CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "The Memetic Symbol" Creepypasta

Starting point is 00:00:01 Even as I come to the realization that nothing in this world can pierce the hopelessness that ruined every stimulus I can still come upon, I find a reliable sense of wonder when imagining how patient it has been, its origins and its creation, its nature and its effects. This always makes me shudder with a palpable sense of despair mixed with awe of my strange fate. I regressed into sympathizing with it, into turning to its titanic lack of mercy and all-encompassing design in order to feel anything. It is the only real thing, I guess. The only thing with a purpose left in it.

Starting point is 00:00:40 I used to be a studier of memetic theories, a band sociology with a specialisation in all things information technology. I had written some well-respected studies on general behaviour on the internet, the spread of ideas, the way people communicate depending on the subject matter. Two girls one cup, but with more analysis, detachment, and looking at how quickly things get attention and how it is related to man's creation of culture. I decided to turn to what outlies next,

Starting point is 00:01:09 the fringes in the corners of the internet. Lost information. I scoured for obscure P2Ps and used extensive programs to make my investigations go faster. I simply looked for anything forgotten, useless, half-cooked, unique, empty, alone, or downright useless on the internet. I figured it could become a book, a study or a decent hobby.

Starting point is 00:01:35 When I found it, there was one thing that called to my attention. The channel name. I was using any and all ways to access any kinds of IRC there was, trying to see what stood out. Where I saw it, I have long since forgotten. But what I saw was exactly what I was looking for. The name of the channel was skewed at an angle rather than a smooth line of. of text with a designated box. Rather than text, it was designated by a symbol, and not the kind available through any Unicode or any script I knew of. Yet, upon examination of the site's

Starting point is 00:02:11 code, there was nothing indicating an image rather than a script. In fact, there was nothing indicating the channel could even exist. The script didn't allow for more than a few channels, and the one with a symbol made one too many. The next day, I took my hard drive to the garage and then prepared to hook up my spare with a trusty screen and keyboard. Upon connecting, I noticed something that made my face lock and prickly moisture form underneath my eyelids. The letters, arrows and other symbols on the keyboard had been usurped, absorbed, eaten. The symbol had taken every spot. On the screen's frame, the name Phillips had been replaced with a row of seven symbols. A bag of snacks lying on my desk had met the same change, and only the symbols could be read.

Starting point is 00:03:04 Stunned as I was, my mind didn't take work until I accidentally glanced at my watch and saw that I was late. The more profane sheltered part of my brain won me over, declaring the whole thing an impressive prank designed by a pair of friends noted for that odd humour and knowledge of my new hobby. It even assured me that they could have made the snacks bag simply to test their commitment. I took the bag and everything affected along with a hard drive, and with a flash of instinct, I threw them into a rocky ditch on my way to work. Work went easily, and a quick phone call to my girlfriend, who usually lived with me, but was on a conference, assured me that she would be home soon, eager to hear of the amazing joke the infamous pair had pulled this time.

Starting point is 00:03:51 By lunch I'd made up my mind for takeout and drove to a sandwich diner. I entered, placed myself in line, opening a newspaper lying abandoned on a nearby table. Surveying the menu, I decided upon something grilled first, and then felt the visual equivalent of a sucker punch, as I saw that symbol sitting innocently in place of the word mayonnaise. With what must have been unsettling concern, I asked the person behind me whether he saw the symbol on the menu. I can't recall the person's gender,

Starting point is 00:04:24 but I do remember the look. It was as if my question broke a rule. The face of the person twitched as if I jumbled his mind to mush just by asking. The twitching hastily stopped and was replaced with the look of the most complete lack of understanding. All this apparently unremarkable to the person in the closest line who had seen the whole thing. I rounded on the cashier asking for my order and, with a deep sense of foreboding, asked for some mayonnaise in the side. Her young frame made a strange quivery motion

Starting point is 00:04:58 that seemed to involve every single one of her muscles and then simply looked at me. Her face normal save for an awkward lack of understanding as if I had asked for something with a foreign name, or at least the kind of condiments she had never heard of. I waved my demand

Starting point is 00:05:15 away, took my order, and, by now, forgetting any sense of inhibition or proper behaviour bolted out of the place. I rushed for the first deli saw. I looked in every aisle, drawing worried or disapproving glances as I surveyed every square inch for mayonnaise, asking every shopper I met whether they knew what mayonnaise was, only to be given the same dumb stare. When I did happen upon the place where mayonnaise should be found, the shelves

Starting point is 00:05:45 were stacked with small statuettes, featuring the symbol in perfectly grey stone upon small grey dyes. Remarking upon this to the nearest shopper, created the same spasms, followed by look, I myself have given to those asking for something in a foreign tongue. I directed the gaze towards the symbols, and then I watched and fascinated horror as the spasms took over them.

Starting point is 00:06:08 I wanted to leave them turning the gaze away, looking towards me with a look of inquiry, suggesting my request had been completely unintelligible. The memory I've seen the symbols had glanced off, or perhaps being received and then forgotten,

Starting point is 00:06:25 may be erased, the instant they were seen. To this day, I wonder how, even as I spend most of time whispering, Why, why, why, why, why? I find a bookstore, scoured dictionaries for the word, only to find the haunting symbol in every copy. Cookbooks show the same replacement,

Starting point is 00:06:48 even in recipes where no real substitute for mayonnaise could exist, and where the dish would suffer. I knew by now that this was no prank or unique hallucination on my part, and, in the last bid for sanity, I asked the first person I came across to indulge me by reading the recipe out loud. He tentatively took the book,

Starting point is 00:07:10 shot me a curious look, and read the list of ingredients. I had no real sense of hope, but I did feel my mind jettisoning all its notions of reality and convictions about the paranormal when he started to have uncontrollable spasms the minute he was to pronounce the symbol.

Starting point is 00:07:27 I need to proceed with the next ingredient as if nothing had happened. I asked him what you got if you mixed egg yolks with vegetable oil, vinegar, salt, mustard and pepper. He simply said, Sounds as if it would taste funny, but good. Still eyeing me with bemusement and suspicion. You get mayonnaise? I said.

Starting point is 00:07:49 And then the spasms overtook him. He angled his head as if he had not heard me and then said, sorry I dropped my shoulders and said You get Kesev a Russian paste Make it fluffy Kesev

Starting point is 00:08:07 Sounds tasty with tuna By the time I'd come home I was deathly nervous Having bought a dictionary And looking patiently through it With a permanent film A sweat upon me I scrutinized every page

Starting point is 00:08:22 I trembled at the thoughts Of what effects the symbol could create next and knocking at the door I left the dictionary open on my desk and opened only to find my living girlfriend beaming back at me her eyebrows stuck between concern and amusement

Starting point is 00:08:38 and my no doubt Harriet Eyre I explained myself as having come back from a jog and embraced her happily she responded in kind and I hope to brush over the spreading sense of being at the mercy of the symbol by asking her about a journey while I prepared her some dinner

Starting point is 00:08:54 Having recently read of the dangers of red meat And its many tasty byproducts our household was recently swearing by chicken And I was preparing some fajitas for us while she detailed the conference She is Was an employee had a company Selling Risk Assessment for other companies Interested investing in Third World countries Apparently the war launched by New Carthage

Starting point is 00:09:20 And not to say in critical problems to the poor citizens in the remains of the Ottoman combine. The place was now quickly been invaded, not by troops sent to kill their dictator, but rather people hoping to make a buck in gaining a footing. The conference would mean her company had busy days in the future.

Starting point is 00:09:38 I asked her about the journey back as a place chicken breast in my special marinade. I can still remember the glottal sounds as a body repelled the word, normal. It grew at an exponential rate after that. Time and time again I showed my girlfriend the symbol that had taken the place of normal in the dictionary on the internet in writing and presumably in speech. Every time she would have the same paroxysms, only to ask me,

Starting point is 00:10:07 Look at what? Exasperated as well as worried about my frightened weeping. I tried to keep her with me for as long as possible. I wanted her comfort and humanity while I still could. yet at the same time watching her represent the same deconstruction all other humans felt tore at me so badly

Starting point is 00:10:27 I could barely keep a straight face not even to make her happy it was like watching an amputee keep working on as if the amputated part had never been there working around the absence as well as she could only to spasm and forget as soon as

Starting point is 00:10:43 a mind turned to the thing that would have been there before the symbol but it wasn't just word. It was its very substance, meaning, concept and form that was replaced. Things the humans of my dimension dictated to be statues turned into those brooding great effigures one day. Then the other day the word nails was gone and buildings collapsed en masse while my girlfriend, along with all other humans had her fingertips covered with the symbols. I stayed with her until the day I awoke to find a pair of symbols where her eyes should have been.

Starting point is 00:11:20 She flailed for me as I left. She wasn't in panic. She didn't even remember she once could see. She just saw darkness. But she remembered that I used to be with her. And now I was not. I strangled her. What else could I have done?

Starting point is 00:11:43 Compared to what met the others, it was a mercy. Even before everything thought to be eyes was exchanged with the symbol, people had been rendered pathetic and unstable by the unfelt absence of words like strong, pyramid, particle. Yes, any imaginable word disappeared, only to leave, the symbol, I guess. The words, as well as what they represented, disappeared. Soon, the night sky had an enormous symbol instead of the moon, and naturally the tides became erratic, flooding the blinded people who lived by the shore, even as they fought starvation,

Starting point is 00:12:22 trying the best at talk in between themselves, trying to understand why it was they could not see things. As for a cruel play, humans lost the concept of sight and vision weeks after their eyes became replaced with the symbol. Of course, soon dehydration and hunger killed those not dead of accidents, and I was glad their mouths disappeared, as quickly as they did, freeing me from hearing the their broken pleas for help. I watched in a mixture of complete sorrow and attachment

Starting point is 00:12:51 as skyscrapers, lampposts, trees, dogs, cats and so on, turned into grey simple statuettes of varying sizes. Why did it leave me? Why do I have a field around me in which I could store whatever foodstuffs I've been able to find before it was replaced? Maybe it sought to play with me, punish me, or even thank me in its own little way.

Starting point is 00:13:17 It matters not. As I wrote this last part on a paper and pen I've successfully managed to keep in my little pocket of safety and meaning, most of the elements in the earth and its crust has turned into the inert and nameless element the symbol is and represents. Perhaps this cancerous element is made up of countless smaller symbols. I do not know. The earth's magnetic field is waning and soon all will cook. Unless the stars and our sun with it turns into titanic symbols before that of the first. course. Perhaps my entire universe will turn into one great symbol. Piece by piece it has, after all,

Starting point is 00:13:56 sought to cover every element, concept, and whatever else comes to mind. It will become everything soon. Perhaps it is lonely, the symbol. Perhaps my message will come across your dimension once I've given up. Perhaps it will not. All I know is that I remain safe. And while the ruination my universe does not stir any emotion in me. The thoughts are the symbol enveloping another dimension, where all of them, like a tumour, fills me with dread, even while nothing else can.

CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "The Memetic Symbol" Creepypasta

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