Chapter Text
It started off as background noise.
Just a few videos, a handful of articles you scrolled past while sitting on the couch, chewing something probably stale. You had a blanket half-sliding off your shoulder, a show running as background noise, and your phone brightness turned almost all the way down to preserve battery.
“This machine may prove several theories in the field of quantum mechanics,” one grayed-out professor was saying in a video—his voice even, confident, scholarly. “If it works, we may be able to transfer matter across space and time.”
You blinked lazily. Okay. Sure.
Then came a younger voice—nervous, maybe excited. “It could even confirm the multi-reality theory,” a student from Oxford, one of the many universities working on it, added, trying not to smile too much for the camera.
You frowned, tilting your phone sideways. That sounded like… a lot. But not your business.
Still, you tapped into the comments. Half memes, half debate threads. Some verified account left a string of vague-eyed emojis. You liked a few of the funnier ones, then scrolled away. Probably back to videos obscure videos online or some cooking tutorial you’d never try. Something that made more sense.
Honestly, it wasn’t like you didn’t care. You just didn’t see how any of it was going to matter. Not to you.
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Then came the explosion.
You weren’t watching it live, no one really was, but suddenly it was everywhere. Headlines. Panic posts. Raw footage so pixelated it made your eyes hurt.
The facility—the one with the machine—was in ruins. Smoke, helicopters, sirens, government-issued tanks crawling across the desert. You kept blinking at the screen like you were waiting for it to cut to a trailer or a hoax reveal. It didn’t.
And then the videos started.
Shaky hands. Zoomed-in fences. Breathless voices claiming they lived near the site. Some of them said they saw somethings. Not the explosion—but somethings leaving it.
You watched one grainy clip of a man standing behind a chain-link fence. His voice was shaking.
“It walked right past the fire,” he said. “Didn’t burn. Just walked away. And the next minute, black trucks pulled in—full gear, helmets, everything. Whatever it was, they didn’t want anyone else to see it, to see them.”
You rubbed your eyes. No way. That wouldn’t be real.
Still, your fingers hovered too long before scrolling to the next video.
Probably attention-seeking. Clickbait. Some AI-generated fever dream.
Right?
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Then the news anchor came on, and as she explained and your stomach dropped like you had just missed a step going down the stairs.
"This just in," she said, her voice too polished for what was coming. "Reports from the highly classified Air Force base—Homey Airport, better known as Area 51—have brought forward a message suspected to be connected to the explosion at the California Institute of Technology."
You sat up.
"The message reads, and I quote: ‘Do not approach or engage with any individuals or unknown organisms,’ ordered government officials."
Then she smiled, a nervous uneasy one at that. The network cut to a commercial. And you sat there, phone on your chest, hand frozen over the remote.
Your ears were ringing.
You weren’t sure how long you’d been holding your breath, but when you exhaled, it was shaky.
Your brain started doing the thing it always did—pulling apart every possible worst-case scenario like a magician's scarf, knot after knot of doom.
Aliens? Interdimensional portals? That ghost theory someone half-jokingly mentioned on Reddit? You really wished you weren’t so paranoid of EVERYTHING.
Your hands were cold. You stood up. Sat back down. Opened Twitter. Closed it immediately.
This wasn’t just noise anymore.