THE DIGGING TEAM
internal field account from corrective operations
May Season Studio Archives
by Gintare O.
The call came in just after nine. Not late enough to count as overtime, not early enough for anyone to pretend it could wait until morning. The message was short. Coordinates outside Morris. A single line beneath it: correction required. No details. No signature. Nothing unusual about that.
Lorin closed the message and slid the phone into the inside pocket of his jacket. He didn’t sigh. He didn’t react at all. He grabbed his gloves, tapped Merrit’s cube wall with his hand, and they walked to the van without speaking. Correction Unit 9 didn’t do small talk.
The drive stayed quiet in the usual way. Highway lights thinning out as they drove down I-80. Empty fields holding on to whatever warmth was left from the day. A few trucks pushing west. One of those nights where everything looked fine from far away but wrong up close. Merrit had the Ramsey show on low, just enough noise to keep them awake without asking for anything.
The coordinates sent them past a shuttered warehouse and into a field that always looked abandoned, even in daylight. Merrit slowed the van and let the headlights roll over a strip of wind-flattened grass, then pulled off the service road. They had done this enough to know they were close when the air started getting heavier.
They stepped out, boots sinking slightly into soft ground. It was colder than it should have been. Lorin felt it in his hands first. Not weather. Something else.
“Same as last time,” Merrit said, pulling the shovels from the back.
“Not quite,” Lorin answered. He didn’t explain. He didn’t need to. The shift in the air would reach Merrit soon.
They walked toward the center of the field, guided by instinct and the faint vibration under the soil. It wasn’t loud. Just a low hum deep enough to settle into their knees. The same kind of hum you hear from old office lights when no one bothers to fix them. Ahead of them, the ground dipped into a shallow depression. The edges looked softened, not burned. Like the soil was trying to remember what shape it used to be.
Merrit crouched down. “Something landed.”
“Or appeared,” Lorin said. “Hard to tell these days.”
The scent reached them next. Burnt sugar mixed with copier toner. The exact smell of a mid-afternoon office where too many people reheated lunches. It didn’t belong here.
Lorin scanned the depression. There were impressions in the dirt. Footprints, but unstable ones. They blurred at the edges, like someone stepped down and never fully committed to being real.
Merrit stiffened. “There.”
The figure lay curled in the center of the crater. Small. Loose-limbed. A shape that looked human if you didn’t stare too long, and not human as soon as you did. Its outline flickered in a slow, uneven rhythm, like a glitch in old film.
They approached carefully. Not out of fear. Nothing dangerous ever came from these events. Just unpredictable.
The figure breathed in short, uneven pulses. Its chest rose and fell like it was still deciding how breathing worked. Its face was smooth in some places and too detailed in others, like someone had sketched a person from memory but couldn’t settle on the right order.
“This isn’t one of ours,” Merrit said.
“No,” Lorin agreed. “Not a creature either.”
“So what is it.”
Before Lorin could answer, the thing lifted its head at the sound of their voices. The motion was slow, like video buffering on a bad connection. It blinked with eyes that weren’t finished. The pupils sat slightly off-center, and its expression kept trying to form something familiar but couldn’t find the alignment.
It whispered a sound. Rough, like a throat clearing in an empty room.
Merrit stepped back.
Lorin didn’t. “Do you know what you are,” he asked quietly.
It didn’t respond. It only stared, confused but not afraid.
Lorin crouched, studying the flickering edges of its form, the softening soil beneath it, the faint shimmer running across its outline. He had seen twelve of these before. Seven in the past four months. Not enough to feel routine. Too many to ignore.
“Memory construct,” he said. “Capsule malfunction. Prototype batch.”
Merrit swore under his breath. “Someone used it wrong.”
“Or used it exactly as intended,” Lorin said. “That part no one wants to say.”
Corrective protocol didn’t need theories. It needed disposal.
Merrit set the tarps down and started digging. Lorin logged the coordinates and began the field report. The wind shifted, carrying the warm smell of office break room coffee and something sharper underneath. A half-formed echo of fluorescent lights.
The construct tried to sit up. It braced its hands in the dirt. One hand looked solid. The other looked like a blurry photograph. It made a sound again, and this time, a word formed.
“Clock… clock in…”
Merrit froze. “It talks.”
“They all do,” Lorin said. “Eventually.”
“What is it remembering.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Merrit dug faster. Early summer helped, but this was more than weather. The ground gave way like it wanted to be disturbed.
Lorin watched the figure. It looked at him the way stray animals watch passing cars. Not hopeful. Not scared. Just aware.
When the hole was deep enough, Merrit climbed out and brushed the dirt from his hands. His skin, thicker than human and dusted with mineral flecks, caught the moonlight.
Lorin lifted the figure. Its form steadied at his touch, briefly gaining weight, like it wanted permission to exist. It reached toward his shoulder. It was lighter than he expected. Almost empty.
“Not your fault,” he said.
The figure tried to rise again, spine bending in hesitant angles. Lorin pressed two fingers to its sternum. It collapsed softly into the body bag, flickering until the edges settled. They zipped it up.
They lowered it into the hole. No struggle. The construct simply rested.
Merrit covered it quickly. Lorin spread the neutralizing powder across the disturbed soil. The shimmer faded. The scent dissolved. The ground settled. The crater was gone. The field looked like any other field off I-80.
Lorin filed the report while Merrit packed the tools.
The drive back to the van was quiet. Dave Ramsey telling listeners to stop buying lattes.
Lorin’s phone buzzed. A new internal alert.
Incident Report: Pattern Interference
Location: May Season Studio Headquarters
Classification: Memory Breach
Signature Match: Confirmed
Assigned Unit: Team 8
Merrit leaned over. “Same as this one.”
“Identical.”
Lorin closed the alert and looked at the field. The hum under his knees had faded, but not entirely.
Merrit started the engine. “What now.”
“Same as always,” Lorin said. “We wait.”
“Think it’ll be soon.”
Lorin didn’t answer.
The van pulled away, dust lifting behind it. The field settled back into ordinary quiet. A place no one would glance at twice.
But the air still felt wrong.
They would be back.
They both knew it.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
At may season studio, we document the quiet mechanics that hold our world together — the routines, the tensions, and the moments that should not have happened but did anyway. this entry reflects another observation from within our walls.
written and designed by gintare okrzesik, creator of may season studio — a fictional corporation exploring beauty, bureaucracy, and quiet corruption through narrative design.