Something was very, very wrong. Elias Halberstram had seen the message in the mirror, and thought nothing.
He'd thought wrong.
Just the same as he did every day, he threw his towel aside, putting on his shirt and tie. Just the same as he did every day, he pulled his socks and shoes on, and stepped out from his bedroom door. Just the same as he did every day, he walked downstairs from his loft to the kitchen to put a breakfast sandwich in the microwave.
Unlike any other day, the scene out his window was wrong. The tree stood deadly still. The grass looked plastic, static, frozen in time. Elias squinted out the window.
What the hell?
He stepped outside, kneeling down. He gently pressed the blade of grass, and it bent, staying stuck in place. He plucked a tuft, and when he tossed it, they bounced like little plastic toothpicks across the cement patio.
The tree, too. Not moving. No wind, no sound. No cars in the street, no children yelling, no music. Dead silent. Had he missed something? An evacuation? An emergency? He opened his phone, finding no messages. No alerts, no warnings. Then he checked the time.
"Shit!"
Elias thundered back into the house, grabbing his papers and throwing them in his bag, alongside a warm breakfast sandwich, cooled in the microwave for the several minutes he was outside. Storming outside, he slid across the street for a moment, before getting his grip and jogging to the corner. The bus left at 7:05, and it was 7:00 when he was outside checking on the grass. Had it been five minutes since then? Had he gotten his things together?
Hands on his knees, he wheezed. He hadn't ran like that in… it had to be years. Out of shape and with asthma, it wasn't a regular activity. Elias removed the phone from his pocket. 7:05 on the dot. Breathing a sigh of relief, he sat back down on the bench, ready to wait for his bus.
Waiting, he did. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. He must have missed the bus after all. Maybe it was early today. He stood up. How was he going to explain that he'd missed his office hours? He did have a perfect record so far, maybe the dean would grant him an exception due to the circumstances? One last time, he placed his hand in his pocket to get his phone, to call her and explain the situation, but movement in the corner of his eye stopped him. He hadn't been thinking about it, but nothing had moved in the last twenty minutes, since he sat down. There was a shimmer in the air, like rising heat, right over the street. A gas leak maybe? That had to be it. There was a gas leak in the area and it had been evacuated! He rose to his feet to walk back home, getting ready to call a friend and get a ride to work.
Then a man shot across the street in the blink of an eye. The shimmering patch of air had spit someone out, hurling them at dozens of miles an hour. The man tucked and rolled, flipping a few times before hitting a retaining wall and stopping. Elias watched, wide-eyed. He didn't move for a few seconds, bewildered… until the man started moving.
"H-Hey! Are you okay? Hello?"
He rushed to the side of the man, and found him no older than one of his students. Small twigs hung in his blond curls, and he was covered in scrapes from the pavement.
"God… damnit. That wasn't right at all."
He sat up, leaning against the retaining wall, and looked to his side. A pair of broken sunglasses, neon blue sat there, and he picked them up. He placed a lens back in the frame it had popped out from, and put them on his face, breathing heavily with exertion.
"S-… Young man… I-…" Elias faltered. He couldn't think of anything to say, seeing what he'd just seen.
"Dude, what are you doing here? This place is supposed to be suspended."
Suspended? "I… I missed my bus."
"You missed your bus? What bus? There's nothing going on. This is a silent cycle. Why would a bus come through here?"
Elias looked at him, dumbfounded. "A bus comes through here every day."
The young man stood up, brushing himself off. "Yeah, when the simulation is running. Today it's on break. Is this your first time here?"
Elias shook his head. "Listen, I think you might have taken a blow or something, let me call an ambulance, okay?"
He locked eyes with Elias through the tinted shades. "Go ahead."
Pulling his phone from his pocket, Elias dialed 911. The phone rang. Once, twice, three times. Then, connection terminated. He tried again. Once, twice, three times, terminated. He looked up from his phone to see the young man stacking blocks on top of each other on the retaining wall.
"What… what's going on?"
He turned to face Elias. "You really don't know, huh?" Elias shook his head. "Okay, uh… how do I put this, dude…" He gestures broadly to their surroundings. "This, everything around you… it's a simulation. These guys… Coders. They run this. The entire level is a simulation."
Elias stares blankly. "Level?"
"Y… yeah… level of the Backrooms?" Silence. "Really?" He sighs and puts his hand to his forehead. "Phew… yeah no, I'm not really the guy for this… uhh… here."
He waves his hand over Elias's phone, still in hand. The screen stutters, and then opens to his browser. The page reads "The Backrooms: You've been here before."
The young man points to the screen. "Everything you need to know is in there. You're looking for a sublevel created by Level 400. Now, let's get you out of here." He grabs Elias by the hand, and pulls him over to a nearby wall. "We're gonna go through this wall."
Turning to him, Elias scoffs. "No we're not."
"No time for that. Here we go. One, two, three!" The man walks quickly with Elias, breaking into a full-on run, and then…
SMACK.
Both of them fall away from the wall. Elias is reeling, staggering backwards, holding his head. "What the hell! Are you fucking crazy?"
The man is holding his head too, but he points down at the ground. "No. Look." A shimmering green chain is wrapped around Elias's leg, and quickly fades from sight as soon as it was noticed.
Elias leaps away, shocked. "What the hell is that? What is that!?"
The stranger rubs his head, steadying himself. "You've been booted, mate."
"Booted?"
"Booted. Like a car. You're not going anywhere."
He thinks for a moment, trying to formulate a response. "And… that's why I couldn't go through the wall?" Elias stutters.
"Yeah, but I can still do you a solid. Here." The stranger takes a ballpoint pen and a mirror out of his pocket, kneeling down. Looking into the mirror, he starts writing something on his hand, and before Elias can react, he licks his hand several times, and then plants it firmly against Elias's forehead.
"That's arbitrary code injection. The next time the simulation loops, your memory will be cached, and you'll remember it the next day. But you gotta be careful."
"Careful? Careful why?"
"Careful because all I did was stop the dump of your memory. If the file size gets too big, the Coders will notice. Try not to think too much."
"Try not to think too… hey, what are you doing now?"
He crouched, stood up, and crouched again, over and over. "Building up speed. I have to get out of here before they notice. The Coders and I, not exactly on good terms."
"Wait! Before you go!"
The man turns around one last time. "Yes?"
"Who are you?"
He smirks. "Me? You couldn't pronounce my name if you tried. But if you like…" He assumes a runners stance, vibrating slightly.
"You can call me Joey Q." Just like that, he takes off.
He's off down the street at impossible speed, and then: he steps awkwardly on a pebble, trips, and his momentum is suddenly diverted sideways. He's flung across the street into a parked VW Beetle, denting the side.
"Fuckin' hell…"
Elias runs up to him again, and Joey waves him off. "No, no, I got this. Watch." He does his same crouching maneuver again, and this time, his speed carries him down the street, up into the sky, and he's gone with a flash of light, leaving Elias alone on the street outside his house.