Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25259255-20140803175352

This is my first pasta. I am sure it meets all criteria, but I need another's opinion before I even bother submitting it. Hopefully, it isn't too long-winded.

Terminal Velocity – The Hidden Level

Terminal Velocity was an arcade-styled flight combat game developed by Terminal Reality released in 1995. It was a high-action, fast-paced game compared to similar flight simulators at the time. It was made mainly for the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system, and thus, Dosbox is required to play this game nowadays.

The plot was typical for a futuristic sci-fi action game. It was the year 2704, when the ASFAR (Alliance of Space-Faring Alien Races), of which Earth is a member, suddenly turns against Earth and their fleet ravages the planet, starting a war. The player flies a powerful star fighter, the TV-202, in a series of missions to defeat the many enemies and bosses on the various planets in your quest to end the war. In Episode 3, “The Mad God”, the player learns that a huge supercomputer known as X.I. (Xenocidic Initiative), located on Proxima Seven, is responsible for the war. Their final mission is to eliminate it.

Although the game is far from cutting edge now and it seems to of faded into some degree of obscurity, it had certainly left a fond impression on me. As a child, I loved to fly around and blow up the many hostile forces that were both on the ground and in the air whilst listening to the kickass digital soundtrack. I also liked to collect the various power-ups and weaponry found scattered around in bunkers throughout the levels.

I had started playing the game again recently, but, after what I had found on my old CD-ROM- well, let’s just say; I just HAD to have it replaced with another one. What I saw- or what I thought I saw on that old CD-ROM of mine, horrified me, and may haunt me for the rest of my days.

One winter night I was playing this game, I was home alone at the time. I was completing the final mission on Proxima Seven when I encountered the final boss (X.I.) again. The final boss was hard, but its appearance was rather laughable: It was a gigantic rotating computer frame that contained an image of a very angry-looking Descent-like cartoon man with pupiless eyes who sometimes shouted phrases like “COME ON LITTLE MAN!” other times he just laughed like an insane maniac.

Once I had defeated the boss, (it took a while due to the fact that was I flying clumsily while playing this game with a keyboard and not a joystick) I flew out of the boss room and into the very LONG and narrow tunnel that would lead me to the end of the level. I eventually made it to the end of the tunnel, I then saw my star fighter escape the planet, and watched the cutscene in which the planet I had left behind blow up in a very spectacular way. I saw my game had annoyingly started flickering and chopping out for some reason. My copy of the game always did that at this particular point. I then saw the usual message before the end credits.

“You have saved the Earth and most of the known universe. Not Bad! Wanna test out the new TV-303? Hint: Try typing your name as “Terminal” and your callsign as “Reality”.”

I would usually ignore this message, especially as a child long ago. I mean, really, who in hell would want to name themselves as “Terminal” while having your callsign as “Reality”? Besides, I usually was more eager to enter my new scores to see if I had better results than the last time I played, and the stupid flickering at this point didn’t make this message any easier to read, but this time, I was curious the see this new “TV-303”. I thought that it may have been a faster or more powerful version of the star fighter that was normally used.

After the credits had finished rolling and I had saved my new score, I started a new mission.

Before the first episodes’ mission, rather than just entering my name with a badass callsign, I entered in my name as “Terminal” with my callsign as “Reality”, just as the message had said. I then hit the enter key.

What I saw, I most certainly was not expecting…

There was a planet was a murky red colour on my screen; it was the distinct colour of flesh and blood. But it wasn’t the colour that had taken me aback. The planetary surface was completely covered with what looked like gaping fanged mouths. These mouths were always open as if they were preparing to devour something. The mission briefing was this:

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Unknown Body LOC: Proxima Centauri, 4th O.B. DIST: 4.2 L.Y. from Earth The data you’ve transmitted indicate that the XI was a S-Max Supercomputer and had accidentally digitized a janitor instead of its normal input media, the PIM, or Physical Information Matrix. The guy’s name was Sy Wickens. He apparently went mad trying to get out or something. But this is all for later we need you there now.

Centauri IV just flashed and turned a muddy red. Maybe there is more behind this attack than we thought.

Find out what force changed the planet, and destroy it. I just hope whatever it is wasn’t what turned Wickens mad…


 * PREPARING TACTICAL REPORT
 * PREPARING TACTICAL REPORT

I had no idea what this mission briefing was talking about, and I still don’t to this day.

The enemies here were peculiar compared to the rest of the game and the music was foreboding and mysterious… My first objective was to enter a tunnel. The tunnel was a raised section with one of those frightening pixelated mouths on top of it that I could actually fly through. I flew my fighter slowly into the unfriendly toothed mouth.

The imagery was quite disturbing in the tunnel. One of the images was like that of a crouched skeletal child or foetus covered in what could be maggots, or biomechanical tubing of some sort… There was also a collection of other images that looked like elongated grinning skulls with eyes still in their sockets. I found this very unusual to the rest of the game, and VERY unsettling. I can imagine the horrified look on my face if I had discovered this Easter egg as a kid… I wormed my way through this passage until I saw that a cavernous underground room was nearby.

In this room was some kind of a strange, but destructible statue. I had no idea what it was supposed to be, or what it was supposed to represent. I heard it shoot at me, but I saw no shots. I eventually demolished it. I flew inside the next section of tunnel ahead.

In this section of the tunnel, there was what appeared to be upside down demon heads on the walls as well as more biomechanical imagery such as vein-like tubing all over the walls. This segment was slightly more difficult to transverse than the last section, with more of those moving walls that open and shut. Before I could wonder what this planet was supposed to be or why I was even here, the next room was just ahead.

I nearly shat myself when I first saw it. In this room, there was a massive spider-like entity that blasted shots wildly into the air. I might not have arachnophobia, but the first sight of it running around on the spot when I had first entered room gave me a start. I took a few hits from its frantic firing, but this boss was relatively easy. I entered the tunnel, believing this bizarre mission would soon be over, now that the boss had been destroyed.

I was so wrong…

This next division of this winding subterranean passage was quite a bit more extensive and filled with some light and dark sections with the consistent biomechanical imagery on the walls and the grinning skulls from before appeared in some places again. This kept up until I noticed there was a significant amount of damage recovery items ahead of me.

I then knew that yet another underground cavern may be dead ahead.

I entered the cavern carefully.

What I glimpsed in there was way more frightening than the spider boss. The music changed as well, into something dramatic and fearsome.

The boss was monstrous. It looked at me with the six red eyes on its ugly head and sprayed red blood at me from its eyes. The four spindly, insect-like appendages attached to its frame were flailing around while it thrashed around in place and threw its head up and down the as if it were roaring and screeching in utter contempt at me.

I blasted the repeatedly beast with the upgraded laser I had acquired earlier, but the beast kept hitting me with the blood from its eyes and I kept on crashing into it due to the boss’s large hitbox.

Eventually, I lost the boss fight.

Right after the game had shown the animation of me crashing into the monster, my screen flashed with the image of the final boss of the game from episode 3; the crazed man digitized onto the supercomputer. That had NEVER happened before when I died in the game.

Then suddenly, the power to my house went out. The darkness of the night swallowed my room. I tried to turn on my bedside lamp back on, but it was to no avail. Then I tried flicking the switch to my bedroom light, but that was useless too. The electricity to my house was dead. All the lights in the entire house were snuffed out. I then tried vainly (and rather foolishly) to turn my computer back on. I yelled “What the fuck?” at the blank computer screen, and I started shaking and tapping it in blind frustration.

I was PISSED.

I wanted to see what happened next in the game, why did the power have to black out now, of all times! I wanted to see what would happen if you had defeated that monstrosity and completed all of the objectives in that level. Goddamn it!

I started pacing pointlessly around in circles. “You fucking bastard! Why?! Why now!” I kept raving on as I eventually decided to take a stroll outside the house to calm down and inhale the fresh night air.

After a few minutes, I eventually came to my senses and calmed down. I felt silly, losing my temper over something as trivial as a power outage. I sat down on a boulder in my garden. I then began to ponder what on earth that mission was about and what the hell that boss was supposed to be.

A little bit of time had passed when I noticed that the neighbours’ lights were on. I figured that the electricity must have come back on.

I headed back to my bedroom, along the way; I observed that the lights in the living room and the kitchen had indeed flashed back to life. I was pleased to see that the blackout was rather short lived, and didn’t last for hours.

When I had entered my bedroom, the room was still pitch-black as the bedside lamp had not come back on. The air was also ice cold; it was much more frigid than when I had left the room earlier. I didn’t think this was out of the ordinary. After all, my end of the house was always much cooler than the rest of the house anyway. I shrugged it off, and I then walked over to the computer tried to turn it back on.

The computer simply remained silent and the LEDs on it remained unilluminated. I swore. “What the fuck? Why won’t you turn on, damn it!” How come there was power to the rest of the house, and none whatsoever to my bedroom? I started to think that maybe there was something wrong with my distribution board, or maybe some smartass tampered with it. I made way towards the door.

My bedroom door suddenly slammed shut in front of me. My window curtains closed themselves over the window in a rush, but I was sure that I heard no one in the room with me.

I turned around to look at my curtains. What was going here? I began to feel afraid, but at the same time, I thought that this was someone’s idea of a sick joke, or someone was trying to shut me in my room so that they could burgle the house without interference.

But, if someone WAS in my house, how the fuck could they slam the door shut RIGHT in front of me when it swung from the INSIDE of the room, and close my curtains behind me without being noticed at the same time? Giving it no more thought, I ran hastily over to my tallboy across the room and pulled out my handy pocket knife as a precaution, it was better than nothing. Intruders were often armed these days, and violent home invasions were not unheard of. Better to defend yourself if necessary than become another death statistic on the evening news.

I tried to pull my curtain back, but they wouldn’t move. I tugged at them harder and harder, but the curtain wouldn’t move, nor did they rip off at the pins. I now put my efforts into opening the bedroom door, but it wouldn’t budge. This was becoming increasingly bizarre, and unnerving…

Suddenly, I heard something that made the hairs on my neck prickle up. It was a disgusting, wet, squelching noise. The source of the sound was coming from my computer, so I checked it out. I then noticed something that was extremely alarming. The CD-ROM port opened itself despite the fact that the computer appeared to be off. But, where the CD should be, a putrid and foul-smelling murky red mass was there instead. Black tendrils started stretching themselves out of the filthy mass on the CD-ROM port, and had begun to envelope the entire machine. Eventually, the growths spread out at such a rapid rate that they were now squirming over the computer desk, onto the wall behind the desk and were now spreading themselves all over the floor and ceiling.

I panicked. I dropped my knife and I had started to kick in my window desperately whilst calling out for help in the hopes of escaping the approaching writhing masses of murky red and black tendrils, but the curtained window wouldn’t break. I tried throwing my chair at where the glass would be behind the curtains that were now also being smothered by the creeping fleshy black tendrils, but it was useless…

All of the walls of my room were eventually entirely smothered in the revolting red and black coils. They were locking together in moist clumps. Mouths were now starting to appear on the walls, ceiling and floor while white tube-like structures pulsated and twisted in between them. The mouths were exactly like the same as the ones in the game I had just played, but these mouths were not pixelated. The stench from them was like that of a multitude of a week old rotten corpses.

I cowered on my bed as it too began to get covered in a black mass. Where my computer screen was, a vast hole was forming, but was no mouth like the others, and it had no teeth. Once it had finished forming, in the midst of it, there was a red and white shape, much like that of a foetus that slopped onto the floor with a gruesome slap.

I did not dare approach it. I remained rooted on the spot in silent fear, and the smell of the room was overwhelming me. The red and white mass on the floor stirred. It then began to grow at an alarming rate until it was taller than a man. It changed colour until it was bone white.

It was the demon from the game. It stared at me with its six red insect-like eyes. Its eyes glowed with a feeling full of hatred and malevolence. I felt nothing but sheer terror.

It began to speak to me in a piercing, grinding, metallic and demonic voice. It sounded like many voices speaking at once. And while this being had no visible mouth, it only looked at me, and I understood what it said.

This is what it said:

“Mankind will reap from its labours as it has sown. You breed endlessly like a virus. You’ll rape your world whilst having no qualms about the damages you have left behind. You shall all perish, whether though starvation or plague, that for us to know and for you to find out. And should mankind miraculously survive its self-destruction, and decides to spread its diseased practises into our domain in space, we will use your own weapons against you. We will force you to eat the rotten fruits you have grown. We will make you fall upon your own weapons.

As for you, you will spread our word: The universe is OURS. If you do not, we will see to it that we will have our full on your offspring. We would take great delight in your torment.”

It then turned back its head and made an ear-splitting screech. The curtains ripped opened and the door was blown off its hinges.

After a blinding burst of white light, the monster, the repulsive stench and the mouths on the walls had all together vanished. The power turned back on, and the computer booted up like nothing happened. The CD-ROM port was still open and but then it closed.

I was catatonic. I could not believe what I had seen and heard. I ran out of my room in a panic, grabbed my keys, made for the front door, locked it and I fled down the street until I couldn’t run anymore.

I stopped at a half puffing and sweat with exhaustion. I had no idea how far I had run away, but I had to stop and piece everything together about what I saw and heard in there. Was it real or was I just imagining all of this? I can’t be mad, I mean, I have no history of mental illness! I can’t of just though all of this up and hallucinated. Things just don’t fucking happen like that!

I started to go back home, but warily.

When I got back, I snatched up the CD-ROM out of the port, put it back into its case and vowed rid me of its presence. I put the CD inside a lockbox and I then went to bed, but did not go to sleep that night nor did I sleep for another 3 days. When I did, I had terrifying nightmares of violence, rape and various other evil deeds. In each of those dreams before I woke up, the monster’s voice would say:

“These are the contemptuous exploits of homo sapiens, the “Wise Man”. Remember my words.”

A month has passed since that night, and I have sold off the offending CD-ROM copy of Terminal Velocity to who knows where on the internet. I now feel much better without that CD laying inside a box anywhere near me. I sold it instead of destroying it, seeing as it now was quite valuable for some people I had told of this event who had become interested in playing this old game for the first time, but some people wanted to prove the sceptics of my encounter with the bestial entity wrong. I think that the latter type were more like horror-junkies, thrill-seekers and conspiracy theorists. I haven’t heard from the buyer since then, I am beginning to worry that I may regret selling away the horror on that CD to some stranger. It could still be somewhere out there, doing more than just frightening people shitless and threatening the very existence of humanity. Who knows what actions that fiend is capable of performing, if what I saw was re- No, it must be real, why else would my door be blasted off its hinges like that? I had never felt deer, rotting fear so genuine before that. I am fearful that I may have caused some harm to an innocent person, but I MUST tell myself this occurrence will never ever happen again. Maybe, if I keep it up, I will eventually believe that I had simply imagined this whole scenario.

I also since have bought myself a new CD-ROM of the game. Despite my fears of the Easter egg in the game, I have played it though the hidden level again so as to confront my fears, and to convince myself that the demon was just a figment of my imagination. The horrifying events of that night have not repeated ever again. Others have loaded Let’s Plays onto YouTube, and seem to have not encountered anything unusual at all about their gaming experience.

As I have started the writing of this memoir, the nightmares have also come to a stop. I have not seen the monster again while awake or in my sleep. It could because I am warning others of what may be out waiting for us. We all must better ourselves for a brighter future and unite as one should we encounter any threat that will try to end us.

I am spreading the word, and I am afraid for the future of us all. 