I've Given All I Can, But We're Still On The Payroll

The timeline, as I understand it, culled from rumor and police questioning.  Early last week was the last time Dr. Ellison was seen.  Apparently Michael's been missing since that Wednesday.  Thursday morning, Dr. Ellison's head was discovered in the woods.  By the time I was questioned, they'd found the rest of him, more or less.  I guessed from his research that it might be the Empty City.  This isn't the City.  Nobody finds a body if the City gets you.  I've been dismissing shadows as paranoia...but what if it's the Nightlanders, crawling around the hallways?  Escaping from the Doors that his research opened?

But they terrorize.  They punish.  They may break someone's neck in anger, for disobedience, but I've never heard of the shadow men ripping someone apart.  And what the hell is up with the fire?  Are they really trying to conceal Dr. Ellison's work?  Was it dangerous to them, somehow?  Are they some kind of puppets of the City itself?  

And speaking of concealment...no news on the dismembered body, at all.  It's a fire and a mysterious disappearance.  Might be the Panopticon at work...but nobody seems to even want to talk about what happened, or speculate.  It's actually starting to remind me of how people react when I ask them about the murder last year.

And if that's the connection, what the unholy fuck does Tall, Dapper, and Dangerous have to do with any of it?

I've Given All I Can, It's Not Enough

When the world is insane, sometimes you have to lie to the authorities.  Especially when they don't have any real clues or suspects.  But the lying comes later.  I'll start at the beginning, last Thursday.  Police and CSI in the halls of the engineering building.  I introduced myself as a student who'd just gotten out of my Forensic Anthropology course, and was interested in investigation procedure.  Some bullshit about understanding if there was any kind of problem, yada-yada, not wanting to get in the way, and I completely failed to be let anywhere near the scene.  What I did have was a conversation with a law enforcement officer responsible for keeping people away from the scene.  Within sight of the scene.  Though not the original scene, as it turned out.

The place I was watching them investigate was Dr. Ellison's office.  I saw no initial signs of trouble from where I was, but overheard some other gawkers mention he'd been missing for a few days.  My immediate thought was that his research had continued, with Michael Ng's help, and had drawn the attention of the City.  It was easy to imagine him opening the door to his office, and walking off the map completely.  I was starting to look around, worried that the City would want me back, since it had already been here...when they brought out the desk.  

Apparently a tenured professor gets quite a large, impressive desk.  It must've been nice, because it was still quite an impressive piece of work, even as a charred husk.  They carried it out in two pieces, the fire seemed to have started in the middle and burned through the most there.  I asked why this wasn't an arson investigation, and he told me they hadn't expected a fire.  Which told me pretty quickly that this wasn't the primary point of investigation.  So I tried to find out more.  

Obvious advice time, runners, researchers, observers, and miscellaneous troubled individuals...when there's an ongoing homicide investigation, and strange things that puzzle the detectives are already afoot, it does not pay to be too interested or insightful.  It really doesn't pay to be the one to ask questions about the other missing person associated with the case, or the research that was destroyed in the mysterious fire.  Unless you like those rooms with the one-way mirrors and the uncomfortable chairs, and having to wait for hours for the police to question you.  

Finding out that the last people I talked to about the Empty City had mysteriously vanished had me a bit jumpy.  Being stuck in a small room with a flickering lightbulb and the shadows jumping around and only a single door to leave by didn't really help either.  The good part is, being completely innocent in any rational way will get you off the hook.  Eventually.  While I was being questioned, I found out about the first crime scene, and the bloody mess that eventually brought the cops and the crime scene guys to Dr. Ellison's office.  Breaking the story here, I'll tell you what I was able to learn within a day.

It's Just Like Watching The Detectives

Class ended half an hour early. Police and men in suits in the halls. Looks more like an investigation than an emergency. Will try to find out what's going on. Will post later.

Gonna End Up A Big Ol' Pile O' Them Bones

Been busy.  Osteology quiz, so spending my free time studying instead of bugging Math TAs.  Have left small squares of electrical tape out of normal line of sight on the doors I'm supposed to pass through on the way to class.  Useful so far, learning the layout, counting steps.  Still a creepy building.  There's a strange noise in the halls when I'm alone, like wind, but not quite.  The only word that really describes it is "susurrus," something I had to dig from the depths of my vocabulary.

Two pieces of dubiously good news.  First is that I got a look at the summer dormitory telephone listing, found the number for the roommate of last year's probable Slender Man victim.  Second one, take a look:

Yellow Chalk is back.  On the upside, it's someone I might be able to help, or learn from.  The downside is that where there's a runner, there's almost always something to run from.  Remembering the trouble that none of us can get away from really brightens the fuck out of my day.

Arrest This Man, He Talks In Maths

Paranoid examination of the math department has been delayed.  It turns out that Michael Ng, graduate student and teaching assistant for Business Math or whatever it is, has office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3PM.  A perfect time to visit and ask about his notebook and what he meant about the gates.

He seemed startled when I walked in, panicky almost, until I spoke up.  Maybe something's already been threatening him?Tried to kick me out since I wasn't in any of the classes he graded for.  When I told him that I'd seen something familiar in the notebook, that caught him.  He was too curious to make me leave.

Which brings me to the question of how you tell an insane mathematician from the regular kind.  I recognized the word "fractal" in all the babbling, and some of the rest seemed to maybe be about theoretical physics?  I don't know, really, Anthropology isn't the kind of science where you need much math beyond statistical analysis.  What I understood is that Michael was working on the calculations in the notebook for Dr. Ellison, his boss.  Helping to check over some of the professor's research.

Long story short, I have no clue what the fuck he's talking about, but it's apparently really exciting.  Probability math and chaos theory.  It's shown an amazing ability to predict a number of near-random events, like weather and urban growth patterns.  Except, sometimes, it just can't.  At certain unpredictable places and times, the predictions fail, and form what he called a Fractal Probability Loop.  Which to me just sounds like a cereal for math geeks.  I'll quote his explanation:  "You can't find an answer.  Every prediction's margin of error is an imaginary number that trying to correct for leads you into a different prediction, but there's another imaginary number that pops up, and so on to infinity.  Like pi.  No, not pie, 3.14159 etcetera.  It never ends, and we don't think these errors end."

So I brought him back to the gate question.  He said it was from a dream.  He'd been working on the problem way too many hours, and was starting to see the numbers in his sleep.  When he fell asleep, he saw a hallway full of doors labelled with imaginary numbers.  (Note to non-math people, I don't mean things like levenge, or bleem, or that one mathematical SCP, I just mean numbers useful in calculations despite having no real-world equivalent...square roots of negative numbers, and things like that.)  Every time he went through a door, he found himself in a different universe.  Then he got lost, and it started to sound like he was describing a nightmare.  A growing silence, nothing but still air, light without shadows, shadowy shapes chasing him through the doors.  He scribbled that phrase on the notebook after he woke up, terrified.  He told me he planned to see if any part of it might be a useful message from his subconscious, to help with the research.  He hasn't done that yet.  I think he was too frightened to remember and try to use it.  He claims he just forgot.

I told him it might be better not to look into it.  That if it gave him nightmares, maybe it's something he wasn't meant to know about.  Because avoiding things man was not meant to know is EXACTLY why I started actively searching out Fear activity.  I can't expect any less from a scientist...looks like he'll be pursuing some new avenues of research based on his dream.

I don't think I made things better.

I'm Not Sick, But I'm Not Well

Nothing left behind by the class before us today.  I checked, apparently the class is one of those Math for Humanities Majors type of courses.  I doubt any of those guys even know half the symbols in the notebook, much less the math.  And if it does belong to one of them, it's weird enough to look into.  Maybe the TA?  They usually sit in front of the class, so it would be the right desk.

On the "Sarcastic Observer is an obsessive-compulsive weirdo" front, I've been keeping track of the layout of the building, and nothing seems to be added or missing yet.  Okay, just to step back and recognize that I know how crazy I am...I am keeping an eye on a building, in case it makes any sudden moves.  Maybe psychological counseling actually is a thing that I should do.

Not yet.  If I end up talking about the source of my paranoia, I'll look delusional, or schizophrenic.  If the City is out to get me, I'm not crazy to keep an eye out for it.  And the Door I found on campus was on the same building that I'm in now.  Not sure if it matters.  I think I'll have to take some time after class tomorrow, give the halls a proper going-over.

Is This A Test? It Has To Be

New building.  Phobia of getting lost, and of unknown doors.  BIG FUCKING FUN, LET ME TELL YOU.  Turns out we got moved to the math department for a bigger room, and that's why we're not in any of my usual places on campus.  So I'm wandering small hallways, counting doors.  Doesn't help that it's an old building with weird acoustics.  Navigating the place has me so paranoid that I keep thinking I spot people behind me in mirrors or windows.  When I look straight at it, there's nothing there, though.  It's worse than yesterday, but maybe once I learn the place I'll get better.  Otherwise I'm going to have to see the campus shrink, or something.
Speaking of creepy, I found a notebook under my desk.  Turned it in to the department office.  Looks like mostly higher mathematics, but written on the back was "THEY ARE NOT MISTAKES, THEY ARE GATES"

I Woke Up In A Soho Doorway

School's back in.  Forensic Anthropology class should provide useful information and possibly access to investigate some of the...messier fears.  And if nothing happens, it should at least stimulate the part of my brain that somehow still enjoys creepy things.
Class is in a section of the building I haven't spent much time in before.

I Linger In The Doorway

So, if I think about it, one of the worst things that can happen has already happened.  A Fear got me.  And now I'm fine.  It's time to be overconfident now, so I can get myself killed!  Except hell no.  Still being careful, still hiding from the Panopticon.  The good news on that front is that I've seen no sign of them near my house.  The bad news is that their stupid flyers have started showing up on the student bulletin boards.

But that's something to worry about when classes get back in, for summer session.  For now, let's talk about the City.  Too many blogs end there, in surreal rambling.  Sanity slippage and very little chance of escape puts us in a situation where almost nothing is known of the place.  I want to change that.  We can't fight if we're ignorant.  Hell, we can't even run, if we don't know what we're running from.

A caveat, to begin.  This is my personal experience, months ago, seen through the lens of mildly frayed sanity.  Don't trust my information if you have anything better.  Let's begin with the first mistake.  You've gone through the wrong Door.  Normal situation, you don't notice for awhile, or you notice immediately and panic.  Do not panic.  Especially do not run.  Vitally important, DO NOT FUCKING TURN AROUND.  Once the door has closed behind you, it won't take you home.  Most doors in the City behave like this.  Let them close, and they won't lead to the same place as before.  Doors with windows, glass doors, that kind of thing, are a different story.  Nothing in the City seems to change while it's being observed.

And that's the key that will get you out, if you're lucky.  The better you are at keeping track of where you've been, and where you are, the less the City can shift on you.  The City is a parasite on reality, and the first few places I found there had a lot in common with the place that I left.  Most of the time.  I live in a small town, and for the most part the City followed a similar theme when I was there...except for one door, which opened onto a subway station.  Obviously, these doors just take you deeper into chaos.  Avoid them, if you can.  Stay to what you recognize.

When trapped anywhere, starvation is always an issue.  Proxiehunter and any number of runners have great advice for living on the streets, and that probably applies in the City.  There are a few abandoned shops, if you're willing to trust the food.  Assuming the City's copy of the place contains food.  I avoided eating it, the legends of consuming food offered in Faerie scared me off, at first.  The city's not as empty as the name would have you believe.  I heard pigeons, occasionally.  Clubbed a crow to death with a lucky swing.  And, of course, good old Rattus norvegicus has done what it does with all cities.  I'm going to assume that's what I heard scuttling around, anyway.

I'm sorry, but I'll have to end it here.  Whenever I try to think too hard about how I got out, I get a splitting headache.  It's worse if I've been thinking about the city before then.  Basic escape strategy...go to the places that are more like the real world.  Home is usually the best target, but anywhere you can remember in near-photographic detail is the right idea.  The right path puts more things back in their proper place, avoids letting the random drift of change in the City take you further away from reality.

That's about all I can offer.  I never saw the Nightlanders.  No shadows at all, actually.  There's no easy way out, and I can't really communicate all the little clues I learned to notice.  I have the sense that I only scratched the surface of that place, that thinking of it as a city only scratches the surface of what it is.  When I slept there, I dreamed of what I'd find if I went deeper into the chaos, closer to the center of the City.  I remember the idea of a vast abyss, deeper than the universe.  Happily, I don't remember my dreams much at all, anymore, since I got out.

Don't Stop Believin'

I am no fucking hero.  I'm still tempted to file the City away in my mind as the worst nightmare ever.  Maybe ignore the Operator symbols.  Leave it all alone.
But, hell no.  I'm going to investigate that suspicious noise outside, in the dark and stormy night.  The escaped lunatic from the mental institution down the road just makes it a little more challenging.  That, and six months of nothing weird happening couldn't get it out of my mind.  Why would stopping now be any different?
Besides, I'm betting cowardice in the face of the Fears is a recipe for not living very much longer.

Been Down, Isn't It A Pity

The City exists.  The Panopticon tried to hide it.  I have photographs.  This realization has been creeping up on me.  When the impossible happens, your mind wants to disbelieve it, in spite of the evidence.

Fuck this shit, I know know what happened, no matter how much I hoped I was actually crazy.  I mean, I probably am a little crazy, but my sanity was at least nailed down a little more solidly before November of last year.  Creepypasta, a long hallway, and a shadow I thought was Slender Man...I mentioned that already.  Freaked out, decided to duck into the computer room and smack the light switch.  Wrong door.  Wrong Door, really.  The light didn't come on.  And then it wasn't the right room.  And then there was another door.  I wasn't on the proper floor of the building.  I wasn't near my apartment anymore, didn't know any of the buildings.

It got worse.  Much worse.  Days of fucking worse.  Are the Convocation edible, or do pigeons and ravens manage to get lost in the City too?  Whichever it is, I caught one.

There's a pattern there.  I've read about the City being alive.  I think it's a parasite.  Parts of the world become part of it.  It connects to them, copies them.  No door leads out of the City, they say.  Nothing ever comes back.  Unless the City wants to let you go.

I don't think that's the case.  I recognized pieces of everywhere I went in the City.  Not that I went far.  It's not random, the places it uses.  I only traveled a block, and it all still looked a lot like home.  No people, though, and a weird kind of light that doesn't make shadows.

It's like there's only two real directions there.  Chaos and order.  Meticulously look for a way out.  Meticulously observe your surroundings.  Maybe a borderline case of OCD helps.  Getting out made it a hell of a lot worse, I can tell you that.

But one night, long enough to get hungry again after the corvid, I found my way to a Door, in a long hall. It was across from another door, a closet, and that door was six inches from a third door.  An open door led to a laundry room.  It matched perfectly with the place I'd left.  And when I opened the Door again, I walked into my computer room.  The light switch worked.

If I don't know exactly where I am at all times, I worry I'll find my way back to the City.  Little rituals help me trust my memory, help me keep everything orderly.  Things were normal long enough that I started to think that the worsening of my obsessive behavior almost overnight was just stress.  The final project that semester was a bitch, after all.

But, I had to check, just to be sure it was all my imagination.  And it turns out that this shit is real, and I am in no way prepared to deal with it.  Consequently, I am freaking the fuck out, and my mask of competence is slipping.

So, Proxiehunter, that's why I'm pretty sure the obsessive behavior isn't EAT.

Pressure

Two weeks at home before summer term starts.  That's two weeks of safety, which I suppose I should appreciate.  Two weeks in a place where I know the number of doors.  I know the hall closet is six inches from the bedroom door, and that the laundry room door is never closed.  It's also two weeks in which the Slender Man can stalk the person with the yellow chalk.  Not that they're likely to come back over the summer.  If you're being stalked, why not flee home, possibly to another state?  How many victims know that you can't really escape the Fears, once you've gotten their attention?  I suppose they all do, eventually.

Yeah, that was cheerful.  Way to keep your spirits up, self.

I can't just sit here and ignore Those Which Go Bump In The Night.  I suppose since there's nothing to watch out for, I can at least do some research.  See if I can find out anything about the Panopticon, maybe work on getting a Freedom of Information request in about the dead girl.  That, and keep an eye on the Runner blogs.  Always a chance to notice something that was missed.  

Watching Him Dash Away, Swinging An Old Bouquet

My self-appointed Observer status is now on self-inflicted probation.  Three weeks I've been glancing at this picture when I post, or check for comments.  Three weeks in which I could have been searching for the person making the operator symbols, instead of stumbling on one the very last day before everyone leaves for the summer.  Ladies and gentlemen...look and see shit that I completely missed, zoomed in for ease of observation!   

Operator symbol.  Yellow chalk.  Three motherfucking weeks.

At least no one died.

Yet.

That I know of.  

Shit.