Backrooms

Everything I know about the Backrooms comes from PGA files. Some time ago, the organization attempted to study this anomalous space, but it quickly became clear that their HR department couldn’t keep up with recruiting replacements for the missing personnel. So I have to rely on a thin folder of reports, most of them heavily classified or mercilessly redacted. Only one sentence appears with disturbing regularity:

“Any contact with the Backrooms or its entities is strictly prohibited.”

And, frankly, I’m beginning to understand why this place unsettles even the PGA’s professional anomaly hunters.

The Backrooms are an endless labyrinth. Its corridors, lit by a dim, almost sickly glow, stretch on for… well, it’s hard to say how far. Attempts to measure time and space inside resulted in equipment malfunctions — and, unfortunately, in “malfunctions” of the people trying to map even a fraction of it. If you ever find yourself surrounded by an infinite weave of peeling walls and empty liminal passages — I’m afraid it’s best to accept your new reality immediately. There’s a very real chance you won’t see anything else for the rest of your life.

If the Backrooms were merely an empty branching maze with no practical exit… that would be tolerable. Slow starvation in total isolation, no hope of returning home? I’ve already come to terms with something like that.

The problem is that the Backrooms are anything but empty. In this profoundly hostile environment dwell — and, more disturbingly, thrive — entities so malevolent that you almost feel grateful the Backrooms serve as their prison. And their hunting grounds.

Kitty is one of the few documented PGA examples. But it would be naïve to assume there aren’t worse things roaming those endless corridors. My advice is simple: if you hear any sound at all during your wanderings in the Backrooms — run in the opposite direction. Statistically speaking, the odds that it’s another lost soul rather than a brain-draining doppelganger are not in your favor.

And yet… despite all the horrors, I’ve arrived at a paradoxical conclusion: the Backrooms are not only a catastrophic threat, but also serve an essential function. They feel like a buffer layer. Or rather — a filter. A barrier between the stable worlds of the Simulation and its deeper layers of code. Horrifying, sanity-eroding — but remarkably effective. As if they contain entities whose mere presence in our multiverse could “break” it. Viewed cynically, the Backrooms handle roughly ninety-nine percent of the PGA’s workload.

One can only hope that the remaining one percent — the part that still leaks into the worlds of the Simulation — doesn’t turn out to be something… or someone… capable of turning the entire multiverse upside down.