Chapter Text
Date: Apr 7, 2004
Time: 6:14:00 pm
Video Source: Fenton Labs, Security Camera
Video Contents:From a fixed camera set in the lab’s ceiling we take in the scene. Three teenagers, barely more than children, play in a sterile lab. The space is made of polished aluminum and bare concrete, if it wasn't for the color they’d brought with them to the windowless underground room the camera could have been mistaken for recording in black and white.
Though there is no sound, the teens' body language speaks loudly, boisterous. Danny pulls a modified hazmat suit out of a locker and puffing up his face, begins some kind of miming routing that makes the other two teens laugh. [The Goth], a white girl dressed all in black, her makeup heavy, points towards a large metal arch set into the wall of the lab.
Danny glances at it and his smile falters, but [The Nerd] a black boy with thick rimmed glasses and a yellow turtleneck, joins in on the discussion. The idea is infectious and whatever reservations Danny may have had seem to melt away, he gathers a full kit of gear from the locker and is soon striking poses in the arch.
[The Goth] snaps photos as the [The Nerd], wracked with laughter, braces himself against a computer console. Unnoticed by all, [The Nerd]’s fingers brush a button on the computer’s controls.
Revolving red warning lights at the top of the arch come to life, bathing the room in scarlet light, between them a sign reads “Danger, do not Enter.”
Two of the teens freeze where they stand, moving neither to help their friend or run away.
Danny turns his head to look behind him, deeper in the arch.
Green lightning splits the air where he stands, and static floods the image.
End of File.
Date: Apr 7, 2004
Time: 6:41:00 pm
Date: Unavailable
Time: Unavailable
Video Source: Fenton Image Recording Gadget with Integrated Listening
Video Contents:A blurry pink blob on screen resolves itself into the panicked face of a teenage boy as F.I.R.G.I.L.’s camera adjusts the focus to minimum distance. Danny’s eyes aren’t focused on the camera lens, they’re busy reading something on the camera’s display. Apparently happy with what he sees, Danny smiles and focuses on the camera.
“If somebody finds this, I’m ok.” His voice shakes with unspent adrenaline. “I lived, bitches.”
End of File.
Danny paused the recording, that was stupid, who talked like that? Maybe he’d delete it later, or record over it or something.
He’d woken up on this floating rock a few minutes earlier, his head throbbing and feeling like he was about to puke. It had been all he could manage to lay on his side waiting for it to pass.
Which by the way, is an excellent way to process that you’re on a purple rock floating in an endless void. If it ever comes up.
He pressed record again, narrating as he panned its view 360 degrees. “I’m not really sure what happened, one minute I was in my parents’ lab and the next I was here… Wherever here is, but I’ve never seen anything like it.”
All around him is an ocean of green mist that goes on forever in every direction, speckled with islands of floating purple stone. Up or down, it doesn’t make a difference, the floating islands are everywhere, challenging the idea of earth or sky. There’s no sun or horizon to navigate by, the whole place lit in an eerie glow that seems to come from the mists themselves.
Danny carefully poked his head over the edge, staring down into the abyss. There was no bottom to it, the mist just made everything hazier the further out he looked until he couldn’t make out anything in them anymore.
And for all that expanse, not a sign of life.
“It’s just you and me out here F.I.R.G.I...” Danny said, talking to the camera. He tried to think of something else to say, some big idea or important information to share with his hypothetical future audience, but what could he say?
The silence stretched for a long time.
“I think I’m going to turn the camera off for a while.” He said, his voice hitching. “Focus on getting home.”
Date: Unavailable
Time: Unavailable
Video Source: Fenton Image Recording Gadget with Integrated Listening
Video Contents:“Are you seeing this?” Danny’s voice is a whisper, over the whir of the camera zooming in. Unsteady in his hands it tracks in on glowing lights in the distant mists, specs of light moving like a school of fish. “Something is out there, I thought I saw them before, but I wasn’t sure.”
End of File.
He’d spotted them after staring off into the void for an hour, trying his walkie talkie twenty times, and crying a little.
The lights danced in the distant sky; not really going anywhere, but moving with an energy that felt alive. He wonders where they’re going, or if they’re going anywhere at all? It’s hard to tell distance in this place, or size. He could be looking at the world’s weirdest meteor shower or a bunch of Christmas Tree lights his parents had accidentally dropped through the portal when packing up in January.
One by one the lights begin to fade; he didn’t know if they were just going out, or if they were getting too far away to see, or getting sucked out of the world just as he’d been sucked into. But each light that went out left him a little more alone in the empty place.
“No!” Danny yelled as the last of the lights began to wink out. He waved an arm above his head. “I’m over here!”
When the lights didn’t return he dug into the pockets of his Fenton Science Suit™ and withdrew an emergency flare; with a crack and a hiss red light bathes the purple stone. The red light of a Fenton Emergency Signal Flare painted the green mist around them a pinkish brown and the purple stone a bloody color.
“I’M HERE!” Danny’s voice casts out into the mists and is swallowed by their vastness, not leaving even an echo in their wake. “I’M OVER HERE!”
One light flickered to life again. It sat frozen, the stillness disconcerting, all of its playful movements gone. Then with a jolt it began to move again; crossing the immeasurable distance in moments.
The light, [The Blob], stops abruptly just out of arm's reach. Zipping this way and that, surveying Danny from all sides. Moving slowly he picked up his camera and started recording again, trying to keep the thing in frame.
Date: Unavailable
Time: Unavailable
Video Source: Fenton Image Recording Gadget with Integrated Listening
Video Contents:The fist sized creature is a blob of a semi-translucent green substance, not dissimilar to lime jell-o, and it glows with an inner light a brighter shade of green than this strange place’s sky. Its movements are playful, excited, as it circles Danny; each bob and weave sending ripples through its gelatinous form.
“Hey buddy,” Danny calls to [the Blob], ‘What are you?”
The thing didn’t answer Danny’s question. Its movement didn’t even register on the camera’s microphone; its passage didn’t even disturb the mists it played in.
End of File.
“Are you a friendly little guy? Do you know where we are?” Danny stretched out his hand, palm up like he was trying to make friends with a strange cat. [The Blob] slowed and drew close, just out of Danny’s reach. “Can you show me how to get out of here?”
It paused at these words, perhaps trying to understand the request or considering an answer. Then it zipped to a nearby section of floating rock, one only a few feet away from Danny’s own.
“You can’t be serious? I’d die!”
[The Blob] remained stubbornly floating over the platform.
He stared at the neighboring island, it was a foot lower than his and maybe eight feet away. Not impossible. “This is so stupid.”
“At least it’ll hurt less than starving to death.” He retreated to the far side of his little island in the mists. With the thump of heavy treads on stone, Danny sprinted for the edge and lept, the empty mists beneath him filling his view. He screamed, voice blending courage and terror, and for a moment he’s flying.
The shout ends with a whump of expelled air as Danny crashes onto the neighboring platform. “I did it.” he wheezed, rolling onto his back and enjoying the sweet feeling of solid stone beneath him.
After a minute he climbed to his feet again. “Now, where’s my little buddy?”
“Ah,” He sighed, spotting [The Blob] floating above the next platform over. “I guess we have to do it again.”
Again, Danny prepares his running start and launches into a run.
Again, a whoop of excitement and fear fills the air.
He falls short.
Date: Unavailable
Time: Unavailable
Video Source: Fenton Image Recording Gadget with Integrated Listening
Video Contents:In a blur the rock whips up and past the camera’s view.
Danny’s excited roar turns to a scream of fear.
Far above we catch a glimpse of the islands disappearing into the mist, before the view is obstructed as Danny clutches the camera to his chest.
You can barely hear him now, his words are lost to the roar of wind as he plunges faster and faster into the mists.Is he cursing? Begging for help? Trying to leave some final message?
In a deafening silence, the screen cuts to black.
End of File.