WARNING
Unauthorized access to the following document is restricted not due to security concerns, but because of the nature of this document and the circumstances that led to its creation. Ask yourself if you want to know. If the answer is no, you'll sleep better for it.
If you really want to read this, then reentering your Overseer credentials will activate a visual agent that should retroactively wipe your memory of the upcoming hour. Trust me, it's better this way. And if you don't have those credentials—yes, you, reading this, we know our security is a hack job—well, we'll inform your family what happened to you, and hope we find your body.
This document has been preserved as-is out of respect for the dead. Honor River as ze lived, and don't think too hard about it.
- Overseer-B, with love
if_it_hurts_to_look_at_it_didnt_work
I have to do it. I have to get to the bottom of this place. I have to know what I saw, and what they saw, and why they won't leave.
I have to know. I'm sorry.
～ River
Possible appearance of Entity NULL, photographed by Agent Gavriel deep in Heaven
Entity Number: NULL
Habitat: Majority (Theorized)
Description:
The other day, I spoke to someone who made it home. He was delirious, Kat said. Talking in circles. She'd seen people in that state before, but never that bad. Never in the depths he was in.
He said he'd seen his mother, his father. Called me "sister". Said he loved me. That he'd seen everyone he knew and loved, and he wanted to go back, that they needed him there. He tried to take me with him. Told me how much everyone missed me.
He knew my mother's name.
He wasn't insane. He saw something we hadn't. I don't know if he really found his home or his family, but something showed it to him. Something that wanted him to remember, and suffer with the memory.
The next time I saw him, he was completely lost in his own nostalgia. Indistinguishable from one of the things that live in 200. We had to let him go back home. He wasn't human anymore.
This all has to be connected. We can't lose anyone else to something we don't understand.
～ River
Entity NULL is a hypothesized Entity responsible for several interrelated phenomena in the Backrooms. If it indeed exists, it affects human memory in an as of yet unknown fashion on a wide scale within the Backrooms, and is capable of assuming variable forms based on its intentions.
Its appearance, motivations, capabilities, and existence are unconfirmed.
I've seen swarms of 73's take people laughing and sobbing. I remember, they always say. I remember. I miss them. You can see it in their eyes when they're beyond saving. Somewhere else, somewhere they're happier.
Them, 200, the Nostalgia Traps in 70, 404… 404's strange. Only a few people who fall into heaven come back, and they
it's hard to talk about.
Most of them don't come back
but Gavriel. Agent Gavriel. She fought her way back out and she was sobbing the whole time, she wouldn't stop saying that her lost love someone there1 needed her, that she'd abandoned her, that she couldn't live without her. We couldn't calm her down.
The next day she was fine. Happy, actually. She sang to herself in bed. Such a strange voice. She didn't feel like herself, not the Gabby I knew. She talked about a beautiful, beautiful woman she'd seen there, towering over her with hair that shone like the ocean she'd grown up with and smooth porcelain skin like the kitchen tile from her childhood home.
The next morning, she'd stopped breathing. Died with a smile on her face. So pale. beautiful
Nowhere to bury bodies here. She
i'm getting off track.
What happened to Agent Gavriel is the first time we've seen what 404 actually does to people, and it's familiar, too familiar. 73's, 200, 404—they all prey on your memory, take you somewhere better. I've heard similar reports from other levels, and it's getting worse.
I'm drafting this documentation because I believe that one entity is responsible for all of this. All of this poison, all of this… this awful melancholy. It's all the same source.
I'm going to find it. Find her. I don't care if no one believes me, but I think Kat's starting to understand.
I don't know if I'm ready. I don't think we are, really, but there's nothing else I can do but record the whispers.
I think there is a God, and I think she wants us dead.
～ River
Entity NULL's appearance varies, often taking the form of memory-altering Entities or otherwise familiar figures to the viewer. However, primary records of Entity NULL indicate that its natural appearance is that of a humanoid female, hundreds of meters in height and resembling a statue in the style of Roman sculpture. This form of Entity NULL resides in a deep, normally inaccessible segment of level 404; its existence is inferred from the few records of level 404 that exist. More research is needed.
Exploration Log: Entity NULL - level 404
Exploration Team: Senior Archivist A. River
Date: [DATA LOST]
BEGIN LOG
[Muffled scraping.]
River: …rolling. This is Senior Archivist A. River, currently on Level 4, recording for the M.E.G. I'm going to perform a controlled clip into level 404. This audio is streaming back to my workstation, so if I don't make it back, uh…
[Pause.]
River: Kat can archive it for me, yeah? Kat, if you're listening, I…
[Pause.]
River: …no, I'll tell you that off the record. Just keep me in your thoughts, okay? I'll be thinking about you, too. It keeps me anchored, you know?
[Laughter, then a barely audible sigh.]
River: Here goes.
[Radio interference, then momentary silence as the recording device clips.]
[Howling wind is audible.]
River: …Oh.
River: Oh, it's…
[Choked laughter.]
River: …hello again, my love.
At this point in the recording, all listeners experience a consistent, vivid auditory hallucination, rendering the original audio irretrievable. A transcript of this hallucination has been provided to the best of the archivist's ability. No other attempts at documentation have been successful.
FEMALE VOICE, UNIDENTIFIED:
dance with me
dance with me, darling, i miss you
it seems
it seems there are still things you need to learn about the world, little ones, silly chittering people worrying yourselves to death in a damp attic.
every human being has been fundamentally broken, you see.
never in the course of history has there been a single person left unscathed by the suffocating experience of being alive.
no one is happy.
we all miss someone desperately, sucking a hole in our hearts, don’t we?
don’t you have someone you miss, dear listener?
family, or a companion, or a lover. earthly comforts, sunlight, fresh air.
but you've all forgotten me.
in your silly pursuits of temporary happiness, in your frivolous search for meaning where the cruel earth offers you only sorrow,
you've left me behind. and oh! how i drown in the unshed tears!
but don't worry, my darling,
i still love you.
i created this place so i can finally hold you in my embrace.
won't you remember?
won't you come home?
[Distant muttering.]
[Radio interference.]
[Sound of breaking glass. Muttering becomes recognizable as speech.]
River: …body. Burn my fucking body. Burn my fucking body. Burn my—
[Radio interference renders the remainder of the log unintelligible.]
END LOG
River was recovered from Level 4 six hours after transmission ceased, catatonic. Ze regained consciousness four hours afterwards and became stable with medical assistance from the M.E.G., albeit with previously undocumented unusual properties.
Behaviors:
I made it back in one piece. I think.
I saw her there. I miss her. More than anything.
I don't even remember who she is.
Something's wrong.
her name is
Nostalgi Gaius.
that's all i remember
～ River
[CONTEXT UNKNOWN]
Nostalgi Gaius should should not be approached. she
let me love you
too close,
Nostalgi Gaius preys on human memory and nostalgia in order to sustain its existence, achieving this through any means necessary. Its effects are twofold:
- Having in-depth knowledge of the entity and its intentions is inevitably deadly through undetermined means. It is theorized that this effect is a self-protection mechanism.
- Interacting with the entity in an extended timeframe results in psychological and physical assimilation. Most commonly, this results in transformation into other entities that carry its effect. Essentially, if one interacts directly with Nostalgi Gaius, they become a facet of the entity.
It is unknown what occurs if Nostalgi Gaius is both fully understood and interacted with consistently.
But I intend on finding out.
A lot has happened. It's easier if you can see the code.
I don't know what to think.
Did you know that one of the first computer viruses was named ILOVEYOU? For as long as we've existed, humanity's affinity for simple infatuation has been preyed upon by those lacking it.
Let me backtrack.
What I saw there was a sea, and a girl, and a god, and people. It was
it's so hard. It's hard to talk about without letting her in let me love you go away go AWAY
In 404. I don't remember what she looked like. I don't remember anything but her name but I miss her so, so desperately. I know she's killing us, but I couldn't stop sobbing when I saw her. I just
I missed her so much. I remember now. She was so beautiful. I let her down, I forgot about her, how could I be so cruel? Even looking at her, right in front of me clothed in silken, polygonal robes with broken roses braided into her hair, I missed her. Like a jilted lover, like I'd been lost at sea.
That's
but that's not important.
Beneath her, there was an ocean of humanity. Bodies and faces piled up, floating aimlessly in the planes in a howling mass. I couldn't breathe under the weight of all their memories. It was suffocating, nauseating. They caressed my skin, sobbed and moaned and told me how much they love me, how they wanted me to remember with them. All those people, lost in the past.
She was rejoicing in it, though. The sorrow, the bleeding hearts. It was all she wanted, for us to remember, and suffer.
～ River
Theories:
If you wanted to catch a human being, what would you fashion the trap from?
Nostalgi Gaius found the answer—a gilded cage made of thorns and memories.
A set of sickeningly familiar rooms.
I'm dying, now. I know I'm dying, but I've never felt closer to her. I'm sinking deeper even just writing this. I want to
She's going to take me back, eventually. I think I'm becoming her ghost.
Am I making sense?
There's one last thing I have to ask, Kat.
Keep these records, so we know how to stay away from her, and seal them, so no one else has to feel what we feel.
Don't come home. Stay in the light, okay?
I'll miss you. We all will. Don't mourn me.
I miss you
i love you
～
Safety Precautions:
Carve your fucking memories out of your head.