Site-69 is a fucking joke.

Let me paint a picture for you. The Foundation. Cold, corporate, bureaucratic, sure — but real people do actually work here. Real people with emotions, a love for life, a sense of humour. You get the idea.

Every now and then, an emotional/life-loving/humour-sensing mind might want to escape from drab monotony for just a few moments. I think that's pretty natural. And what better way to do that, if you're a mind that's had the creativity crushed out of it over years and years of stifling bureacratic bullshit, than to — and please forgive me if I'm getting this wrong — than to "play a prank." I think such a mind could be forgiven for such an idea.

So, every few months, some so-called "Senior Researcher" or "Site Director" or "HMCL Supervisor" sends a prank email to one of their staff, instructing them to:

In context, and if you too have had all creativity stomped out of you, it might even be funny. It’ll be framed as a tongue-in-cheek punishment for some perceived malfeasance on the part of the recipient — not a very serious one, for sure, and certainly not worth any real punishment — but it'll be enough to make any junior researcher sweat a little. Or maybe it’ll be the 'reward' for some poor researcher’s 10th anniversary with the Foundation. Something like that. It doesn't matter.

Once the jig is up, though, and the joke is revealed, the pranker and the prankee will have a little laugh with each other, and it'll be a nice little bonding experience, and the victim will feel a little more like they're part of the team.

But, after a few minutes of laughter, and after sharing the prank with a few nearby colleagues, and after everyone involved gets a moment to reflect… the funny number stops being funny. The email is quietly deleted, and everyone gets on with their day.

But the system never saw it as a joke. The reassignment is recorded. The transfer goes through. Somewhere inside DEEPWELL an old function triggers, written in a programming language only a handful of older researchers understand, and a bit silently flips from zero to one.

The victim goes home and dutifully begins packing their things, barely aware of what they're doing. They eat food, they brush their teeth, they go to bed. The next morning they wake up, feeling well-rested for quite possibly the first time ever. They say goodbye to their family — who hardly look up from their breakfast — go to the nearest airport via whatever means are available to them, and board the next plane to Site-69.

They won't return.

Your family won't notice you're gone. Your friends won't notice you're gone. Your previous Site won't notice you're gone. Even your boss or supervisor or whoever it was who sent you the prank email in the first place won't notice. They might remember you briefly, if prompted, but no one ever will. You'll be replaced without fanfare and everyone's lives will continue, without you, entirely unaffected by whether you're there or not.

If you're reading this, welcome to Site-69.

Settle in. Find a hammock, we have plenty to spare. If you know any stories, or any songs by heart, or if you have any nice memories that you'd like to keep, you should write them down. We're all family here, but keep your wits about you. You'll quickly get a sense of who you can trust — anyone who got here up to a year before you did, anyone who arrives up to a year from now, and that's it. Don't even lend toothpaste to anyone else.

Good luck.