Walls wear stories, scratched and torn,
Faded posters, graffiti worn.
jagged circles in dark flights
Cracks appear amid the lights
Entropy calls, freedom’s a scream,
The prism is broken, but what does it mean
Cracks appear amid the light
A shattered truth, a fleeting sight.
Masked rebellion underground .
Jagged suns and static sound
Symbols, meaning everywhere
If only anyone would stop to care.
Entropy calls, freedom’s a scream,
The prism is broken, but what does it mean
Cracks appear amid the light
A shattered truth, a fleeting sight.
Fingers trace the rough chalk lines,
Desperation carved in jagged designs.
The hum grows loud, the path grows thin,
A battered door waits, pulsing within.
Entropy calls, freedom’s a scream,
The prism is broken, but what does it mean
Cracks appear amid the light
A shattered truth, a fleeting sight.
Steps to nowhere, a path unplanned,
Through buzzing lights and shadows grand.
The hum resolves, the rhythm speaks,
Even in light, the truth still leaks.
Graydon‘s flow was interrupted by a notification about a new message in his inbox. This was unusual as in Chromadyne, people only messaged if it was something they had discussed, or a matter of urgency. It wasn’t forbidden or anything. It was just that research had proven this kind of communication unhealthy. It was now common knowledge that the act of sending messages as soon as something came up caused a false sense of urgency, resulting in people not only spending unnecessary time on issues that more often than not resolved themselves. It also kept people at a constant state of heightened awareness leading to chronic stress. Nowadays, with a high focus on wellbeing, unsolicited communication had become something people frowned upon.
Graydon wasn’t expecting any news, so it was only natural that he was curious about the message. When he opened his inbox, he immediately knew that something was off. The message was short and written in a plain monospace font:
„Entropy’s Prism is cracked. Look closer.“
It did not make any sense. Graydon stared at the screen. On further scrutiny he noticed that it had neither sender nor timestamp. His pulse began quickening and it seemed to him as if the words were faintly flickering as though they might vanish, if he even more than blinked. There was also an attachment.
Maybe this was another one of Barry’s jokes, Graydon thought and glanced around the office. But Barry was typing furiously with his usual overdramatic flair of someone pretending to be busy. Daphne was chewing on the end of a neon yellow pen, and Candice was pacing by the coffee machine, gesturing emphatically during a holographic conference call. Everything seemed to be business as usual and no one was looking at him.
Graydon remembered a story, half rumour, half cautionary tale, about a junior programmer who had once received an unauthorized message. It was supposedly just a joke, a garish animated GIF of a cartoon penguin doing the cha-cha.
Now, Graydon‘s instinct was to delete the message.
The programmer, thrilled by the break in monotony, had shared the GIF with a colleague, who’d shared it with another until half the office was giggling over the absurdity of a dancing bird. By lunch, the GIF had been flagged by Chromadyne’s Visual Interference Surveillance Algorithm (VISA), and the next morning, the programmer’s desk was empty.
Some argued, Penguin-guy had simply been transferred to „a more suitable role“. Yet, it was said that the details around this issue were murky. Others claimed he’d been reassigned to an offshore data farm in the middle of nowhere, monitoring outdated servers. Then there were those who whispered he’d vanished altogether as if the city’s endless appetite for order had swallowed him up.
Surely the whole affair was nothing more than a made up office story, an urban legend told to intimidate new employees, Graydon thought. This had nothing to do with the message in his inbox.
He hesitated. Then, glancing around the room, he took a deep breath and clicked the attachment.
The file opened into a chaotic jumble of symbols, code fragments, and half-formed shapes, as if someone had chosen the wrong font. Graydon squinted, his mind instinctively parsing what he was seeing for patterns.
At first, it seemed like nonsense. A child’s attempt at coding. But as his eyes wandered over the lines, he noticed there were parts that did add up. He could make out code for colours, and not random at that. Letters and word fragments were strewn within. He noted them down and after shifting these around for a while, he got:
“Find the cracks. They’re everywhere.”
He stared at the words.
So it was a puzzle.
Maybe the sentence would make more sense, if he extracted it from the message, fixed the code and ran it though a compiler.
That didn’t seem too difficult, so he got down to it right away. Sure enough a colour wheel emerged on his screen, or rather a broken, incomplete one. Entire sections of its spectrum were missing. There were shades of red and green, teal and otherwise only pale blues. Yellow and orange were completely absent.
Graydon could not imagine why someone had sent him this and what the meaning of the cryptic sentence he had scribbled on his desk pad meant.
He closed the message.
It disappeared!
Graydon was startled. He clicked through his inbox in search for the message.
Then his system went blank, rebooted and returned to its default grayscale desktop as if nothing had happened.
The compiler was void of any code and even after going through his system logs, Graydon was unable to retrieve any traces of the message. It was as if he had never received it.
He stared at the sentence he had scribbled on his data pad: “Find the cracks. They’re everywhere.”From the memory he added the initial message: „Entropy’s prism is cracked, look closer“.
He reread the two sentences. If it was a joke, he didn’t get it.
Entropy was a state either of complete chaos or sameness, depending on what angle you looked at it from. Was entropy‘s prism some kind of Maxwell‘s demon, an instance to create order? Or was it the opposite? If it was cracked, what did it mean?
You’re overthinking it, he told himself, when a voice cut through his thoughts
“Everything okay over there, Graydon?”
Graydon looked up to find Daphne leaning over his divider. He immediately covered the sentences with his hand. “Fine,” he replied curtly,
“You sure? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” She inquired.
„It‘s nothing.“ he said irritatedly, more to himself than to Daphne.
„Okay then“, Daphne replied putting up both hands in defense playfully retreating backwards.
„Sorry, Daphne.“ Graydon muttered, but she had already turned, walking towards the communal kitchen.
Graydon looked down at the sentences again. Trying to solve the puzzle had been a complete waste of time. He needed to catch up on his tasks for today. He glanced around the office.
Barry, always on the lookout to avoid actual work, had followed Daphne to the kitchen area and engaged her in a loud debate about the merits of MoodSync 3.0. Candice had switched from pacing to perching on the edge of her desk, her colour-coded charts arrayed like some vibrant altar to productivity. She didn’t seem to mind the ongoing discussion as it was overall praise of Chromadyne‘s revolutionary colour tech.
Graydon shrugged and returned his focus to his terminal. The monotony of debugging patches for some obscure interface protocol, reviewing lines of code that had been recycled so many times they practically screamed to be trashed, and writing up redundant reports on Fidelity Algorithm Compliance. These monotone tasks were exactly what he needed to clear his thoughts. He stayed seated, typing away happily for another few hours. He was totally immersed in his work when Barry slapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, Pallor, don’t work too hard. Anyway, see you tomorrow. ”Graydon managed a tight smile, not looking up. “See you tomorrow, Barry.”
The office was nearly empty when Graydon put on his grey coat and walked toward the elevator. The strange message was still lingering in his mind Entropy’s Prism is cracked. It was probably nothing, but then, how did that message just disappear. “Crazy”, Graydon mumbled to himself.
His thoughts were interrupted by the soft whir of a maintenance bot rounding the corner. The little machine glided silently on its wheels, gleaming faintly under the fluorescent lights.
“Working late too, huh buddy?” Graydon muttered, watching the bot pause as if it had heard him. Its sensors blinked a faint blue, then switched to an unsettling red.
Graydon frowned. Bots weren’t programmed for theatrics, there seemed to be something wrong with it. Maybe it’s filter was clogged. As it turned to wheel away, a small panel on its side popped open, and a slip of paper fluttered to the ground.
“What the…?”
Graydon crouched and snatched up the paper. He felt a little silly doing it and and glanced around to ensure no one was watching. He looked at the paper. There was message printed on it in black ink:
“The door is where the prism bends. Orange knows.”
More words that didn’t make sense. Again something about a prism.What a strange coincidence. If it was one.
His mind was racing and he remembered another urban legend about a floor in Chromadyne called Sub-level Orange, but that was just nonsense, like the story about Penguin guy.
This is Chromadyne, not some kind of sinister corporation, and he wasn’t a figure in one of those movies based on SCP files from the old web and he wouldn’t end up in one of those backrooms either. Graydon shrugged, crumpled up the paper and put it in his jacket pocket, mainly because he didn’t want to litter.