Theo sat up in his chair, his pulse running on an all-time high as a piercing sound reached deep into his ears. Thoughts of bombs or weapons drove his mind to the worst imaginable scenarios until the sight of a blue screen made him calm down. His computer crashed.

Wiping away the tiredness from his eyes, he heard snickers from the cubicle next to his own. He might’ve snored a bit too loudly, his body refusing the idea of sleeping silently. He wasn’t meant to sleep at all during work hours, truthfully, but his body refused the idea of that as well. There was no arguing with it at this point. Theo just had to beg and hope it would listen someday.

The computer rebooted just in time to tell him that the worksheets hadn’t been saved, making three hours of work wasted. He was meant to have sent in the compiled data sets to his boss two hours ago but that wasn’t happening now. Looking blankly ahead at the screen, he wasn’t sure what to do. Every other cubicle in the row next to him seemed to fill with endless typing and talking, people working and socializing at an untestable pace.

Each of their little spaces was littered with small trinkets of all shapes and sizes. Just right next to his own space was Veronica with her curious collection of small glass dogs. She had just gotten a new Labradoodle that she hadn’t stopped talking about to her friend for the last… god, had Theo really slept for two full hours? He was more late with the report than he’d thought.

I’m going to lose my job at this point, aren’t I?

He probably wasn’t. Out of all the employees on his floor, he was likely the one who’d spent the most time in the office. Theo knew there was no honour in that fact, ninety-hour weeks doing nothing but damaging his mind and stopping him from doing anything. But… bills had to be paid. His bare apartment was too precious to let go of, seeing as the alternative was to sleep outside his office.

And if that happened, he would most certainly be fired. The company didn’t want to hire homeless people, after all. Theo had more than just heard what Lea, his boss, had said about the people sleeping on the streets. That she was in control of other people made him fear for those with a higher position than her.

“Hey, Theo,” Veronica said over the cubicle wall as the man started to retype the data he’d worked with before. Looking over at the somehow happy woman on the other side of the wall, bleary eyes meeting hers, he saw her flinch just a little. “Weren’t you meant to be on your lunch break thirty minutes ago?”

… Oh, damn it all.

“Yeah, I was,” Theo replied. He still had ten minutes to work with if he wanted to get something to eat. Seeing as breakfast had been a rather sad affair, he couldn’t afford to not go and get his packed lunch. That thing had cost a fortune anyway. “Thank you for reminding me.”

“It’s no problem.”

Veronica was nice sometimes. The two of them didn’t talk too often, sure, but she was good at reading those around her. That’s what her latest horoscope had said, at least. Theo wasn’t sure how she believed in stuff like that, but he didn’t let it go to his head. She had her own ways of enjoying life and who was he to judge?

Isn’t she the one going to the Bahamas next week?

Theo was somewhat sure he could remember something about that. It was either her or Joel, the dude on the opposite side. He wasn’t as talkative and Theo theorized that the man outright didn’t like him. Maybe it was the tired eyes that caused it, Joel seeming rather upright most of the time. That bouncing ball that he’d replaced his chair with last month certainly talked about being healthy. The posters that he’d taken from some sports event made that even clearer.

Looking at his own blank walls for the seventh time that day, the not-so-young man promised himself he would find something to show off. The ‘I’m new so I don’t know what to put up’ didn’t really work after seven years. Everybody decorated their work spaces with some of the hobbies they did in their off-time.

But what if he didn’t have anything like that? Hobbies were expensive. Even if he wanted one, to go out and maybe take a trip hiking, his bank account wasn’t happy with that line of-

“Mister Locheim,” Lea said politely as he walked by her office on the way to the cafeteria room. “Do you have the report ready for me?”

“Uhm, not yet, no,” Theo replied quickly, not able to figure out a way to look good in this situation. It was a shame he was the only one who had to. Even with his pitiful work record that day, even logging into the system was a bigger triumph than whatever his boss had been doing. Just how was she throwing her work at somebody else this time around? “The computer crashed and I wasn’t able to recover my progress on it. I should be able to have it before the end of the day.”

“That’s great to hear,” his boss said with eyes that didn’t have any life in them. He wondered what she was thinking about. “When you finish it, I do have another data set that I would love for you to review and arrange as well. A client wants a couple of changes as quickly as possible.”

Within the day, you mean.

Theo supposed that not going home before midnight was for losers anyway. Promising to have it all ready before he left the office, he continued down the hall and into the break room, barely able to get past the horde of people in the hallway. There wasn't anybody around inside the room itself, luckily, and the people of the hour had already eaten before he could get there. The small kitchen area and the white, sterile walls were all for his taking.

A grimace formed on his face when he opened the fridge door. The lunch he’d so meticulously packed that morning, putting an obvious ‘don’t touch’ sticker on as well, was gone and void. Either somebody wasn't able to actually read, which wouldn’t be too surprising in a place like this, or they had no care about politeness and had just eaten his only food of the day anyway. He wondered if it was alright to be angry at them or if he was just meant to sigh and move on.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

He didn’t even know who had stolen it so there was no reason to be angry anyway. The chattering of people in the hallway dulled his sense enough for him to just grow empty inside. Taking out his wallet and counting a few of the bills, Theo guessed that he could afford to buy from the vending machine that day. It had been a while since he’d bought some good old heart disease. Sticking to his American roots was important every now and then.

Going over to the old machine, he spotted something that didn’t look too out of date. Grimacing at the very black carrots, he pressed the option for one of the chips packets. The vending machine swallowed his bills without giving anything back, though.

“Come on, you old thing,” Theo said, lightly slapping it on the side. It spurred back to life for just long enough for the insides to whir, two packets dropping down instead of one. Now that was something he didn’t mind. “Apology for the latency has been accepted.”

The machine didn’t answer back in words, the back of it just pushing out air with a broken fan that sputtered every few seconds. A click noise of some sort, one that couldn’t be healthy in the long term. Theo wondered if he needed to report it to his boss or if it was worth being saddled with the bill for the repairs.

Taking the two small bags in one hand, each barely qualifying as a serving, he sat down on the table. Opening up the first, the grease hit his hands instantly, the saltiness brought in flavour that his mind loved to no end. It was incredible what such a simple trick could do. Salt was the bread of happiness. It was a shame that it was so expensive.

Filling up one of the free bottles with tap water, he took a swig from that as well. It was a beautiful blend of being fed and hydrated. He almost felt serene. His body almost wanted to fall back into the realm of sleep, though he snapped out of it before his eyes closed entirely. Instead, he began to notice something else.

That bit of background noise from the vending machine. It was… gone? Theo nearly couldn’t believe it, the machine fixing itself even further. How he wished he could just stop having those small flaws. Or… actually, there was no sound at all from the machine.

Checking by putting his hands alongside the back, the worst-case scenario did in fact seem to have happened. There was no airflow at all anymore. The few refrigerated drinks inside would go hot in just a few hours and expire. Seeing the camera, he knew he would have to report it. His conscience wouldn’t allow him just ignore the issue at this point.

And yet another issue became clear as he walked to grab his food and drink of the day. The only footsteps he could hear were his own, the supposedly busy hallway outside the break room somehow growing silent. Were they playing a prank on him? Theo was rather sure it wasn’t anywhere close to April yet.

“Hello?” Theo said, slowly walking to the door, waiting for it to open up suddenly and for people to scare him. And yet… there was nothing. There was no sound at all. Even the old lamp on top of the door, the one which constantly admitted just a little sound if one listened carefully, was fully silent. Theo considered the chance he had just gone deaf but he could very easily hear himself. Crazy, then? “Is anybody out-”

Opening up the door, he was greeted by nothing but a very black void. There was no hallway, no nothing. Feeling a slight pull from it that nearly had Theo’s left leg sucked out, he made the rational decision to close the door and go back to the table where his chips and water still sat.

Nope.

Craziness it was. If Theo had to go to a mental hospital and rack up enough bills to make him forever in debt, he was going to at least enjoy his lunch. Biting into the chip in his hand, however, the small fragments that got out didn’t fall to the floor. On the contrary, they fell directly towards the exit.

There was no chance of holding the door closed, the iron hinges blowing out entirely as the door was ripped off. It was like the gravity of the room turned, and Theo started to fall towards the void no matter what he did. He tried to hold onto the table to escape its pull yet the fake wood furniture just followed him until the point where the door had been ripped off. The table was bottlenecked at the exit but Theo had no such issues, him and his lunch being thrown into the void without anything to hold onto.

The man had no issue confessing that he screamed. When he finally entered the void, it felt like he was being pulled apart from all sides. His skin was turned inside out and his eyes were subjected to a black so dark that his brain felt like melting. He saw everything and nothing at the same time, the horrors of the universe looking at him. Concepts gained the ability to judge and they saw him as unworthy, more than happy to start compressing him into an atom so he would become a building block for future generations.

And then he was back to normal, his mind wiped off… something as he sat in a small pool of water. A second of wondering was spent in the dimly lit room as Theo regained the ability to see clearly, the sound of his two chips packets and bottle of water dropping next to him causing him to look down.

What?

Feeling at his body, everything seemed to be at the right places. His knees were a bit scraped but that was more because of his fall in the break room. His throat was a little dry as well but that was more due to a lack of water and a lot of screaming into the void. The literal void.

“Oh, damn it all. What is happening?” Theo muttered, seeing thousands of extremely small lines on the flat stone beneath him. Standing up and looking at whatever that was, it seemed to pulse for a few more seconds. Just looking at it made a headache appear in his mind, as it was rejecting the concept of staring at the lines. What was wrong with that? Fancy artwork was now illegal for him as well? “Does psychosis really make it all that vivid?”

Going down on one knee no matter how much his leg refused the motion, he felt the stone. The texture was rather fine but the small indents all around were clear to the tip of his fingers. The droplet of water hitting his head from the top of the room sealed the deal for him as well, a small light fixture of sorts sitting at the top of the room.

I haven’t seen that kind of lamp before, actually.

It wasn’t bulb-shaped like what he knew normally. It was too… short for that, the sides being pressed out even more than normal. Going up on his toes, he tapped it a few times, the interaction making it work as it was likely meant to. Just like that, the dimly lit room was made just slightly less dim.

“Now, just where am-” Theo murmured until he looked around and saw a spider the size of a dinner plate slowly moving towards him. The bits of bioluminescent spheres sitting on its legs and the main body was vomit-inducing, the things looking ready to pop. “Australia.”

Living target detected!

Assimilation protocol has been activated. Estimated time until completion: 00:4:59

Psychosis was back on the table.