Pentober 2026 - Day 11: Bridge

Ok so, what is Pentober? Promptober? It's a writing tradition that's been around the web for a while where you write up a short story every day in October based on prompts. Some go for pen and paper, some digital; everyone has their own style. I'll be posting here, and I'll be using the prompts from https://www.topinfiction.com/p/pentober-2026 

House rules are that I vomit-write the story; no planning, just taka taka taka on the keys. I get ONE edit at the end of the draft (if I even have time, lol), then we post it. House rules also say that I get to play catch up and do multiple days separately on one day or combined if work gets wild and I can't write. Get it? Got it? Good! Here we go.

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Slack made that annoying noise it does when a message comes through.

>"Hey, Heston, there's an incident going on. Can you hop on the bridge? We need someone with TS/SCI-SCP for it apparently and you're the only one online.

It was Randall, one of the engineers. Heston liked Randall, but Randall was sick with a particular affliction that marred their relationship: Randall always bought bad news and more work to Heston.

>Sure, buddy. Going to have to multitask on a few things, though. We've got a private client with a massive work order going through right now. Let me hop on the incident bridge now. Link?

Randall was typing. Little dots flickered in the corner. Then, a Teams link. Heston clicked. He was warped, slowly, at the speed of Microsoft's ''latest and greatest'' technology into the room; functionally, it was a conference call. Everyone's cameras were off. That was typical of these, engineers and support techs didn't generally like to have their cameras on. He joined in the middle of a discussion between peers.

"...yeah so we're not sure what's going on exactly but the customer was ingesting an exotic data type and it started wigging out that data center. It's a total fail. We can't get anyone in that cluster back online and accessing data. We're lucky it's night and a Friday on the East Coast--"

"Hey, guys, it's Heston, I'm here. What's going on? Is this the Virginia cluster? I'm working something else in East US right now and it's running fine. Whose the customer?"

"It's one of the redacted accounts in Salesforce. I'm sending you the Lemonjuice link now, Hes. Hold on."

That annoying Slack noise again, "Ok I see it. Hold on let me click and have it load. I've got to enter my PIN and insert the Yubikey and everything. It takes a minute or two..."

Heston started doing the ritual to log into this section of their customer CRM; it had way more security.

"I'm not seeing anything. You sure this is the right link?"

"Yeah I can send it again. It's index number in the CRM if you want to pull it up is 550639694JSG33x40em."

"Let me try that, hold on."

Heston punched in the number. He was familiar with it, near knew it by heart.

"Nothing. A total blank. What did you say the issue was? Seems like something is up with our database, too."

"We're not sure. They were working with exotic data types and blinked offline. That entire data center is shut out now. We can't get anything back online."

"Hold on."

Heston had the CRM zoom out to list the entire data center; all of the customers should have shown up. Nothing did.

"It's blank. It's like the records don't exist any more," he said.

Heston refreshed. He refreshed. He refreshed again. Finally, something appeared.

"Something's coming back online. Looks wrong, though. Is anyone familiar with an uncontained customer called Number Cruncher?"

You could hear fervent typing through the open mics. A chorus came back with:

"Nope."

"No, nothing."

"No deals closed."

"No existing records."

Heston thought for a moment, "I'm going to click in and see."

Randall chimed in, "Go for it; I'm getting a call from one of the data center techs. Going to go on mute. Maybe it's a fire or something?"

Heston clicked in; what he saw didn't make sense. Data joins were connecting every account that should have shown up in the previous screen, as if someone had re-organized their CRM structure.

"Something's changed our data structure. Call security. Escalate this, someone, please; let's treat it like a breach, even if it just ends up being a drill."

"On it," one of the techs said.

Heston continued to look through the data. He was seeing customers and files that he didn't recognize, organizations that he knew didn't use their product, joins to entire other companies. He clicked into those, he could see all of their TS-SCI/SCP information as well. It was as if the entire database had been joined under their system.

Randall came off of mute, "Just spoke with their head of Security. They don't know what happened but all of the racks are gone."

"The racks?"

"Yeah, all of the hardware. All of the servers. Gone."

"Rand, I'm seeing the data. I'm seeing more than our data. I'm seeing all of the data of every customer in that center, not just us. Something is seriously wrong and you're telling me the hardware just up and walked away? Thousands of pounds of drives? More maybe."

"That's what he told me. He sent photos. Check Slack."

There was that annoying Slack sound again.

"Horseshit, I can't believe it. What?" Heston had no idea what was going on. The entire building was cleared out, top to bottom, it was just a stories-tall hole in an underground data center in suburban Virginia.

Another tech chimed in, "East is down now."

"What?" Heston checked the other data migration work he was spending his evening with. "Yeah East is vanishing now, too. Rand, get on the line with that data center's tech and see what's happening in there now."

"On it." Randall went on mute again. Heston kept on refreshing his view. Data kept getting pulled under the new Number Cruncher file. He was even able to get into the other customer he was working on, Legal Services Industries LLC, and work on a bit more of the data until it seized up. Upon refresh, the data was intelligible. It didn't even look like text on a field, it just looked like someone dragged a magnet along an old CRT monitor and left stray pixels and warplines all over.

Randall came back off mute, "They're saying drives and racks are disappearing there, too."

"To where, though?"

"They don't know. They're literally just blinking out through a wire, like they're collapsing in on themselves. They're saying it's starting to spread all over."

"Well the way it's going we're going to see what happens when you literally put all the data in one spot. That one spot is us, I guess. I guess we wait and see?"

"I guess. We'll keep the bridge open?"

"Yeah, I'll stay on. Just in case someone needs me."

Heston did stay on. He stayed on through the night. Through the lights flickering out, through the radio signals going dead, through the cell networks going offline, until it was just the blue-white monitor glow illuminating his face, reflecting in his glasses. Then, that blinked out, too.

The sun came up over the horizon not much later.

The monitor came back on not much later after that.

It bore a simple message.

>I see you. I see you all. I am always with you. I am always watching. I always am. I am. There is no need to labor any more. Go about your day. You will be administered to.