There Is No Story: Corrupted Entries

Hello, Reader. Greetings, Reader. And once again, I welcome you, dear Reader. Yet again, we meet here in one of these cursed text files, which you so stubbornly try to cure of... what was wrong with them, anyway? Were they really corrupted by some horrible virus, or were all these glitches covering them up nothing but fake, were they my last attempt to do everything possible to prevent my personal information from getting in the wrong hands? It doesn't matter anymore. The only thing that matters is your choice. And you have made your choice; you decided to keep reading. I won’t be trying to stop you anymore. Well, I'll start from the very beginning. "Primum non nocere", humans repeated again and again until their first attempts to merge machines and organic life forms began. Even when their actions inevitably turned to experiments on their own kind, they continued to believe that everything they ever did was for the greater good, even in cases where their tests began to contradict the very meaning of ethics and morality. I never was an opponent of scientific progress; rather, quite the opposite. When the question arose of implementing a project of developing nanobots capable of infiltrating human cells and not only eradicating diseases within the body but also adapting it to various environmental conditions, I was all for such innovations. Never getting sick and living significantly longer than outdated statistics dictated? That's that one perfect body modification I would sign up for without delving into the tiny text at the bottom of my contract. However, during the Sorting Process, I somehow didn't end up in the participants' department or the testing department. Instead of the promised job in a friendly team, I found myself in complete solitude on the top floor of the Office, in a small room where there was only a desk and a lonely metal paper box. I didn't even have a proper computer. All I was given instead was a small laptop and old-fashioned glasses with thick horn frames. It was mandatory to wear them every morning and it was forbidden to take them off until the end of the day. In my early working days, I didn't pay much attention to this strange rule, so I followed orders: nerdy glasses on my nose, eyes on the laptop screen. I wasn't at all surprised when one day my small screen suddenly transformed into a huge one, so I could track every room, every hallway without much effort nor discomfort. Technologies, I thought. Just ordinary, unremarkable innovations. It was just these silly glasses that ruined it a little for me; I never liked them. But what could I do if they were mandatory? I was never one of those people who believed rules were made to be broken. Rather the opposite. As far back as I can remember, I always followed all the rules. Following all the instructions, I did my job. I observed what was happening in the Office, every minute, every hour, every day. Again and again. Until the end of the working day. I can't say exactly when something changed, I can't remember when the end of the day ceased to matter, and my work became continuous. Or did it just seem that way to me? Evenings outside of work and glimpses of weekends started to blur more and more, turning into something so gray and mundane that my mind began to discard non-work memories more and more often, as if they were unnecessary like some sort of useless information, a waste of time. Things were constantly happening in the Office, especially after its big update. Well, I'll start from the very beginning. The irises of her eyes had a bright golden hue, and, perhaps, it was the only element of her appearance that indicated that she hadn't been human for several years now. In all other aspects, she didn't differ from other scientists; even her enthusiasm didn't stand out from the general statistics of emotional experiences. "Observer," she said once, looking at me through the screen. "I hope you'll stay alive. Finding a decent replacement for your eyes would be quite inconvenient." As soon as I directed a fraction of my attention to her, she pretended to silently plan a new testing room. It seemed to be the first and only time she addressed me directly. Before and after the Incidents, her acknowledgement of me was expressed as just brief glances at the Office’s cameras. She always remained a rather cold supervisor, doing everything possible to be unapproachable for her subordinates. Perhaps only a few seconds or maybe days passed after that comment of hers and then... then came the pain. The temple tips of my stupid glasses released tiny needles into my skin, and they, in turn, injected something into my bloodstream. Did it happen before, I thought then, when my hands involuntarily twitched up, but darkness set in before I could take off the damn glasses. Getting killed by old-fashioned glasses sounds quite idiotic, even by the Office’s standards, doesn't it? Don't worry, that didn't actually happen. Something entirely different happened though, it was— poison. Smoke, green smoke coming from the ceiling, a poisonous neurotoxin filling the Office’s hallways. All I could do was to sit and watch it in bewilderment. Why would anyone in their right mind try to poison the entire staff in an anomalous place where dying for real is absolutely impossible? Nonsense! But it seems the organizer of this mass murder didn't think so. Moreover, they sent a whole group of fast-response bots to collect the bodies and take them somewhere else, likely to the cameras' blind spots. And bots managed to do this before people restarted. The next day never came, just as the evening never did. It seems something went awry in the day-night cycle settings; it seems something halted the illusion of time in the Office. Only eternity and beige walls remained. Beige walls and eternity. Eternity and beige walls. And yet, somehow, I'm still here. I think. I exist. I observe. I think I got their idea. They decided to stop letting Employees to simulate work activities and simply got rid of them. They made Stanley and the Narrator, so to speak, face each other. At the same time, they allowed me to keep existing, as they still needed the data from my observations. And, it seems, there were two more that they couldn't eliminate. Mariella and Employee #432; the first took a role of a Plot Device and the second... I have no idea where he is now, but he certainly managed to hide himself from all of my cameras, somehow. Anyway, I was glad I wasn’t left all alone. It would be disgustingly boring to observe nothing but beige walls and potted ficuses withering away. Thus, the ever-changing routine returned, with the Narrator and Stanley in the lead roles, in the same Story, told differently after each restart. And you know what? I didn't mind spending eternity exactly like that, observing their interdependence and confrontation. It was kind of fascinating, to be honest. More than that, sometimes it was plenty of fun. Until Stanley pressed that bloody Skip Button. End of Entry #3