Work Text:
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ARCHIVIST
My sincerest apologies for the primitive equipment. I’d offer to use my laptop to record the statement, but based on your statement synopsis…
DARRIUS
That really wouldn’t be helpful to me.
ARCHIVIST
Right, and this building seems to screw with any sort of device made after 1990.
Now. Would you like to begin the statement?
DARRIUS
Ah, yeah. Sure. Let's start.
ARCHIVIST
Statement of Darrius Campbell, regarding a series of… [sighs] technological difficulties. Statement recorded direct from subject, 23rd of September, 2016.
Statement begins.
DARRIUS (STATEMENT)
Right. I’m a software engineer and I’ve spent pretty much all my life around computers. I, ah, worked at a technology store back in 2006 when people were still new to home computers. So you’d really think someone like me should be able to figure out a few glitches and problems. That’s all they were at the start. Seriously. Nothing more than a few programs going defunct. Or some data corrupting itself. Whatever; simple enough to deal with. At that point it was only the computers at work and despite my working at a tech company, the software and hardware we have there is barely good enough. So I really didn’t pay much mind to it. I fixed the problems every time I was called to and never thought much more of it. Except how frequently they actually occurred. That part was weird to me. Considering problems of that magnitude shouldn’t happen that frequently.
I started to pay a little more attention to it when the problems reached my personal computer. And then got so much worse. I have quite a decent computer, for the most part. It runs many resource intensive programs the computers at work can’t. So it sort of calls for me to have a decent computer. Anyway, on a machine like mine, there was very little chance that problems like the ones from work could occur. The problems at work were definitely caused by the fact that the hardware there is worse than anything I’ve ever seen. Computers don’t just go rogue. They don’t just break just with no prior warning. I did what anyone would’ve done and I booted it in safe mode to see if it’s a virus. Or I tried to. It didn’t work as it was meant to. I figured at that point it was stupid to keep trying to fix it, considering I’d been locked out of most actions that would require administrator privileges. Windows is notorious for liking to demand you have admin privileges even when you’re the primary user and the administrator. So the computer had just decided it’d lock me out of performing any and all potentially helpful actions.
Then the whole thing started artifacting. That’s a GPU problem. The screen displays all those sorts of graphics you’d see when hackers in movies take over a computer. And, ah, my boyfriend, Michael, he—
ARCHIVIST
Full names, please, Mr. Campbell.
DARRIUS
Oh, full names? Right. Okay. His name is Michael Shelley, if that’s anything—
ARCHIVIST
Michael Shelley? The one who worked here up until 2013? I thought he went missing?
DARRIUS
Well, I, [he taps the desk a couple times, rapidly speeding up, and then stops.] I didn’t know he worked here, he just told me I should make a statement here. I thought he had heard about you guys from the internet, or something. I’m not versed in this field.
ARCHIVIST
Okay, then… Statement resumes.
DARRIUS (STATEMENT)
Where was I… Oh, right, he suggested that I had hit a bad spot with the technology. Or my ability had ‘run out’. I didn’t know what he meant by that. I took the computer into my closest repair shop since I, for whatever reason, was unable to locate the root of the problem. The guy behind the counter looked at me like I was insane when he booted the thing up. The problems I was experiencing only happened when I was the person using it. He charged me £50 for the consultation, too.
The worst part of it all was about a month ago when I returned to work for the first time after having to call in sick for a bit. I had the worst imaginable pains in all of my joints and could barely walk—Ah, I’m getting off topic. So I’m the only person who works on my floor, right? The hallways are long and horrifying. Minimalist. Corporate. You know the type. Basically the exact opposite from what this place looks like.
There’s a sort of lonely feeling in the office every day. You’d get that feeling when the only person on the floor apart from security guards is yourself. Not the other day. The feeling of being lonely was replaced with the feeling of, I want to say anxiety? Or being watched. Something like that. Along with the endless hallways that could probably go on for hours and hours, all of the hallways lead into massive server rooms. All the server rooms have several towers contained within them. They’re well managed, since it’s mostly my job to keep everything up to conduct. Now, the entire floor is kept at well under standard room temperature. At about 10°C. It’s to prevent all the computer systems and servers from overheating when running high volumes of software.
There are a bunch of stupid rumours that go around between the guys at work that there’s something of a ghost living on my floor. That some guy died on the floor while trying to manage all the server towers. He got crushed by one, or something. They joke that I’m the next person to end up like that. They think that—despite the obvious technological reason for keeping the floor at that temperature—there’s a ghost decreasing the temperature. Or something. I don’t pay much mind to that since I’m considered somewhat of a sceptic.
Anyway, I start my usual rounds, I check through all of the standard procedures. The towers beep. A lot. And the room I was in also doubled as a storage room for recalled and de facto tech. Sometimes we take certain technology from stores and see if we can put it to use somewhere else. That’s TVs, computer monitors, casing, components, and sometimes broken cameras. It, [he laughs nervously] sounds really stupid, but I mentioned how the server towers beep, yeah? That combined with the fact that I could hear the high pitched screech of electricity was maddening. I felt… Like the screens were trying to pull me into them. And then there was the fact that I could feel the electricity in the room. Like. Feel it flowing through everything and up into my hands when I was holding the cables and wires in the server towers I was working on.
When I caught myself staring into the blank screens of the dead technology, my hands were starting to hurt. My fingertips were buzzing and I felt dizzy. I can’t explain it, but it felt like there was something in the technology there that was trying to connect with me. Pull me into it. I felt like I was being watched. There were definitely security cameras over my head, but security cameras don’t give you that same sort of feeling of being watched. When I shook off the feeling of the wires trying to connect themselves to me, there was a long, sustained beeping. The same kind of static, flat tone that you’d hear when your ears start ringing. Although noticeably louder. I assume some sparks flew because then the power shut itself off, the room went dark, and a small fire lit itself.
Electrical fires aren’t rare but they’re not a common occurrence. It’s a whole part of the reason why we keep the floor so cold. But we keep an extinguisher in all the rooms in case of fires. So I got up and grabbed it. Ignoring the obvious pain in my hand that meant I had definitely been burnt from it.
[There’s a pause and fabric heard rustling. It is implied he raised his hand to show the Archivist the burn.]
It’s mostly healed now. I did have to take a couple extra days off work, even though that probably made me more suspicious. I just claimed I had a recurrence of the pains I felt the other day. I fled the room when the power came back on and once I had dealt with the fire. I expected people to know the fire was me, but all I know is that it turns out I was the person responsible for wiping the data of the entire company. Which is impossible! I wasn’t working on a server with any sort of data. I don’t know why or how I managed to do something of that magnitude. And I don’t think people know it was me. I don’t know how they would?
I haven’t been back to work yet, but if anyone found out I was the person responsible for that then I’d never be able to get a job in tech ever again.
Since that event, every piece of technology—software or hardware—that I’ve tried to use has just broken or corrupted itself. So I haven’t been able to figure out anything as to why all of this has happened. Then Michael finally convinced me to give a statement. So here I am… And that’s my whole statement. I think.
ARCHIVIST
Statement ends.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the name of the company you work for? To assist with follow up, of course.
DARRIUS
Northdoor. It’s a data security and management company. I’ve been working there for nearly five years.
ARCHIVIST
Thank you. It’s safe to say that your statement will be kept confidential as dictated by our non-disclosure policy, but I will still talk to your coworkers.
And, if possible, Michael?
DARRIUS
[defensive] I’d. Really rather you not. He’s not a particular fan of… questions. And he wasn’t really involved in this. At all. So it might lead to a dead end.
ARCHIVIST
Alright. Then I won’t talk to him. No need to be so defensive.
DARRIUS
So… Can I go? Since we’re done here and all.
ARCHIVIST
Yes, you’re free to leave.
DARRIUS
[Chair scrapes quietly against the floor]
Thanks for listening to me, Jon. It means a lot.
[Door creaks open, and then closes shut]
ARCHIVIST
Michael… An unfortunately familiar name. If this Michael is the same one that Sasha claims to have met, then we may have a bigger problem on our hands and this statement can’t afford to be brushed off.
The way Mr. Campbell directs himself leaves me skeptical that this even happened, and I can perhaps attribute the burn on his hand to an earlier, unrelated accident. However, as much as I’d like to dismiss this case completely and file it away, I do remember seeing an article on the BBC about a large-scale data wipe at an information technology establishment by the name of Northdoor. Which may be cause for follow up, independent of my wishes. I’ll have Tim look into the information provided—and talk to Sasha about the possible appearance of her Michael—but other than that, I don’t expect to spend too much time on a complex follow-up.
End recording.
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ARCHIVIST
—I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.
ELIAS
I understand you perfectly, Jonathan. Listen. I want you to dedicate as much time as possible to this; between your other tasks, of course.
ARCHIVIST
I can barely make something like this a priority. I have other things to be doing. More important things. That statement was… A bad string of events at worst.
ELIAS
It’s important. No matter if it was a string of bad coincidences or not.
ARCHIVIST
Why!? Why do you expect me to drop everything at your whim and focus all of my time and energy into some irrelevant statement giver?
ELIAS
I’m not required to give you that information. You can return to your duties now, Jon.
ARCHIVIST
But, I—
ELIAS
You’re dismissed, Jon.
ARCHIVIST
Fine.
[Door creaks open and then closes]
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