Night Watch
5/13 Nothing to report
5/14 Nothing to report
5/15 Sophia says that I can write anything I want in the security log instead of nothing to report all the time so that’s what I'm going to do. Technically, she's my boss, but barely. She's the day security and I'm the night security. Jak does the evenings because, “nobody wants to do a 12 hour shift.” Which I guess is true.
5/16 This is the most boring job in the world. To be clear I'm not complaining. This isn’t my real job. I mean it is at the moment, but that's just temporary, while I'm doing my internship.
But with this job I can pay my rent, have time to do the internship during the day, and I even have enough money to go out to eat every now and then. IHOP is better than people say. I’m gonna get waffles when my shift's done.
5/17 Night security guard sounds important. I thought it would be like those movies where there's a room where someone's watching a wall of like 20 screens monitoring different areas. Well, that's not the situation here. There's a console with only one screen and 4 indicator lights below it. The light shows which camera is being shown on the screen. All I have to do is monitor the four security cameras, which amounts to pressing the ‘x’ button every so often. It's pretty easy as one of the four cameras doesn't even work.
Do I have to do anything else? No. Do I have to deal with intruders? No.
Just cycle through and if I see anything I tell Sophia in the morning.
5/20 This job is pretty boring, but I'm very excited about my internship. It's working with a group of researchers looking into the folklore of this area. There are a lot of old tales and I get to interview a lot of local people. Really cool oral history stuff.
5/21 Sophia says I don’t need to put stuff about my internship into this log. But she already said I could write, “whatever I want.” She even added, “knock yourself out.” I don’t want to lose this job though.
5/22 I’ll write about what I see on the cameras. I’ve been saying nothing to report, but I could report what I do see instead of just saying nothing.
Camera A: The writing on the console is very strange and ‘old computer.’ The labels make it look like ‘CAN A’. I’m not sure why they didn’t choose a font that’s easier to read, but there you have it. Anyway, CAN A shows the entrance to the building. The monitor shows the door that never opens or closes. I can also see the hallway that nobody goes down.
Maybe I’ll save the other cameras for the next couple of days. Don't want to have too much fun all at once.
5/23 Camera B: CAN B is the parking lot. You can tell because there's a car. Whose car, you might wonder? I have no idea, but it's always there. Is it the head of this company? But why would they always leave their car here? Maybe it’s been abandoned, or maybe someone else is working here overnight, and I just never see them.
5/24 Camera C: CAN C covers the back staircase. The number of people that I have seen on the back staircase is zero. To be fair that's exactly the same number of people that I've seen on the other monitors. I keep expecting to see a ball rolling down the stairs or something. Maybe a Slinky.
5/27 Camera D: CAN D is just static. Sophia said that they're not going to be fixing it and not to worry about it.
PRESS 'X' TO CYCLE CAMERAS
5/28 Jak asked about the books I'm always carrying. People are often dismissive of folklore studies so I don't always like to talk about it but Jak was excited when I told them what I am studying. Their eyes lit up, “You know, I saw a soglin, once, a snow elf. They call you to play and get you lost in the snow. They don’t try to hurt you but if you're not careful you can get lost.” I wasn’t sure if Jak was making fun of me at first, but they continued, “One of my uncles was lost for three days before they found him. He was ok after. Said he didn’t feel the cold ‘til we got back.”
I asked if they were able to see what it looked like.
"They're hard to see but I did see a little person smiling and waving to me."
"What do they do? Do they try and eat you?"
"No, I don’t think so. I never heard anyone talk about getting hurt, but I have heard stories of people who died of the cold when they couldn’t find their way home. I don’t think that's the soglin’s intention though, they're just looking to play. Some of the stories say they’re ugly but this one looked nice and friendly. I wanted to play, but my older brother held me back. I still kinda wish I could see them again."
"So are they good or bad? "
"I don’t think they think like that."
I bet I could interview Jak for my internship. I'll ask tomorrow.
5/29 Apart from Sophia and Jak, I'm not sure anyone works here. I've never seen anyone else, never talked to anyone else.
“You work from 11pm to 7am , who would you see?” Sophia asked.
“I don’t know, there’s not even any change on the monitors.”
“Yeah that’s good. It means we don’t have to deal with nonsense or worse.”
5/30 Saw a pigeon on Cam B. It looks like it was walking around the car. I’m gonna pop outside for a minute to see the pigeon in person.
Update: It was just static.
6/1 When I started this job I'd usually just skip past CAM D since it's broken, but honestly I'm starting to find the static relaxing. It reminds me of riding in the car back from my grandmother’s house when I was a kid. Every Sunday we would have dinner at my grandmother’s house. We would stay until 8:00 which was our bedtime so we would change into our pajamas and try to sleep in the car for the hour long ride home.
I remember my parents listening to the scratchy am talk radio. I didn’t understand most of what they were saying, but I found it very relaxing. I listened to the static more than the voices. Just watching the stars, interrupted by headlights from other cars every so often.
6/2 I saw something in the static.
I know that.
It's probably just seeing things where there is nothing, but I really thought I saw something in the static. Almost like it's trying to tell me something, send a message.
6/3 I talked to Sophia about it and she said that the camera doesn’t work. It isn't even connected to the system so there's no way that there it's picking something up.
I checked the cables and Sophia was right. The channel isn’t connected to any camera, or anything really. I must have imagined the flashes. I do need more sleep.
6/4 Ok, now there really is something and I think I can hear sounds. Words maybe?
When I got in today I told Jak about the sounds. I was worried about telling Sophia because I can't lose this job. Especially now that I lost the internship. Jak said that there's no way that Sophia would fire me. The last person who had the nightshift just left without saying anything and it was hard to find someone new.
Anyway Jak says that it's easy to imagine stuff when you're alone in the night.
6/5 I really think someone’s there. It seems to be responding to me. I'm going to try something.
Reproduced from a logbook found in the security office of Verity Systems. Entered into evidence on June 10.
I wrote this story to go with some "illustration" experiments I have been doing to learn Pico-8. I used bikibird's amazing speako-8 for the third one.
