Far away in an desolate, mountainous country seldom touched by warmth or nature loomed a tall, white, featureless structure of indeterminable purpose at the top of a high mound of crushed and powdered rock. Its conspicuous cleanliness kept it unnaturally apparent among the dead, grey environment surrounding it; a monolithic gravestone marking a once prosperous land. Inside was a dark room illuminated only by the cold glow of consoles and displays, each presenting a wealth of information urgently being deciphered by the room's nervous occupants.

A dozen people in the room hurled orders and questions at each other without coordination before returning to their own posts and frantically typing a command into a console, quickly standing back up every time a dark crimson warning message surged across their screen to repeat the process. On the wall facing the staff was a screen that spanned the full width of the room, which cut between video and audio feed of a dark object enveloping the sky above a small town and critical error alerts that were quickly replaced by more critical error alerts . In the midst of the uproar, a door at the back of the room swung open, flooding the room with light from the hallway, followed by a man in an important looking suit who strode down the aisle between consoles to the front-most display.

“Final call! We need to reset the system!” the suited man yelled as he walked.

Hearing this, the room grew more chaotic, each voicing their thoughts aloud to a room populated by individuals who only cared about having their own opinion heard.

“We don’t know what’ll happen if we perform a system reset now! There are people in there who are at risk, we have to try and recover what we–” yelled a large sweaty man near the front of the room, before being interrupted by the man in the suit who now stood facing him.

“And jeopardise the entire project? You’ve seen what’s going on, the psychological stress of the citizens is overwhelming the system; the server is at critical space. If we don’t do something right now we could lose everything we’ve worked towards! You gathered the data that you were requested to find, there’s nothing more you can do!” The room went silent, save for the whirring and trilling of the consoles’ strained hardware.

The sweaty man who insisted otherwise stubbornly tried to resist, the rest quietly agreed.

“Good. The reset should remove the object from the program and set the date to the morning of the next day: May 24th.” said the man in the suit, regaining his composure.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

At this, a tense murmur filled the room, and typing could be heard across the rows of consoles.

“Reset is ready, sir.” said a woman in the middle of the room, which was met with a nod from the man in the suit.

With that, the display at the front of the room went dark, and all the consoles in the room shut down, leaving the room in a dark, anxious silence. Minutes passed, and the computers booted back to life, relighting the space in a cold blue hue.

“What’s the status, doctor?” asked the man in the suit.

At the right most console in the front row, a small woman stared at her screen and read its content, her face growing more pale at every line.

“Um… we’re seeing mass sensory hallucinations and variable switches on nearly every single citizen. It looks like some were fully disconnected from the software; their vitals are flat. Braindead. Others are reporting physical and psychological changes in their simulated counterparts: some personalities are being amplified, some are even being reversed.” she read aloud slowly. Once finished, whispers filled the room.

“How will this affect the real world subjects?” asked a voice behind the woman

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if they’re capable of being disconnected from the program anymore.” she answered, dejectedly.

More silence followed and thoughts raced through the heads of every member in the room. After a few moments the man in the suit, who had been deep in thought, raised his voice to the staff.

“You’ve done all you can for now. What we needed was the data of the feedback to the UFO. The rest is in your hands.” he said, before slowly making his way back to the door at the end of the aisle.

“You don’t care about the people?” blurted out the woman in the front row, standing up “You don’t care that you just ordered us to condemn thousands of people to their deaths?!”

The man stopped at the last row of consoles, unphased by the gravitas of the woman's question and turned around to look her in the eyes with a dead gaze,

“I do. But we have more than this small group of civilians to worry about. There’s a reason we were asked to do this, doctor, as you’re aware. As you’re all aware.” Hearing this, the woman in the front row sat back down defeatedly in the seat to her side. The frankness of his statement caused her and the rest of the people in the room to give up any chances of guilting him.

“What happened here tonight will not leave this room. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the experiment went smoothly and the simulation is continuing normally.” he continued, before pausing one last time at the frame of the exit.

“The work you’ve done is appreciated, and I hope this facility can count on your aid in the future, if it’s ever needed again” he finished, before stepping out and closing the door, cloaking the room once again in darkness.

None uttered a word, none thought a thought, all were left with the knowledge and burden of their abomination.