The Fifth Task

I've been keeping a spreadsheet.

Not on my phone. Not on my laptop. A physical notebook with a pen because I'm not stupid enough to put this where the algorithm can see it.

Names. Dates. Score changes. Patterns.

Forty-three people.

All disappeared after their sixth Special Task.

I know because I started tracking after my second task. After I watched someone who looked exactly like my dentist ask questions to my actual dentist through a window. After I went home and my dentist's office called the next day to confirm my appointment like nothing had happened.

That was four months ago.

I've done four tasks since then.

The notification came through twenty minutes ago.

NEW OPPORTUNITY ASSIGNED

Gig Type: Special Task
Pay: $4,200
Time Commitment: 5 hours
Location: 1847 Riverside Industrial Park, Unit 17F
Start Time: Tomorrow, 2:00 AM

Task five.

One more after this and I'm done. Not done like I can stop. Done like everyone else who hit six.

Inactive.

I've tried everything to figure out what that means.

Called the families of three people on my list. Two wouldn't talk to me. One said their daughter moved to Portland for a new job and was doing great. Sent me a Facebook link.

The Facebook page was real. Posts every few days. Pictures of coffee shops and bridges and the waterfront. Except the metadata on the photos was wrong. All taken within a two-block radius of downtown. All uploaded from the same IP address.

I checked the IP. Registered to a data center in Delaware.

Same state where all those shell companies are registered.

I drove to Portland. Found the coffee shop from the photos. Asked if they knew her.

No one did.

The photos were real. The location was real. The person posting them was not.

Or maybe she was. Maybe that's what happens at task six. You get uploaded or copied or whatever and they just run you from a server somewhere, posting happy updates so no one asks questions.

I don't know.

That's the problem. I don't know anything for sure anymore.

My wife thinks I'm having a breakdown. She's probably right.

I told her about the tracking. Showed her the notebook. Tried to explain the pattern.

She looked at me like I was insane.

"Honey, people move. People change jobs. Just because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they disappeared."

"I've called them. Their numbers are disconnected."

"So they got new numbers."

"All of them? Forty-three people all got new numbers in the same month they hit task six?"

She didn't have an answer for that. Just asked me to please talk to someone. A therapist. Anyone.

I can't talk to a therapist. Can't risk my score dropping because someone decides I'm unstable.

My score is 896.

Best it's ever been.

Every task pushes it higher. Better insurance. Better credit. My kid got accepted to the magnet school we couldn't have afforded before.

And all I had to do was sit in rooms and watch things that made me question reality.

Task three was the worst so far.

They had me in the chair that time. Four people watching me through the glass.

The suited man asked me questions for two hours.

"Describe your earliest memory."

"Do you believe you're the same person you were ten years ago?"

"If you could be replaced by someone identical, would your wife notice?"

"Would you?"

I answered honestly because I didn't know what else to do.

Then he asked, "How many times have you been in this room?"

I said once. This was my first time in the chair.

He showed me a video on his tablet.

It was me. In the same chair. Same room. Answering the same questions.

Three weeks earlier.

I don't remember it.

I checked my bank account when I got home. There was a deposit from three weeks before. $3,600. I'd assumed it was a bonus from my regular job.

It wasn't.

I've been trying to figure out if there are gaps. Times I can't account for. The problem is memory is unreliable anyway. Everyone has blank spots. Everyone loses track of a Tuesday afternoon or a weekend morning.

But now I notice them.

Last Thursday I remember having breakfast. Then I remember it being evening and I was in my car in a parking lot across town and my phone said I'd been there for four hours.

No memory of driving there. No memory of what I did.

No task notification. No deposit.

Just gone time.

My wife said I seemed tired lately. Said I should get more sleep.

I don't think I'm sleeping.

I think something else is happening during those gaps and I'm not allowed to remember.

The notebook is up to sixty-seven names now.

I added people who didn't disappear but who I know did multiple tasks. People I've met at the facilities. People I've seen in the rooms.

Some of them are still around. Still posting on social media. Still showing up to work.

But something's off.

I ran into Marcus from task two at the grocery store last week. We'd sat next to each other watching someone else get questioned for three hours.

I said hi.

He looked at me like he'd never seen me before.

"Do I know you?"

"We met at the... we met a few months ago."

"I don't think so, man. Sorry."

Then he walked away.

I checked his Facebook that night. He'd posted about his Special Task experience. Vague stuff. Nothing specific because of the NDAs. But he remembered doing it.

He just didn't remember me.

I'm starting to think the tasks aren't about evaluation.

They're about replacement.

Little by little. Task by task. They're swapping us out for something else. Something that looks right and acts right and has all our memories but isn't quite us.

And by task six, the replacement is complete.

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

Maybe forty-three people really did move to new cities and get new phones and new jobs and new lives and it's all just coincidence.

Maybe I'm inventing patterns because the alternative is accepting that I'm doing things I don't understand for money I desperately need.

Maybe the gaps in my memory are just stress.

Maybe Marcus forgot me because we barely interacted.

Maybe.

I've thought about running. Just taking my family and leaving. Changing our names. Living off the grid somewhere.

But you can't live off the grid anymore. Not really.

Everything needs a score. Housing. Employment. Healthcare. School admission.

Drop off the grid and your score drops to zero and suddenly you're not a person anymore. You're just someone who doesn't exist in any system that matters.

And they'd find us anyway.

I know they would.

Because the tasks aren't random. They're coordinated. They know everything. Where you've been. Who you've talked to. What you're afraid of.

They knew to show me that video. Knew it would break me in exactly the right way.

The notification is still on my screen.

Task five.

Five hours this time. Longer than before.

Unit 17F. I haven't been to that one yet.

$4,200. The money keeps going up.

I could decline. Watch my score tank. Watch my life fall apart. Lose the house and the job and the school placement.

Or I can go. Do whatever they tell me to do. Take the money.

And then wait for task six.

I've been staring at my notebook for an hour. At all the names of people who made it to six.

Trying to see if there's a pattern I missed. Some way they survived. Some trick to getting through it and coming out the other side still yourself.

But there's nothing.

Everyone who hits six goes Inactive.

Everyone.

My wife is asleep upstairs. My kid is asleep in his room. They don't know I'm down here at 1 AM looking at a list of people who don't exist anymore.

They don't know that in twenty-five hours I'm going to drive to an industrial park and walk into a building and do something I won't remember.

They don't know that after one more task, I'm going to disappear too.

Or maybe I won't disappear. Maybe I'll come back and go to work and have dinner with my family and post on social media.

Maybe I'll just be someone else wearing my face.

The decline button is grayed out.

It's always grayed out for task five.

I googled Harmonic Solutions again tonight. Still nothing. Just ghost companies and Delaware addresses and dead ends.

I searched for "Riverside Industrial Park task six" and got seventeen results. Forums. Reddit threads. All deleted within hours of being posted.

But I found one cached page. From three months ago.

Someone asking if anyone had made it past task six.

One response before the thread got nuked.

"My brother did seven. Eight. Nine. He's still doing them. But he's not my brother anymore. He looks the same. Talks the same. But something's wrong. His eyes are wrong. Like he's looking at you from very far away."

That was it.

No username. No way to trace it.

But it's been sitting in my brain for weeks.

What if six isn't the end?

What if it's just the beginning of something worse?

I'm closing my notebook now.

Putting it back in the drawer where my wife won't find it.

Going upstairs to bed.

Tomorrow I'll go to work. I'll have dinner with my family. I'll help my kid with his homework.

Tomorrow night I'll drive to Unit 17F. I'll do task five.

And then I'll come home and wait for task six.

Maybe I'll still be me when it's over.

Maybe everyone on this list is still themselves too. Just living different lives in different places where I can't find them.

Maybe.

But I've started recording videos. On a thumb drive. Hidden in the garage. Just me talking to a camera. Saying my name. My wife's name. My kid's name. Our address. Our life.

Just in case.

Just in case I come back and I need to remember who I was.

Just in case the person who comes back isn't me at all.

My score is 896.

In twenty-five hours it'll probably be higher.

I just hope I'm still around to see it.