Entry 4 Part Two

From the Audio Journal of Niles Dantes

November 19^th, 1981

I strove first to communicate with the children. Though efforts at conventional speech continued to be of no avail, I pressed onward, channeling all my thought, all my will, into a single mental command that, soundless though it were, seemed to echo throughout the phantom chamber.

Heed me.

As one, the children turned in my direction, alarm and confusion spreading across their faces at the voice that seemed to have come from nowhere. Indeed, even as they gazed toward me, their eyes remained unseeing, darting back and forth uncertainly. Was I invisible, then? Present in some physical capacity that remained shrouded to the inhabitants of this strange realm of my own making? Or was I a spirit disembodied, set adrift by some higher power or incomprehensible wrinkle of fate? My inability to move implied the latter.

Regardless of the nature of my state or its cause, the children could not see the source of the voice they had clearly all heard. As mass panic threatened to set in among them, I ‘spoke’ once more, attempting to shift my thoughts into a softer tone as I asked that they remain calm.

Their nervous murmurings and wavering glances only intensified at this. A few of the children began crying. When I restated my desire for them to be at ease, hysteria finally erupted, as all of the children began screaming and frantically running this way and that, some huddling into corners, others fleeing from the room or otherwise passing beyond my still static field of view.

All save one.

An auburn-haired girl of perhaps nine held her ground, her fear clearly matched by resolve tinged with curiosity.

“Please, whoever you are, whatever you are, don’t hurt us”, she whispered, still glancing about in a vain attempt to see me.

I shan’t harm you, child. I merely wish to speak with you, to gain understanding. I am…new…here and unsure of a great many things.

“Who…who are you?”

My name is Niles Dantes, and I…

Our conversation was interrupted as the screaming of the others intensified. Between the noise and continued unease caused by my disembodied state, it was becoming increasingly difficult to muster the level of concentration needed to continue speaking in this unorthodox fashion. I must confess that I am generally not a very patient man, and here my frustration finally boiled over. I issued another command at the entire room, inadvertently willing the children into a single state, the potency of my thoughts strengthened by my anger.

Be still!

And still they were. Every last individual in that room was suddenly deathly quiet, frozen in place without so much as a blinking eyelid or quivering muscle to be seen. To my horror, they remained that way, petrified, their unaltered appearances the only thing distinguishing them from the hapless victims of a Gorgon. Even the brave girl I was conversing with was so inflicted, her head imprisoned in a slight tilt begun by her curiosity and preserved by my own foolishness.

I had only meant to tell the children to be still, not force this terrible state upon them! I frantically began attempting to issue thoughts reversing the affliction, yet my mind was drained, hollow, devoid of the energy needed to issue a command of sufficient strength.

Even as I stared into the frozen blue eyes of the poor child I had been speaking to, she and rest of the surrounding world were gone. Physical sensation was restored, and I found myself slumped on the couch of my apartment, exactly as I had planned before.

I had returned.

Note from the author: I apologize for the long delay since the previous post. I was suffering from an infuriating case of writer's block. For the final few entries of the narrative, I have decided to alter the format of user feedback in order to give you, the audience, greater influence. Rather than offer a binary choice, I instead pose a question: The little girl that spoke to Dantes in this entry will become a recurring character for the rest of the story. Given that she is essentially a tabula rasa within the context of the narrative, what kind of personality traits would you like her to develop? What should her name be? I will attempt to incorporate as many responses as possible into future entries.

Entry 4 Part One

From the Audio Journal of Niles Dantes

 

November 19^th, 1981

*Begin Recording*

Success!

This morning, I was able, after some trial and error, to trigger an experience similar to that which occurred five days ago. Given that they are indeed not some hallucination or once in a lifetime anomaly, I have decided to call these moments Reaches, after the crossing that seems to occur of the gap between my own reality and that fashioned by my mind. 

I began today’s Reach by working with a variant of the previous trigger phase. Inscribing The clothes and food of children are plain and simple resulted in a world that was most unpleasant, despite my intentions for creating an uplifting piece of writing. The first course of action was to determine the cause of this disparity. Was it a lack of specification in the actual wording? Or were my thoughts not focused enough when writing? Though I am well aware that it is terribly unscientific to alter more than a single variable at a time, I had no desire to create an exact replica of the initial Reach. As such, I decided to change both my writing and thought processes.

Lying stretched out on my couch so as to avoid another physical collapse, I began by calming myself and steadying my breathing, adopting an almost meditative state as I began to fashion my thoughts around a singular purpose. Children, bright and innocent, unburdened by the cynicism and weight of a fallen world, free to express unguarded emotion, each with a mind unique in its swirling ebbs and flows. An elementary school cafeteria, a safe, warm haven bustling with these young individuals, all contently enjoying meals according to their varying tastes.

As this vision spread to fill every iota of my consciousness, I lifted my hand in a detached manner, inscribing The innocent children cheerfully ate together on the same sheet of paper I had used previously.

To my bewilderment, nothing happened.

Doubt began to cloud my mind, as I began to feel that, whatever I had previously experienced, it could not be so duplicated. Yet I continued on, driven by some urge I find difficult to describe. Perhaps it was due to the potential importance of this occurrence, as I mentioned in my previous entry. More likely it was simply plain stubbornness. Regardless, I calmed myself, refocusing my mind and writing the phrase again and again. On the fifth attempt, the Reach occurred.

The apartment around me vanished, replaced by a scene that, to my great excitement, was just as I had envisioned it: a cafeteria, of roughly the same dimensions as before, but now warmly lit, with walls and tables painted in vibrant reds and blues. Young children filled the room, their visages thankfully energetic and full of life rather than that terrible blankness, laughing and speaking with one another.

I presumed that, if the first Reach was anything to go by, my experiences in this new world were finite, cut off by some arbitrary passage of time. As such, I needed to make the most of the time I had, yet attempts to move or speak produced no result, as before.

Please vote for one of the following in the comments section below:

1. Attempt to move around.

2. Attempt to communicate with the children.

Entry 3

From the Audio Journal of Niles Dantes

November 18^th, 1981

*Begin Recording*

It would appear that I owe more to my time at the bank that I had appreciated. All those years of number crunching helped cultivate a methodical, meticulous approach to problem-solving, one that has proven beneficial in understanding my current dilemma. For the past several days, I have been considering my…experience...trying to make sense of it, to determine its cause. 

Strange though it seems…what am I saying? This entire ordeal is so far beyond the bounds of normalcy that ‘strange’ cannot possibly hope to do it justice...I believe the experience to be tied to my writing. The last thing that transpired before it began was my writing of the phrase The clothes and food of children are plain and simple. That in and of itself proves nothing, but the location I seem to have been transported to bore a distressing similarity to that phrase. The children there were all nigh identical and consumed identical food…they were plain and simple. Those aspects were accentuated to the point of being terrifying, but plain and simple they were nonetheless.

It stands to reason, then, that my experience would have been different if I wrote something else. I shaped it. Yet it was not as though I found myself transported to what I envisioned. I was attempting to write of innocence, not horrifying homogeny. Warmth and tenderness, not cold lifelessness. Why is this? 

The only clue I possess was my mental scream moments before returning, the one thing I did that seemed to have an effect on that strange world around me. It was not just a scream, but a thought, active and deliberate, unfocused though it was. Could I, through carefully controlled thoughts, have produced other, more desirable results? Moved around? Communicated? If so, could my thoughts not also shape the very nature of the world itself if somehow used in conjunction with writing?

I speak of such things because it strikes me as inevitable that, if my theories indeed be true, I shall eventually be drawn into such a realm again. After all, I cannot very well live out the rest of my days without writing anything at all, now can I? Assuming that to be the case, I must be prepared for such encounters, knowing both when they are most likely to occur and how to best cope with them. The prospect of contending with this for the rest of my life continues to fill me with fear, yet it is now joined by another emotion. I must confess that the possibilities of such experiences under proper control excite me. I could be on the threshold of uncovering some aspect of the human soul, hitherto unknown, with unfathomable power, one that would change the course of history and propel mankind into a new era! There would of course be an enormous amount of fame and fortune bestowed upon the man who discovered this magnificent secret, but that’s hardly important in comparison.

Ah…there I go, getting ahead of myself again. There’s no guarantee of such things, or even triggering further experiences, for that matter. Back to the present.

I have decided that, come morning, I will try to generate another such experience, one under more controlled conditions, in which I will attempt to both shape and navigate the world I find myself in.

*End of Recording*

Please vote for one of the following in the comments section below:

1. Write a revised version of the previous trigger phrase.

2.Experiment with entirely new phrases.

Entry 2

From the Audio Journal of Niles Dantes

November 15^th, 1981

*Begin recording*

I’ve gone mad.

Two days ago, I considered myself the perfect model of sanity. A little cynical and jaded around the edges, maybe, but still very much in the safe, comfortable haven that comes with having a sound mind. But now? There’s no other possible explanation for what happened yesterday. I’ve gone mad.

I…I suppose I should recount this from the beginning. Describe what hap…what I thought happened, while it’s fresh in my mind. I’ve not told anyone about this, nor do I intend on doing so. It’d only result in being shipped first-class to an asylum or callously dismissed as a babbling fool, neither of which sounds particularly helpful right about now. Still, having a record of this might well come in handy.

Anyway, I had just sat down and started to write. Nothing concrete, just some brainstorming here and there. I got the idea for something about innocence, children. Pleasantly uncynical train of thought amidst all that’s been going on in society the past few decades. I wanted to write about simplicity, how so much that’s screwed up in this world stems from complexities we’re oblivious to until after our formative years. I picked up the pen and jotted down The clothes and food of children are plain and simple. But as soon as I finished the sentence, I…I wasn’t there. My desk, my apartment, everything around me, all…gone.

I was somewhere else…a large room, practically devoid of color. It looked like a school cafeteria of sorts. Row after row of unpainted metal tables and benches filled the place. In the distance was a pair of doors, beyond which came a smell that vaguely reminded me of food. And around me…all around me were what I can only describe with great reluctance as children.

If kids they were, they were the most unsettling bunch I’ve ever seen. Utterly quiet, every last one of them, as they sat eating or moved in and out of the room. They were all about the same age, perhaps nine or ten, an even mix of boys and girls. Gender was just about the only distinguishing feature they had. Their faces weren’t identical, but they all shared the same sickly pale complexion, as though they’d been drained of lifeblood and color. Their eyes all had the same distant, unfocused look, as though, despite the actions they performed, no one was really home. All the boys wore their hair in the exact same short, cropped style, while each of the girls sported the same ponytail. Everyone wore the same clothes regardless of gender, muted brown button-up shirts and grey pants. All of those that were eating sported a tray with an identical bowl of some colorless sludge that looked like gruel.

I tried to take a step forward, only to find that I couldn’t move, that I couldn’t even feel my body. Trying to turn my head produced the same result. It was like I was frozen in place. A few seconds later I realized that I wasn’t even breathing…yet there was no burning ache signaling a need for oxygen. It was as though I had left my body, my mind plucked from its home and tossed in front of a window, leaving me with nothing more than my senses.

To say that I was terrified is unquestionably the greatest understatement that has ever been conceived in human history.

I tried to scream, to cry for help, yet no words emerged. As I began to panic, I thought as loudly as I could, a psychic, wordless cry that filled all of my mind. 

It…it appeared to have an effect. All in unison, every last one of those terrible, nearly identical children stared in my direction with those haunting, vacant gazes. I didn’t think it possible, but I became even more fearful. As I prepared to scream again…

I returned.

I found myself back in my apartment, sprawled out on the floor as though passed out from a night of heavy drinking. Taking a deep, urgent breath, I slowly sat up and managed to get on my feet.

A hot shower and night of fitful sleep helped stave off my inevitable reflections on what had transpired until today, but inevitable they were. So here I am, babbling to my journal like the madman that I must certainly be. Of course, my ravings haven’t come close to answering the most important question.

What am I to do now?

*End of recording*

Please vote for one of the following in the comments section below:

1. Ignore the experience and behave as though it never happened.

2. Try to determine the cause of the experience and recreate it under more controlled circumstances.