To Whom It May Concern, I Am Sorry

‘To whom it may concern; I am so sorry.’

Nine words in and already, a tear slides down my cheek, dripping onto the red wooden desk that has been the fulcrum of my ambition.

‘Someone must know what has been done. Whether this is document is a warning, or a deathrattle, or an email that never makes it to your inbox, I cannot go silently. We were doing it for the best of reasons, I promise. Why would you want to split an atom, to wield the power of the sun itself, when you can wield the power of a God?’

My hand shakes as it reaches those final three characters, and the words seem to writhe, serpentine, upon the screen, as if the language had come to life and yet was only capable of perceiving its 2D plane – an ever so fitting thought, such that I am unsure if it were my own or if I were simply being mocked for our hubris. I return to my writing.

‘We were simply like rats’ - I feel it this time, the word being handed to me – ‘rats, in a home, one in which you were sneaky leeches. We were subtle, at first. We siphoned only what we needed – to get a pip on a reader, to prove that this added layer of reality was everywhere, so long as you had the eyes to see it. A fourth, or fifth, or sixth – however many, it doesn’t matter: an extra dimension, upon which our three-dimensional traversal looks pitiful. A realm upon which our laws of the universe are merely footnotes, stipulations to the truth of existence, only true in measly conditions. We, like the rats, were simply trying to sneak in and out with our prize, unnoticed. Without alerting the residents that we were in their domain.’

Through the walls and beneath the barred door to my office, I hear a sudden screech. Reverberating, collapsing upon itself, as though a woman were screaming down a great winding copper tube. It was inconceivable, unholy and wholly unsettling in its sound. I feel the air begin to hum, and I can tell I am running out of time.

‘At first, with scientific caution, we simply took what we needed; we took enough to prove the energy could be extracted - A tick on a voltmeter, to prove we weren’t crazy, or at least weren’t wrong. The next few months after that first scientific katabasis were hesitant progressions: making a lightbulb glow, or a copper wire heat up. The exciting part was how well this worked – without a fuse, the lightbulb would explode immediately. The wires would liquefy. The energy, it seemed, was limitless.’

              With that last word, a flash of emotion flows through my mind: pride, anger, envy. Beneath it all, the sense of mental impregnation, seeds of thoughts that are not mine.

I can hear the threads of reality being cut, singing in horrific discordance like a sliced guitar string, from all around me. The air begins to reek, so faintly yet so totally, like both fresh midnight air and sickly rot. The hum from earlier has become a pulsing buzz, my skin reddening and itching in accordance with its heinous tempo.

‘It was not long after,’ I wrote with a trembling hand, ‘That I should have realised we were already too far gone. The atmosphere within the lab had shifted. It had gone from excitement to fanaticism, hope to desperation. We all wanted to see what could be done. I must admit to you, even I was swept along in this fervour. Our experiments began to stray further from the scientific method, or from science at all. For what possible benefit, in the studies of energy, could there be to attaching a series of electrode pads to a mouse and engaging it?

It was Henderson who suggested it – the lead researcher, by virtue of the fact that it was he who came up with the initial trans-dimensional energy theory. He did not explain why it must be done, simply that it was vital. It was a sin, to put it simply. Non-religious as I am, it is the only appropriate word; a sin against the nature of the universe. Yet we did not stop him.

 When the rodent exploded into a bundle of cysts and muscle and more blood than was ever possible, we should’ve drawn the line. When it began dragging itself towards its fellow mice in the neighbouring cage, we certainly shouldn’t have let it in. When it began cannibalising its fellows with what, if you stretching the definition, could be dubbed a mouth, we should have killed it. We should’ve broken the machine. God, I wish we had killed ourselves, to well and truly erase that information from earth itself.

Again, I hear a wailing screech that manages to cut through the now deafening din of energy vibrating the air. My eyes are drawn, almost forcefully, to the door of my office. Beneath the chair I propped against the handle in a vain attempt at fortification, the beige carpet has begun to rapidly turn to a crimson sponge. The screaming has still not ceased. It sounds as if it were simply down the hall now, and I recognise it: Victoria, my coworker and friend in equal parts. With this realisation comes that invasive force, that mind-raping sensation of thoughts that are not my own. I feel my consciousness begin to flow without me, and Victorias within me. I feel as my – her? – guts unspool from a mouth, forcing their way through a throat. Metre after metre of intestine, litre after litre of blood and chunks of viscera splatter upon the floor. Blood begins to pool. A stomach begins to swell, like a balloon. It grows and it grows, as if overinflated with air, until finally –

My senses return to me just as I hear a splash outside the walls. The slow creeping of bloody stain on my carpet suddenly surges forward, before it ceases. For a moment, the droning air recedes. I need to act, and my story must be heard.

Our experiments only grow in their irrelevancy to genuine progress, now no need except our raw and feverous curiosity. The zenith of this process, and the cause of the circumstances I am now entrenched in, was our inevitable foray into human experimentation.

Henderson, once again, suggested it. This might’ve been the breaking point for most of us, were it not for the fact he elected to do it on himself, rather than suffer us the choice. At the time I had thought it selflessness, but now I see it as either insanity or zealousness. In any case, it was done. A dozen pads were placed upon his naked body, connected to the device which siphoned our blasphemous energy from wherever it came. With a tonic of nerves and excitement, we activated the device. The switch flicked. Time stood still, waiting with us.

Reality exploded.

In a sudden flash of fluorescent gore, radiating force and scintillating mental shockwaves, Henderson simply ceased to be. In his place was a great gaping maw, a tumour on existence of orange hues and warm colours which occupied the space where a man once sat. We had been found, and I scurried away like a vermin.

There is no moral to my story, nor instructions to the salvations of humanity. This may well be the last transmission of humankind, I may be sending this message to a dead internet. In any case, my story must be heard. I just want you to know that I am sorry

I quickly attached every document I could to the email, CC’d as many people as I could conceive of, and hit send. I snatched my keycard off the table, slammed my laptop closed and shot out of my chair. At that exact moment, I saw the door to my office, my measly bastion of safety, crumple inward as if a finger were being pushed through wet paper.