You rise from your desk. How long have you been sitting there?
Your aching body answers.
You look around your office, same as it ever was. Alone under the fluorescent lights and the white walls and the gray carpeting. A room bereft of distraction, but you have nothing to be distracted from anyway.
You are bored. Very bored. Maybe it's time to take a break.
Feeling returns to your legs as you wander the corridors of the Site. Your memory of the Site number does not. How long have you been here, existing within these drab walls and humming lighting fixtures? You think back to the last time you saw the Sun.
It's been a while, hasn't it?
Everything looks the same in here. You see a pair of researchers down the hall, having a conversation about something you don't understand, and think to ask them where the nearest exit is. But it would be rude to interrupt them. So you don't. They wouldn't even give you the time of day with that attitude, right?
You keep looking.
You are lost. You somehow convince yourself that it's not entirely your fault. You haven't seen another staff member for a while. The air feels staler, you leave footsteps in the dust on the floor. Maybe you've gone too far. You think to turn ba-
You see a crack of sunlight. An unmistakable ray of soft light trespassing between the ordered domains of the ceiling lamps, coming from just beyond a fork in the maze that is the Site. You can see specks of dust dancing within it. It looks inviting.
You turn the corner and step into the light.
The dizzying sensation in your head disappears as quickly as it arrived. A fog lifted from the eye in your mind. You have felt this before. What was once a cause for fear and panic, now a mild annoyance. With newfound clarity, you confirm the truths of your predicament.
You are no longer in the Site.
While this was your original plan to begin with, that is, going outside, the scenery is wholly unfamiliar to you. It is clear that you are somewhere else entirely.
There is nothing but dirt below your feet, paved into a road that runs into a town of dull grayscale buildings in the distance. Beyond, a wall of dark trees under a gloomy sky. It looks like it's about to rain.
There's a wooden sign up ahead.
WELCOME TO GREENLOUTH
POPULATION: -1
You are very lost.
This isn't the first time you've gone missing. You have been prone to appearing in far flung locations, remote even for the Foundation. You've gotten used to it at some point. Somewhere on your person, there is a GPS tracker. You hope someone notices your absence and comes to collect you. In the meantime?
You have time to kill.
Walking down the rural road, you arrive at the first structure of note. A quaint white house with a flag hanging off the porch. There are signs in English, but you aren't quite sure what they're meant to signify. You identify that you are somewhere in the United States of America. That's good. You also reason that any locals would understand English, which makes things a lot easier for you.
You approach the door, hand in a fist as you move in to knock. But then what? Are you going to ask for their telephone, to make a call to the Foundation? Ask the homeowners for shelter? What would you even say? What makes you think they would let you in?
Knuckles meet wood before you can stop yourself. Flecks of white paint fall as you pull away.
Now you've done it. It's too late. You follow through with another two shaky knocks. And then a "hello?" you weren't sure was audible enough.
You cautiously circle the house, peering into dark windows. It seems like no one's home. You turn to the other houses along the road, your expectations nebulous and intentions underdeveloped.
No one lives here. The air is quiet, all the lights are off, there are no cars anywhere along this road, and the sign you saw earlier floats around your mind. There's no one here.
So why negative one?
You circle around the small cemetery on the outskirts of the town, inspecting the weathered stone, treading carefully on a poorly defined path in the dirt. You wouldn't want to disturb the dead, now would you?
It's been a while since you've visited a cemetery. You weren't even there for a funeral. It was a long time ago. The one you're standing in right now is a lot smaller. Their headstones duller ten times over, and nowhere near as ornate, and after an embarrassingly lengthy period of inspection you notice something.
The headstones have nothing carved into them.
Spooky. Maybe there's nothing buried under them. Maybe the town exhumed their dead and brought them away from this place. To have them rot somewhere else. Maybe this is a vestigial graveyard, a memorial for what used to be a resting place for the people who lived and died in Greenlouth.
You feel pretty confident that no one rests eternal under your heel at this moment. You also feel confident that you've spent more than enough time contemplating the cemetery.
You leave, thinking self-satisfactorily that you've got the cemetery all figured out, and also because you're too much of a coward to actually confirm anything. In fact, you walk right past a maintenance shed that might contain a shovel, thinking nothing of it.
You glance back once more at the cemetery, half-expecting to see some manner of ghost staring back, but there is nothing in the cemetery.
Wandering into the town center, you take in the sights of a town left to the whimsy of the wind and the rain and the overgrowth. This could've been a sizable town once. As you stroll past the dusty display window of a former bakery, you catch your reflection amidst the loaves of very stale bread.
Why are you here?
Your 'involuntary translocations', a term used in something you read before but don't remember where, more often than not have a purpose of some sort. That there's always something you end up doing there, wherever 'there' is. Otherwise, there's no other plausible reason for you to be 'there', or more appropriately, here. Right?
So why are you here?
You wonder how the bread in the bakery still looked edible.
Is that it?
Alex Thorley and the Mystery of the Ghost Town?
Alex Thorley and the Suspiciously Mold Free Bread?
Alex Thorley… the Investigator?
You question whether there's anything in this town that needs investigating at all. And even if there was, what are you going to do? You haven't any fancy equipment to detect radiation or energies unknown to modern science. You haven't seen any corpses to poke or people to interview.
It is just you, and the ghost town with nothing in it.
As you pass by what seemed to be the town hall, your mind wanders to questions of bureaucracy. You reason that in some office, some census taker simply filled in an erroneous value for the town's population.
Does that seem right?
No.
The windows of the town hall are sealed. There’s graffiti on its walls. You aren’t sure what they’re meant to convey. The main entrance is guarded by two large mahogany doors that have long betrayed their purpose, unveiling a dark foyer within, eclipsed by the panels covering the windows but exposed to the elements nonetheless.
This was not some remote village forgotten by the maps. This was a sizable town, which meant someone else would've had to come all the way up here just to change the sign, and a negative number is very conspicuous.
So's a zero.
From what little light filters through, you can make out a few filing cabinets, a desk, maybe, and tattered curtains trailing into the shadows. It looks cold inside.
Is there even a point in changing the sign then?
Maybe this was just a high effort prank. A poorly thought out joke that depreciated in comedic value when the prankster realized there was no one in the town to find it funny. Or perhaps a final hurrah from the last resident before they left.
You wonder if you should laugh.
You've somehow wandered into a theatre. The old kind, for stage plays instead of movies. Sunlight filters in from the ceiling from unseen windows, illuminating the theatre in the same dismal light that bathes the town. For what it's worth, it makes things bright enough for you to appreciate the peeling wallpaper, the rusting ornate decorations, the faded seats and carpet.
You seat yourself in what was once the front row, beneath opulent arches and elaborate frescoes on the ceiling, too far for you to make out. You wonder what plays they used to put on here.
How many people is negative one?
That doesn't sound like a grammatically correct sentence.
There are over 100 seats in the theatre. Probably. Counting them all was never a task you registered as possible when you stepped in here. What does it matter anyway? There’s no audience coming.
Is it the absence of a person?
That is a zero.
A large chandelier rests on the seats behind you. It looks deflated, now that it’s no longer suspended from the ceiling. The floor must be a chandelier’s version of hell, to be cast out from great heights by the powers that be.
Is it the absence of a person where there ought to be one?
No. That is still a zero.
The stage remains structurally sound. Probably. The dark wood conceals any cracks and holes that may or may not exist fairly well, if it weren’t for the dust and plaster and debris that blanket everything.
A ghost?
A ghost is still a something.
The curtains have faded over the years, but retain their distinct and complex patterns as they lie collapsed on the stage. You are reminded of an old TV show, where they uncover golden artifacts from an archaeological excavation. Unlike those trinkets, these curtains will never shine again.
How can there be a negative value of a something?
Negative one is the inverse of one.
The wallpaper seems to be decomposing in some places. You see mold. Exposed brickwall elsewhere.
What is the inverse of a human being?
You leave the theatre. The skies are still cloudy. You aren't sure how much time has passed. Outside the theatre is a large sculpture of a sundial.
It's broken. The shadow-casting part lies flat on the pedestal, pointing down one of the streets in the middle of town. You wouldn't have been able to use it anyway.
You glance at the bricks in the wall of the building you find yourself standing next to. It might’ve been a warehouse, or perhaps a factory. You can barely see your own shadow under the overcast sky. But you would know how to use the sundial if it worked. Probably.
There's a thought at the back of your mind now as you begin another round of window shopping. It's telling you to ask why the sundial is broken amidst your inspection of the suits and skirts and shirts in the display windows. Maybe you can hold onto that question for whoever comes to inspect this place after you.
There’s a church across the street. A clinic a little further down. Shops and restaurants and bars and other establishments peppered everywhere else. They are all as run down, as quiet, as empty and hollow as every other structure in this town.
You have seen everything there is to see.
You take a seat on the steps leading up to the church, on a patch of concrete with a less prominent infestation of overgrowth. The waiting game continues.
The sound of an engine draws closer. The Foundation has come to pick you up.
The vehicle enters your vision, coming to a halt just before the church. You expect to greet the driver, but it appears that the Foundation has sent a self-driving car to collect you.
You gaze out of the car window as it drives out of Greenlouth. You can retrace your steps as asphalt slowly turns into dirt, and the buildings become smaller and more spaced out.
The same sign greets you on your way out.
WELCOME TO GREENLOUTH
POPULATION:
There is nothing in Greenlouth.
