The fog was not a natural phenomenon. It was a construct, an experimental tool devised in the recesses of a government laboratory hidden from prying eyes. They called it 'Project Chimera', a twisted attempt at achieving global compliance.
A fine, grey mist that, at first glance, appeared harmless. It was anything but. Dr. Aris Thorne had always been a man of logic and reason, a scientist first and foremost.
He had joined Project Chimera out of a sense of duty, believing in the potential for good, however twisted the road there was. A quiet, solemn individual he was, a man more comfortable with numbers than emotions, who liked things a certain way.
Now, that was gone. His job initially was to test the substance of this fog. The deployment started with calculated precision, releasing it into the jet stream, allowing it to be carried to every corner of the planet.
The intention wasn't to harm; it was to influence, to subtly nudge, and ultimately control the thoughts of everyone it blanketed. In the initial stages, there was a perceived quietude across the globe, a reduction in conflicts, a uniform placidity.
The data pointed to the government's success. The public's compliance. Thorne felt like he was losing grip, on all his values, a knot in his stomach growing bigger and bigger, every time he went to his workspace.
It didn't take long for things to turn from calculated compliance to disturbing obedience, then complete dissociation from life itself. The first sign was subtle, missed by most.
Individuals became excessively compliant, expressions fixed in an unsettling calm, faces devoid of anything other than muted, emotionless calm, an unnerving vacancy in their eyes. They all acted like automatons going through the motions of the everyday existence, which had now become the most disturbing of actions.
Performed so methodically, almost inhuman, an unsettling presence had come about, one that bothered Thorne a lot. They worked, they ate, they went home to sleep but not with the warmth that comes from real life.
Instead it came from the void of thought and the dead weight of the body itself. The initial reports, couched in dry, bureaucratic language, spoke of an anomaly, nothing serious, they had declared.
Soon after, the reports were becoming more frequent, and the anomaly became the new truth for everyone except the people involved. The subjects started to lose all initiative, all signs of independent thought.
They didn't react, they simply followed, waiting for instruction and for their bodies to act on its accord. There were no laughs, cries or even complaints of the bad state they had all found themselves in, not even a frown.
Everything felt forced into a state that none should experience, but did. Then, the dreams began, or, at least, those who could still remember having dreams.
They were graphic, violent, and deeply unsettling, often with disturbing scenarios and impossible situations that came and faded and came and faded over and over again every time the affected were allowed a single thought. And everyone had these dreams.
Nightmares painted with a clarity that no sleeping mind should produce, dreams of grotesque landscapes, dark voids and of disfigured, nightmarish faces all aimed in their direction with wide open empty stares that threatened with violence but acted only with vacant intent.
Never going too far or acting as intended. People, on every corner of the world, started waking up with the same dread, with that feeling that something was definitely, most certainly wrong.
Thorne felt the fog. At first it was just in the air, a feeling of the weather. Then, there it was, a cold breath that followed him indoors.
It moved through the vents and under the doors, a silent thief that took not possessions but memories and feelings that made an individual. Thorne noticed the effect first on his colleagues, their minds, usually brimming with ideas and scientific debate, became echo chambers.
Only spitting back the ideas the programed. Their eyes began to take on the same lifeless stare that plagued the rest of the population; even his higher-ups had this vacant gaze now, as though the mind that was there before had packed its things and found somewhere new.
It had not been something that started recently either; now everyone that held some kind of responsibility all held the same gaze as the test subjects on the reports. He felt the weight of all his failures weigh heavily, something he was experiencing for the first time in his long career of service for his government.
He looked into a mirror in one of the offices in the facility and did not recognize the face looking back at him; now all his worries were confirmed, he was not different, he was now in line with the very people that his research created. Thorne, a man who had given everything to his pursuit of knowledge, now looked at his reflection as a hollow man staring out.
His face pale and eyes empty. This was all due to his efforts, his hands, and now his mind was becoming something like that too. Something broke within him, a deep crack forming where once an unshakable certainty of life was.
All his belief had turned to an abyssal darkness that would be his fate. He found himself locked into one of the facility's labs that no longer served as such.
The quiet of the facility was unnerving; this used to be a space bustling with life and activity now silent save for his footsteps and the ever-present, all permeating feeling of the fog itself. Driven by a newfound desperate energy, a burning, manic desire to make amends for his deeds.
He found himself deep within the restricted parts of the facility that once would be the biggest obstacle. He used what little that was left of his scientific and analytical mind, now sharpened by something between panic and acceptance.
He was using his keys to go from terminal to terminal and finding all the access codes of every door with an impossible speed. His focus became all too great.
The very machine of what was the world's system was showing all of it's codes, everything on every device laid bare and open to see. He realized that everything that was once out of grasp and forbidden were, at their most base form, just numbers and text laid bare for him.
He looked back at what he was. Nothing. Nothing but an automaton, his mind completely changed into nothing other than another brick in a big wall.
Something changed, or maybe came back to him. As if awakened from a dream, he quickly understood and saw himself, what he had done.
He saw what he had become. And everything began to fall apart. His body seemed like it would do its thing.
Just waiting for some signal from his broken mind to just simply be another step on that long walk. But that something he found within him would not let him succumb to it, yet, and now he was running.
Running with something that was only pure survival instinct mixed with guilt. He did not stop. He discovered a small area deep underground.
This had to be it, this was the origin point, the main computer hub where the source of it all would be found and potentially put to an end. This system was not one of many in a large network; it was all connected to a single node.
Everything passed through this main frame. A long white computer system with flashing lights all around and thick wiring connecting to different places within this chamber was the only thing of note.
It had no guards, which meant the control was beyond physical means. He could try to use any tool he found in this chamber, try and turn off, or hack the machine, try and shut the thing down.
And yet...there were no terminals, not keyboards and certainly not a way for one to interface with it. Only a few red light signals going down a very particular code in front.
He could see every sequence play before him as clear as the nose on his face. There was a panel right underneath that flashed a different kind of code, all symbols that did not have a single name.
These, Thorne understood, were the control of it all. If there was a weakness to this machine it would be here.
A series of red circles flashed slowly like the beats of a heart. Thorne knew that this was not good.
He was in the central machine's operating system now, or a version of it he could access. But that did not make any sense, and even to his analytical mind, which now was a combination of panic, acceptance and raw survival, it just did not make sense.
This code had been the reason for everyone's plight; including himself. He found the one command that would shut it all down, but he realized it also showed the sequence, to completely deconstruct himself in the most brutal way imaginable.
He understood what would happen. Every memory and every experience he ever had, the man he once was and even this broken husk of an individual he is now; it would all be picked apart into the same code he saw flashing right before him, that was the cost.
And in order to do what was necessary, to free everyone from this eternal hell, it had to be paid by someone. And that someone, at the edge of his very end was now him.
Thorne had a thought; it was strange, that after losing everything, a thought would come to him out of all the possible actions that could have been. An eerie calm settled around his presence as his hands began to push onto each of those red dots on the panel one by one.
Initiating the process that was going to end with him being reduced to nothing, every part of him that ever was, every moment that made who he was, turned into nothing more than the data of the machine itself. Thorne had already made his peace with everything, which allowed him this newfound silence that was surrounding him.
He no longer could feel the fog; at least not the oppressive pressure of it; he just felt the air in its raw form as it was without a single code or text influencing him. As Thorne pushed the final one, a blinding, pulsating light filled the room.
Not something external, rather coming from him as everything about him seemed to come undone, he was now being ripped from existence into nothing. Every experience, memory and feeling now converted and rewritten back into their very basic digital sequences of 1's and 0's; that made them.
Thorne, as a person ceased to be. He was being picked apart layer by layer as a single string, no bigger than a mote of dust within this chamber, being sent throughout the machine's operating system as something unrecognizable even by itself.
The man Thorne did not leave, no dust and no shadow was cast behind; as such, no proof of his deeds could be seen. The machine hummed. The fog, no longer tethered to its source, dissipated, it was gone, its influence ended.
The people that it controlled returned. The terror of a few was only surpassed by the complete, and utter void within themselves; and for what they all witnessed; the sudden reawakening and recognition that was placed on their mind.
For now, they would remember the time that was given and was stolen, but in time the fear and terror would be all that was left. Thorne's sacrifice had freed the world.
It also broke it into a permanent kind of hell, even one they couldn't recognize.