Haunted Rubber Duck Incident
The three had found some statements marked with ‘completed research’ while Jon was having “allergies” before lunch. So Jon figured it was time to recreate the whole ‘real statements wont record digitally’ which meant Jon needed to record some fake statements for the real ones to be the anomalies.
Click
Jon looked down at the small pile of fakes with the one real statement that had completed follow up to start recording.
“Statement of Clair Jones, regarding the haunting of the computer lab on campus. Original statement given April 7th, 2013. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
“Statement begins.
“I’ve never been one for believing in spooky things. It’s all gotta be fake. Least that was what I thought. It feels silly now-”
The computer prompted a ‘recording error’ message. It was like when recording a real statement.
He looked at it baffled. Double-checking it again, it was the fake statement, something about a haunted rubber duck in a computer lab.
That can’t be right. Jon read over the statement in his head. Pure give away it was fake, but also he Knew it was a prank by some professors who moved the rubber duck around between hours.
Jon tried again. And the recording failed again. A little sooner this time.
Jon grabbed another fake one. This time something about a talking pizza? Clearly the statement giver was on something and he didn’t need to Know that, but Beholding let him know anyway.
Same error message.
He got up and peaked his head out. “Sasha, do you have a moment, something is going wrong with my computer while I’m trying to record. Mind taking a look?”
“Sure, what’s it doing?” Sasha made her way over.
“After about 30 seconds I’m getting an error message. See.”
“Weird. Lemmie try.”
Jon handed her the fake, the duck one, and she tried to record it. Sasha recorded for about 2 minutes before she looked over to Jon, leaving the recording going. “Looks to be working now. Guess it was a fluke?”
“Seems so. Quite odd. Guess that's just how computers work sometimes. Try to get help with a bug and it decides to play nice.” Jon had a bit of a tired laugh to his voice, then the recording glitched.
“What the hell?” Sasha looked at it. “Spoke too soon.” The error message was a string of broken characters.
It only glitched after it started to pick up Jon voice. He felt his blood run cold. It couldn’t be Him, could it?
“Let me mess with it. You can use my computer if you want to. I know you wanted to get that stack out of the way and we don’t want you staying late like a workaholic.” She smiled at him knowing that he probably would anyway. If anything using the excuse of his getting here late.
“Quite. Thanks.” Jon grabbed the statements and went over to Sasha’s desk. How ironic there was a rubber duck in a bedsheet ghost costume next to a few other trinkets.
Click
Jon noticed the tape this time. It was recording because of course it was. Jon let out a bitter sigh and tried to record the first statement again.
He wasn’t surprised when the error message appeared this time. Jon slumped in Sasha’s chair with a groan.
“Having a hard time, boss?” Tim leaned over. “Looks like computers are boycotting you.”
“I don’t even know what I’m surprised at this point…” Jon mumbled, bringing his head into his knees.
“Ooooh?” Jon couldn’t see Tim’s face, but from the sounds of it, Tim was about to blame something spooky. “Seems like the gods of the archive aren’t blessing our boss on this fine spring day. First dust attack, now computer problems. We should all have a week’s vacation. Its a sign.”
“Come off it, Tim.” Jon mumbled again, but with a bite to his voice. Sounded more like the Jon that Tim’d known upstairs and made Tim smile.
“What's this I hear about a vacation?” Sasha came outa the office. “It paid?”
“There isn’t any vacation.” Both Sasha and Tim responded with a ‘Boo’ as Jon continued. “Any luck? Your’s gave me the same error.”
“That’s. Hm...well didn’t give me any errors after you left. So not sure what that means?” Jon started uncurling as she spoke.
“I guess it means that we may need to have a different set up for recording. Since as Tim put it, I appear to be cursed. For now, why don’t the three of you test out this pile and see if any give an error message for you. I’ll look into other methods in the meantime”
“Boss, are you implying that there might be something Spoo-” The tone of Tim’s voice was flavored with joy.
“Don’t say spooky. It’s simply trying to figure out how to smooth out interrupted workflow.” He got up to give Sasha her spot back. He grabbed the recorder on habit.
“Gotcha. We’ll start up with these then.” Sasha started dividing the stack between her, Tim, and Martin as Jon went into his office and closed the door.
For the system to work even close to how it had before, Jon needed to be able to have the fakes digitized. If he was going to have to record the fake statements on tape as well, Jon was going to lose his mind. The thought of fake tapes touching his real ones, grossed him out. It felt wrong. If it came to that, he could probably spend a few nights separating the fakes and hiding them?
The tapes that recorded this incident though. They would file nicely. He smiled at them taken back by the flavor of fear they held. His own brand of fear recorded onto them. He’d always been watching, an observer to fear. Was this the first time he was the origin? Would this become a piece of a statement Sasha would tell later as the first sign that something was off with her boss?
The spark of Hunger faded just as fast as it appeared at the thought. Well, that was new.
Jon shook his head, like the thought would be dislodged from his mind. Now was not the time. He wasn’t going to deny his curiosity, as he knew where that train leads, but he wasn’t going to pursue it at the moment. He’ll have a Statement later tonight to fend off any edge of hunger, and calculate that thought into his work in progress feeding plans at home.
Right now, Jon had to figure out how to explain the logic behind his illogical tape recorders to his assistants while keeping the fake statements contained to a computer.