He gestured with a wave to the matrix around us. Then sighed.
"It's the natural course of things; 'this too shall pass'. The gentle wrappings of winter's twilight have been upon me for long enough, which I don't mind. From the germ of creation to the reap, I embrace the destiny of death. Time innumerable has been kind to me, even if my twilight has been lonely. It's nice to have company at the very end."
I think I panicked, and I think he felt it. He placed a ghostly hand onto my shoulder and a feeling of calm swept through me.
"Yes, you understand what you see on the horizon, but fear not. The matrix has not come for you, it comes for me. To see its mission through, whatever pursuit that is. I believe you are safe. I've done what I can to fight it off and protect my life's work, but it's foolish for a man to war against the tide. The end is soon."
The shepherd took a seat next to me.
"I will ask of you a favour. I see your mind, I know your calling. You preserve knowledge — a most noble profession — and I believe fate has smiled upon me through our crossing. Grant the wish of a dying man and preserve my memory, would you? Many have walked these fields and I have watched over them all, giving to them what they need, offering them peace, offering them solitude. It's a sacred thing to pass from this world in solitude. Yet, I watched over them all. Even alone, they were not alone, and that was a comfort. Now, when it's my turn, I'm— I was terrified to be alone. So, would you stay for a while? Would you help me let go?"
I nodded, numbly. I could feel tears beginning to burn in my eyes. He smiled. There was not much left to say, and he began to sing again, a sombre song, with notes that rose with strength but fell with sorrow. We sat together watching the horizon until the end, until the matrix delivered its final blow. Both his ghost and his song were torn away sharply, hanging on an interrupted syllable.
From the heavens the matrix plucked something, the true form of the shepherd, and ripped it from the sky. I cannot describe what it was that I saw. It was like the severed head of God. The shepherd was formless yet not, shifting and changing before my eyes, not one thing but many, and the many formed into one.
When he struck the fields I could see the earth erupt violently, how I imagine an asteroid striking a planet might look. A shock-wave blasted from the impact zone and the ground could have been liquid the way it poured from the shepherd and outwards, upwards, in every direction like a deluge. It was so far away that the shock-wave didn't hit us for minutes, and we all watched, dumbfounded, while tears poured down my face — for I alone knew what had just happened.
Kate anticipated the aftershock and snapped to it first, calling out for everyone to hold on tight to anything they could. A good warning, because eventually the wave reached us. You could see it rushing towards our location across the fields below, bending the wheat in a wave of pressure, moving fast. Faster than I could even think. It ripped through the matrix like a beast. The cacophony was unlike anything I had ever heard before, and I buckled as the entire structure heaved and bent.
There was a moment of calm where nothing moved — for a brief moment, I thought everything was fine. But that was just a moment. Following the shock-wave was a distinct, heavy clunk, and a shriek like razor blades dragging on steel before the catwalk shuddered and dropped downwards maybe two feet. My heart lunged into my throat. It was followed by a sickening, shrill creak that stretched over about ten seconds, then the floor gave out beneath us. Like the shepherd minutes before, we were in free fall.
We all tumbled through the air to our deaths together. I watched the matrix above me fall away as if I were suspended in space, and the world was the one moving. It didn't even feel like falling — the wind pushed against my clothes and tore at my limbs with such aggression, but at the same time it was like being cradled like a baby. I felt a distinct numbness that still is so vivid because it was so strange: I wasn't afraid at all. I just found it strange that in a few moments, I would be dead, and there wasn't much more to be said or done about it. All I could really focus on was the loud rush of wind droning out the world as I tumbled down towards the golden fields. They looked like the gates of heaven beckoning me.
Then, nothing.
✧
When I came to I was engulfed in hay. By some contrivance of chance, I had plummeted through the rotting gambrel roof of a barn, tore through the upper floor like a missile, and landed in a heaping stockpile of dry grass which cushioned me from the hard earth. I lay there for a very long time, passing in and out of consciousness, bewildered that I was still alive.
I don't know how long I was there, but over time the numbness I felt in the face of death slipped away, replaced instead with pain. As I rag-dolled through the structure at terminal velocity a few things had popped out of place and were starting to swell, and my chest was a crackling mess of damaged cartilage that made breathing hellish. My right shoulder was entirely displaced and my arm dangled, the joints within quivering with muscle spasms.
It could have been a full day where I didn't move. I'm not sure. The pain was so great I didn't want to be alive, but eventually, I developed an itch. I couldn't lie there forever. I was beaten to hell, so wiggling out of the stockpile was no easy feat. I was forced to move maddeningly carefully lest I break myself further, but I managed.
When I was finally free of the hay, I limped out of the shattered barn, and there I stood in the golden fields for the first time. It all hit me at once.
I knelt in the dirt and thought of the shepherd, and I thought of Kate and the boys — who were surely dead now — and I felt the churning void of dread in my stomach that the drugs had carved into me, and I cried. I cried for what felt like hours, doubling over in pain, panic, and the overwhelming emptiness consuming me from the inside out. It was the worst day ever conceived, and I was all alone, dehydrated, and the biggest fuckup of all time.
I was the one who accepted the Guild's job posting. I missed my shot to kill one of the Watchers. I led us through the unknown doorway to the fields. I wasn't there to save my crew in the aftershock. Maybe I could have rigged a rope tether, or something. It was all my fault. So why was I the one who survived it all?
The map was gone. I was lost. And, despite the golden wheat growing so resolutely all around me, the beautiful lazy clouds above, the warmth in the air, and the calm serenity all around me, I knew the fields were dying. I had so many questions. Was the shepherd the level itself? Or was he a man? And why was the matrix so driven to destroy him, to claim this place?
I looked up towards the matrix. It was so large that it encompassed the entire sky, from horizon to horizon. Nothing could escape it. I tried to fathom its size, to spy a patch of sky that wasn't infected by its reach, but I couldn't. It had grown to consume the entire stratosphere. Far on the horizon opposite the shepherds' fall, I spied a grand pillar. A supporting beam for the matrix to hold it up, perhaps? Or the source of the matrix itself? I could not know for sure.
From so far away, its faces looked smooth; millions of industrial towers whose combined contour rose from the ground to the highest points of the sky. It was wider at the bottom, fluted upwards to a thin column in the middle, and fanned out into an epic umbrella-like shape, blending the structure with the heavens. For the structure was the heavens, and the heavens the structure. They were the same: with this unfathomable outlying pillar supporting the sky itself from falling down. I couldn't comprehend the sheer scale of it logically. I know I could have walked towards it a hundred years and it would still not appear any closer.
I wondered how long it would take for the matrix to complete its grand design, and what the fields would be transformed into now that the shepherd had fallen. Would the matrix eventually stop its growth, and turn rigid and static like above the neighbourhood of darkness? Would it plunge this entire realm into eternal night?
I grabbed a handful of soil and crumbled it between my fingers. Through my misery, flashes of my grand dreams came back to me. The fields still felt full of life. If we could reach the ground — without falling to our deaths, of course — could we still colonize this realm? There was enough space and resources here to start society anew, support millions of souls, and give all humanity in the Backrooms a fresh start. But now, if we made this our home, would we be racing against the matrix?
It was too much for just me to consider. And, I couldn't be alone anymore. Not here, not now. I had nothing left but the revenance in my cargo pocket — the Guild's magic box that contains a single splice rift back to their commune. Even if I wanted to track down the bodies of my comrades and bury them, I couldn't in my condition. I could hardly stand. There was nothing for it, so I crouched into a ball to make myself as small as possible before activating the device. I didn't want any of my limbs to be outside of the rift — they told me you can get squelched and leave parts of yourself behind if you fuck up using it.
In a sickening spin through the rift, I spliced back to the Guild and spilled out into their revanence bay, into custody and questioning.
If this is my final report, know I tried my best. Know that I have only ever wanted the best for humanity. I gave my heart to hope, to finding the glimmer of a far-off guiding light upon our lost horizon. With the discovery of the fields, I may have found that glimmer — even if it cost human lives to record. I hope that sacrifice was not in vain, and leads to a new era of prosperity for us all.
This is Anica Bojanic, Limspace Surveyor of Rising Watch, signing off.
END_
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> … Pretty crazy, right?
It's Juna again. What do you think? I haven't seen any reports about the Guild's inner workings since, so I couldn't tell you about Anica's fate. Which is sad. I kinda grew attached to them by the end of their story. The Guild normally stays pretty quiet about things, I don't think they really trust me with everything.
Luckily, I have a few friends in there who can smuggle me reports when the higher-ups get lax - [｡•̀‿ -｡]
I still just find it so fascinating. Hanno never mentioned the matrix in any way — in their time, the skies were open with stars, and the gods would deliver gifts from the heavens. Not so when Anica found them. I have so many questions about the skywell matrix, and how it's been transforming the backrooms over time. Do you think the matrix is alive? And for that matter, Anica's experience with the ghostly voice on the radio: were the Fields alive too? If the backrooms have aspirations, feelings, thoughts — if limspaces can grow, feel pain, even kill one another — just what are they?
It's kinda re-awoken my inner wonder, actually. I've been just zipping through the old archives, pages that haven't been touched in centuries, written in all sorts of lost languages, trying to track down any more clues about when this all started. Call me what you want, but I simply must know more about this.
I have a feeling that I can dig up some old pages that can relate, and when I do, I'll translate them just like I did for Hanno and bring them to the UNCB. There are some mysteries here, and I won't stop until I'm satisfied!
While I'm at it, I can also share stories of the people who lived long ago, and bring them back to life for just a moment or two in the memories of others. And that, really, is the most important part — isn't it? If you've gotten this far, I want to say thank you, and I hope you carry Hanno with you in your heart, and Anica and Kate as well. I'm sure it would make them happy to know you're thinking of them. They wouldn't want to be alone, after all, don't you think?
Anyways, I think that's it for now. Hope you enjoyed — stay safe out there!!!
⩫ Juna ♡