Spending the Night at the Office

The Night Shift

The office was quiet.

Mostly dark.

Only one small corner remained illuminated by the warm glow of a single yellow light.

Ulrikk was working late.

As usual.

He had come prepared. A modest supply of food, several bottles of Cola Zero he had bought at half price because they were nearing their expiry date, a tall inflatable mattress already made up in the corner, and a sleeping bag waiting for when research finally gave way to exhaustion.

Somewhere out in the corridor, the coffee machine let out a low mechanical rumble.

Ulrikk barely looked up.

"Don't wait for me," he said over his shoulder. "I brought my own thermos."

He had boiled water at home before leaving and filled the thermos while it was still steaming hot. Beside his keyboard sat a neat little stack of instant soup packets and sachets of instant coffee.

Luxury, by RABAGAS standards.

He stood up for a moment and looked across the office.

It was hardly the largest newsroom in the world.

But over time it had become surprisingly homely.

Stacks of paper leaned against shelves that had long since surrendered to gravity. Old magazines, maps, notebooks and curious objects whose origins nobody could remember had gradually accumulated into something resembling an archaeological exhibition dedicated to creativity.

And yes.

He was completely alone.

He lowered himself back into his chair and cracked his knuckles.

Tonight was for research.

The assignment sounded simple enough.

Find the next story.

Something informative.

Visually striking.

And just strange enough that people would feel compelled to keep reading.

He opened his browser.

Ten minutes later he had eighteen tabs open.

Twenty minutes later he had forty-two.

An hour later he found himself reading about sea cucumbers defending themselves by ejecting their own internal organs.

Ulrikk leaned back.

"How did I end up here?"

No one answered.

Somewhere out in the corridor came the faint sound of metal clicking into place.

He froze for a moment.

Then slowly shook his head.

The coffee machine.

Probably.

He returned to his reading.

Research Never Goes Where You Think

Five minutes later he stumbled across an article about mysterious radio signals from deep space.

Then a documentary about abandoned weather stations in Greenland.

After that, a report on a Soviet research base that had been forgotten for decades.

Ulrikk smiled.

Now this was getting somewhere.

That was exactly how research worked at RABAGAS.

You started with one question and somehow ended up somewhere nobody could quite explain.

Out in the corridor came another metallic click.

This time followed by a short, high-pitched whine.

Ulrikk looked up.

"If you're planning something," he said into the darkness, "I'd just like to remind you that I brought my own coffee."

The office fell silent again.

So silent that he could hear the faint hum of the light bulb above his desk.

Ulrikk nodded with quiet satisfaction.

The coffee machine had clearly received the message.

He turned back to his screen.

The next article led him to a forgotten observatory in the Andes.

That became a story about a Cold War listening station.

Which somehow became a forum discussion where three retired engineers were arguing about whether a mysterious signal detected in 1977 had really come from space or from faulty equipment.

He opened another tab.

Then another.

He had long since stopped pretending this had anything to do with the article he was supposed to be writing.

That, too, was part of the process.

Good research rarely travelled in straight lines.

Sometimes you had to wander through sea cucumbers, Soviet outposts and inexplicable radio signals before you discovered what you had actually been looking for.

Or perhaps before it discovered you.

Somewhere in the corridor came another click.

Then silence.

Long enough that it almost felt deliberate.

Ulrikk didn't look up this time.

He simply took another sip from his thermos and kept reading.

Unfortunately, the coffee machine hadn't received the message.

It had simply spent the silence thinking.

That was usually when the problems began.

Morning Comes Eventually

Ulrikk stared at the screen for another hour.

At some point he had drifted from mysterious radio signals to forgotten observatories, then to abandoned research stations, and finally to an article explaining why octopuses might be far more intelligent than anyone had once believed.

He sighed.

There was no longer any obvious route back to the story he had originally intended to write.

There rarely was.

He glanced around the office.

The inflatable mattress waited patiently in the corner.

The thermos was almost empty.

Several empty bottles of Cola Zero stood beside the desk like tiny monuments to productive procrastination.

Outside, the building had settled into the peculiar silence that only exists after midnight.

Then came the sound again.

Click.

A pause.

Another click.

Then a soft mechanical hum.

Ulrikk looked towards the door.

"I'm warning you," he said calmly. "I've read enough science fiction to know how these things begin."

Silence.

He smiled to himself.

Perhaps spending too many nights alone in the office wasn't entirely healthy.

He switched off the monitor.

The room instantly became smaller.

Quieter.

He crawled into the sleeping bag and reached over to turn off the lamp.

Darkness.

For a while he simply listened.

The ventilation.

A distant car outside.

The old building settling for the night.

Then—

Click.

He opened one eye.

Nothing.

He closed it again.

A few moments later another sound drifted in from the corridor.

Not a click this time.

The unmistakable sound of coffee pouring into a ceramic cup.

Ulrikk sat up.

The office was empty.

The corridor was empty.

Yet the sound had been real.

He walked quietly towards the coffee machine.

On the drip tray stood a freshly brewed cup of coffee.

Still steaming.

No one else was in the building.

Beside the cup lay a small yellow Post-it note.

In Hampus' unmistakable handwriting were six words:

"Don't work too late. You'll start believing things."

Ulrikk smiled.

He picked up the coffee.

Switched off the last light.

And decided that whatever had happened tonight...

...it could wait until morning.