Our True Nature

There's something horrible about being the only one to know what the world is really like, and being unable to talk to anyone about it.

I remember when I first discovered the world of the anomalous. Thousands and thousands of people know about it, yet my family and friends don't, and I couldn't risk telling them. It's practically unbearable.

I worried they would find me crazy, or that they wouldn't understand. Or maybe, just maybe, one of them did know. But the anomalous world isn't all too safe, is it? If I were to tell the wrong person, I might end up in a jail cell or with a bullet in my head.

I joined the Foundation to try and avoid that. A global superpower with the best technology and security our world has to offer— what else could be safer? And after a while, they started to feel like a family. As I researched different anomalies, preparing speeches and documentation, my fear dissipated. I could finally tell someone about what I've seen.

I just wish I'd never accepted that project.

It was top-secret, an order from the O5s themselves. I was flattered, of course. A bit fearful I wouldn't live up to their expectations. But I did. I found out what the very first anomaly was: a statue in a room.

At least, that's what I found in the beginning. Every document I uncovered conflicted with the others.

An apple on a tree. A library. The first human. The Foundation itself. A well of life.

All of them were the 'first.' Every single one.

Isn't that ludicrous? Multiple things cannot be the first. But the universe is fluid. Throughout the whole database, I discovered so many different contradictions. Reality itself was changing, including me.

First I was tugging at loose strings. Changing small little details, file by file. But it all began to tear at the seams. Countless holes in reality, and while I could've patched them… I didn't.

I reached out, ripping through dimensions until nothing was left except for me and the void.

After ages of silence, a phone began to ring in front of me. And though I made no motion to answer, I found myself sitting at a wooden desk, raising it to my ear. A man spoke on the other end, in a voice similar to my own, telling me of a peculiar project he was working on.

A story about a scientist trying to find the very first anomaly.

And at that moment, the world reset, leaving me sitting at my desk, my whole being shattered.

I could no longer control my own body. I couldn't even think. But after a few years, I suppose whatever was piloting me lost interest. So I deleted everything I had ever worked on, and I left.

I'm now where not even the O5s can find me. And I am going to stay here until the day I die.

I know the true nature of our world, and hopefully, nobody else ever will.

- S Andrew Swann