Etheria: The Secret City
So, there is a town hidden in a mountain range somewhere in the Midwest. The town is not like any regular town. When it was first established, its inhabitants were made up of officers, guards, nurses, and doctors of all different areas of expertise. The town itself looks like a Hollywood set. Fake grass, some fake trees, and bushes, even some of the houses have fake families sat around like props, and yes, there are even fake animals.
The town, Etheria is more like a disguise, hiding what is built within the mountain range surrounding the little town. . It was established way back in 1783. That's also when they began building the facility, a government project that was built in complete secrecy. I mean, not even the President knows about it. Only a few people that work in Washington, D.C. actually know about what goes on there. It's meant to be that way because of the inhabitants that are taken there and what the facility was actually built for. See, it's an asylum. An asylum the size of a city.
Supplies are brought in unmarked vehicles; drivers were given explicit instructions: to not ask questions, bring the supplies to their designated stores and to the facility, to not get out of the vehicle under any circumstance. Some of the doctors, nurses, and guards were allowed to bring their immediate family to live here, but only after an almost impossible-to-pass screening of sorts.
The purpose of this place was to allow doctors, psychologists, and scientists to experiment on ways to "cure" people of their mental illnesses, and also for them to experiment on ways to use these illnesses for certain tasks. Some of these tasks involved top-secret missions where they would be taken to other countries that we were at war with, and given only the minimum of supplies. They were also given a specific target and then released. Bottom line, expendable.
Certain disorders were valued more than others: any form of schizophrenia, as well as dissociative identity disorder. The ones who hear “voices” and the ones with multiple personalities. The goal was to discern a method to use these extra personalities like a Chameleon of sorts. They were trying to figure out a way to make each personality aware of the others, and for the patient to be able to switch at will, so as to be able to be used for spying. One experiment focused on patients that showed an ability to almost change features when another personality took over, the theory being that if they were caught, they could just switch personalities and somehow fool the officials or whoever had them imprisoned. As technology advanced, so did experimentation. They began to try to pull the personalities out of the patient, creating programs for artificial personalities using AI. The prototype machine was named after its creator, Dr. Albert Jaquez Chadou. To pronounce his last name, in English, you would say Sh-ay-doe, but everyone just started calling it the Shadow Machine.
Another group of people that were experimented on a lot were the ones that had trouble controlling their anger and rage. Psychologists would put them through extensive questioning in order to find the key to their rage, or “trigger.” Once the trigger was discovered, it would be pressed again and again under varying conditions to measure the patient’s reactions. These tests were extremely hit-or-miss; more often than not, the patient’s mind would snap from the torture. When the rage was able to be harnessed, however, they were used as kamikazes. These people were kept in a wing of the facility that was nicknamed The Beast Ward.
The layout of the entire facility was very planned and deliberate. If you looked at it from an airplane you’d see the town in the center like a perfect circle, then the mountains surrounding it would be North, South, East, and West corridors. They were placed to be the cardinal points of a giant compass.
Each of the corresponding four wards had separate inmate halls and experimental labs, along with its own dedicated hospital facility in case an emergency arose. Each ward was lettered and each room numbered.
The North housed the A, E, I, M, Q, U, and Y blocks, which were made up of the more easily managed patients. Very low security, but still had locked rooms. During the day, the patients on these blocks were allowed to walk to classes and appointments by themselves and could visit one another’s rooms. The center of the North Ward was a giant atrium of trees, plants, a pond, and a few types of harmless wildlife. The patients of the north tended the gardens.
The West housed the medium-security patients, D, H, L, P, T, and X wards. Here they were restricted to their individual rooms unless they were attending a class or with a doctor. The good behavior patients could visit the atrium if accompanied by a nurse or guard.
The East held the B, F, J, N, R, V, and Z maximum security dorms. B Ward was the one that housed our rage-driven criminals. So, the Beast Ward is B - Eastward. It was just a coincidence that it fell to be lettered that way and wound up housing the rage and anger issue inmates. However, there were a few inmates that were placed there because of being diagnosed with more than one mental illness; these patients were on the “J” block.
The South housed the C, G, K, O, S, and W. These dorms were made up of the patients and inmates that the scientists experimented on the most. It was a mix of patients from all the other three blocks. These rooms were all adjoined where the second room had the lab and would be where the experiments would take place, so they wouldn’t have to be wheeling patients from place to place. Which was smart because that would’ve just made it easier for a patient to grab someone or something and cause all kinds of trouble for the rest of us.
Alright, so that's some of the past information up to the present. Well, some of the present.
My name is just J.13.CK, but you can call me Jack since that is clearly what my inmate tag looks like and I can't actually remember anymore what it stood for. I think the J is the letter of the Ward hall my room was in, 13 was the room number, and maybe CK is my initials. But either way, everyone here just started calling me Jack because it’s easier, obviously, and that is what it started looking like on my inmate clothing as it started to fade away.
Side note, if you take the 13 and break it down, it would be 1 plus 3 which equals 4 and then my inmate tag would read J-4-CK and that makes it really look like JACK. Anyway. How about I tell you why I am not in my Wardroom and why you should not ever come to visit, drive through, or accidentally make your way to this little fake mining town.
Not too long ago an inmate from the Beast Ward became a little bit too enraged. He had already been thinking about trying to escape, and some inexperienced nurse accidentally gave him a higher than normal dose of their experimental medicine. He managed to overpower all the guards on his block and every single one that was between him and the place he was most interested in. He was heading to the facility’s Main Control Room. This was the most secured and guarded spot in the entire place, on any other occasion impenetrable. Until a frustrated guy at the end of his rope gets too much Juggernaut Juice in his veins.
He went through every officer, guard, and any other personnel that foolishly tried to stop him. It was like a hot knife through butter. There was no stopping him. Which to their credit meant their experiment was a half success. The crucial other half was being able to control the Juggernaut. Once inside the control hub, all he had to do was hit one button and every single door inside and outside the facility became unlocked. And apparently, that button was his off-switch because he just sat down in the Captain’s chair and watched as Hell literally broke loose.
Despite having a button that caused such chaos, they were never prepared for that to happen. There are thousands of rooms, hallways, and corridors that seem endless while walking down them. But there were a number of patients that were lucid and most of them didn't participate in the uprising. I myself only had one particular target, and he wasn't going anywhere fast.
Maybe you guessed it. My target was Dr. Chadou, who was in his high-security office that had a safe room, blast doors, and triple-paned glass windows. He was the one doctor who planned for something like this and had an extra backup generator installed that was only connected to his area of the labs and offices.
They had poked and prodded me, gave me doses of stuff that sometimes glowed in the dark. They gave me things that made me sleep for days and things that kept me awake for weeks at a time. They gave me pills that slowed me down and some that sped me up so much that I would feel like I was able to time travel, and it worked. If you met me, you would notice that I have a bit of a tick. I look shaky, but really I am just really having to concentrate not to be going so fast that you would hardly see me. I am not shaking, it’s more like I am vibrating.
I can move so fast that all a camera can catch is a ghost-like blur of me if it catches me at all. I am a shifter, I guess. That’s what they started calling me among the scientists and the shrinks. Also, I guess I better come clean now, I am one of the personalities that were pulled out of a patient. I’m not even sure how real I am or if I actually ever had a real name or not. The extraction was one of the first successful attempts and since they didn’t know what it was going to do, they weren’t prepared for what would happen next. Long story short, the people we were pulled from didn’t make it. There are eight of us altogether; each one has a different sort of ability.
I am made from the specific disorders of my… host. (Ugh, that makes me sound like a parasite.) He had ADHD, Insomnia, bipolar, dissociative personality disorder, kleptomania, depression, you get the idea. I am a psychologist’s nightmare, or (bad joke warning), I’m like the Baskin-Robbins of mental illnesses, and I’ve got all the flavors. (Insert Laugh Track Here).
Alright, moving on. Where was I? Oh, right, me in the past and Dr. Chadou. So, he thought he was safe from the uprising because he had backups and a safe room that would lead straight outside if it got breached. Another tricky ability that the eight of us actually share, is something we call flickering. We can move quickly in the dark and almost pass from shadow to shadow like teleporting. We have been trying to see if we could do it through a solid object like a door or something, but none of us had quite gotten it yet.
I guess all it took was the right motivation because I got from my room in J Ward all the way to the doctor's office in the West block in a matter of seconds. This is actually saying something because this facility is actually massive. Anyway, I was standing right outside his door, which already had the blast door initiated, and I just closed my eyes, focused on the image of him just sitting in his chair looking all smug.
Then I stepped forward. Then another step, then another, and another. It worked! I was inside the office, but he wasn’t anywhere I could see, so he must have gone into the safe room. I wasn’t sure if he was able to see me on the cameras that were all over the place. Those were connected to the main control room and were for the security guys to watch, not doctors. But he could have always put up some of his own.
He did not, I soon found out. Because he was very, very surprised to see me when I stepped through his locked safe room door. So surprised that he let out a very high-pitched yelp but quickly cut it off so as to not actually seem scared once he saw it was me. He thought for a second that I would be his completely compliant test subject. His submissive little Guinea pig pet. But he was very, very mistaken.
I won’t go into detail here, don’t need to self-incriminate or whatever. But, I will say, if anyone actually comes to look for the doctors, they will not find Dr. Chadou. Nope, not a single piece. He just... Disappeared. You won’t even see his shadow.
After a few hours, or days, the patients had made every doctor, nurse, officer, and guard disappear as well. Well, maybe not everyone, there were some that submitted, and to be honest, we did still need someone not crazy to run the hospitals and know what was in the vials and pills.
As for the few families that actually inhabited the fake little town outside our walls, they were given a choice, join us or well, you know... And each one chose to stay. I was glad because that meant I could actually talk to someone who isn’t insane or someone who takes care of the insane. Just normal people.
So now the town of Etheria and the asylum that surrounds it deep inside the mountains belong to us. The inmate that managed to make it all possible wound up making a few of us people of power, to watch over and keep some kind of law. There were really only two big rules, which were not to leave the borders of the city, and if anyone by chance drives in that isn’t a supply drop-off driver, as long as they drove straight through and back out the other side, they were to be left alone.
That second one was a good one since we really didn’t need to draw any more attention to ourselves. We did just take over a huge government secret facility that housed insane and murderous monsters from all over the world.
Right now I bet you’re thinking, well aren’t they just going to come in there with guns blazing or fly over and bomb the place, or maybe there's a self-destruct inside the facility? But, no, nobody is coming, nobody is going to be blowing anything up unless one of us does it. See, this place was one of those very old secrets, and since there are so many of us and many of the officials that know outside of the town have no idea what kinds of things we are capable of, they see it as too costly, the damage is already done. The people already lost were replaceable elsewhere. Bombing the place would raise too many conspiracy flags and all that jazz.
Nope, for now, we are our own little insane city. Most of the inmates were so relieved to not be experimented on any longer, they are manageable and still taking their meds from the hospitals. Anyone too far gone or broken were wrangled up before they could make it out of town and put back into the facility where some of the patients from the North Block actually tend to them, making sure they are okay while still maintaining the atrium. Old habits, I guess.
Some of the rest of us are now inside all the prop homes and businesses, making them no longer props. The other thing with the government supply trucks, they still keep coming. They bring the stuff to fill the originally fake stores with food, toys, clothes, you know, stuff and the other trucks bring the meds and other facility supplies. The drivers just stay looking straight ahead, we unload the trailers and they drive off.
I guess as long as we aren’t killing people or burning the forest down, we will remain supplied. I don’t know what might happen if the supply trucks stop coming. I don’t think it’ll be anything good.
So, the inmate that made this all happen, also had a patient number like mine, B-1-LL, so we called him Captain Bill. Turns out Bill also could no longer remember his real name so it was perfect. Also, ol’ Bill was actually quite smart, I don’t know if that came with the experimentation or if he always was, but either way, he did a good job of seeing which out of us all would do the best at what jobs. Some were actually made to be the town's firefighters, police, emergency responders, and even teachers. The regular people who we, well, kept were sprinkled throughout those other jobs to maintain order. Sometimes one of the firefighters had been a firestarter, but hey, what are you gonna do, right?
I actually got a great job for someone with my abilities and speed, and the fact that I stay up for weeks on occasion. I’m just simply, a watcher. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. I watch things. But while watching, I listen, and then I report. I’m to make sure there aren’t any patients plotting to mutiny.
Cuz’ we be land pirates, ye see, and thur best not be nun a plottin to overthrow the cap’n. Cuz’ if’n they r, then the plank they’n gonna be a walk’n.
Ha! Anyway, some years have passed since that time, I’m not actually too sure how many. The “Captain” actually died not too long back. I guess some of the experimentation caught up, because, well, he just kind of blew up one day. It was as crazy as it sounds. He was in his office and we were all outside just chatting and we heard him getting angry with someone over the phone and then we heard him say, “oh no! What the…” and then Bam!
Blew out the windows of the whole building and almost made the roof collapse. Luckily for the rest of us that liked the place having some kind of law and order to it, he had already appointed a couple of us as seconds and made sure we could be completely trusted.
There wasn’t anything to bury, so we just made a big headstone with a statue of him to put alongside it. Written on the nameplate was this: No matter what he was before, he got us all out. He was actually a pretty good guy. A hero to the criminally insane, a real genuine captain of our land-ship and its crew of scoundrels and thieves. He will be mist.
Yes, I know someone misspelled the word “missed”, but actually it was on purpose. Since he, well, blew up and there was nothing left of him. I mean, nothing except a mist of water floated down from where all the windows had blown out. So, He will be mist. Ha!
And that’s how we got our own town and for now, won’t be having any more tests done on us. For now, we have something like peace and a community. Inmates will be inmates, so of course, there is still crime on occasion. We deal with it our own way. Also, some of us have gotten married and started families.
I know, it’s insane for insane people to be having crazy babies. But hey, is it any different outside of Etheria? Think about that. But for now, I have some watching to do. Someone spotted a car with a family that seems a little lost and I am hoping they don’t come up this road. But they are very close. I’ll tell you about it the next time I see you.
“Poof”
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