The Box

The hallways slowly illuminates around you, extending gradually down the hall. About 50 meters down, the hallway splits left and right at a T. In the darkness, you think you see something dart across the gap.

As you run down the hallway, your bulky hammer swaying at the ready. With a silent step, you overtake the corner, the light following you. Now in front of you is another hallway, filled with doors, all closed, no signs of movement, no creature. It looks almost dead in the dim light, like the place had once been alive, then abandoned and left to die. You can see five doors on your right, and three on your left. Turning around, it's as if the hallway that had gone right had never existed in the first place, being now just a blank wall. Holding the hammer in both hands, steadily in front of you, you make your way forward, slowly.

You open the door with ease. On the other side seems like a real bedroom. There's a nicely made bed, a bookshelf fully stocked with reading materials, and a desk, some pens and paper littered over it. It's strangely warm, compared to the cold stillness of everywhere you've explored so far. It's almost relaxing, if not for the eerie feeling you get thinking about whether or not someone else is here, and whether they'll be friendly or not.

Pulling out some books, you find works of all sorts, arranged in no particular order. There are sci-fi novels, history textbooks, science works, and books of philosophy. Some further strange picks being 'Imbecile's guide to operating heavy machinery' and 'So you found out your son is a robot.'

Wondering if you're the heavy machinery referred to by this manual, you search and poke yourself. It crosses your mind as you find nothing to remove your own hand. You'll keep that as a plan B, but for now, you might need it.

You go to shuffle through the papers, and find that they're all written in a neat, green, font. They seem to be akin to your journal, each piece containing a header with a number. As you read them, you realize that there is someone else who woke up just like you did, not knowing what was happening, and figured it out. You find at the bottom of the pile a sheet headed 'Entry 2.' It reads: This has happened to me before, i found a note to my parents written in my handwriting, but i had just woken up, and couldn't recall writing it, as well as there being nothing in this room for me to write with, and I had to find the pen under my pillow. This is just a hypothesis, but if I wake up to find this entry, it would imply a time loop of sorts. That raises the question of how the loop ends; do I die? If I do, how many times has this already happened? Edit (Entry 3): Tell the room that the pen is under the pillow. Edit (Entry 13): I have been lead to believe that I had experienced at least two dozen loops before entry 2 and close to 4 between 2 and 3, everything from 3 to 13 seems to be in consecutive loops. The ink on the second edit is still wet, and prints the words onto your finger near the end.

Checking the pillow, there isn't anything under it. You put the pillow down, "There is a pen under this pillow." You lift up the pillow again, and there is still nothing. Your hairs stand up on end, and you jump when you hear another voice, "I already got the pen, the same request won't work twice in one loop." Spinning around on your heel, you see a girl, about as tall as you are, with a long black ponytail. Her outfit is the same as yours, a white jumpsuit and sneakers, though she seems to have drawn on her shoes in green ink.

You open your mouth to ask the girl who she is, but she pipes up before you get a word out. "My name is Julia, and this is my room. I connected it to the mainframe, sleeping chamber, library, and messhall." You ask her if she knows what's going on, "I'm in the same boat as you, bud, I've just got a bigger bucket. Food can be found in the mess, if you get tired, sleep in the pods, not a bed. You'll keep your memory that way. You should also tether your room to this corridor, just ask for one of the doors here to open to it.

Walking into the hallway, you choose the door directly across from hers, seems like as good a door as any. You tell it that it opens to your room. Opening the door, you can see that the door does in fact lead to your room. You go to ask her some questions, but she is gone.

You check the door next to your room's it doesn't seem connected, and doesn't open when you pull. "This door opens to the outside." You get a chill down your spine, as your hand pulls the latch. You are sent sprawling as the door slides open. You catch a glimpse of Julia, now standing where you were, before a torrent of black shoots from the open door, slamming the girl against the wall. The black stuff hangs in the air, suspended and churning. You can hear footsteps coming down the hall as a hulking figure appears on the other end of the walkway, "Jul- Oh no. He looks at the door, which slams closed. The mass stretches and becomes humanoid, a sleek body with pointed limbs and no head. The hulking brute looks you in the eyes and gets a single word in before blast doors slam down between you and the thing, "Run."

You are walled off from Julia, and unsure of what just happened. You have access to your room and Julia's, as well as 3 doors you have not checked and the messhall.

Looking the blast door over, you think it'll keep out whatever the hell that thing was. It also doesn't sound like it's trying to get in. You feel strangely safe right now, despite seeing Julia slammed into the wall and crumple to the floor just a few moment earlier. Dwelling on what you've witnessed, a wave of uneasiness falls over you as consider whether or not she was killed by that thing and who the other person was. Dwelling on that doesn't put you any further from the thing. You need to get moving.