Day 1

A week ago I woke up in an unfamiliar place, a fenced campus of some sort, and I do not know how to get out. There are stores with plenty of supplies left in them, but no one is here at all. I am guessing that the space is close to a mile in diameter (one sig fig), and a perfect circle, or close to it. So far I have seen no sign of life, no used coffee cups or hairs left on the carpet, just empty offices and common areas, with some retail. The most alive thing I’ve seen is a simple robot. It was in the room I woke up in, and it seems to just sit in there, occasionally puttering around but without leaving. It is programmed to display a weather forecast and calendar, and to read off messages at 6am and 6pm every day. I guess the messages are pre-programmed. The pattern seems to be that the first message is some platitude that almost sounds AI generated, and the second message is a piece of short writing (like real literature), or a song. My next goal is to figure out how it gets the weather forecast, but it is not like any machine I have seen.

I found this journal in a supply cabinet, and I figure that since it seems I may be here a while, I should keep track of the days and the messages, just in case.

Message 1.1:

“Aloneness does not need to be lonely, and silence is not the end– it is only what it is.”

Message 1.2:

“My grandfather used to say: Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that– not to mention accidents– even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.”

The silence is getting to me.

XOXO,
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