"You people, you humans,

In your desperate maintaining of order

Have become ignorant to the Grand Cosmos."

-quote from the ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ Manifesto

March 14th, 2011.

That is the last date I remember.

I remember hearing about it on the news all the time. Broadcasted on radio, on the big screens attached to business buildings throughout the city, on the news channels on TV. The first one ever discovered was in Narva in Estonia 2 years ago, so the official term they use is 'teine-humans'. The word roughly translates to 'alternative', so people adopted other names such as alt-humans, alts, alt-people, narva-humans etc. Immortal, undying, unkillable are some of the words used to describe them. Apparently whenever they die, or rather when they were supposed to die, they would simply come back like nothing happened. Other than this, they are no different from normal humans. Though having just 1 unique aspect is enough to be considered a different species, and with that, discrimination is also sure to come.

There were 4 of them discovered so far. All of them were well known globally due to this, but 1 of them was especially notorious. Number 2, John Collins, found in Ireland about 1 month after the second case. He was working for a construction company that was contracted to build a 30 stories office building in Dublin. The project was nearing it's end, when John tragically fell from 80 meters, landing on his upper back. His spine was shattered, skull severely cracked. Splinters of his ribs were found throughout his organs which have been ruptured as well. His skin was cracked and blood was spewing out. Yet he was still alive. Authorities took him to the hospital to try and save him, but 2 days later news came out that he was not only still alive, but his wounds were healing. On their own. That's when it was announced that the second teine-human was found. They let 3 more days pass so his body would be in better condition, and then transported him to a military hospital in the US. Nothing much was heard of the case after that, but about 6 months later a report came out that John Collins killed 27 doctors and researchers and 13 guards and escaped the facility, and he was declared a dangerous escapee and international fugitive. A bounty was placed on him, and the reward was "1 billion US dollars or their equivalent." There would countless reports and sightings of John Collins since then, but he was never caught.

This incident caused many people to adhere to the first obscure beliefs and conspiracies that the high powers were conducting experiments on the alt-humans. Countless blogs, threads, articles from independent publications. Some people started feeling sympathy for the alts. Smaller protests would pop up in many cities throughout the world. Of course most people still feared and hated them, and this sentiment was only intensified by the "Number 2 incident" as people call it. With this also came a form of insult that people would throw at those they didn't like. "You lowly alt!", "fucking inhuman", "zombie"; sometimes this was taken to the extreme, and people would use it as a weapon or a threat. People would call the police and report someone they didn't like or that had wronged them as being an "alt-human". They would be placed under arrest and verified. Sometimes even local tests would be conducted on the suspects, such as small cuts, to see if the wounds would heal themselves. Many countries started passing laws to prevent this, ranging from fining those who falsely accuse someone of being an alt, to some even jailing people for it. This didn't stop the discrimination though.

Such was the case with this boy in my class too. He spends most of the time with headphones on his years and doodling in his notebooks. Doesn't really talk to anyone. 2 years ago, he would've been just your usual quiet kid, and no one would pay him too much mind other than the occasional joke cracking, but that was about it. It's different now. People name call him all the time. "There's no way you're not an alt, weirdo." He was verified multiple times and even tested, and always the same result came back. He was normal. That didn't stop the bullying though. "He always acts like a zombie." Personally, I never hated or viewed the alts as monsters, and i know there are others like me in my class, but none of us are open about it or ever defend the boy. There's this innate fear for most humans to be cast out by society, and this is even more proeminent with kids and teenagers. Psychologists say we're almost primitive or tribal in that sense. Of course some of the teachers looked at him differently too, even if they tried to hide it or were subtle about it. It was obvious.

One of those teachers was holding the philosophy class right now. Not one of my favorite ones, but sometimes the topics were interesting so I'd listen to them with 1 ear. The lesson today was one of those, something about memory and the human conscious. A particular fact that piqued my interest was something along the lines of humans not remembering anything from before they are around 3 years old. "Hmph, do i remember anything from back then?" I thought smiling to myself. Then i froze. It was as if i unlocked a memory with that thought, one that had been laying dormant in the deepest parts of my mind. I was maybe a little older than a year. I was strapped in one of those car chairs for kids, in the back of my mom's car. It was an especially hot summer day, i remember the sun blazing brightly. "Lorraine baby, mommy is going in just to get some bread and some milk, then I'll be right back as soon as i can, ok? I promise." My mom must've forgotten to leave the windows open, or she thought she'd be back to the car quicker. I remember the air getting warmer in the car. I remember it getting hot. I remember my lungs and my throat feeling like they're on fire. I remembering how it felt to suffocate. I also remember the fresh air hitting my face like a breeze when the door opened, and i remember my mom thinking i was just sleeping. The bell woke me up from this trance. I felt my palms cold and covered in sweat.

Classes were finally over and i was heading to one of the local coffee shops with my friends, one of those places we like to hang out after school. "Can't wait to study non-stop for 2 weeks lol."

"What do you think the entry score is gonna be?" My friends were going about the upcoming entry exams for whatever colleges they were pursuing, the finals right around the corner, grades and other stuff. I didn't pay any mind to them. I couldn't pay any mind to them.

"What did I just recall? A dream? A childhood memory? Why would I remember that now? Did I really die? There's no way I died, right? Maybe I just passed out or something, or maybe my mom was right and I was only sleeping. How could my mom forget to open the windows? How could my mom kill her own child? It's not her fault, what am I saying. Did I really die?" A storm of thoughts violently clashing in my heads, question after question. My heart was racing. More than anything, it was this 1 question for which the answer would scare me the most: "am I an alt?"

"Lorraine!"

I must've been spacing out, because I woke up in the middle of the street to my friends calling my name. "Lorraine! Lorraine!!" I turned around to see what they want, and as I did, I saw a the blinding headlights of what looked like a truck coming towards me, loud horns ringing in my ears.

March 14th, 2011.

That is the only date I remember. In fact, those are 2 of the only numbers I remember. I can't even recall which month March was, or what season it was part of, but this date stuck in my head like a light burning your retina. One other number I recall is 18. Apparently there were more alt-humans found after the 4th one, though they were kept a secret. As for how they were found, almost all of them were discovered by John Collins. Apparently the reason for why the authorities never "caught" him was because they had a sort of agreement, where he is permitted freedom if he can deliver them other alt-humans he finds. They call me Number 18.

As it turns out, the crazy conspiracies about experiments being conducted were right. Though I wouldn't call them experiments. They torture us. They inflict us pain and kill us. Over and over and over and over...

They severed body parts for examination. Limbs, organs, muscle parts, bones, even my brain and heart, but I would never die; or I would die and I would come back. Even I am not sure what is actually happening to me when I am supposed to die. They would also monitor my pain levels and my brain activity whenever they are torturing me, to measure the body's levels of tolerance to all kinds of methods of inflicting pain. They skinned me alive. They shot me. They cut parts of my body until I would die from blood loss. They suffocated me. They drowned me. "Who are they?" I have no idea, I don't even know who's doing all of this to me or for what purpose. They dropped me in acid. They poisoned me. They dropped me in lava and all kinds of molten metals. One time they made cuts all over my body so I would bleed and released starving hyenas to maul me. They dropped me in all kinds of boiling liquids. Worst of all was the boiling oil. They burned me, multiple times and each time more severe to see how I react. First they burned my skin, then the second time they let me in the fire until my meat was melting too, and lastly until nothing but ash was left. They found out through other test subjects that they could put us in a tube filled with this jelly-like soup, filled with blood and and minced meat and calcium and other minerals that make up the human body. Apparently this would speed up the healing process.

One thing about being an alt, is that no matter how many times you die or how much you have to suffer through pain, you never become numb to it. Your feelings, your emotions; they stay with you. You never stop feeling disgust over the smell of blood and flesh, of crisp skin, of decay. The moldy, putrid stench of death. You never stop hurting. And your body growing back hurts even more. They crushed me with heavy objects. They planted bombs inside my body and let them go off. They hang me upside down until I would die from too much blood falling to my head. Yet I would always come back.

March 14th, 2011.

I have no idea how much time has passed since then. I have no idea how much time passed since they started something called Experiment "Self Care". I was placed in this small square-shaped room. The floor and ceiling and all the walls look like they were made of glass, yet I can't see anything past them. I know they can see me though. There's nothing else in the room. I'm alone in this empty box. Everyday they would repeat the same sentence: "if you don't want to starve, start eating." At first I kept asking myself "eat what?", but I quickly realize what they meant. I refused. My stomach was aching. The only solace I find is that I would always die from starvation, so when I come back I didn't feel hunger even if for a while. I always come back.

I keep falling in and out of sleep. In truth, I have no idea what is real and what is not anymore. Sometimes I wake up from being tortured and they were just dreams, or I would fall asleep in the middle of an experiment and drift into some distant lands. They keep testing me after every new preferred method of killing, to see if my psych is still intact. They say it is, though I have no idea myself. Am I still sane? I forgot what it's like to talk. I forgot what it's like to think and make plans. I forgot what the world is like, what my life was like before all this. Sometimes I wonder if I even had a life before, or if I was simply born in here, destined to die again and again. Other times I think I'm still the same old me, living my normal life, and this is just a long nightmare. So much time passed since I was put in this glass box, that I'm now wondering if even the torture was real, if I was always in this box and I simply can't remember it. Actually, I don't even know if a lot of time passed. It could've been 1 hour, or 1000 years.

I have no idea whether I fell asleep or I died, or if it was just a hallucination, but I had this strange dream. I was outside. It was night time, the full moon and the sea of stars lighting the world. I was running in a forest that seemed endless, through tall grass and colorful flowers that smell nice. I finally notice this little pond, with the moon's beautiful reflection in it's middle. I see ripples in the water, and my eyes guide me to their origin. A humanly figure, sitting down, playing with it's finger in the water. It turned it's head against me and I saw a woman. I felt affection towards her, a deep warmth in my stomach and something like a hand squeezing my chest, yet I could not recall who she was, or if I ever knew her at all. "It's not fair, what they're doing to you. You can have this", and she got up and raised her hands to show me the surroundings, "you can be free." My heart started pounding, and I remembered what hope feels like. "How?" She took the finger that she was playing in the water with and started drawing something on her pale chest with it. A line starting under her neck, then turning into an angle and following around her boob. Then from the middle of her chest another short line, from where she circled around her tummy and back to the line, that she then dragged down in a short zig-zag and then 1 last line to her belly button. "I concede" she said in a thunderous voice, which she followed with a confusing gutural noise that sounded like a name. I couldn't understand what she said, but I somehow instinctively knew what to say.

I woke up and for the first time in what seemed like eternity I felt invigorated. I felt hopeful. I felt alive again. I was still starving, so I knew that at least I didn't die and it was a dream. Oh but it felt so real. I immediately started chewing my finger, not because I wanted to comply with their experiment and eat myself, but because I needed some liquid to draw the symbol myself. I finally managed to bite off the tip of my finger and draw it in blood.

"I concede, hThalhlalhlalth".

I looked around and the glass box turned into a sphere, it's walls immaculate white and far away. In the middle I could see a giant lone dark hole, as if it was the iris of an eye. Everywhere I looked the hole appeared, it didn't seem as it it was moving or there were multiple eyes, but rather the sphere would let me know it's watching me no matter where I looked. It was like the eye of God. Finally I looked forward and I could see this strange appearance before me. It had the shape of a human, but it was not made of bones and flesh and skin. It was formless and yet it appeared to be with form, inside it something black, that wasn't neither liquid nor smoke, was forming what looked like strands of muscle. They were turning into each other, twisting around each-other and always changing size. The figure had no front nor back, nor did it have sides. It appeared sizeless and void, yet it looked like an ordinary human being. It pointed a shape that looked like a hand at me. I knew to reach forward and grab it, and I could feel myself floating and the smoke-like matter enveloping me.

I saw the dark iris in the sphere, and I wanted to look through it. My vision leaned in itself and sped to see through the hole, and I could see through it. I looked down and saw myself, or rather, I saw my body. I became confused, and checked my hand to see if I was still there, but instead of a hand I saw myself extending into myself, into the endless black, viscous vapor that was around me, in me and through me. I looked back down to see my body break through the glass box, shatters piercing my skin. A weird grey gas was coming out of my mouth, rapidly spreading through the facility. As it took in the people there, I could see their skin shrivel up and darken, and their life leaving their body. Bullets and other thing flying towards my body but the wounds would heal unto themselves. I was limping through the facility, bloodied up. I couldn't tell whether it was ironic or poetic, but I truly looked like a zombie now. I couldn't stop laughing. I don't even know why I was laughing, was it the sweet taste of freedom, was it the revenge of seeing my abusers get murdered. Maniacal laughter, that's all that mattered now. I was free.

Almost everyone in the facility was dead, when suddenly the black gas dispersed in the air disappearing. I could see a masked figure approach me, and in an instant that seemed infinitely quicker than even the blink of an eye, I was back in my body. I felt dread. "No, no, no, no..." I felt despair. I felt that I could feel pain again. I felt as if I was betrayed. Before me stood what looked like an old man, dark skin. Across his chest he had weird symbols drew as white tattoos. Weird letters and sigils, and patterns that looked like the stretched into each other and led to an endless void. I stared at them and into them and felt myself sucked into them for what felt like infinity, admiring them. He was wearing weird, orange, skirt-like garments over his legs, decorated with all kinds of weird drawings and artefacts. I could see his bottom lip pierced in the middle, his septum pierced too. He had small bone-looking objects in both of his ears, and on his eyes a masked that looked otherworldly, like some sort of demon; it looked as if it was made of tar, and on it were drawn weird shapes in a fiery orange. On top of the mask 4 small horns arose like a crown, covered in pink and azure fur. From behind the mask came cascading long, thick ropes of black and silvery hair twisted together.

The old man finally opened his mouth, and exhaled a thick and opaque smoke. He reached in the middle with both of his hands twisted, then pulled them apart simultaneously, grabbing the smoke almost, forming balls in his palms. He pointed his hands downwards and split his fingers in weird, rigid grips. He whispered a word I couldn't understand, and then I could see the smoke taking form into something else entirely. Two black spheres, with blood spewing and spilling out of it on all sides, and a weird thick, green goo. They spew what looked like 8 thin legs, all spotted with the same blood and green goo. They sprawled around like spiders, though the spheres would also circle around and twist, and instead of moving their legs, they would stretch in and out of the spheres, as if disappearing and reappearing. They ran around me, and I stood there paralyzed, confused and afraid, though one thing I knew for certain: there's absolutely nothing I can do. So I just stood there and accepted whatever was going to happen next. At least I was used to doing this, after all this time getting tortured. The spheres shoot what looked like spiderwebs at me, thought they were thicker and looked like they were also covered in the same green jelly. They stretched around my entire body, squeezing me hard and making my body go numb. Finally the old man came forward and exhaled once more. The smoke came out again, and it came into me through my mouth and nostrils. That was it.

"Lorraine Melly, you are charged with committing a serious cosmic crime by making a contract with a Urupuru Imp and massacring 281 people."

Those were the words I heard as I woke up in this place. The last words I ever heard. The last interaction I ever had, with anything human or not, with any object or entity or space. I am in what I think is a cage. It's all white, immaculate and shining. I can't tell whether it's a small room or a huge field. It could stretch into infinity for all I know. I don't care to find out. There's absolutely nothing, and I can't feel nothing. No pain, no hunger, no thirst, nothing to grab onto or smell or hear or taste. Nothing to see, just endlessness. I can't tell how much time passed, or if time is passing at all. A bleak white void, infinite and for eternity.

I have no future and I must die.