Traumatic Wrong Turn

Cyberspace's highways were already abuzz with activity. By what? Its little inhabitants of different shapes, colours and sizes, albeit with a cubist abstract lineage to each - sentient sparks of energy: the cybermessengers, tasked with the minute-by-minute of shuttling byte-by-byte data packages throughout the World Wide Web's overall network - they were the blood cells in the communicative circulatory system of the Internet, already evolving and expanding. Why yes, they practically flew along the highways.

And amongst the crowd was a rather unique, distinctive and apparently jovial messenger. How unique? He had a demilune head with a dark forehead, with a small rudder trailing behind it, and a large turquoise nose; further down, a small round striped body, and of his two arms - a skinny, blue left arm with a small hand in a singular white glove, and contrastively a large, orange, spreading, wing-like right arm (on closer inspection it resembled an oak leaf, tapering at the stem), tightly carrying the glowing green parcel of data - and two short skinny legs with two oddly shoed feet - a sneaker on the right and a high heeled boot on the left. Twipsy, that was his name.

And being a cyber courier as his primary job, travelling down cyberspace's many highways was his way of life, and since the Web was already expanding in speed and capacity... well, since its dramatic evolution from the ARPANET of 1969 to a large public network of the 1990's, and all the way to an establishment of the high speed network from the 2000's onwards... as more and more people (or how he refers to them, the "outerworlders" in comparison to those in cyberspace) were connected to the Web, so did the need for more and more messengers to carry the data anywhere and everywhere.

Of course, more people harnessed the web in many ways possible... new websites were built and established - the birth of social networks by the outerworlders - and in turn, libraries were established as well. Twipsy remembered it very well, as he sped down the highway, parcel in hand, as he saw one interesting structure - a free floating, constructivist abstract, hive, in shades of blue, and with hundreds (if not thousands) of his fellow cybermessengers entering it with parcels in hand - outerworlders called it Facebook, he thought, as he was caught up in reminiscing how, oh how much, the web had changed...

However, the large nosed cybermessenger veered off the highway, taking a right turn towards a different fork in the road, and then he snapped back out of his memories - startled, Twipsy realised he had taken a wrong turn, and before he could turn back, he helplessly realised the road was heading down... down towards a different free floating structure...

...it was very large - colossal, like a cluster of bubbles and spherical marshmallows merged together, to make a large fluffy stylised, caricatured cloud, and in many shades of rainbow - a carnival for the senses, Twipsy noticed, as he finally recognised the numerous imagery appearing in the numerous bubbles - up close, tiled with little hexagons like a beehive, were little faint images of famous web icons - cats here, there and everywhere, for instance... 'I think I may have stumbled on the Hall of Memes,' Twipsy realised, and astounded by the sight, his eyes widened in joy, as if realising that this was the best discovery he had made in his life.

Of course, he realised he took one more wrong turn on the highway leading to the Hall of Meme's brightly coloured interior... the left exit practically loop-de-looped and inverted the unlucky cybermessenger away from the structure, downwards, and heading towards the bottom of the structure... as he found himself heading towards the lower levels of the structure, it was noticeably darker in colour, and much more foreboding, and as he entered, it was... pitch black in darkness, and only his bright green parcel in his large orange arms could illuminate the entrance hallway...

...and at the end of the hallway, was a very large foyer, with a very high ceiling, and at least two, three open floors like a library... deserted and dark. To make a bad situation worse for unlucky Twipsy - apart from being comparatively dark and dimly lit - much to his bewilderment, nobody went down to this level. Not at this time. Landing on his two oddly shoed feet, the sound of his impact echoed around the foyer. It sent shivers up Twipsy's non-existent spine (of course, being a spark of energy, he had a cytoskeletal structure), as he paused to figure out where oh where he ended up. Maybe he should go explore the floors, the large nosed messenger thought, and walked across the foyer.

The foyer leading to the first floor didn't have any stairs, and being a cybermessenger meant he had one special ability - if he was able to practically glide along cyberspace's highways, then he was able to hop high distances. He leapt, somersaulted, and landed on both his oddly shoed feet on the first floor, and fortunately kept the parcel safe and sound in his large orange hand.

Now where does this floor lead to? The cybermessenger pondered, his lesser left hand scratching his dark forehead, wondering which area on the first floor to explore. All he could see is a sole hallway, just as dark as the rest of the foyer, and it scared him, head to odd shoed toes. His non-existent ears picked up a faint voice (well, at least the rudder behind his head had to serve as the ear), coming from the hallway.

Maybe someone is telling a story, he thought, and despite a shiver down his spine, he slowly crept, making sure each footstep did not echo the room once more to startle him. Quiet step after step, he entered the dark hallway, and he can easily interpret what the voice, coming from the hallway, actually was. It was a prerecorded story, and the hallway led to a dark, individual, auditory theater - a dark chamber. There was absolutely no lighting inside, save for the green package in Twipsy's large orange hand, illuminating the inside, but to no avail. He entered the chamber, and stood quiet to listen.

It sounded like a good story, he thought. The cybermessenger closed his eyes and imagined the course of the story, expecting something soothing or memorable. Almost...

The prerecorded story sounded reasonable... a story about how hackers have investigated a computer game that had a very abnormal difficulty curve... in short, the game was almost impossible to beat in a few levels. It sounded very courageous, Twipsy imagined, but thought of the hacking as, well, cheating. But a few minutes in, he noticed that the story took on a dark turn.

The story went on... as the hackers managed to crack the code and beat the penultimate level, something awful happened to their hacker's computers... disturbing files were written on their hard drives, and were so ingrained that if they were removed, their hard drives would be irreparably corrupted. There were more, and especially the scenes where the hackers suffered total psychological torment, because after they reached the final level... it was...

The image he formed in his mind... the cybermessenger just couldn't take it anymore.

He could feel his pulse accelerating... well, anatomically, being pure energy, he probably had a heart, but it was probably more spark than flesh... he still felt his legs and back weaken a little, his lower jaw trembling, as he clambered, albeit stumbled out of the chamber, and down the hallway. Whatever he imagined during the course of the story, it was too much for him. Poor Twipsy wanted to cry out for help, or calm himself down even, but his sheer amount of fright just paralysed him. Each step he took shivered, and he slowly lost balance. He paused to catch his breath, and he looked around the open floor of the foyer, still dark. The room was spinning, his pulse raced, and all those horrific freeze frames he formed in his mind during the course of the story suddenly flooded towards him...

It was too much. In an appalled wail of horror, he fell down faint on his back. His large orange arm spread out all over the floor, exposing the bright green data package, squarely in the palm. The sheer amount of shock he endured was far, far too much for him. Even if other cybermessengers came to rescue him, and even if he lived to tell the tale, he could not unsee what he just heard on the first floor of the dark foyer.

Addendum: Help did come to finally recover and revive Twipsy, who was reportedly listening to a well known creepypasta at the empty lower floors of the Hall of Memes. Other cybermessengers managed to rescue him and carry him out of the venue, and consoled him along the way. Of course, Twipsy now knows to look both ways, and to make sure he would never take any wrong turns again.