There wasn't anyone else left on the list. Anyone but me.

Watching the CCTV feeds in the buzzer room, I could tell there was at least one more person left on campus. But they weren't on the list. And we all knew the PROTOCOL, and the METHOD, so I followed the playbook and buzzed myself out.

And suddenly I'm smoking a cigarette, and it's freezing cold and dark and snow and fields and moon and I'm standing next to a tank. Next to a row of tanks. Because I suddenly remember I'm in the 237th tank regiment, and I'm Russian, deployed outside of Valuyki. And I'm a man. And maybe we're going to drive these tanks over those fields. And maybe not. It's above my pay grade to worry about it. I just need to make sure my tank is ready to move.

I'm walking over to the campfire. Muffled voices but you can see their breath. And then a clear voice to my right. They're not speaking Russian.

"Pssst! Sabrina!"

There's an open door on the edge of the field. Inside it looks bright. And warm.

"Er... jussasec... ah -- Alexey? Is that right? Alexey? Sabrina? Either way, you gotta come here. GET IN!"

I can’t tell the colors of the walls anymore. There’s no color anywhere. Just mold.

It’s grown over the walls. The ceiling. The lights. Furniture and food is coated with the stuff. Even the singular rat that ran by was a dark green color, coated in the stuff from top to bottom.

I can feel the tickle of it growing in the back of my throat.

There’s a sound coming from the end of the hallway, but it’s a long, long hallway. I’ve stopped to sleep, what, three times now?? After I post this, I’ll get up and start walking again.

I miss having the other parts of myself to talk to.

The only comfort I have is that they’re all back home and technically, physically, so am I.

Paradi. C. Benzene.

I found where the other students went.

They’re going towards the light.















Paradi. C. Benzene.

"So, I think it's clear this operation has been burned."

The rest of the Olds Network mumbled in agreement. We had gathered on landing 47782 on stairwell 9-A64, which was painted in giant letters on the wall.

"After being buzzed out, we were placed in deep cover lives in adjacent realities. We weren't even supposed to realize it--"

"Yeah till YOU came along and woke us up," @Danny Krista Wong said.

"No, no, she's right," said @Max Vermilion. "There were problems with the inserts. They were covering it up. I saw reports."

"And if you're like me," I continued, "you can feel something inside you. Some ONE inside you."

"The original host personality," Max said.

"Exactly. We're sharing their brains, after all."

Everyone was silent.

"What's going to happen to us?" @Wm. Bethany Patton asked.

"As long as we stay in the access shafts, the original personalities seem to remain subdued. At least mine has. Sometimes I'll start daydreaming and realize I'm thinking their thoughts, but as soon as I notice it it goes away," I said.

"So we're stuck in these endless stairwells between realities? For eternity?" @Danny Krista Wong asked.

"I want to go back," @Jonononathan Riggs said. "I mean, back to my insert. It was pretty darn comfortable. And safe. I had a mansion, and a security system..."

"Nobody's going back. We were stood up, don't you see? This whole thing was a shoddy scam. We'd all be having nervous breakdowns inside of a year."

"So what are we supposed to do?" asked @Sabrina Duncan.

"We find Mr. Sterne," I said.

I didn’t realize so much mold had grown in and over my mouth, until I had to actually use it.

I followed the small group of students, shuffling down the hall. I tried to get their attention, desperately I tried, but it was as if I wasn’t there at all. Blank eyed and emotionless, they tread onwards even now as I write this. I have never seen them falter, much less stop. Even when a rat scuttled in the way. The poor thing didn’t start a chance, now crushed under the shoe of a student.

I followed them down the corridors for…time. It could have been days or weeks, or just hours. It could have been a few seconds for all I know. At this point, my mind does more than wander. I’m practically in wonderland most the time. Nothing exists outside the infested hallways. Time and space might as well be as real as the Easter bunny, or the queen of England.

I only snapped out of it when I realized I could hear something I couldn’t before. Only out of my right ear, though. My left one has grown over with the mold at this point. For every step I took, I could hear a fain echoing sound. Step. Step. Step.

I looked down and I was stepping on a fine, black tile.

There are more students up ahead, their clothes in stark, white contrast to the black world around me. We are walking through a long, tall hallway. The walls on either side are looming. Seeing the ceiling is impossible. Within the walls, every hundred feet or so, are alcoves within them. They are all the same shape and size, almost like a large, fat teardrop.

The only thing that makes them different are the people- the things inside. I’m laying in one now. Qaaos said I need the rest. He’s right.

Qaaos in one of the things that live in the alcove. He is taller than be, though not much. He takes the appearance of a fat man under a long white cloak, but there is no body under the cloak. Only shade. He glitters like freshly fallen snow with every movement, the light from the fire bouncing off him in fine particles.

In front of me is an anvil and a fire. A cauldron with water, and a small bench of tools like I’ve never seen before. Qaaos says he is a smith.

He scraped off some of the mold growing on my body as I slept. When I woke up he answered many questions in a strange voice I can only describe as an otherworldly Santa Claus.

He was able to cut most the mold from around my lips, and he tore it from my throat. He cleaned some from my ear and nostrils, though much of it stays on my face.

I’d ask where we were- where I was, and he’d say: “You are not where you are, aren’t you?? You are here, and you’re not. You feel your feet in The Hall To God, but not your feet. Yours.”

Very helpful.

“Is this Psy High??” “This?? No. That?? Yes. You are, you aren’t. It was, not it’s was not.”

“Where am I??” “The Hall To God.”

“Where are they going??” The ghostly students continue to walk by. “They had their duty, and they knew it. You know it, but you don’t know. One day you’ll know it. Soon you’ll know you know. They’re going to God.”

“They’re dead??!” “Dead??! Dead. No. Never dead. Are you dead?? Never. Just as your body rests while you are here, they are there as their bodies go To God. Just as yours had and will and will always and will never.”

“Where do I go, then??” “Talk to God. Talk to God.”

As annoying as his answers were, I forgot all my peeves when he places a large bowl of soup in my lap.

I don’t know what kind, and I don’t care. I. Was. Hungry.

When I finish this, I’ll say goodbye to Qaaos. I’ll follow the rest of the students, and I guess I’ll meet God.

If I ever get back home, I think I’ll start a cult or something dedicated to Qaaos. If you get past his bad advice, he’s a pretty good guy.

I owe him one for the soup.

Until then, I guess I’ll go meet God.

Paradi. C. Benzene.

Nothing but stairs. 

“Hope you like stairs,” said @Jonononathan Riggs. He was a pretty scrawny kid back at school, but the middle aged millionaire body he was in was in good shape. 

So we kept going up. Nobody knew exactly how to get to Mr. Sterne’s office. School lore just always called it “upstairs.” And being stuck in the access shafts between realities, it began to make a certain sense. 

“Maybe we could... take a… short break,” said @old noah new samuel. He was in the oldest body of us all, and the relentless stair climbing was taking its toll. He panted on the landing. 

“When we pause on a landing too long,” said @Field Marshal Olivia, “is when the other paths open up. Like that!”

Now there were two staircases going up, and two going down. 

“We’re best off if we can keep a steady pace,” Olivia continued. “But really it’s all about intention.”

“Theese one. Theese is the way to Mr. Sterne,” @Sabrina Duncan said. 

“Okay people — you heard the man” said Olivia. “But that Russian accent is totally fake. How did you even convince anybody back on the front, Sabrina-Alexy?”

Meeting God is a pretty intimidating concept.

As I walked away from Qaaos, I found myself missing the comfort his little smithy provided. There were more figures in the holes in the walls, but none of them spoke like he did. Just snowy, robe covered creatures of all shapes, sizes, and seemingly professions watching wordlessly.

Halls. Caverns. Corridors. Stairs. Stairs. Stairs.


I can’t describe to you how many stairs I’ve stepped up. All I know is stairs.


Until I reached the platform.


It’s completely black, except the large, red, holographic impact font in front of me.







GOD IS COMING
2:59

2:58

2:57


.


.


.



Paradi. C. Benzene.

"Do you have an appointment?" asked the woman at the desk.

She was definitely representing as a woman. A middle aged woman in comfortable office clothes, pearls, big glasses and big hair.

"Uh, no," I answered. "But Mr. Sterne said we had a special waiver? Like, a hall pass? And whenever we needed to use it -- only in emergencies of course -- then we could come up and see him. 'Anytime,' he said. So here we are! Tell him it's Olivia."

The woman at the desk didn't even look at me.

"Then the hall pass will do." She put out her hand.

"Well, it WAS an emergency, so we had to leave in a hurry and I didn't have it on me so we had to just go. Come. Here. To see him. I'm sure that if you let him know it's Olivia from the kids he visited at Alt-Psy High that he'll want to know. We share a special connection."

There was no such connection. Somebody saw what they thought was the back of his head walk into the principal's office once, and so we all had this story that it was the famous and likely mythical Mr. Sterne you read about in the archives. But here it turns out there was something to it.

"You have admitted of your own volition and free will that you were roaming the access corridors without a hall pass. I'm sorry sweetie but we're gonna have to put you through processing."

She hit a button on her keyboard and started talking into her headset.

"Yeah Ricky? I've got a group of seven juveniles that just came through the Sector B Subcluster with no papers. Gonna need your help."

"Roger that" said the tiny voice coming out of her earphones.

God is actually a pretty cool guy once you get past his looks.

Think of a giant, floating, lumpy shaped head covered in thin, stringy fur. Huge, round eyes that never move or blink, bloodshot and pupils blown. A wide open mouth that takes up the rest of the head the eyes don’t occupy. A few, straggly sharp teeth. A blood red tongue. On either side of the head are the ears of a squirrel, above them protrude giant goats horns that wrap around in a circle, penetrating into the flesh right above the eye. That’s God, and God is HUGE.

I can only describe God’s voice as a sort of maniacal giggle, fused bloodily with the squeaks of a squirrel. Take that voice and multiply it by a thousand speakers, and you can almost start to imagine what God sounded like.

Once the timer count down to zero, God appeared. No fanfare. No excitement. One moment there was black, the next there was God.

We talked for a while. I’m not going to waste battery life imbedding quotes. Nobody better be grading this.

“ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ᓭℸ ̣

After a series of diagnostic tests, we were sent to a waiting room.

"What about our old bodies? @old noah new samuel asks. "Can you put us back in them?"

"Sorry hon. Doesn't work that way," said the lady at the desk.

We waiting in the room for what felt like an eternity. There were magazines but languages we couldn't read. There was a wall-mounted TV that only played cooking shows and we couldn't change the channel. The chairs were too uncomfortable to sleep in.

"Mr. Sterne will see you now," the lady told us, and a door buzzed open.

"It's dark, but don't worry. He likes it that way. Just keep shuffling down the corridor and you'll know when you get there."

The door buzzed shut behind us.

And then the giant floating head of Mr. Sterne appeared. He didn't look at all like we pictured. He was a giant, bulbous, bumpy head covered with long stringy hair that hung like jungle vines. Big oozy googly eyes and a giant drooly spikey mouth. And horns and pointy ears.

And when we spoke he filled the room with the most hideous, soul-wrenching screech of noise we'd ever heard, and it drove us to our knees.

WUT? U WERE EXPECTING SOMEONE TALLER?*





*translated from hideous, soul-wrenching screech language