Commander in charge of Echo Base.
Echo Base was not meant to be abandoned like this. Top secret research into space-time manipulation was theoretical. The recruitment of Doctor Jonah, put at the head of the research pole, aimed to observe and list the possibilities of a transfer of matter from a space A to a space B without loss of physical and psychic integrity.
What we discovered in Hangar 10.42 was not supposed to exist or even work. The security personnel as well as most of the technicians and laboratory workers present in the complex had disappeared. Rare cases of corpses were found through the floor or the walls as if they had "clipped", without their other end ever being found.
Doctor Jonah was found in front of a machine thought to be the designer, empty of emotions and thoughts, as if his mind had also been caught up in something.
It took 1 week of stimuli and shocks for him to recover his senses. Here are his words:
[…]
“This machine is not mine. She appeared on her own, all of a sudden, while we were storing the user belongings of the Echoes experience in hangar 10.42. Those who…”
[…] We questioned him to find out the smallest details. Where had the staff gone?
“It happened so fast. In an instant, they all […]. Yes… they are all gone. Some seemed to fall, passing through the ground as if it were just water. I didn't know what to do... What should I have done? And this spinning top…”
After sending the best researchers in the world to the base to analyze and study the device, the unanimous report mentions that the device is not of human manufacture. No material can be removed from the structure and nothing suggests that an earth technology is the origin.
We asked him to say more about his research, about what happened before, during and after. How long had he been motionless like this?
“I don't know anymore. The Echos experiment had simply failed. The numbers did not match. The result of 1042 did not conform to the mathematical proofs. I remember a resounding din had shaken the peace of the base. We were at that time in Hangar 10...42? 10.42? How is it possible ?”
We had kept Doctor Jonah under observation for an additional week, but he showed no signs of dementia, and he did not seem to be affected in any way by the disappearance of his colleagues before his eyes. However, following his rest, he persevered so that the General Staff gave him carte blanche to study the machine. He was sure he would be able to find the base personnel.
His abstract explanations of mad scientists could have earned him confinement in a psychiatric hospital, if he had not fled to hangar 10.42 and the machine had not started spinning again in his presence.
I was not there that day, however reports mention a door opening within a wall of the enclosure of Hangar 10.42, giving access to an area otherwise unreachable. These words sounded strange to me, but a few days later the personnel at Echos Base had been replaced and the first words I heard from the Doctor on my return were:
“Welcome to the Backrooms.”
[…]
Origin
