‍ ‍ It’s December 3rd 2025, I think. It was when I came in here. Writing down everything I can on this tablet before I no longer have the strength to do so. If you're reading this in SOT, then I'm sorry, you're probably in the same situation as I am. If this somehow finds its way back to Earth, then please share this however you can with anyone you can.

And if someone from the Outvoid Exploration Association finds this: fuck you fuck you fuck you and fuck you.

I've already lost my name to this place, but I remember my designation: C42-12, the 12th and last member of Facility 3's 42nd exploration group. We were told we were going to map out a new section of Somewhere. C42-1 through 6 went in first, but didn't come back in their allotted time. Two hours later, the second half of us were sent in with a new mission to find them, or at worst, retrieve what was left of them.

Our supervisors said it was "unusual" for a large group to go missing on such a routine outing. I say they're full of shit. They knew they were sending us to our deaths, and now I'm stuck here, waiting to be the last light from my group snuffed out.

The OEA is sticking their nose into things they never should have, just like every other group that messes with and tries to control things they can’t even begin to fathom.

I should know. I was employed at a place like that before this whole ordeal, though its name and my job within escape me. It’s hard to remember anything from that time, but I know I was taken off of some project before being transferred here as part of an “inter-company goodwill initiative” or something. “You’ll just be gone for a week”, they said. Assholes.

I was flown to an underground facility in the middle of nowhere, but given the terrain above, I'd hazard a guess it was somewhere in the midwest, maybe Nebraska or Kansas or Colorado (actually I'm not sure if Colorado is a part of the midwest, but I can't exactly look that up that right now).

It’s a blur from when I got off the plane to when I was taken down into the facility with the others. I don’t know if they drugged me, or if this place and my condition are taking those memories away from me too.

But I remember all 12 of us were sat in a briefing room, getting a rundown on OEA's mission. Their faces are hard to remember too — everyone's faces are, but a woman with a fake-sounding voice was the one who told us everything, all while two guards stood by her side.

I know I've seen her type before. We probably had one or two at my previous employment: a spokesperson with a pleasant demeanor who represents their company, telling everyone that everything is fine, that the work they're doing is all for bettering humanity, protecting it, and furthering the prosperity of mankind. In hindsight, it's all bullshit, but apparently it's bullshit that's worked on me before.

In OEA's case, they stumbled upon this "Somewhere Out There" place, and they’re trying to cross it to meet some kind of god that’s both a place and deity at the same time; a thinking mass of darkness that has the power of creation within its own proximity.

But when it makes something that doesn’t meet its standards, it throws it out and it ends up here. All of it has sort of amassed into this...desaturated wonderland. As I'm sitting here writing this, I can look up into the sky and see a massive chessboard and its pieces floating above me, with featureless fish swimming around them in a wide circle. There's empty facades of buildings with their top halves crumbling upwards, pierced by giant spears of light struck through their wreckage. The ground is made of cracked marble statues and asphalt blended together, with wires growing out of them like weeds, and strands of blinking lights and triangle-cut flags swaying in a wind that doesn't exist.

I'm currently leaned up against a building-sized piano keyboard that's fallen against and equally-large pile of oversized glass bottles, surrounded by seashells and starfish with twisting spiral patterns carved into them. I’d be in awe, if I wasn’t so terrified and pissed off right now.

I don’t know why they spent such a long time briefing us on their goals and purpose if we were just going to die out here anyways. Maybe it was to make us feel prepared, to keep us calm for long enough to get the data they’re after. I wish I would’ve ran when I could’ve — found a way to hide in those hallways just long enough to hijack an elevator to the surface, but I didn’t.

At the time, everything felt fine. Everything felt normal. My head felt dull in a way that wasn’t uncomfortable or worrying, but I just…I can’t believe I went along with it. Even after learning that the first half of us went missing, we all just accepted it without question.

After the new briefing, we were led to a prep room where we put on hazmat suits, did our final checks, geared up, and followed the same steps that group one must’ve gone through.

We went through an airlock that would’ve supposedly decontaminated us on the way back.

Passed through a small, empty connecting room.

Entered a second airlock, waited a few seconds as the pressure changed around us, had to fight off some serious vertigo before the feeling subsided —

And then the door opened directly into Somewhere Out There, into a base camp they had set up on the outside. Someone there directed us off of what I assumed was the main road, all lit up with lights and signs, towards a forest in the distance. They said to keep going forward, that they would monitor us and call us back if things got too bad.

They lied. They lied and we followed orders like dogs.

They told us so much and yet not enough about what to expect out here.

They told us other lifeforms existed, sure, but they didn't tell us that they could hurt us.

42-8 was taken out by some kind of octopus person covered in chains that tore him apart like an ill-stitched ragdoll.

They didn't tell us that the environment could change at a moment's notice.

Past the forest, another of us — I think 11 — fell into a chasm of starlight when wooden floorboards cracked open beneath us. His only mistake was walking a little too far left of the group. We had hopes that he had survived somehow, until metal pipes shot out of the star-scattered darkness like bamboo shoots. We wanted to turn back, but we were too scared of the thing in the forest. We were being monitored though, right? They were going to help us, right?

They didn't tell us that items ejected from the void could materialize and fall from the sky.

10 was taken out by a massive bowling pin that crashed down on him.

Crushed. By a fucking. Bowling pin.

They didn't tell us that we could fall under the spell of something hiding in this place. Or maybe just lose our minds.

One of us simply stopped walking, told us she had to go now, that someone was calling for her, turned around, and vanished into a fog that had been building up behind us. It took her and receded the moment she went in. 42-7 and I didn't have the energy to stop her at that point. We just let her go.

And 7...7 got the same fate as me, just much more quickly.

OEA didn't send us in to retrieve the first half of our group. They never meant for us to map out a section of this place like they originally said.

They sent us in here to die. To watch us die. To see how we'd die. To study how we'd die. I know it.

The hazmat suits they gave us were made faulty on purpose. Ours are red and white, but all of the employees at the base camp were wearing ones that were yellow and white. Our suits are thin and missing the protective inner layer that keeps out the void's influence, but we didn't know that at the time. How could we have known? And with long enough exposure to that radiation, if we survived everything else out here, that influence would either drive us mad, kill us outright, or turn us into...whatever 7 became. Whatever I’m about to.

We were marked for death the moment the second airlock opened. Hell, the moment we all got on the planes that took us here.

I know this because the radiation is telling me as much. I can hear it in the back of my mind, like noise, speaking to me through the static.

It took a while to hear it. I don’t know how long — I can’t tell how long I’ve been out here. I got lost trying to find my way back, to find any sort of help, I got sick and now I’m stuck here too weak to move.

But the noise. The static. It tells me that we won't be the last to suffer this fate. That OEA will throw as many bodies as they need into this horrible, beautiful place until they get what they want. And one day they will get what they want. They will. But as soon as they have it, they’ll realize they never should’ve looked for it at all.

The way I hear the void signal speak, it almost sounds like music, but it's still so discordant. I fear for the moment that it harmonizes, and I fear the moment that I sing along with it, scream along with it as 7 did. It’s better than dying the way the others did, right? It’s better to become something new? If that’s even going to happen. What if I’m just going to die, and the resulting beast will build itself from my corpse? I don’t know. I’m tired.

I'm tired, I'm scared, I'm angry, and I'm tired all over again. I can't fight against this much longer. There’s a writhing beneath my arms and neck, a static crawling through my bones, a temperature in my eyes that doesn't exist, and a feeling that’s calling me to sleep. I just want to go to sleep so bad.

If I am to die here and be reborn into something else, I pray for the ignorant bliss of not recalling the scattered memories of my previous life. Or, I pray for the grace to accept what I've become. And if I cannot have either of those things, then I pray that I never lose my hatred towards the bastards who did this to me.

I've written all that I can. If you are stuck Somewhere Out There, I wish for you to have the strength and willpower to make it through. To make it back home. I hope they gave you a hazmat suit that’s yellow. I hope you lose your mind quickly and painlessly if they didn't.

If you have the ability to hold onto memory, then please don't forget me.

My name was C42-12, and I will miss what I cannot remember.