I'll assume you all know about the deep web.
Well, what you've heard is true, it's not
a great place.
While some people are there to score weed
or firearms, or even out of sheer curiosity,
others... well they're obviously not up to
anything good.
But I'm not here to talk about those sickos.
I'm here to talk about what lies beyond that
point.
The more cryptic and unexplainable part of
the internet.
The part that nobody’s really supposed to
see.
There was an info-graphic that cropped up
a while ago.
Not sure when.
"The 8 levels of the internet".
Maybe you've seen it.
As interesting as it was, it's complete bunk.
I'm sorry, but "Polymeric Falcigohl Derivation"
means nothing.
And the "Primarch system"?
I guess somebody's a fan of Warhammer.
No, there's no quantum mechanics involved
here.
However, that doesn't mean it was an easy
place to find.
Now, I'm not going to begin to tell you how
to get here.
It's unlikely that'd you be able to, even
if I did.
I'm not tooting my own horn here, I just didn't
have a life outside of this.
I was warned, of course.
Everybody told me I wasn’t going to like
what I saw.
That I wouldn’t even understand it.
Now I’m passing off that warning to you.
Don’t try to look for this.
There's no official name for this place, or
at least I haven't seen one.
There were rumors, however.
These ranged from an illuminati chat room
to a virtual holding cell for an experimental
AI gone rogue.
In reality, it’s a lot worse.
After a long and painful process of breaking
down firewalls, encryptions, solving bizarre
philosophical riddles, and following hidden
links, I was finally directed to a blank page
with one line of text and a text-box underneath.
"Quid quaeris?”
Latin for "What do you seek?”
I remember feeling surprised.
But in retrospect, I didn’t know what I
was expecting.
I'll admit, I was a bit stumped here.
Partly because I didn't know the answer to
that question.
I had no objective, I just wanted to see if
I could do it.
I tried some generic answers at first.
I typed in "the truth" and "enlightenment".
You know, matrix shit.
Nothing happened.
I tried a bunch of answers, but none of them
worked.
I was getting frustrated at this point.
Maybe this was a gag page.
Maybe I really hadn’t figured anything out.
If only.
I tried something off the wall.
Not sure how this came to me or why I thought
it would work, but I typed in “what also
seeks me”.
Now that I think about it, this thing might
have been an AI.
To my surprise, the page went blank.
Like fully blank.
I waited.
After about five minutes, I was directed to
what looked like a forum.
No, not even that.
It was more basic.
Just a list of links over a brownish-yellow
background.
The links themselves were indecipherable.
Just seemingly random sequences of characters,
symbols and letters.
A lot of them I had never seen before.
It almost looked like an alien language.
Obviously, just a code I didn’t understand.
At this point, expectations were off the wall.
Each link was a shot in the dark.
I clicked on the first one.
It loaded up a live-feed of what seemed to
be the Paris catacombs.
I watched for a while, but it was ultimately
uneventful.
I moved on to the next link.
It was a shaky video in a dark setting.
But I could make out men in tactical gear.
They were in a house, opening doors and sweeping
each room.
Eventually, they kicked one down to reveal
a creature.
Tall and humanoid, with scaly skin.
It was gnawing on a dismembered arm.
They tried shooting at it, but it escaped
out the window.
The video stopped there.
Well, I was floored.
What the hell was this?
It looked too real to be unreleased film footage.
I was officially intrigued.
Maybe this was worth the months of headaches
and bloodshot eyes after all.
I couldn’t stop now.
I started working down the list of links.
With each click, everything got more and more
bizarre.
More disturbing.
I stumbled upon a document called “The Paragon
project”, detailing trials of human experimentation
that would lead to superhuman levels of strength
and durability.
It was an apparent success.
Looked official too.
There were essays on space-time anomalies,
glitches in reality, and apparent pictures
of alternate dimensions.
There were detailed explanations regarding
Area 51, the Bermuda triangle, assassinations,
disappearances, and the true nature of the
Holy Grail.
One of the more upsetting ones was a document
referring to a “world-ending bomb”.
A nuke that’s 720,000 times stronger than
the one dropped on Hiroshima.
I don’t want to know why we would need that.
I found contingency plans for different kinds
of Apocalypses - nuclear winter, biological
weapons, viral outbreak.
Some more peculiar ones were called “The
Marianas Trench abnormality”, the bluntly
labeled “Strange man on the fifteenth floor”,
and one simply referred to as “Blackout”.
Recovered logs of skin-walker hunting expeditions,
911 transcripts from residents of a town in
Texas that went missing in 1977 and even the
journals that belonged to the people involved
in the Dyatlov pass incident.
They didn’t go insane because of the snow.
I spent hours on there, looking through pages
and pages of things I felt like I wasn’t
supposed to see.
I came across a trailer to a silent film made
back in 1910.
One that apparently made people claw their
eyes out after watching that nearly derailed
the whole industry.
There was a live stream of a hooded man sitting
in front of a camera, head crouched down.
He eventually lifted his head.
Even though he had no mouth, a deep, guttural,
“Hello” came through my speakers.
Somehow, I knew it came from him.
I didn’t stick around for that.
There were obscure sets of step-by-step guides
that involved things like cutting off your
own limbs and sewing on a corpse’s, performing
religious incantations in the middle of the
Siberian forest and going to coordinates that
apparently housed captive fallen angels.
It was unclear what any of these were supposed
to achieve.
There was also a 20 second long clip titled
“The futility of the living”.
I didn’t watch it.
That’s when I realized there was no way
even the highest form of organized government
had full control of this.
One of the scariest things about this whole
experience was that I didn’t find an end
to the list.
No matter far I scrolled down.
I think I had a meltdown and passed out eventually,
because I woke up on my floor in the middle
of the night.
I looked at my computer screen to see looped
helicopter footage of a massive, crab-like
creature tearing apart a coastal island.
I clicked off of it.
I just sat there for the longest time.
I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing,
and I don’t think I really wanted to.
Now, I’m not really sure why I kept going.
My brain was screaming for me to take my computer
out to the lawn and smash it into pieces.
But I didn’t.
I noticed something I hadn’t before.
A small message at the bottom left hand corner
of the screen.
I don’t know if it was always there or not.
It was hard to read so I had to squint.
More Latin.
Translated into “Are you satisfied?”
There were two options underneath it, yes
and no.
Now, I knew the answer to this question.
Hell no I wasn’t satisfied.
I was horrified, scarred for life.
But I should have clicked on yes.
If I just clicked on yes it would have taken
me out of that godforsaken place.
Back to comfort and sanity.
Even right now, I can’t tell you why I clicked
on no.
But once I did, the page seemed to refresh.
It was still the same basic setup, except
there were only four links.
This time, there were no recognizable numbers
or characters.
Hell, it didn’t look like anything that
could have come from this world.
Just a collection of extremely crude symbols
that didn’t give off any sense of pattern
or direction.
I clicked on the first link.
After about 20 seconds, I slammed my computer
shut.
I can’t describe to you what I saw.
All I know is that I wasn’t supposed to
see it.
NOBODY should ever see something like this.
It’s not only that it didn’t make any
sense, I can’t tell you why it didn’t.
I couldn’t begin to grasp the images I was
seeing.
It wasn’t graphic or anything, not like
that.
I just couldn’t recognize anything.
I could make out things moving, but not in
a way any creature on earth has ever moved
before.
Colors that I’d never seen before.
Just thinking about it gives me a splitting
headache.
This is my best attempt at visualizing it.
We have 3 dimensions here on earth.
We can move forwards, backwards, left, right,
72.4 degrees southwest etc.
These things weren’t restricted to that.
I can’t explain it any further.
All I know is that I didn’t want to watch
one more second.
I don’t think I would have been able to.
I left my room.
For the first time in a while, I was planning
to leave my house.
I needed fresh air.
To take a walk or something.
Hell, I was thinking about running a marathon
in the middle of the night just to get my
mind off of that shit for a few hours.
I was putting on my jacket when I heard a
knock at the door.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Obviously, I wasn’t opening up.
About a minute and five more sets of knocks
came before somebody spoke up.
“Open up.
We know what you did, but we’re not here
to hurt you.
We just want to talk”.
The tone wasn’t threatening.
Eventually, I obliged.
I opened up my door to two tall, slim men
in suits.
They smiled at me.
“Can we come in?”
I still don't know how they found me.
I thought for sure that I was off the grid.
We sat down on the couch.
I guess I was just waiting for answers at
this point.
One of them looked at me and said “What
were you looking for?”
“I don’t know.
But I’m not going back”, I responded.
He smiled again.
Like this is what he wanted to hear.
The other one piped up: “Who do you work
for?”
His tone was a bit more aggressive.
I just shook my head.
“Look, I didn’t know what I was getting
into.
I wasn’t looking for anything.”
They just stared at me for a while.
“I’m not gonna tell anybody.
Trust me”.
They finally responded: “We’re not worried
about that.
Doubt anybody’d believe you.”
Another smile.
Somehow it felt genuine.
“We just wanted to know what your priorities
were.”
In retrospect, that was a very strange question.
“Just do us favor and we’ll leave”.
I perked up.
“Give us the device you used to access it”.
I didn’t ask any questions.
I ran upstairs and basically tossed them my
laptop.
They both smirked at me one last time before
heading for the door.
Just as they were about to leave, one of them
turned back.
“I don’t think you need to be told, but
don’t try this again.
And don’t show anybody else how to get there
either.
We’ll know.”
I didn’t ask who they were.
I’m not sure I would have wanted to know.
It’s been a week now.
I don’t go on the internet so much anymore.
After this, I’m going to try and forget.
To try and not to think about it anymore.
I’ve started having horrific nightmares.
Been seeing a therapist for that, but I don’t
think it’s helping.
Anyways, I’m not going to let this consume
the rest of my life.
The thing is, I’m afraid this might not
be possible.
There are some things we aren’t supposed
to know about.
Probably for our own safety and sanity.
Don’t try and seek them out.
It’s better that way.
However... it might be a bit too late for
me.
