I’ve been instructed to write down my experiences with Experiment 0259, in hopes that the institution can get some further insight to the insanity that was Dr. Alastair Haines. I can’t believe that there were at least 258 of these things after the horrors that this caused. You’d think that someone who wanted to cause this much pain and destruction would have created this one first. The scariest number, now that I think about it, is probably the “0” before “259.” Was he really planning on creating a thousand of these damn things? More?
Experiment 0259 is a computer disc. It looks like one of those cheap dollar store backups you burn songs to, or used to anyway. I don’t know anyone who still does that. The CD simply has “Experiment 0259” written on the disc. That was it. There was nothing else notable about it. Even the back wasn’t particularly pristine or cared for. Not enough to make you wonder if it’d run, but enough to make you know that it had seen years of use.
I had found it in a computer store. Someone had recently dropped off a bunch of old junk. There were a couple of external hard drives - one of them was even flayed open; some speakers that may or may not have worked; a monitor that looked to be out-of-date since the 90’s, and of course some CD’s. Some of the CD’s were clearly playlists of specific songs; I recognized things like Beatles’ album names.
I thought that “Experiment 0259” might have been just an album name by some alternative artsy band. I often bought these used burned CD’s from this computer shop. Sometimes I’d find really cool things - music that I’d never heard; a video game that’s been lost to the ages; etc. Sometimes you find pages and pages of just random gibberish or someone’s digital diary entries. And sometimes you get a virus. It’s why I test this stuff on an old PC, and I was eager to do this once again. I had been bored for the past two weeks, and it was time to get some kind of excitement at least.
This should be obvious at this point, but protocol number one when dealing with the works of Dr. Alastair Haines is “do not activate.” If it’s a machine, do not turn it on. If it’s a vehicle, do not activate the ignition. And if it’s a CD, do not place it in any computer. Even the most innocuous creations of his have wreaked devastation. I don’t have clearance to tell all of the details, apparently, but some of the “experiments” of Haines’ that have actually taken lives appear to be a Spanish guitar; a children’s doll; and a spark plug wire.
The institute calls them “experiments” because that’s what Haines had called them. What he was trying to do, or trying to study, or if he even knew what the definition of “experiment” was is, by all accounts, a mystery. Even after being exposed to it, I can’t really figure out what information “Experiment 0259” would have given Dr. Haines.
When I got home, I placed it into the CD-rom of my junk PC, and immediately I had gotten an error. “Error 22” apparently. I had shrugged it off. Whatever was on this old CD didn’t want to work. That was what happened most of the time. I tried to remove it from CD-rom, but it wouldn’t open. Pressing the button on my PC got the light to blink a couple of times, and then my desktop repeated “Error 22.”
Okay, so it was a virus. One that apparently stopped me from opening my CD-rom. I didn’t pay too much mind to it. It’s the risk you take when exploring digital relics of the past, although things were already striking me as strange. It wasn’t like this PC didn’t have any antivirus software - I’d be foolish not to have it on a PC made for this purpose - but it wasn’t activating.
I started the program up and I did a manual scan. I was tempted to just leave the program running while I walked away, but I was curious. Open documents, click back to “This PC”, and check out the CD manually. It was still entitled “Experiment 0259”, which was a number that was becoming ever more fascinating to me. My first inclination was that it might have been a date, but the numbers couldn’t make any date that I could think of. Maybe it was the time of day.
I right clicked the icon, pressed “eject” from the drop-down menu and “Error 22.” Perfect. Suddenly my antivirus software had caught something - files for my music player, claiming that it was a virus that posed a risk to my computer. I stared at my monitor for a moment or two, not sure on how to proceed. Was this virus disguising itself as innocuous programs, or was it fucking with the antivirus software itself?
I decided to bet on the former. I let the antivirus software delete my music player. Then I went to see if my music player was still there, and strangely enough it was. My curiosity was peaked so I played a song. Immediately I regretted my decision as my speakers blared out this ear-piercing, high-pitched noise. I turned off the speakers immediately.
More confused than angry or disappointed, I tried to close out of the music player, but I was greeted with “Error 23.” Then my CD-Rom drive went haywire, making odd scanning noises. I tried pressing the eject button a couple more times, but received nothing but “Error 22’s”. Trying to turn off the computer, either through the shutdown menu or through manually pushing the button earned me “Error 17”. I was halfway tempted to unplug the damn thing from the wall.
But my eyes were drawn to mp3 files being placed onto my desktop wallpaper, and random folders. Each of them had five-letter alphanumeric names, but even to this day I don’t know what “1aE45” or “6uIg7” means. It was clear to me that my computer was burning whatever was on this disc to my hard drive. I did have my hand on the plug, ready to end it, but the CD-Rom stopped.
I admit that I’m a flawed human being. I should not have gone forward. I should have written off my computer as worthless, destroyed by a virus, but that’s something that Dr. Alastair Haines knew and understood - curiosity is an indiscriminate force in us. I wanted to know what exactly was on my hard drive, almost worried that I’d be facing some kind of police investigation.
The music player was still going, and it only took a second to know that the horrible noise was also still going so looking through the mp3 files was temporarily out of the question. I decided that the first thing to look into was the folders. Just out of random, I took a look at folder “27uJm”. Inside, it contained some jpg images with names like “STARS” or “CAKES”, along with more randomly titled mp3’s.
I tried to open “STARS”, but immediately my antivirus program alerted me that my image viewer was now a virus. This time I opted not to delete it. And with that, the virus scan was over and it had detected nothing. I thought for a moment, and then I decided that perhaps it would be best to disable my antivirus software completely. If this program had hacked into it, it was corrupted anyway.
As I browsed through the folders on my pc, I noticed that there were more random files with random alphanumeric names. The strangest thing about all of this was that my hard drive wasn’t full. Viruses like these attempt to fill up your hard drive with random bunk files in order to slow things down, usually so you’ll pay the sender money to have it removed and get your PC to what it would have been. It’s the most common virus type at least. But that didn’t seem to be the intention of this program.
However, my antivirus’s file was missing, apparently, or renamed. Something was crawling under my skin. I had to know - what was the end game here? Was this virus trying to annoy me? Was it trying to steal my information? Or was it just trying to waste my time? I opened up “run” and typed in my antivirus program.
Immediately a picture popped open on my image viewer, one that had been given the name of my antivirus program, and the intention had immediately become clear to me. The image was of a bloody construction zone accident. Even though I had seen far worse exploring the internet for well over a decade, the surprise forced me to close my eyes.
“Error 37” greeted me when I tried to close out of it. Closing out of it was not going to be an option. I minimized the picture to get a moment of reprieve. My next inclination was opening task manager. The attempt to do so earned me “Error 2”. I was already beginning to get a headache.
I got up from my junk PC and booted up my real PC. Even though the computer with a virus on it wasn’t very valuable, I wasn’t entirely ready to cut my losses. It was still a computer. And before you ask, no the junk PC wasn’t on a network with my good one; it wasn’t even connected to the internet. I shudder to think how differently the story would have gone if that was the case.
The delightful startup sound began, I started searching around the internet for a “Experiment 0259 Virus.” Maybe others had come across my experience and I could get some answers. I didn’t have any luck. I also decided to look around for the numbers “0259” and once again found nothing. I must have searched for hours and hours, and by the end of it, my headache had become a full-fledged migraine.
I took one final look at my virus-infected PC before going to bed. Nothing had changed, at least from what I could see. That was some kind of relief I suppose. Whatever was happening to it was waiting for me to respond. I went to bed, or tried to. I had trouble sleeping. My head was thumping too much, as if something was crawling around in my head.
I don’t remember when I got up. It was sometime before sunrise. I had given up trying to sleep. And no, if you’re wondering, that computer wasn’t on my mind until I got up and walked past it. Not wanting to deal with this so early, I decided to turn on my good computer and bounce around on it. However, the second that the delightful boot up sound began the disturbing image that “Experiment 0259’s” virus had shown me flashed in my head. It wasn’t… a memory. It was like the picture was literally in my head somehow. I could see it as if it were placed in front of my eyes, crystal clear and perfect.
It’s what I thought anyway, but I was sleep deprived, and even more than that, I knew that I was sleep deprived. As time went on and I messed around with programs that I actually wanted to mess around, I was beginning to feel more and more calm, but that old computer was still on. “Experiment 0259” never left my mind.
I walked over to it, and thought it was time to use the nuclear option. I unplugged it and plugged it back in, prepared to start it up in safe mode and manually delete whatever the disc had placed on my computer. However, the very second that I placed the power cord back into the back of the computer, it booted up.
Random numbers and file names danced across the screen, but all I could really think about was that image I had seen. I didn’t understand why this was bothering me so damn much. I had seen far worse on the internet, and it wasn’t a picture of me or anyone I knew, not that I really knew anyone. It was just a random construction worker who had been mangled by a jackhammer. I was beginning to feel more and more sorry for him though.
The computer started up once again, and just as the image faded from mind, it popped open once again on my computer as the virus had reopened every single program. I don’t know what it was - curiosity, annoyance, or a nagging fear in the back of my mind, but I had to know what this virus was trying to do. It was stuck on my mind for some reason or another.
I looked back to the image and stared at it. If the “experiment” was designed to make me look or feel like an insane person, it was clearly doing its job. I even zoomed in on parts, thinking that maybe it was a large image made of smaller images that held a secret message. But no, I got all the way down to the pixels and found nothing. Any attempt to close it would be met with “Error 37.”
Then it occured to me - I didn’t have to close it; just change it. I clicked the button to the next image on my photo viewer. I don’t know what I was expecting, really. This time it was the image of a brutal car crash. I could only really sigh. I felt relieved in a way when my phone rang. My mother was on the line. While I didn’t usually like talking to her, it proved to be a nice distraction. I felt shaken. Not enough for her to notice, but it was still clear that I wasn’t acting entirely myself.
The second that I hung up the phone, it was just me and the computer. And there was one thing that I still had to know. I opened up one of the folders on the desktop and just stared at the audio files. I turned the computer speaker back up, exposing myself to the ungodly sound once more, and I quickly pressed the file for “8uJk2.mp3”.
It was a children’s laugh. Not a slowed children’s laugh, or played in reverse. It was like a children’s laugh that you’d put as a sound effect in a shitty personal movie. It was better than whatever background noise the music player was on, so I found it some kind of relief. The relief didn’t last long as I noticed the “album” photo for this particular noise. This time it was an animal cut open. I think that it was a cat.
I played each one of the fucking audio files. Why did I play each one of the fucking audio files? Every single one brought me the same thing - the sound of birds chirping, a car driving, a dog barking - each one came with a new image. I couldn’t help but look at them as I opened each new file. Every new file would cause the program to “pop up” and, try as I might to look away, I always saw them in the corner of my eyes. Why did I play each one of those fucking audio files? Every single image was bloody, disturbing. Violent crimes, horrible disasters, people dying of disease, getting eaten by parasites, tragedy after tragedy.
It took me until I got to the sound of a phone ringing to know exactly what was going on, but by that time it was far too late. The phone ringing was file “9u7jT.mp3”. Those numbers will be burned into my mind. For once, I didn’t see the disturbing image on screen. I saw the disturbing image in my mind. It was the car crash again, displayed so vividly as if the image was a program saved inside my mind.
I am a moron. Why the fuck did I play each one of those audio files?
“Experiment 0259” didn’t close them. It wouldn’t let them close. Each file was merely added to the playlist. When the phone ringing sound had finished played, it looped back to children’s laughter, and it sparked the animal image in my mind.
My breaths were quick and deep. I turned off the sound as quickly as I could, but the sounds didn’t stop. They didn’t stop. The birds chirping outside placed an image in my mind. The water dripping as I tried to sleep placed an image in my mind. Food cooking, grass being mowed, rain dripping off of the roof.
Each and every sound had such a connection to one of the images, that they were one and the same. Like the smell and the taste and the sight of cheese was all a part of cheese; these fucking images became a quality of cooking or rain or a summer’s day.
I wish that I had made myself deaf sooner. Maybe it would have helped, but that’s not the goal of “Experiment 0259.” It’s not what it wants. It’s a parasite that burrows into your mind and makes its home there, and it never wants you to forget the mistake that you’ve done. It always wants you to remember.
At the start, the only time I saw the animal image was when I heard children’s laughter, but each time the image got… more powerful. If the child was playing a game while laughing, then that game being played became a trigger. It could have been a sight, a sound, a smell. It weaseled through and rotted my memory, tainting everything.
Life has no beauty any more. Anything that I loved, anything that I could love now has a connection to something. I’ve been dealing with this for, I don’t even know how long. I think a year, but the sun reminds me of a particular suicide attempt.
I’ve asked them to destroy “Experiment 0259.” It shouldn’t be hard. It’s a fucking disc. That is it. But they told me it wasn’t standard protocol to destroy the operations of Dr. Alastair Haines. They told me that if the disc was destroyed there was no way they could reverse-engineer what “Experiment 0259” had done to me. I told them that I didn’t care. They told me that others had been affected. I told them that I didn’t care. What exists on that disc needs to be destroyed.
But they won’t do it. They don’t want to do it. It’s only just occurred to me that they want to use it themselves. Strange how all of these “professionals” can’t seem to get the idea that that’s what Dr. Haines wanted, to cause as much pain as possible. And now he has gotten exactly that. God help us - the only people who could possibly understand the damage these things can do don’t want to destroy them.
Experiment 0259 is a computer disc. It looks like one of those cheap dollar store backups you burn songs to, or used to anyway. I don’t know anyone who still does that. The CD simply has “Experiment 0259” written on the disc. That was it. There was nothing else notable about it. Even the back wasn’t particularly pristine or cared for. Not enough to make you wonder if it’d run, but enough to make you know that it had seen years of use.
I had found it in a computer store. Someone had recently dropped off a bunch of old junk. There were a couple of external hard drives - one of them was even flayed open; some speakers that may or may not have worked; a monitor that looked to be out-of-date since the 90’s, and of course some CD’s. Some of the CD’s were clearly playlists of specific songs; I recognized things like Beatles’ album names.
I thought that “Experiment 0259” might have been just an album name by some alternative artsy band. I often bought these used burned CD’s from this computer shop. Sometimes I’d find really cool things - music that I’d never heard; a video game that’s been lost to the ages; etc. Sometimes you find pages and pages of just random gibberish or someone’s digital diary entries. And sometimes you get a virus. It’s why I test this stuff on an old PC, and I was eager to do this once again. I had been bored for the past two weeks, and it was time to get some kind of excitement at least.
This should be obvious at this point, but protocol number one when dealing with the works of Dr. Alastair Haines is “do not activate.” If it’s a machine, do not turn it on. If it’s a vehicle, do not activate the ignition. And if it’s a CD, do not place it in any computer. Even the most innocuous creations of his have wreaked devastation. I don’t have clearance to tell all of the details, apparently, but some of the “experiments” of Haines’ that have actually taken lives appear to be a Spanish guitar; a children’s doll; and a spark plug wire.
The institute calls them “experiments” because that’s what Haines had called them. What he was trying to do, or trying to study, or if he even knew what the definition of “experiment” was is, by all accounts, a mystery. Even after being exposed to it, I can’t really figure out what information “Experiment 0259” would have given Dr. Haines.
When I got home, I placed it into the CD-rom of my junk PC, and immediately I had gotten an error. “Error 22” apparently. I had shrugged it off. Whatever was on this old CD didn’t want to work. That was what happened most of the time. I tried to remove it from CD-rom, but it wouldn’t open. Pressing the button on my PC got the light to blink a couple of times, and then my desktop repeated “Error 22.”
Okay, so it was a virus. One that apparently stopped me from opening my CD-rom. I didn’t pay too much mind to it. It’s the risk you take when exploring digital relics of the past, although things were already striking me as strange. It wasn’t like this PC didn’t have any antivirus software - I’d be foolish not to have it on a PC made for this purpose - but it wasn’t activating.
I started the program up and I did a manual scan. I was tempted to just leave the program running while I walked away, but I was curious. Open documents, click back to “This PC”, and check out the CD manually. It was still entitled “Experiment 0259”, which was a number that was becoming ever more fascinating to me. My first inclination was that it might have been a date, but the numbers couldn’t make any date that I could think of. Maybe it was the time of day.
I right clicked the icon, pressed “eject” from the drop-down menu and “Error 22.” Perfect. Suddenly my antivirus software had caught something - files for my music player, claiming that it was a virus that posed a risk to my computer. I stared at my monitor for a moment or two, not sure on how to proceed. Was this virus disguising itself as innocuous programs, or was it fucking with the antivirus software itself?
I decided to bet on the former. I let the antivirus software delete my music player. Then I went to see if my music player was still there, and strangely enough it was. My curiosity was peaked so I played a song. Immediately I regretted my decision as my speakers blared out this ear-piercing, high-pitched noise. I turned off the speakers immediately.
More confused than angry or disappointed, I tried to close out of the music player, but I was greeted with “Error 23.” Then my CD-Rom drive went haywire, making odd scanning noises. I tried pressing the eject button a couple more times, but received nothing but “Error 22’s”. Trying to turn off the computer, either through the shutdown menu or through manually pushing the button earned me “Error 17”. I was halfway tempted to unplug the damn thing from the wall.
But my eyes were drawn to mp3 files being placed onto my desktop wallpaper, and random folders. Each of them had five-letter alphanumeric names, but even to this day I don’t know what “1aE45” or “6uIg7” means. It was clear to me that my computer was burning whatever was on this disc to my hard drive. I did have my hand on the plug, ready to end it, but the CD-Rom stopped.
I admit that I’m a flawed human being. I should not have gone forward. I should have written off my computer as worthless, destroyed by a virus, but that’s something that Dr. Alastair Haines knew and understood - curiosity is an indiscriminate force in us. I wanted to know what exactly was on my hard drive, almost worried that I’d be facing some kind of police investigation.
The music player was still going, and it only took a second to know that the horrible noise was also still going so looking through the mp3 files was temporarily out of the question. I decided that the first thing to look into was the folders. Just out of random, I took a look at folder “27uJm”. Inside, it contained some jpg images with names like “STARS” or “CAKES”, along with more randomly titled mp3’s.
I tried to open “STARS”, but immediately my antivirus program alerted me that my image viewer was now a virus. This time I opted not to delete it. And with that, the virus scan was over and it had detected nothing. I thought for a moment, and then I decided that perhaps it would be best to disable my antivirus software completely. If this program had hacked into it, it was corrupted anyway.
As I browsed through the folders on my pc, I noticed that there were more random files with random alphanumeric names. The strangest thing about all of this was that my hard drive wasn’t full. Viruses like these attempt to fill up your hard drive with random bunk files in order to slow things down, usually so you’ll pay the sender money to have it removed and get your PC to what it would have been. It’s the most common virus type at least. But that didn’t seem to be the intention of this program.
However, my antivirus’s file was missing, apparently, or renamed. Something was crawling under my skin. I had to know - what was the end game here? Was this virus trying to annoy me? Was it trying to steal my information? Or was it just trying to waste my time? I opened up “run” and typed in my antivirus program.
Immediately a picture popped open on my image viewer, one that had been given the name of my antivirus program, and the intention had immediately become clear to me. The image was of a bloody construction zone accident. Even though I had seen far worse exploring the internet for well over a decade, the surprise forced me to close my eyes.
“Error 37” greeted me when I tried to close out of it. Closing out of it was not going to be an option. I minimized the picture to get a moment of reprieve. My next inclination was opening task manager. The attempt to do so earned me “Error 2”. I was already beginning to get a headache.
I got up from my junk PC and booted up my real PC. Even though the computer with a virus on it wasn’t very valuable, I wasn’t entirely ready to cut my losses. It was still a computer. And before you ask, no the junk PC wasn’t on a network with my good one; it wasn’t even connected to the internet. I shudder to think how differently the story would have gone if that was the case.
The delightful startup sound began, I started searching around the internet for a “Experiment 0259 Virus.” Maybe others had come across my experience and I could get some answers. I didn’t have any luck. I also decided to look around for the numbers “0259” and once again found nothing. I must have searched for hours and hours, and by the end of it, my headache had become a full-fledged migraine.
I took one final look at my virus-infected PC before going to bed. Nothing had changed, at least from what I could see. That was some kind of relief I suppose. Whatever was happening to it was waiting for me to respond. I went to bed, or tried to. I had trouble sleeping. My head was thumping too much, as if something was crawling around in my head.
I don’t remember when I got up. It was sometime before sunrise. I had given up trying to sleep. And no, if you’re wondering, that computer wasn’t on my mind until I got up and walked past it. Not wanting to deal with this so early, I decided to turn on my good computer and bounce around on it. However, the second that the delightful boot up sound began the disturbing image that “Experiment 0259’s” virus had shown me flashed in my head. It wasn’t… a memory. It was like the picture was literally in my head somehow. I could see it as if it were placed in front of my eyes, crystal clear and perfect.
It’s what I thought anyway, but I was sleep deprived, and even more than that, I knew that I was sleep deprived. As time went on and I messed around with programs that I actually wanted to mess around, I was beginning to feel more and more calm, but that old computer was still on. “Experiment 0259” never left my mind.
I walked over to it, and thought it was time to use the nuclear option. I unplugged it and plugged it back in, prepared to start it up in safe mode and manually delete whatever the disc had placed on my computer. However, the very second that I placed the power cord back into the back of the computer, it booted up.
Random numbers and file names danced across the screen, but all I could really think about was that image I had seen. I didn’t understand why this was bothering me so damn much. I had seen far worse on the internet, and it wasn’t a picture of me or anyone I knew, not that I really knew anyone. It was just a random construction worker who had been mangled by a jackhammer. I was beginning to feel more and more sorry for him though.
The computer started up once again, and just as the image faded from mind, it popped open once again on my computer as the virus had reopened every single program. I don’t know what it was - curiosity, annoyance, or a nagging fear in the back of my mind, but I had to know what this virus was trying to do. It was stuck on my mind for some reason or another.
I looked back to the image and stared at it. If the “experiment” was designed to make me look or feel like an insane person, it was clearly doing its job. I even zoomed in on parts, thinking that maybe it was a large image made of smaller images that held a secret message. But no, I got all the way down to the pixels and found nothing. Any attempt to close it would be met with “Error 37.”
Then it occured to me - I didn’t have to close it; just change it. I clicked the button to the next image on my photo viewer. I don’t know what I was expecting, really. This time it was the image of a brutal car crash. I could only really sigh. I felt relieved in a way when my phone rang. My mother was on the line. While I didn’t usually like talking to her, it proved to be a nice distraction. I felt shaken. Not enough for her to notice, but it was still clear that I wasn’t acting entirely myself.
The second that I hung up the phone, it was just me and the computer. And there was one thing that I still had to know. I opened up one of the folders on the desktop and just stared at the audio files. I turned the computer speaker back up, exposing myself to the ungodly sound once more, and I quickly pressed the file for “8uJk2.mp3”.
It was a children’s laugh. Not a slowed children’s laugh, or played in reverse. It was like a children’s laugh that you’d put as a sound effect in a shitty personal movie. It was better than whatever background noise the music player was on, so I found it some kind of relief. The relief didn’t last long as I noticed the “album” photo for this particular noise. This time it was an animal cut open. I think that it was a cat.
I played each one of the fucking audio files. Why did I play each one of the fucking audio files? Every single one brought me the same thing - the sound of birds chirping, a car driving, a dog barking - each one came with a new image. I couldn’t help but look at them as I opened each new file. Every new file would cause the program to “pop up” and, try as I might to look away, I always saw them in the corner of my eyes. Why did I play each one of those fucking audio files? Every single image was bloody, disturbing. Violent crimes, horrible disasters, people dying of disease, getting eaten by parasites, tragedy after tragedy.
It took me until I got to the sound of a phone ringing to know exactly what was going on, but by that time it was far too late. The phone ringing was file “9u7jT.mp3”. Those numbers will be burned into my mind. For once, I didn’t see the disturbing image on screen. I saw the disturbing image in my mind. It was the car crash again, displayed so vividly as if the image was a program saved inside my mind.
I am a moron. Why the fuck did I play each one of those audio files?
“Experiment 0259” didn’t close them. It wouldn’t let them close. Each file was merely added to the playlist. When the phone ringing sound had finished played, it looped back to children’s laughter, and it sparked the animal image in my mind.
My breaths were quick and deep. I turned off the sound as quickly as I could, but the sounds didn’t stop. They didn’t stop. The birds chirping outside placed an image in my mind. The water dripping as I tried to sleep placed an image in my mind. Food cooking, grass being mowed, rain dripping off of the roof.
Each and every sound had such a connection to one of the images, that they were one and the same. Like the smell and the taste and the sight of cheese was all a part of cheese; these fucking images became a quality of cooking or rain or a summer’s day.
I wish that I had made myself deaf sooner. Maybe it would have helped, but that’s not the goal of “Experiment 0259.” It’s not what it wants. It’s a parasite that burrows into your mind and makes its home there, and it never wants you to forget the mistake that you’ve done. It always wants you to remember.
At the start, the only time I saw the animal image was when I heard children’s laughter, but each time the image got… more powerful. If the child was playing a game while laughing, then that game being played became a trigger. It could have been a sight, a sound, a smell. It weaseled through and rotted my memory, tainting everything.
Life has no beauty any more. Anything that I loved, anything that I could love now has a connection to something. I’ve been dealing with this for, I don’t even know how long. I think a year, but the sun reminds me of a particular suicide attempt.
I’ve asked them to destroy “Experiment 0259.” It shouldn’t be hard. It’s a fucking disc. That is it. But they told me it wasn’t standard protocol to destroy the operations of Dr. Alastair Haines. They told me that if the disc was destroyed there was no way they could reverse-engineer what “Experiment 0259” had done to me. I told them that I didn’t care. They told me that others had been affected. I told them that I didn’t care. What exists on that disc needs to be destroyed.
But they won’t do it. They don’t want to do it. It’s only just occurred to me that they want to use it themselves. Strange how all of these “professionals” can’t seem to get the idea that that’s what Dr. Haines wanted, to cause as much pain as possible. And now he has gotten exactly that. God help us - the only people who could possibly understand the damage these things can do don’t want to destroy them.
