I’m A Park Ranger At Tower 9. My Partner Just Looked At Me With A Hollow Smile And Said, “it’s Beautiful Beneath The Ground.” I Don’t Think She’s Human Anymore.

*”Worst case scenario: the seal fails and the aperture expands exponentially, requiring immediate evacuation and permanent exclusion zone establishment. Best case scenario of a failed seal: we get a partial closure that buys us time to try again.”*

The odds weren’t great, but they were better than nothing. The containment team moved into position, placing the charges with precision while Mills monitored the reality stability readings. I watched the numbers drop steadily: 23%, 21%, 19%.

We were running out of time.

*”All charges placed,”*

The team leader reported.

*”Ready to detonate on your mark.”*

Mills checked his tablet one final time.

*”Clear the zone. Everyone back to minimum safe distance.”*

We retreated 300 yards and took cover behind a natural rock formation. Mills counted down from 10, his finger hovering over the detonation switch. When he hit zero, the world went white.

The explosion wasn’t loud; it was the opposite of sound, a wave of un-noise that made my ears pop and my vision blur. Through the protective visor, I saw reality ripple like water. The aperture’s blue-white light flickered and dimmed as the quantum stabilizers forced physical laws back into alignment.

For a moment, I thought it was working. The crack in the ground shrank from 12 feet to 8, then 6, then 4. The singing stopped abruptly, leaving a silence so profound it hurt.

But then the light flared brighter than before. The crack didn’t just stop shrinking; it reversed. It expanded past its previous size to 15 feet, then 20, then 30.

*”Seal failure!”*

Mills shouted into his radio.

*”Initiate evacuation protocol Alpha 3. This is now an exclusion zone.”*

People were running, vehicles were starting, and equipment was being abandoned as the containment team retreated from the rapidly expanding breach. I couldn’t move, transfixed by what I was seeing.

The aperture wasn’t just growing; it was changing. The blue-white light was resolving into shapes: geometric patterns that hurt to look at and structures that existed in more dimensions than my brain could process.

Through it, I could see something on the other side. They were not creatures or entities, but concepts given form. I saw mathematics that thought and colors that had consciousness. These were the fundamental building blocks of a reality that operated on completely different rules than our own.

Mills grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the vehicles.

*”Don’t look at it! The longer you stare, the deeper the contamination!”*

But I’d already seen too much. I could feel something in my mind now, a presence that hadn’t been there before. It was not malicious or evil, just fundamentally other.

It wanted to understand me as much as I wanted to understand it. And that mutual curiosity was itself a form of infection.

The Source of the Breach

We piled into the vehicle and Mills floored it, racing away from the expanding breach behind us. I watched through the rear window as the aperture consumed the clearing, the stripped trees, and everything within a hundred-yard radius.

The forest itself was being unmade, reduced to component particles that rearranged themselves into new configurations that followed different rules.

*”How far will it spread?”*

Mitchell asked, his voice shaking.

*”Projections estimate it’ll stabilize at roughly 3 square miles,”*

Mills said, though he didn’t sound confident.

*”Maybe four. We’ll establish a perimeter and monitor the expansion. If it goes beyond 5 square miles, we’ll need to evacuate the nearest towns.”*

We made it back to the facility in record time. Medical personnel were waiting to check us for contamination. I submitted to another round of tests, trying not to think about the presence I could still feel in my mind, humming just below conscious awareness.

The tests took hours. When they finally released me, it was late afternoon. Mills found me in the common area, nursing a cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago.

*”You’re showing early Stage 1 markers,”*

He said without preamble.

*”Elevated activity in the temporal and parietal lobes. Unusual neural firing patterns. Nothing critical yet, but we need to start treatment immediately.”*

*”What kind of treatment?”*

*”Cognitive restructuring therapy combined with neural stabilizers. Basically, we retrain your brain to reject the contamination patterns. Success rate is around 80% for Stage 1.”*

He sat down across from me, looking more tired than I’d seen him all day.

*”I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you get that close. I thought your resistance would hold.”*

*”It’s not your fault. I volunteered.”*

*”Still, we lost three people today to Class 3 contamination, and you’re teetering on the edge. This was supposed to be a routine seal operation.”*

*”How many routine operations go wrong?”*

Mills sighed.

*”More than we’d like. Apertures are unpredictable. Sometimes they form and close on their own within hours. Sometimes they stabilize at manageable sizes. And sometimes…”*