"Justin," a voice called out to me. I waved it away, wanting nothing more than to catch a few more minutes of sleep.

"Justin!" it repeated, insistently.

"What!?" I said as I sat up, looking around for the source of my irritation.

Beside me was Professor Keeburn, a late twenties, brunette bombshell, and my advisor. I had hardly had time to process what was going on as I raised my voice, only to cringe.

"You fell asleep again," she said, pointing to my desk.

Again, yeah, that was happening more and more recently. As I tried and tried to work on some of the more interesting bits of this program I found myself waking up here a lot. I was the low man on the totem pole here, but that was quickly changing, since I was the only one who'd ever built a machine like this before, and had seen a few of the problems they were running into.

Did I really care about their proprietary little computer, designed to keep others out of the base processes? No, not really, but I did care about getting access to the lab for my own work, and so I needed to play the game for now, and that meant listening to Professor Keeburn. I knew I was her first advisee, and would have to fight tooth and nail to pass in the end, but that was fine, she was the only one who could get me here to work on what I wanted.

Crystal structures that could hold a program, forming it with their very design, that was my dream. Was it particularly useful? Well, not in its current iteration, but it was beautiful, almost organic, and had so much potential for growth. The math was... hard, but that was fine, I liked the challenge.

"Sorry, must have lost track of time... when is it anyway?" I looked down at my phone and paled, it wasn't evening at all, but rather morning, on a Saturday.

"Yeah, as you can see, your weekend is already on. Now, go home and rest, you've still got classes on Monday and need to be fresh for those, before we continue here."

"Yes ma'am," I said, hopping up.

She waved me out of the lab after I'd had my chance to pick my things up. With my bag over my shoulder I made my way home. The campus was huge, and well spread out, sadly that meant that it would take me quite awhile to get home. That was fine though, since I had the whole day off, and the walk would at least be nice.

Normally I'd take a bus back to the little apartment I was renting for now, since the school had one that would take me just one street over, but with it being the weekend and early at that it wasn't running. The weather was nice though, so on my way I stopped by a little sub shop, one of the off-brand ones, to pick up some snacks.

"Hey! Look who's here," the man at the counter said, looking up.

"How's it going Jose?" I said.

Jose began making my order before I even said anything, used to me coming in almost daily. He laughed when I asked him to double up, and grabbed a bottle of water.

"You doin' good? Look like you're about to fall over," he said jovially as he packed my stuff for me.

"Fell asleep at the lab again,"

"Man, you gotta learn to relax some, not work yourself to death."

We shared a laugh as I nodded to him in agreement. Jose and I had something of an understanding. I was always polite, not just here but to everyone who handled my food, and he was friendly. We got along particularly because I'd told some woman screaming at him about the lack of peppers on her sandwich that she needed to shut up and pay for her damn food, or leave. Jose wasn't an owner or manager or anything, so he couldn't really do that himself, but having a good relation with people for little effort often paid for itself.

In this particular case it paid for itself in spades. When Jose was alone in the shop he'd often refuse to take money from me, the only cost for lunch on a really slow day here would be what I tossed in the tip jar, which was always at least a couple bucks. Today was in fact one of those times, being crisp and early. He gave me a nod as I put some cash in the jar and went on my way.

A few minutes later I turned off the sidewalk, heading into a little back path. If you spent enough time around any institution you'd find little sections like this, trails and the like that had been made over the years. I was pretty sure that this one was used mostly by joggers, and those who like me didn't feel like walking an hour around this wooded lot.

I'd walked this round a hundred times, in morning, afternoon, and evening, though never at night. So I was a bit surprised when I tripped, rolling down a small slope and into one of the many gullies that was all around here. The little hill above me was perhaps twenty feet, and steep.

"Ow, shit," I said as I landed, unsure how exactly my foot had missed the path. "Need to pay more attention."

It was no big deal in the end, while climbing back up there would be a right pain I could follow the creek down for a few minutes until the slope was a lot closer. At least nobody had seen me I thought as I walked along the shore, finally coming to a large stone pipe.

It was one of those they put in to channel water, seven feet tall and set deep into the ground, maybe ten feet long. Sure it was spooky, but I could see the other side no problem, and walking through would be no issue at all. Didn't even look like there were spiders or anything in it. Waving my hand a bit in case there were any webs I began to trudge through.

In the brief darkness of the pipe the world began to shake, violently tossing me against one of the sides. That was weird, this area of the deep south wasn't exactly known for earthquakes, but I had little time to think about it. As soon as the shaking stopped I rose and bolted for the far end of the pipe, unsure if there would be any aftershocks or something major had happened.

As I came out I looked up for the path, only to find it obscured by trees, that was fine though. With a turn I headed into a parch of denser brush, aiming to cut my time down. I pushed and pushed, finding it thicker than I'd have wanted, thorns and vines wrapping tight around me. It was also a bit darker, not night, but twilight. As I passed through the underbrush I found myself in a deeply shaded grove, perhaps thirty feet across.

"What the hell..." I looked about, above me the trees wove into an impermeable canopy, on all sides vines and thorns made a thicket of unimaginable density. In the center was a pool, crystal blue water with vines spreading out over patterned stone.

"This wasn't here before, what is this?" I carefully walked forward, still heading around and towards where the path should come down to meet.

I'd mark this place for later, if nothing else it was beautiful, might make a good place to show friends or whatever when I had the time. The vines and the like were glowing, enough so that I'd want to check with some others before touching them.

It was as I made my way towards the thicket that my problems started though. As soon as I reached the edge of this surreal oasis I felt my hand begin to shake. I could push through, out of this grove and back into the normal world, but the thought of doing so filled me with terror deep in my soul. One step forward and I shook like a leaf, another, before the pool could even be out of sight and I fell to my knees.

This wasn't good. I ran back the way I came, determined to head through the hole I'd pushed on the far side, only to find the same thing happening. No matter how I tried, how I worked, I couldn't leave sight of the pool, my body simply wouldn't move that way. I fell to my knees and made to crawl, only for the terror to seep deeper and deeper, like death pouring into me. Within seconds I found myself turning back to the pool and running towards the comfort of the soft blue light it gave off.

I began to panic in earnest, and pulled out my phone. I'd call for help, something was clearly wrong, and the authorities...

No Signal

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That was impossible, we weren't out far from anything, near enough to a major college campus there'd be signal for days. Even in buildings and bad spots there was always at least one bar, something. As I looked at the ground I began to consider that this might not be normal at all, and I might be in real trouble.

Observe, that was what I needed to do first. I needed to understand my situation and then come up with possible explanations that I could test. Science classes had taught me at least that much. To that end I poked and prodded at the fear barrier, trying to find a hole in the terror it inspired, only to no avail. I tried closing my eyes and going in, only to find my feet would refuse after a few steps. I looked at the pool and tried to back in, same result. I took out my phone and snapped photos of everything I could see around me, looking for patterns.

The pool was in a divot on a solid stone foundation, and that foundation was surely important. There were the patterns too, decidedly some kind of graphed out mathematics. They tickled at the bits of non-euclidean geometry I'd looked at out of curiosity. More complex than what I'd seen, but somehow strangely similar to how I might try to graph something in two dimensions.

I'd start with those, carefully I took my phone and began to document. I moved the vines here and there gently, taking picture after picture of the patterns until I was sure I'd gotten the whole thing. This took several hours, and as noon began to come I broke into my food, taking a bite out of the sandwich Jose had been so generous with.

"My friend, when I tell you about this, you're gonna call me a damn liar," I said, thinking on the friendly worker. He'd certainly get a kick out of this place.

Luckily my laptop was in my bag and undamaged, so once I was ready I imported the photos to my computer and began linking them up, trying to get a picture of the full pattern. That took awhile, resizing and editing, pulling bits together. I knew a good bit about computers, but photo editing like this wasn't really my forte. When I finished I could see that yeah, decidedly some kind of pattern, repeating out from the center like a fractal and painfully complex.

All the while I checked my phone, only to find the same message repeated whenever I looked. No signal for me, whatever was going on it certainly didn't want me to communicate with anyone else. I went on like this for a few hours, trying to compare what I saw to anything I had saved on my computer. With access to the internet I might have made more progress, but sadly I was lacking such, and try as I might I had no luck.

Too soon I saw the power button lighting up, telling me that my laptop would soon be dead. I rushed to pull over everything I could onto my phone, a rather weak prospect, but all I had. Not much longer after that the battery gave out, pushing forward a dark screen.

As I looked up I saw that the vines looked, almost brighter. I hadn't noticed but for some reason they'd started glowing ever so slightly more. I looked about my bag for ideas, coming up with a few notepads and pens. It had one of those little solar chargers on it, and from that I might be able to drip charge my phone and laptop, if the light of these vines proved enough.

On day two I finished up my sandwiches, and did something I was not particularly proud of. That survivalist and his habit of drinking... well, his own urine, was gross, but it would buy me time. Time was what I needed, time to think, time to reason. My one drink from my lunch wouldn't last forever and the rule of threes said I had only days before that was a potentially fatal issue.

Further attempts to leave the grove met with the same result, but repeating experiments was no folly. It merely confirmed what I had previously suspected.

Above the little spot where I'd holed up a flower had bloomed, brilliant and beautiful. Some other part of whatever nightmare I was stuck in. I considered destroying it, but didn't want to risk any blow-back, whatever was keeping me here had already well demonstrated that it could.

I made calls and yells for help, to no avail. I hadn't really been expecting those to work, so I wasn't too down, but it didn't hurt to try every now and then. While doing so I noticed that I heard no birds or insects, nor did I see any, that alone was worth noting, as bugs were everywhere.

I worked off and on for another two days, and the vines were certainly getting brighter. I knew the time because the light was enough to charge up my phone a bit, if slowly, and even get a few minutes of laptop time.

There was no way this was natural, and I began considering supernatural options for how I'd ended up here. I was leaning towards fairies. I wasn't an expert on them or anything, but this kind of story was their deal right?

This was reinforced by the fact that that little flower had bloomed into the most delicious looking periwinkle fruit, tempting me with succulent looking flesh. I was resolved to resist that though, that screamed trap.

I had weeks before food became that much of an issue, no my main problem was water. Even with my attempts at... extending, my water supply I was out, and the tap was dry. My mouth was bone dry and painful, and there was no source other than the pool, which I was similarly afraid of.

I was too weak, two-and-a-half days with nothing substantial to drink and I was in agony. I wept as I tried to pull myself over to the pool, having just woken up from passing out. I'd said I wouldn't drink, wouldn't fall for the trap, but my body was betraying me, and if I didn't I would die here, I didn't want to die.

The water was cool and perfect, and I drank and drank, sating my thirst before sitting up once again. When I finished I screamed in rage at whoever had brought me here, cursing them to a thousand deaths. This water though will give me more time to think, more time to figure out how to escape this place.

After two weeks hunger had become a real issue. I tried eating the vines, only to find that the terror hit me whenever I tried to damage them, same with the seemingly normal vegetation around the edge. The only thing that looks appealing is that fruit, still hanging there, teasing me. My notebooks filled up days ago, and my pens ran dry. For the last few days I'd been eating bits of the paper here and there, trying to sate my appetite, that's worked well enough.

I gave up on not drinking the water, it's just too much to fight over.

Nobody was coming, wherever I was I was isolated from the world at large, apart, alone.

"Regardless of what I try, I can find nothing. I'm starving and tired, won't you just let me go?" This is the last message I left on my phone, hoping that someone will find it.

I rose to go and take the fruit, pulling it down with a gentle plop. My brain screamed that food is here, all I have to do is bite, but another instinct comes on hard. I turned and threw the offending plant into the pool.

"FUCK YOU!" I screamed at the world, before collapsing to the ground and weeping.

Minutes pass and I looked up, only to see the thing bobbing there, and I lost my nerve.

I waded into the water, nearly knee deep and picked it up. Tears fell as I bit down, letting the juices run down my throat in heavenly bliss. As I finished I wept salty tears, relief washing over me.

When I wiped my eyes I saw the world brilliant blue. The vines around pulsed in time, brighter and brighter to a fever pitch. I was afraid, I'd done what I knew I mustn't what every story told me to not. I'd taken the offering, and now...

My stomach exploded in pain, driving me down to my knees in the pool.

"WHY!? WHY!? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!? WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER ME!?" I bellowed as the pain spread through my body, lines tracing up and along my skin.

I screamed and screamed as parts began to flake away, trying and failing to exit the water, only to sink in, only for the bright light to overtake me.