The Neverending

A loop in space

Thimothy Gettle

The Mist loves to play tricks on the mind. Few are harmless, but most of them are merely confusing. To some extent, they may drive people mad or trigger panic attacks. They all seem petty in comparison to the likes of the Neverending.

Trapped in a boundless room

There is no telling when it happens. No forerunner signs have been identified, it just happens, as far as we can tell. It is a phenomenon that occurs mostly in thinner fog banks. Perhaps it is not the case, but it is hard to recognize the Neverending when you cannot see your surroundings.

Imagine yourself in the street of Detroit, together with your team. The mist is wrapped around you, but nothing too worrysome. Some things roam in the mist in the distance, but you feel your gift awakening. You can handle what is coming. And before you know it, you are isolated from your friends, isolated from everything. The cityscape repeats endlessly, the road never ends. The building you see on your right is the exact same than the next. Same cracks, same broken window. The irregularities in the road is identical to the one you see several meters ahead, repeating as far as the eye. You are trapped in the Neverending.

There is no way out. You can run, but you crossed no distance. Or did you? After all, the environment is just the same as you left minutes ago. You might try to enter the building, but to no avail. You will never reach it, no matter how close it looks. No, don't hope for help, because you are alone. You are not even wandering in a maze, by the end of the day you know every single detail of your prison. What will you do then? Will you exhaust yourself by running headlessly, or will you give up and sit there, waiting for hunger and thirst to end you?

You might escape, eventually. When the fog recede, you find yourself far from your starting point. Sometimes it is several meters, others you emerge on the other side of the city, or even in the wild. That is, if you didn't go with the fog, following your doom. Escaping the Neverending is not as simple as walking in the right direction.

Please note that it doesn't just happen outside. You can get trapped in the Neverending in hallways engulfed in the fog, in underground parking lots, but the most dangerous place to encounter this phenomenon is probably the outside world. A ranger nailed down in this spatial loop is almost always done for.

Surviving the Neverending

To survive the Neverending, you'll need a lot of luck. The best thing to do, when you understand where you are, is to stop moving. It is not easy to know if you are actually moving or not, so your best bet is to just sit down, and remain aware of any change in your environment. When you get out, the danger is not over, and you wouldn't like to get bitten by a meandering zombie after going through that ordeal.

Then, just wait. And hope it's over before you run out of energy. There is not much more you can do. At least, there is no danger in the Neverending, nothing to physically kill you. Just what feels like an eternity of boredom.