CONCORD ENTITY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM
HABITAT(S): Level 274
3B-?
A particularly infamous picture of Jerry, commonly found stuck to walls around the Backrooms.
Description
The fable of Jerry is one that has undergone many revisions throughout its various retellings. All wanderers are told the precautionary tale of the innocuous-looking avian at some point, though the specifics of each narrative seem to vary wildly from person to person. Encounters have been exaggerated – perhaps even bastardised – to the point where no one person’s spoken account of Jerry is guaranteed to accurately separate actuality from mendacity.
What is known of Jerry’s biology is very little in point of fact. All accounts describe it as taking the appearance of a blue parrot (likened to that of the hyacinthine macaw, Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus), and the overwhelming majority of those that have encountered the entity seem to agree that Jerry is capable of speech and rationalisation at the level of an articulate adult human1, but anything past that is subject to debate. The general presumption is that Jerry can fly much like a regular bird, but a portion of witnesses describe a struggle or general inability to actually take flight without assistance; an even split exists between people who believe Jerry requires proper nutrition and those who believe that it does not need sustenance whatsoever; a vocal minority insist that Jerry is capable of a limited form of telekinesis even. The actual specifics are hard to narrow down without upsetting a portion of wanderers, who insist on their own versions of the specifics. To add onto the challenge of documentation, it is considerably harder to obtain verifiable information if only because those who have direct encounters with Jerry are rarely around to tell the tale.
The exact mechanisms through which the process occurs is still a mystery, but Jerry appears to be capable of neurally reprogramming wanderers that encounter it into cult-like devotion. It has not yet been established what triggers subjugation, whether it be the conscious involvement of Jerry or a passive effect with inscrutable criteria, but the phenomenon is very much real and well-documented. Survivors of encounters with Jerry describe comrades falling briefly into a catatonic state, seemingly out of the blue, before snapping out of their trance and offering a reverent gesture to the entity. What occurs directly afterwards is not known – as survivors do not tend to stick around and observe what happens – but the affected eventually wind up as part of a group of devotees known as the Followers of Jerry.
The Followers
Jerry’s worshippers are an insular group for the most part. Unlike some of the other major forces that conspire against ordinary civilisation within the Backrooms, it is practically unheard of for the zealots to commit acts of direct terrorism in the name of Jerry. The pillaging of M.E.G. sites is not as rare, though the goal is seemingly never to instigate fear more than it is to acquire a resource or a piece of territory2. The goal of the Followers appears to be, like most cults, the initiation of more members into their ranks. This is not to say that the group as a whole are anything close to pacifistic in their general tenacity, as they act with violence towards group outsiders and are not reciprocative to attempts at communication. Despite this, the Followers of Jerry pose no sustained threat to the continued development of communities within the Backrooms; for the most part, they keep to themselves and operate from behind the curtains.
Current observations suggest that the Followers principally target areas wherein first entrances into the Backrooms occur, presumably because seasoned wanderers know to avoid Jerry should they see it. Coordinated efforts to misdirect new wanderers are achieved through written media for the most part, which instructs wanderers to seek Jerry under the false pretence that they are to find organised society. Pamphlets, books, and writing on the walls are commonly used tactics, though the most insidious of writing takes the appearance of fabricated journals that an unsuspecting person might interpret as legitimate guidance on how one is to ensure their own safety. Less coherent attempts, such as simply sticking pictures of Jerry to the walls, or crudely drawing the followers worshipping Jerry, appear insane to even a completely ignorant wanderer. For an exhaustive list of recovered and documented recruitment materials, please refer to Document E7/004.
To date, nobody has ever been approached directly by the followers in an attempt to force subjugation. Extensive armed conflict between long-term residents under the M.E.G.’s governance and the Followers occurs only should the latter deem the interference of civilians in their activities a threat to their beliefs, and the intent is often incapacitation rather than coercion or outright murder. Likewise, new wanderers are never approached by members of the Followers of Jerry, suggesting that a chance encounter with Jerry may be a foundational tenet to the actual worship of the entity. Because knowledge of the Followers is apocryphal in nature, it is difficult to ascertain what exactly the scope of their (presumably) continuous growth is.
The avatar hypothesis
Allegedly, two instances of Jerry appeared perched on a tree in Level 194.
Questions were raised as to how Jerry, as a singular and individual entity, was capable of appearing across a wide range of levels across the Backrooms which were completely disconnected from one another. Preliminary explanations suggested that the Jerry entity was not actually unique, but instead a species; this theory has largely been abandoned, if only because the large array of recovered documentation pertaining to Jerry has never made reference to multiple instances of the macaw3
The predominant model at the time of writing, dubbed the avatar hypothesis, suggests that Jerry is able to manifest conduits that act as an extension of itself across the Backrooms. The main evidence that supports this theory is rare occurrences wherein more than one hyacinth macaw was seen in the vicinity of another instance, which resolves the question of Jerry’s vast habitat scope more satisfyingly than the species model in light of Follower sources.
With that said, the avatar hypothesis cannot be decisively proven. For one, nobody has actually ensured that the observed instances are in fact both Jerry – for all intents and purposes, the Backrooms may be home to a population of its own hyacinth macaws, which may confound the estimation of true Jerry sightings. Because the potential for subjugation always exists when encountering birds that could be Jerry, it is largely considered unwise for any rational person to interact with the birds themselves in order to prove the veracity of this hypothesis. Furthermore, the existence of multiple-instance encounters is, in theory, no silver bullet against the species model, because there is an inverse lack of information that suggests Jerry is capable of projecting itself into other instances either.
A unified theory for the vast spread of Jerry sightings across the Backrooms has not been synthesised as of yet. Current assets at the M.E.G.’s disposal neither confirm nor deny any explanation, adding onto a growing number of unanswered questions regarding the entity.
Supplementary documentation
