DAY 1XX

Days must have snuck by when he sat at his post, doing nothing except waiting for the clock to tick, for another applicant to announce their presence.

He remembered checking out of work and checking in again, but the times he had done this all blended together into a single, unified event. Little, if any, details deviated enough between days to separate them in his head.

Every trip to his workplace was through a set of labyrinthine corridors, a route so complicated that he couldn't draw a map of it if he tried. But he could get through those drab, gray halls without getting lost, even with his focus dispersed. He did absent-mindedly venture to his old office a few times, being only a few turns away from his current one. Still, it didn't take long for him to tweak his internal guide. How long exactly? He couldn't tell, but just not lengthy enough for frustration to rise.

The government complex was mounted on the side of the colossus wall that enclosed the Zone, but his residential unit, the home granted to him, was buried among many other concrete towers in a faraway district. That meant traversing the interior of the building constituted only a part of his commute. He also had to suffer through rush-hour traffic.

Numerous figures pressed against him, each possessed a face he would likely forget at the end of the day; they appeared seemingly out of nowhere, with more adding to the volume the closer to the station, until the edge of the mass stretched beyond his sight. The clerk couldn't sense himself walking, shoved along by the stream of bodies.

Each day, he was delivered to the gaping doors of the subway trailer, then when the train reached his station, he fought against the suffocating chunks of bone and flesh to exit the coach, before the train doors would shut without consideration.

He got through the trip almost by instinct, barely remembering the particulars. But sometimes, he would be blessed with happenings, something different. This day, while he drifted among the grand waves of people inside the train prepared for departure, he spotted a disturbance within the crowd waiting outside.

The abnormality didn't only catch his interest, but also most of the other passengers, as hundreds of gazes aimed in the same direction. The subway's warning beep flooded over the stray murmurs.

SNAP.

An incomplete scream and a trace of blood splattered on the door, the clerk craned his neck, but he couldn't see anything clearly. The others had obscured the scene with their corporal existence. Even as he slipped out through the mob, the only clue he could catch was more red along the bounds of the vehicle and a whiff of iron that was poorly masked by the pristine air freshener of the station.

The transient episode of adventure ended soon enough, and he continued his unremarkable journey back home. The columns of apartments competed to squeeze themselves into what available land there was. It didn't matter that the buildings seemed identical; he could still pick out his. Call it intuition.

A somber but clean lobby that brought to mind a funeral home; an elevator wrapped with dull steel walls; a symmetrical corridor arrayed with numbered doorways, one of them assigned to him. His flat was the standard purple; every piece of furniture was ordered as part of a set.

The first order of business was to wash away the dried blood from his boots; his heart raced at this deviation from his routine. Though he didn't directly witness the incident unfolding, he could guess. A person must have attempted to force their way in while the doors were closing. The result was as obvious as it could get: part of their body got cropped off.

Still, a zing rose in his chest from not knowing the specifics of what transpired. Almost ripping his travel bag apart, he fumbled for the camcorder inside. With the lens pointed and the screen flipped towards himself, he put on a smile, mimicking the expression that he saw on the first applicant.

No, the angle wasn't right. Or maybe it was the force he exerted on his lips? His mouth twitched as he struggled to match his face to the one in his memory. He didn't remember the applicant's name, nothing about her life story, so perhaps he had just mistaken the shape of her mug.

He stared more intently at his appearance on the screen. Two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, and hair. Everything was present, but something still felt missing. He reached for a word to describe himself, but couldn't hold on to a single one.

Maybe his past would have inspired him, but his mind drew the same colorless images. The commutes, the bland wait at his office, the eventless days at his apartment, filled with mindless entertainment and tedious chores.

A single day reflected like in a hall of mirrors. Never starting; never ending. Stretching on and on. Even today's encounter was nothing new; he had heard of the same crack and the same cry countless times. This was just the only instance where he could sneak a glance at the scene. Or was it? He had faint memories of the act of cleaning his shoes. He could have. He could have forgotten. He might forget.

There was but one thing that grounded him in the present. That sight of the Zone. The emptiness that stirred his memories into motion, even under the weight of repetition. But that current in turn seemed to tear him apart with the strength of its vast space.

He could see it in the air. He could see it in his walls. He could see it even more clearly when he closed his eyes…

The panic didn't last long. After a night of watching television, all was well. The familiar programming that he wouldn't recall had soothed him. He went to bed with the usual calmness. Ready for another productive day. There might have been a low humming. Hints of conversations might have leaked from another room. It didn't matter because he still slept so entrenched in his formless dreams.

The next morning would allow another cycle to start anew. His life could get back on track, spinning along the ring composed of only work and rest. During the idle span of calmness, he could send the peculiar encounters back to an obscure corner of his mind. The metal gate looming forever at the edge of his vision returned to an ordinary object; what was beyond it no longer occupied his mind. Only a set dressing for his shift.

However, a distinctive sight anchored him in the flow of time again. Another set of applicants had slid their way before him. Three of them, actually; each one pushing a cart piled with wooden crates from the corridor. The clamor of whirring halted as the hand trolleys found their respective parking spots in front of the clerk's desk, forming an irregular triangle.

The operators of the carts were wrapped in a protective layer of white rubber, only leaving their buzz cut-style heads exposed. The hoods that would complete the costumes lay atop each of their luggage. The clerk was certain that he had seen these hazmat suits somewhere before, maybe in one of the television programs he had watched. No matter. He only had to do his job.

He lifted his trusty camcorder and adjusted the lens to capture all three applicants at once. Had he been holding the machine the whole time? He didn't think about this question further. The filming took priority. He didn't want to drag this on any longer. The dread of opening the gate stacked up in him, to his dismay.

Click.

The camcorder responded to his will and started recording. "You can start talking now. I trust that you have been informed of the procedures?" The clerk recited the lines as naturally as breathing, granting no thoughts to any single word.

Two of the applicants stared forward at the remaining one, the tallest of the three. Sensing the pressure even without turning around, the man flailed his arms around; his eyes blinked rapidly. "Oh, right now? Already? I thought we would have more time to prepare."

"There is nothing to prepare. Just speak whatever comes to mind. But keep it short," the clerk said. He noticed that he had been speaking more quickly than he had intended.

"Name is Jasper. The pair behind me is Rowan and Willow. Guess I'm sort of the leader of the bunch. We're here because we are sick of the government walling off 'the Zone' instead of studying it. A brand new, unexplored land, and everyone's first reaction is to ignore it and hide it away like some shameful secret? It doesn't make sense."

The clerk twitched. Ideas of a different life plunged into his flesh, spreading a glaring soreness. It wasn't professional to react to anything the applicants said, but it didn't seem like any of the three had noticed.

The leader continued his speech. "That is why we will be the pioneers. We studied up on what equipment we might need to survive in a hostile environment. Each of us also has to bring the tools that our expertise requires. I'm a meteorologist. Willow is a geologist. And Rowan is an ecologist. Right. We saved up for a few years and finally got what we needed for the trip. Basically… that's it. Not gonna bore anyone with our life stories. I'm sure they are the same as everyone else's. But one last thing, more details of this expedition will be available on our website. We will update it with our findings if we can maintain communication with the outside world."

The clerk ended the recording after the last sound left the leader's lips. He swung his arm to ease. "Great. It is done. You can move along." He rushed to turn his security key and press the button to open the gate.

The doors didn't share his urgency, taking their sweet time to part. The clerk glued his sight to his desk, refusing to even peek at the Zone. He had to spare his memory from the filth of that place.

"You forgot to press the button to stop the recording," the leader said. An unnecessary act of consideration. One that the clerk could compare to a mosquito sting.

"I did."

"But-"

"Just leave." The clerk raised his voice a little. Still too much. He was supposed to set aside his private feelings. Supposed. Such a fragile word, collapsing under the low rumble of the Zone.

He had already done everything he could to look away. But the Zone still announced its presence through its voice. A contentless echo. Ready to take on any identity.

The noise shifted and evolved; he couldn't settle on one description for it. It could be his own voice, screaming and begging for death to arrive. It could be the splatter of a person's body being crushed into juice. It could be the crackling of the inferno burning within a place called Hell. Or it could be nothing.

A vertigo set in. He must have been free-falling, through time, through possibilities. His arms flapped in the open space, though failing to find comfort in anything to grab onto.

And the next moment, he was back in the stagnant office. He must have pressed the close button at one point. The three applicants were nowhere to be found. Did they go through the gate already? Or did they flee after seeing the insides of the Zone?

The clerk didn't need to know. Whichever it was, it wouldn't matter, since today would blend with the rest of his days. His breathing calmed even more when he settled back into his standard sitting pose.