The world has stopped being a home for many. And yet, people keep seeking out one of their own. A world they can call home. And in their pursuit, they find the ABYSS – an inexplicable thing that draws the attention of those with no belonging. An emptiness that craves to be explored.
The believers are few, and the “visitors” are even fewer, if they could be called that. It’s theorized that anyone who returns from the ABYSS finds themselves waking up - as if from a dream. The recollections of visitors can be scarcely distinguished from dreams, and they all seemingly differ from each other – and yet, skepticism is kept at bay. The desire for the ABYSS to exist is strong enough to part with reason, and pursue an impossibility.
Some within the community have begun trying to attempt lucid dreaming, so they may explore the ABYSS consciously, and perhaps even summon it. So far, all attempts have ended up with failure — save for one very special case.
Boid was one of the lucid dreamers, and was seemingly desperate to reach the ABYSS. In their obsession, they’d managed to start lucid dreaming quite regularly, but each attempt to summon the ABYSS failed. However – this was not clear at first. The brain would make up simulacrums of the ABYSS, spaces that worked convincingly, but upon reporting back, those who had claimed to reach the ABYSS showed skepticism.
It’s not known how valid this skepticism was, after all as far as the community was concerned, everyone who’d visited the ABYSS had functionally dreamt it up. But the visitors seemed insistent. Boid ignored them and kept visiting the ABYSS, be it the real one, or one of their own making.
Then, one day, Boid left a message that surprised most of the people there. It wasn’t in their usual style, and it was almost completely incoherent. It seemed that the intent was similar to their previous posts — a desire to share an experience in the ABYSS — but for some reason the text was entirely garbled. Of course, this provoked many replies — making fun, disturbed, worried…
Someone who was wary of lucid dreaming after hearing horror stories of people losing control, left a comment expressing a deep concern. “please, stop lucid dreaming, it’s clearly not helping you”.
Boid came back with a reply 10 seconds later.
“it’s not a dream”
Shortly after, Boid’s messages were gone. Further yet, the account itself was also gone. This story would have become myth, had it not been for the fact that, shortly after, no one seemed to remember who Boid was. A missing poster may have come up, but no one would know who Boid was amongst the millions of missing people.
A couple of years later, the community had matured but not grown. Instead of scattered across various places, they’d built a website specifically for discussions of the ABYSS. Faith had wavered in this time, and most people mainly remained due to connections with other people, though their hearts still held hope.
However there were still diehard believers who, with all their hearts, believed in the ABYSS. The other members looked at them with fondness and the smallest bit of pain — no one wanted to stop believing, time had simply eroded the confidence that they held.
Then, one day, the website seemingly got hacked. It was replaced by a blank white screen. The administrator didn’t know what was going on, they changed their password and checked everything, and by all means the website should have been functioning normally. Since the site was down, some people went back to their previously abandoned corners to report what was going on. People started to wonder what the cause could be — most began to suspect that this was a weird issue with the hosting provider or something techy like that.
Then, a believer came along to leave a weird reply. “it’s not blank, it clearly says hello on there”. People thought they were joking, but then more and more of the believers came in, corroborating the same story. All of them agreed that the page said, in very small text at the center of the screen, written in black, hello.
Some believed them, others thought this was some elaborate trolling effort. Shortly after, the believers claimed that the message had changed. “help”. While the others had their doubts, the believers began to have their own. Was this something related to the ABYSS? Was this just a prank to mess with them? Why were so many people claiming the page was empty — maybe whoever’s behind this prank was targeting the believers specifically to make fun of them or something.
Before they could argue further, the message had changed again. This time, it has 8 words.
“it’s not a dream. i can’t wake up”