Scroll 01: Fall and Awakening

The air in the Human Resources office tasted like metal and burnt coffee.

Thompson, his manager, looked at him with a pity so manufactured it made Joseph's stomach turn.

This was the same guy who always preached about the "corporate family" and "mutual loyalty." Yet now, he couldn't hold Joseph's gaze for even two seconds. His eyes remained fixed on a crystal paperweight atop the mahogany desk.

"And truly, Joseph, this has absolutely nothing to do with your performance. You are an exceptional programmer," Thompson said, adjusting the knot of his tie with twitching fingers. "It's just that the board decided to make some 'optimizations' in light of the new Artificial Intelligence models. They say it's the future. We have to stay agile to survive."

Optimizations, Joseph thought, feeling a lump of bile rise in his throat.

Five years spent fixing their disasters. Five years sacrificing weekends and pulling all-nighters for every critical deployment. And now, a black-box algorithm could do his job for a fraction of the cost. At least, that was what the trendy consultants had sold them.

"What about my severance?" Joseph asked. His voice sounded dry, stripped of any emotion.

Thompson cleared his throat, finally taking refuge in the glow of his monitor.

"About that... the company is going through a temporary liquidity issue due to heavy investments in server infrastructure and language model licenses."

He paused before delivering the final blow:

"You'll have to wait until the next accounting cycle, next month. It's stipulated in the force majeure termination clauses of the new contract you signed back in June. I'm sorry, Joseph, my hands are tied."

Joseph said nothing. There was no point in yelling at a subordinate who was just following orders to save his own skin.

He simply nodded, turned around, and walked out of the office.

He went straight to his cubicle to pack his few belongings into a cardboard box:

A mug with a syntax joke that wasn't funny anymore.

His old mechanical keyboard with worn-down keycaps.

A small succulent in a ceramic pot that was more dead than alive.

A perfect reflection of his professional career.

As he was finishing, Mark and Sarah, his teammates, approached. Mark leaned against the cubicle panel with a furrowed brow and crossed arms.

"Don't tell me they got you too, Joseph," Mark whispered, glancing sideways toward the offices in the back.

"Personnel optimization," Joseph replied with a bitter grimace, sealing the box with packing tape.

Sarah looked down the hallways, making sure no supervisor was nearby, and leaned toward them.

"Something is highly shady here, Joseph. It's not just the AI. First they let go of Luis, the best senior architect we had. Then Jissela, the 3D designer who worked magic with renders and had been here for ten years. And now you."

Mark stepped even closer, speaking in a near-whisper laced with paranoia.

"The rumor on the upper floors is that this is deliberate sabotage. They say the competition paid off someone on the board or in HR to fire key talent and sink the company from within to facilitate a hostile takeover. They're dismantling us piece by piece."

Joseph dropped the keyboard into the box and sighed heavily. The weight of the box seemed to increase with every word.

"It doesn't matter if it's true or not, guys. The result is the same: I'm out."

"You're right," Sarah said, genuine sadness in her eyes. "But we won't be far behind you. We're already updating our LinkedIn profiles. This ship has a hole in the hull, and the captain is selling the lifeboats."

Suddenly, a floor supervisor appeared down the hallway and stopped dead in his tracks upon seeing the group.

"What are you doing standing around? If the project manager sees you, he's going to report you for low productivity," he snapped in that authoritarian tone Joseph hated so much.

However, the man's expression softened for a second when he noticed the cardboard box. He stepped up to Joseph and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"A real shame about what happened, Joseph. Truly. You're one of the best to ever pass through here. I'm sure you'll find something soon."

"Thanks," Joseph replied.

On the inside, he could only think that in today's market, technical excellence meant absolutely nothing compared to networking or sheer luck.

As he left the building, the city greeted him with the frigid indifference of an unforgiving December.

The sky was covered by an oppressive, leaden gray that seemed to crush the skyscrapers. Cars passed with a constant hiss against the wet pavement, kicking up a dense mist of dirty water. People walked hurriedly, their coats pulled up to their ears and faces hidden behind scarves.

To Joseph, that landscape of gray concrete, black asphalt, and slushy snow felt like a natural extension of his own mind. The world was a cold, colorless place.

He walked toward the subway station with the box under his arm, feeling the cold seep through his worn coat straight to his bones. He tried to organize his thoughts, but they kept spinning in vicious circles.

Looking for a job in December was a pipe dream; no company hired in the middle of the holidays to avoid paying end-of-year bonuses. Besides, he was no longer in his twenties. Nearing thirty, he felt the tech industry already considered him an obsolete veteran, a remnant of an era prior to total automation.

He stopped on a corner, exhausted by the dead weight of his box. He felt a freezing touch on the tip of his nose. It was starting to snow.

He extended his hand, and a few white flakes landed on his palm. They were beautiful, geometric, pure... and they melted upon contact with the warmth of his body, turning into insignificant droplets.

At that moment, a woman's laughter—chaotic and full of life—shattered the murmur of traffic.

A few meters away, he saw a beautiful young woman enthusiastically pulling a guy's arm.

"Come on! I want coffee!" she insisted with a playful pout, a mischievous smile dancing on her lips as she tugged at her partner's coat.

"Alright, alright!" the guy replied, laughing with obvious devotion.

"Yeeeiiiii!" the girl celebrated, throwing small hops of pure joy.

A couple? Joseph thought, lowering his cold hand.

He felt a stab of corrosive envy. It wasn't hatred toward them, but rather a deep ache for his own loneliness and circumstances. That guy had someone who loved him, he had plans for the night, probably a paycheck waiting for him, and a warm dinner. The happiness of others made him feel even smaller.

Seeking a distraction, he approached a vending machine at the subway entrance. He needed some sugar to keep from fainting.

Before dialing the product code, he pulled out his phone with numb fingers to check his account balance. The number on the screen felt like a punch to the stomach: 36 dollars. That was it. His credit card was maxed out.

He sighed, feeling the world closing in on him, and bought a bag of potato chips. It was the snack that offered the most volume for the lowest price.

He submerged into the station. The stale, warm air of the subway did nothing to improve his mood.

I really don't have any money, he repeated to himself as the train pulled away.

He stared out the window, watching his tired reflection superimposed over the tunnel lights that flashed past like stroboscopic bursts. He desperately searched for an exit within his thoughts.

He remembered the gold chain he had bought for his ex-girlfriend last year; she had returned it to him after the breakup, saying she didn't want to keep anything that reminded her of him.

Maybe I can pawn it tomorrow. A few hundred dollars would give me some breathing room, he thought. It wasn't an encouraging thought, but it was the only one he had.

He reached his apartment building, a concrete block that seemed to have seen better days three decades ago. As had been the norm for the past four months, the elevator was out of service due to a "technical breakdown" that management had no money to repair.

Carrying the box up to the seventh floor was pure physical torture. By the time he reached his door, he was drenched in a cold sweat, his lungs were burning, and his legs trembled from the exertion.

He entered his tiny apartment, dropped the box onto the dining table, and collapsed onto the couch. He didn't even have the strength to take off his coat. He just sat there in the dark silence, closing his eyes.

"Alright, Joseph," he muttered to himself in a whisper, trying to catch his breath. "You can't let yourself drown in despair. You have to be rational. Tomorrow is Christmas, yes, but there are still pawn shops open. Early tomorrow, I'll find the gold chain, sell it, and stretch that budget until January. I'll map out a plan, update my portfolio... I just need a breather."

At that exact instant, the constant, near-imperceptible hum of the refrigerator died. The silence became absolute, heavy.

Joseph opened his eyes.

"Eh?" he murmured.

Everything was too quiet. He turned his head toward where he knew the internet modem was—that little sentinel that always blinked with green or blue lights. Now, there was nothing. Total darkness.

No... don't tell me...

He got up from the couch with a hollow feeling in his stomach. He went to the light switch and flipped it several times. Nothing. He went to the kitchen and checked the breaker panel; everything was in the correct position, but no current was coming in.

He looked out the window: the rest of the neighborhood had Christmas lights blinking merrily in their windows. Only his apartment was completely pitch black.

They had done it. Right in the middle of Christmas Eve, they had cut his power for non-payment.

"On Christmas Eve!" Joseph screamed at the ceiling, and suddenly burst into a laugh.

It was a dry, hysterical laugh, completely devoid of humor.

"They really did it! Those sons of bitches!"

His laughing fit quickly transformed into a tantrum of pure rage. He began to pace back and forth in the darkness, gesturing wildly.

"They fire me without severance! They leave me jobless at Christmas! And now this! How am I supposed to eat? How am I supposed to survive without heat in this hovel? It's not fair! Damn this city and damn this piece of shit life!"

In the midst of his fit of rage, the air in the center of the living room began to behave strangely.

A black dot, darker than the room's own shadows, materialized in mid-air. It wasn't simply the absence of light; it was like a blot of India ink floating in the void.

Suddenly, the dot ripped open, splitting like a wound in reality.

A dense, glowing purple smoke began to emanate from the rift. It didn't dissipate like normal smoke; it moved sinuously, weaving in and out of the portal like a liquid mixture of fire and ink.

Joseph froze. His heart hammered in his ears. An invisible, powerful, and magnetic force began to pull at him. It wasn't a gust of wind; it felt as if space itself were bending toward that hole.

What... what is this? he managed to utter before the force became irresistible.

He tried to grab the edge of the table, but his fingers slipped. He was sucked into the vortex. The world turned into a whirlpool of impossible colors and a deafening silence that made him lose consciousness.

Joseph woke up on his back, feeling deeply dizzy, as if he had just stepped off a roller coaster that had lasted for hours. He had the sensation that the world was still spinning around him.

The ground beneath him was not the hard, cold floor of his apartment; it felt plush, almost elastic. He moved his fingers instinctively and felt blades of fresh, soft grass between them.

He opened his eyes slowly. The first thing he saw was a lush canopy of giant leaves.

They were of a green so vibrant, so full of life, that for a moment he thought he was looking at an image rendered by a supercomputer. This wasn't the dull green of city parks; it was a color that seemed to emit its own light.

Between the leaves, beams of golden sunlight filtered down in diagonal columns, bringing a comforting warmth to his face that contrasted violently with the biting cold he remembered from his apartment.

He propped himself up on his elbows, and his senses were assaulted by a wave of stimuli. The colors were almost painfully crisp: blood reds, deep purples, and electric yellows in flowers he had never seen in any botany book.

The air didn't smell like smog or garbage; it smelled like damp earth, pine resin, and a sweet fragrance of wild plants he had never inhaled. The wind carried these aromas toward him in gentle, almost caressing currents.

He felt as if his senses had been asleep his entire life, numbed by concrete and the white noise of technology, and that finally, for the first time, they had awakened.

He stood up completely, feeling a strange lightness in his limbs. He took a few steps over the short grass, which seemed to form part of an old game trail.

He looked around: he saw only the vast green expanse of the forest, rolling meadows in the distance, and a biodiversity that defied any earthly logic.

Then, he remembered how he had gotten there. He spun around frantically and saw it.

A hole was floating in the air, a few inches off the ground. It wasn't large, barely about 40 centimeters in diameter. It was a sphere of absolute darkness that seemed to distill that same ghostly purple mist that had sucked him in.

Joseph recoiled by instinct, the hairs on his arms standing up from pure fear. There was nothing natural about that thing; it was an open wound in the fabric of existence.

In his eagerness to get away, he didn't see the root of an ancient tree protruding from the earth like a gnarled finger. He tripped spectacularly.

THUD!

He fell flat on his back. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt much; the grass was so thick and cushioned that it absorbed the impact like a luxury mattress. But panic had already taken hold of him.

He pushed himself up halfway and began to scramble backward on all fours, kicking like a madman on the ground, never losing sight of the black hole that remained there, pulsing in silence.

Finally, he leaped to his feet, spun around, and took off running in a random direction. He didn't know where he was going, but anywhere was better than being near that anomaly. He ran through the trees, leaping over fallen logs and ducking under low branches with an agility he didn't know he possessed.

After what felt like an eternity, he stopped to catch his breath, resting his hands on his knees. His lungs weren't burning. His heart beat fast, yes, but he didn't feel that chronic exhaustion that usually accompanied him after climbing the stairs of his building.

What the hell is going on? he thought, astonished. I don't remember running for this long without getting tired... maybe it's the fresh air... or maybe I've gone crazy and this is a stress-induced coma.

Ggrrr... krrrk...

A guttural sound, like the crunching of bones mixed with a low growl, snapped him back to reality.

Joseph went rigid. He ducked behind a bush of blue berries and peeked his head out with extreme caution.

About ten meters away, in a small clearing, stood three creatures.

They were small, barely a meter tall, with wrinkled olive-green skin and pointed ears that twitched spasmodically. Their eyes were a bilious yellow, and they wore rags of filthy leather. Each held a rusty knife or a short, sharpened wooden spear.

Goblins.

The stench hit Joseph a second later: a mixture of rancid sweat, urine, and rotting meat. It was too real, too nauseating to be a dream or a hallucination.

Joseph began to back away centimeter by centimeter, holding his breath, praying to any god he didn't believe in that they wouldn't see him.

But fate, which had already stripped him of his job and his electricity that very day, had one last gift in store for him. As he took a step back, his boot crushed a dry branch hidden beneath the foliage.

CRACK!

The sound echoed through the clearing like a gunshot.

The three creatures snapped their heads around in unison. Their yellow eyes locked directly onto Joseph's position.

They let out a piercing shriek—a cacophony of high-pitched, bloodthirsty squeals—and, brandishing their weapons, lunged toward the bush with terrifying speed.

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