The full uncensored reports detailing what exactly had happened on the day Black Wing ceased to exist (again…) were definitely interesting.

They were hardly coherent, not believable in the slightest, and varied wildly in their contents – but they sure were interesting.

Many high standing CIA officials later tried to extract some sort of a lesson from the whole incident, but were not successful in this task. They had analyzed hundreds of pages worth of records, email exchanges, and reports about how the facility was being run; they talked to many employees of the facility and even one or two ex subjects; and, as the last resort, they viewed hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, most of which was very, very boring.

All in the hopes of finding some sort of mistake that had occurred during the whole operation. Something to point at and say, there, this is where the last guy made a terrible error, and this is how we fix it on the next attempt.

They didn’t find any.

As far as every analytical expert was concerned, there was not a single mistake that supervisor Ken Adams had committed during his almost year long run of managing Black Wing…

…and it still burned down to the ground.

This is when CIA concluded that, maybe, just maybe, they were operating from the wrong premise this entire time. Perhaps the subjects of Black Wing truly could not be contained to a single facility, or in fact be used in any meaningful way. One of the execs even said that the whole idea was akin to herding cats and that this much should have been obvious to anyone who had ever looked through the project files. And many retroactively agreed that yes, indeed, the whole idea was ludicrous, and how could they ever agree to that, and hey let’s shift our attention back to torturing, imprisoning, and murdering normal people.

Normal, ordinary people that could not switch minds with strangers in their sleep or extract actual concrete facts from tarot spreads or kill people just by dodging bullets.

And everyone moved on happily, and no one tried to dig deeper into what actually happened that night.

The funny thing is that, form the inside of the event, it was not immediately clear what had happened either. They were planning it for months beforehand and many even felt like they had a solid plan, but no one could describe this plan in any detail. There was just a generalized feeling of having a plan, and that seemed to be good enough.

Most agreed that it started with Supervisor Adams leaving on his own one-man mission, and with the sound of a few dozen people hitting the pipes in their bathrooms and chanting quietly under their breaths. It went on for a while; it also woke up many of the soldiers guarding the facility, as well as a family of spiders that lived in the basement were the pipes ran. The spiders took that as a cue to evacuate the building, and were spot on, because soon, the banging ceased, and the doors began to fall down all across the Black Wing Facility Gamma.

It was not a mistake to keep all the prisoners in the same building, but it certainly didn’t help.

The general consensus was that the initial steps were accomplished thanks to Laurie, the girl that could apply powerful hypnosis through kisses. To use this skill, she had to first orchestrate a fake affair with one of the high ranking guards. This part worked so well that they actually ended up falling in love with each other for real, after which the hypnosis part became rather redundant. A month into knowing her, and he was prepared to do anything - so on the night when it happened, he turned off all the cameras, disabled all alarms, and pushed the button that unlocked every single door in the facility.

A lot of other things happened in a quick succession soon afterward. There was a big chunk of joyful chaos, during which many valuable items were destroyed in many violent and creative ways. Computers were smashed and records were burned and someone meticulously opened every single can in the storage room behind the cafeteria as a touching moment of revenge to the horrible Black Wing meals.

Eventually, the exuberant, unstoppable crowd had managed to knock out every single soldier in the facility and spilled over in the yard outside. This was a delightful moment; many of them were not allowed outside at all, and this had been the first time in months when they stepped on grass and breathed in fresh air and looked up to see the sky instead of a blank white ceiling. The feeling was mutual, and it was extraordinary. They’ve dreamed about it for such a long time, thinking that, surely, this is one of those dreams of running away for a better life that everyone has and no one ever experiences.

And they did it. They were running away. Perhaps not to travel the world or live on a lovely farm in Iowa, but hell, anything had to be better than whatever crap they had to suffer through up to this point.

“Is everyone out?” Bart asked, meandering around the yard, counting people according to her own bizarre system. “Michael? Robin? Julie?”

“We’re pretty sure it’s everyone,” said David, the love-struck ex-guard. “Prisoners and soldiers and all.”

“Did someone take out the rats?” Bart asked. “The actual rats, from the labs?”

“Everyone,” David assured, “all humans, all animals. We’ve double checked.”

“Okay then,” Bart smirked, “you can blow it then.”

“Wooo!” cheered Corey the tarot diviner by her side. “Blow. It. Up. Blow. It. Up!”

Soon the whole crowd had joined in on the cheer, and Bart gave her nod of approval to one of the men. An elaborate setup had been constructed and connected to the oxygen tanks in one of the labs. And with one swift motion, fire was introduced into the system, and, to everyone’s collective delight, the building did, indeed, blow the hell up.

They watched it burn like a gigantic bonfire, and didn’t care much about the soot landing on their clothes and skin. The soldiers stood aside, paralyzed, unable to intervene in any meaningful manner. Many were just terrified to shreds of the escaped projects; some actually admired them, and were up for joining the party.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Bart announced eventually. “Does everyone have a safe place to go to? Raise your hand if you don’t, you’re going with me.”

“I have a safe place to go,” Corey spoke up, “but I’ll go with you.”

“Okay,” Bart smiled. She did not expect this, but it made her cheeks tingle with joy. “Do you want to like… be not-prisoner friends?”

“Yes!” she beamed, “I would love to be not-prisoner friends with you, Bart.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled awkwardly, “now get everyone and go hide somewhere, in a place I can find you all in.”

“What about you?”

“Oh, I’ll stay for a bit,” she said, “I have one more thing left to do.”

And with that, she sent the people away, and took out of the pocket of her newly acquired coat her newly acquired gun, and loaded it up.

*

“Holy shit, this is amazing!” Friedkin yelled at another Friedkin, hands pointing wildly at the screen of the Universe TV. “They, like, totally blew it up! It all burned down like, all of it.”

“That is so cool,” the other Friedkin agreed, “I didn’t realize how much I hated that place.

“Yeah right? It made me feel so bad,” Friedkin nodded, “and now it’s on fire. I can’t believe they actually blew it up!”

“Hey, so what about that cave and everything?” a third Friedkin spoke up. “Should we check up on them as well or what?”

“Eh I guess,” original Friedkin shrugged, and began to flip through the channels. “Might take a while. A lot of stuff in here.”

But a while passed, and then another while, and many whiles later he was still not able to locate the right channel.

“Huh. Weird,” he mumbled under his breath. “Must be in, like, really bad temporal flux. Fluxing all over the place.”

“Check the bookshelf,” one of the other Friedkins advised.

“I know,” he retorted, breaking his play-pretend for a second. “Of course I know, you’re literally me.”

He ambled across the living room to the enormous bookcase propping up one of the walls, in front of which he stopped, put his hands on his sides, and produced a single sigh.

“That’s a lot of books,” he pointed out to no-one in particular, and a bunch of nearby Friedkins nodded in agreement. “Okay. Alright. Here’s what I’ll do…”

And without an explanation, he closed his eyes, stuck a hand out, wiggled it in the air for a bit, then grabbed on violently to the book that was closest to his fingers. He pulled it out of the shelf, eyes still closed, and gave it a few testing pokes and prods. It felt like a regular book in his hands - medium sized, not particularly thick, with a thin, glossy cover. He opened his left eye just a little bit to squint at it. Reassuringly, the book was still there in his hands.

To test the waters further, he opened his right eye this time while holding the book quite far apart from his face. Now he could actually see the cover, which depicted a door that opened to a bright starry sky. The title read: “One Septendecillion Brass Doorknobs”.

“That’s a rubbish title,” Friedkin told to the group of himselves that had gathered around him, “what does that supposed to mean, even?”

He opened his other eye and inspected the book closely, all the while mindful of the fact that it could fall apart into imaginary atoms at any second. It didn’t seem remarkable in any way from the outside and nothing further could be gleamed through this manner of examination. He had to actually see the insides of it next.

“Here goes…” he muttered under his breath and flipped open the first few pages.

The pages were quite normal too - white paper, black ink, a lot of words on the page forming sentences, many of them quite lengthy. He flipped through the pages, skimming the words. They described all the things that he had already seen on his Universe TV, from the day professor Daly had discovered that his music box was missing and up to the point when Ken had stepped out of the elevator. And after that…

“Oh this is weird,” Friedkin exclaimed, “look!” he added, showing the book to his other projected selves.

Starting from that point, the ink was faint and gray, barely visible and fading in and out of existence.

“Like I’ve said,” Friedkin nodded to himself, “fluxing all over the place. This is, like, this is what is more likely to happen at this point, or something like that. Right?”

“I don’t know,” one of the other Friedkins replied, “we’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Yeah it must be like when the Universe TV gives a forecast,” original Friedkin replied. “The most probable outcome. Alright, well… it’s spoilers though! Should I even read it?”

“Jesus fuck just read it already!” a particularly impatient Friedkin urged.

“Yes, okay, fine!” the original shouted back. “I’ll read it.”

He did not like any part of what he read next.

*

‘…the sound sequence carried on - bang, a fired shot, clang, the empty bullet husk dropping to the floor, a thud. A minuscule pause filled with gasps and then silence. Someone screamed; it was hard to tell who it was, and the fight carried on. Somewhere in the crowd, Lilly dropped to her knees and crawled across the blood-stained dirt and sawdust towards her goal.

“Roger?” she whispered, taking the man by the shoulder and shaking him gently. “Roger, can you hear me?”

But he did not answer. She knew he would not answer. She closed her eyes, lay down next to him, put her head on his blood-soaked chest and sobbed…’

“What the hell?” Friedkin stared at the page, eyes wide in shock and horror. “This is rubbish! How could they screw this up so badly?”

“Flip forward!” Another Friedkin demanded. “Now!”

“Fine!”

It did not get any better.

*

‘…explosion still roared across the cave, shattering glass and the occasional ear drum. Thousands of metallic pieces were scattered across the floor, the spaceship gutted, engulfed in flames and producing puffs of toxic fume and smoke. She tried to shield them with her body, but she knew it would not help. Amanda’s last thought was “I let them down” - just before she closed her eyes and didn’t think anything more. Beside her…’

“I am so not okay with this,” Friedkin shouted at the book, shaking it in the air, “I am so very not okay with this!”

He wanted to stop; put the book down and kick it with his foot until it disappeared. But his curiosity took over, and he flipped one more page, eyes darting frantically across it.

He quickly regretted doing so.

*

‘…fingers covered in Dirk’s blood, cheeks running with tears, he turned towards her and looked up.

“Fix him,” Todd said. “You’re the miracle. You’re Prometheus. You can fix everything, so. Fix him.”

“I’m not that kind of fixer,” Lilly replied, shaking her head. “I am sorry. I couldn’t save my Roger either.”

“No,” Todd refused, “no, it can’t be like this. You can fix him. You can fix all of them! You have all this, this technology, these things… of course you can fix them!” he shouted.

“I can’t!” she shouted back, and dropped to her knees, exhausted, cheeks stained with soot and tears.

“But it can’t be like this…” Todd carried on, lowering himself to the ground and clutching to Dirk’s breathless body. “He can’t be like this. This can’t be like this. I love him and I didn’t do anything and it can’t be like this…” he…’

“Enough!” Friedkin yelled, snapping the book shut and yeeting it across the room as hard as he physically could.

It hit the opposite wall and shattered into a billion pieces before disappearing entirely.

“Not-real probabilistic Todd is right - it can’t be like this! We have, oh God,” he began to pace the room anxiously, “we have to prevent this somehow!”

*

An emergency Friedkin meeting was gathered at once in the living room. The real, original Friedkin took the central place (standing on the sofa) and tweaked the number of projection Friedkins until he had exactly the right amount for a productive discussion. Then, he announced their task:

“We need to figure out how to get back to the physical world,” he explained, “at least for a few minutes.”

The other Friedkins nodded solemnly, took a few moments to think it through… and the air filled with a chorus of the most bizarre, mind-boggling ideas Friedkin’s brain had ever had the capacity to produce.

Brainstorming with only yourself for company is quite tricky; without peer review, it is near impossible to tell whether the point you are trying to get across is brilliant or utterly nonsensical, which is one of the main reasons why seemingly intelligent people routinely produce tweets that make you regret having a brain capable of processing any human language. It is also very hard to make yourself shut up. This is why, only a few minutes into the exercise, Friedkin was already prepared to throw hands with multiple versions of himself.

“Stop!” he yelled suddenly at some point, making a few Friedkins shudder. “I heard… there was a thought. A good thought. Who said it?”

Every projection began to turn their heads in every direction, trying to determine which one of them he was talking about.

“You,” the original pointed, and the projection stared back at him in a mix of shock and delight, “what did you say like fourteen seconds ago?”

“That PB&J sandwiches should have peanut butter on both sides of the bread?”

“No, before that.”

“That it would be cool if there were like tiny knitted sweaters for bees and you could buy little sweaters for them if you liked the honey that the bees made?”

“Before that.”

“That having eyebrows is overrated?”

“No, ugh…” he shook his head, frowning, “what the hell does any of this have to do with escaping into the real world?”

“I don’t know,” projection Friedkin shrugged, “everyone was just sort of shouting things so I was shouting things too.”

“Wow I am so sorry for every single person who has ever worked with me,” Friekdin muttered, rubbing the back of his head, “well anyway, what did you say before all that? The thing about the garden?”

“Ah that!” the projection beamed, “yeah right, I said maybe we can go through the well.”

“Shit,” originally Friedkin exclaimed, “of course, the well! How did I not think of that?”

“You literally did,” the projection pointed out, but was ignored by the main Friedkin who had just rushed out of the imaginary living room through the kitchen out of the back door and into the garden.

The garden was one of his favourite parts of the imaginary veil-scape. It was bursting with vibrant colours and delightful smells, butterflies and bees flying from one flower to another. All 100% fake of course, and personally designed by him after many hours of meticulous work. All of it, except for one thing - the old stone well.

He found the well pretty early on in making up the garden, and had hated it ever since. The wretched object appeared there of its own volition and refused to be removed under any circumstances. And Friedkin wanted it removed very much, because - although he would not admit it to himself - the thing creeped him the hell out. He didn’t know what it was about it that made his skin crawl, but it very much did. And yet it refused to disappear no matter how much he wished for that.

He tried looking into it once, and discovered a gaping pitch black hole inside. The hole stretched out into infinity; it looked like a hole in the very fabric of reality, and it just did not stop. And even when he managed to make the well go invisible for a few seconds, the hole remained. It simply would not be moved, so he settled for having it covered by the well, and also a dense shrub of rhododendron all around.

Knowing all this, it made sense to check the well for a possible doorway into reality.

Didn’t make it any less creepy though.

“Here goes then,” Friedkin whispered to himself, taking the first cautious step towards the shrub-covered nemesis.

He walked up to it, slowly, and moved the branches away, slowly, and held his breath as he leaned slightly forwards and peered into the depths.

“Yep,” he said, and his voice did not echo but drowned in the darkness below, “the hole is still there. What do you think then?” he asked one of his projections, taking a step away from the well, just in case. “Could this be like, a portal outside?”

“Might be a portal,” the other one responded, “might be a door into a completely different place. Or a slide right into a black hole. Or just a normal well.”

“That was very helpful, thanks.”

“Point is, you won’t find out till you jump in.”

“But do I have to though?”

“Did we have any better ideas?”

“No,” original Friedkin agreed, “no we didn’t. Eh. Okay. I might, like… die. I might not come back from this if I jump.”

“They will all die if you don’t,” the other pointed out, “or a lot of them anyway.”

“True. That’s… that is also true. Ugh,” Friedkin muttered, “I’ve really cornered myself here, huh? Guess I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

“I don’t have any good ones though!”

“Well what feels like the least bad?”

At that moment, all projections disappeared, and he was left alone with just his thoughts and the terrifying, beckoning gap in the fabric of reality in front of him. So he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t really think about it either. He put his hands on the stone brim of the well, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes for a second. The flowers were blooming and the scent lingered in the air; the sun rays brushed his face with their warm fudge-y fingers. It was all rather heavenly, and it was all in his head.

He opened his eyes. Looked around. He was standing in a pitch black space, empty, bare and cold, and he was so utterly alone, and next to his feet was the hole.

“Here goes nothing,” Friedkin said, then closed his eyes again, and stepped forward into the gap.