March 12, 2008. Site: 19-Interview Room 2.
Sitting within a white room with no noteworthy details that stood out, a middle-aged man sat behind a single table in the middle of the room. Bags were under his eyes, and there were signs that he had not slept very well in a long time. His hair was messy, and he wore simple clothing. A white tee shirt, blue jeans, and a black jacket were on the back of the seat he was sitting on. His eyes shifted as he looked around the room, stopping at a camera. "Can we get things moving? I'd rather get this over with as soon as possible. I assume you are all quite busy. But this has been a problem for the last few years, and it has already caused a lot of people to lose their lives." After speaking these words, a man in a lab coat walked into the room.
"I am sorry for keeping you waiting, and I say you are right."
Closing the door behind him, the man would sit down on the chair on the other end of the desk. Pull out a small tape recorder and place it in the middle of the table, pressing the recording button on it.
"If you could state your name, then we can get things moving. You went through a lot of trouble to get our attention. Not many people would be trying to get the attention of the Foundation."
Leaning back, looking at the recorder, his eyes then shifted towards the man in the lab coat.
"The name is Tyler... Don't feel like giving a full name if that is alright to get things going. And you and your foundation are the only people I can think of that could handle this. I know my former bosses that I worked for tried to get into contact with you before you knew what hit the fan, and I'll explain that."
Leaning back into his chair, he rubbed his eyes with his left hand. "So, where do you want me to start for you? This... will be a long story. I will try to make it as short as possible for you to understand." The foundation nodded its head. "I say that from the start of what caused you to be here and speak with us, then we will see how things go from there." Tyler looked at him for a few seconds in silence.
"From the start? Right... Sorry, it is not something I am wise enough to fully speak about, but I will do it to the best of my ability. I say it all started around the year 1991 for myself. I like many others who look for work." Reaching behind him towards his rear pants pocket, he pulled out his wallet, opening it up and sliding out a card. "It no longer exists, but this is the name of it." He places the card on the table and slides it forward to let the other man see it. Async Research Institute was on the old card. "I haven't a clue what I was getting into with that place, but like I said, I was looking for work." The Foundation man slid the card closure.
"Hmm... For a small amount of time, they were on our radar before other events drew our attention away from them. You say that you knew nothing of what was going on when you started there?" He slides the card back towards him, with Tyler nodding his head. "When I got into that place, I had to sign a lot of paperwork and cut off all contact with everything. I had to explain to my family that I'd been out of touch for a while, along with my friends. My start there was slow, but the first thing they told me was that there was more going on than it seemed. There were groups of men and women in yellow hazmat suits. I only caught sight of them, but for that time, I was cleaning floors." Picking up the card, his hands were shaking slightly as he slid it back into his wallet.
"For a few months, that was where I was doing janitor work, but I started to catch bits and pieces of information about something big going on. I did not mind the pay and was happy that I was getting a steady and good paycheck. That should have been the end of it for me. But I started to work towards rising up into a new position. At the start, I was stone-walled... Then one day a new spot opens up." Saying those words from his mouth, he focused on a small window on the left side of the room. "And I was wise to God; it never was. Maybe then I could still sleep without pills." The man of the foundation listened with great interest before he spoke up.
"What was this spot? I find it strange about this man in hazmat suits from what we gathered before we moved our eyes off them. There was nothing going on that would need such suits. A few times, we detected strange energy levels, but it was assumed that they were unimportant. Please, if you will go on, we at the Foundation would like to know everything before we can do anything else." Tyler shifted his focus back to the man.
"Right... It was about two weeks before I was brought into this room with lines of hazmat suits hanging on a wall. There were a few other men within them at the start who did not like me to work with their crew, which I worked with for a few years. New meat was not what they were looking forward to. They gave me the cold shoulder when we spoke, not those who really wanted to make friends. When I asked what had happened to open a spot, they looked at one another, shook heads, and told me not to ask questions but to suit up."
"Getting into one of those suits was painful and hot, and it clings to the skin in a few areas, but I told them that we need them for where we are going. I asked where we were going, and they told me that I had to see it for myself to understand, and they said training would be in the field. I was at a complete loss here as to what was going on and what we would be doing, so I just followed. I recall walking into this huge chamber. There was this door-sized object on the left of me. It was empty, made of metal. We were told to stand back as they "powered" it on. Then within the middle of this "door" was how I could call it... It started to shift and change color, turning white and yellow. Then it opens."
Tyler went quite shaking and took shallow and quick breaths before breathing in heavily and breathing out. "I... I am sorry... Just recalling that place rattled me deeply as this doorway opened up. There was no longer any metal in front of me. In front of me was this yellow room. We were then instructed to walk through it, as I did, and my head started to ring. There was this feeling of bugs crawling all over my skin from within the suit; once on the other side, I was at a loss for words on the entire thing." Reaching over to his wallet again, he opens it up, pulling out a small photograph that had small rips on its edges and was slightly faded. "I kept a hold on this for a very long time... This is the only known photo of what was on the other side." He handed the photo to the foundation man, who took it and looked at it.
The photograph showed a set of rooms that seemed to be randomly set up with yellow wallpaper and a carpeted floor on the ceiling with rows of fluorescent lights. "Interesting... This was on the other side of this "door" you said you went through? Was there anything else within this place you went to? I am guessing there were things that stood out." Tyler was surprised by his lack of reaction and began to be so relaxed with all of this. "The carpeted floor was wet. From what I recall, it was not water, nor was it safe to drink. They ran a lot of tests on it. And there was this near-endless buzzing from those lights, and no one had a clue where it was coming from. A few areas had none of those lights, yet the buzzing was still there as time went on. I just wish that was all it was." Taking the photo back as it was handed to him. "Our job was to simply explore the area and map it out. I soon learned that if not for a guiding rope and tapping on the floor, one could get hopelessly lost within easily."
"I had learned that over time, getting separated was a bad idea for what seemed to have happened to the man who was once with them. He went off on his own, down a different path than his team, and just disappeared. To this day, he was never found when they enforced the rule of staying together. As time went on, strange things started to happen to us and other groups who were sent out into that place. Then one day in November, something happens that none of us expected to happen at all."
Sliding the photo back into his wallet and putting it away. "And what we encountered was a man wandering around. It was not the one that went missing; it was a man in his forties, I think. He looked like someone who had been through hell—cuts on his face, old brush marks, clothing that looked like it was mix-and-match pieces pieced together, and a backpack. And within his right hand was a long blade, like a machete. He also had the look of someone who had not had a bath or shaved in weeks. I recall when he spotted us, and he seemed more surprised and dumbfounded than anything else. One member of my squad was slightly freaking out. With this armed man walking towards us, I kept my cool, for he did not seem to be the one that was hostile, and he kept his blade down towards the ground. He walked right up to us, stopped about, I think, maybe ten feet from us, and spoke up towards us. I guess he thought we were not real."
"I thought that whoever this man was had gone insane and had been trapped within this place for god knows how long. I stepped forward and placed my hand on his shoulder, and he did not jerk away or move away from me... He looked at my hand with a look of surprise all over his face. The next thing I knew, he had his arms wrapped around me. He was deeply happy to find another human. The others on my team got closure, and the man then let go of me to look between all of us. He asked if we were all real. I told him yes. We asked who he was, and he gave me his name, which was Armstrong. From what he said next, I was worried for a while. He asked us how we were all together at this level. I asked him what he meant by level. From what we gathered, it was nothing more than endless rooms in this place; we were within his words that changed that."
"He told us that this was what was known as the first level that people like him end up on when they come into this place. Furthermore, he told us that he just fell through the floor of his home and just went right through the floor, like, for a few seconds, it just did not exist anymore. And ended up within the place we were now at the first level; he had to adapt quickly to the "rules" as he called them about this place. According to his own words, it should be impossible for us to be in a group or to even be with each other. Groups will be separated into random locations, and the only way you could find each other was by leaving the place, which was not easy, by his own words. This was the first red flag that we were doing something wrong, and it was going to end badly for us... We brought him back with us. And within a few months, the bad day would come about."
The Foundation man looked at him after listening in silence to his entire story. "The Bad Day?" He was seeing that things were about to get interesting.