Aeternam Labs

9/24/2023: nilla maze

I found an album on BandCamp called "Nilla Maze", a 6-song experimental ambient/vaporwave-y album with soothing vibes.
It was somewhat remiscent of PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises.
The cover depicted a long room with hotel-like furnishing, which had a pool in the middle with a bridge going across. I believe there was a vending machine in the back. The Nilla Wafers logo was put on top of the photo.
Some of the song titles were full of weird symbols, much like a qebrus album. 2 or 3 of the songs advertised in the titles that there were music videos of them available on YouTube. Not many people had bought the album, but there were 1 or 2 reviews, if memory serves, which had positive things to say about it. I enjoyed it, myself.
It came with a dark secret, however. Everytime you listen to the album, the next time you go to sleep, you'll wake up inside the Nilla Maze.
The Nilla Maze is an infinitely large complex of hallways and rooms, similar to the backrooms (but instead of looking like a dingy office, it had the vibe of a nice hotel). However, once entering, you are not trapped. You'll eventually teleport back to the location where you fell asleep, though the time it takes is variable. You could stay for one night or one week, or even longer.
Some rooms inside the maze resembled actual hotel rooms, with beds, TVs, bedside tables, closets, and other amenities (such as coffee machines or a mint on the pillow). Scattered throughout the maze, there were many sinks where one could obtain water, as well as cabinets where you could find glasses, bowls, and plates, so there was that at least. There were also rooms resembling lobbies, which were larger, and had couches, "service desks" (with nobody at them), and vending machines, along with some decorations like potted plants.
The vending machines were stocked with drinks and snacks, including Nilla Wafers. Most of the hotel rooms also had a box or two of Nilla Wafers inside. I did come across the room on the album cover a couple of times, as well as other rooms resembling it. When I found the room, however, the water didn't look like water, it was just an endlessly looping collage of the Nilla Wafers logo looking back at me. They would move towards me depending on the angle I looked at them from, similar to enemy sprites in Doom.
Falling into this water, or interacting with some other objects throughout the maze, would link me to different places, much like in LSD Dream Emulator. Also like LSD, the appearance of surroundings would sometimes change. I saw what resembled the downer and upper textures on a couple of occasions. While I would sometimes be linked to other places in the maze, I would also rarely be linked to this strange void, with no ceiling, walls, or sky for that matter, where I could walk in an endless loop (much like some smaller worlds in Yume Nikki), though there were some small buildings and other landmarks, which would usually just link me back to the maze.
After enough wandering, I actually started finding some other people. One guy was just chilling in a hotel room, which seemed like one of the nicer rooms I had seen due to the big comfy bed. I managed to get a cup of coffee there. He started acting kind of creepy though, so I ran away.
When night came, most of the lights turned off, leaving the surroundings extremely dark. As I continued to wander, I found my cat (Crimpet) who was in here somehow, we then continued wandering together. Thankfully, I did manage to find a decent enough room where I could rest for the night, which I figured was remote enough that we wouldn't be found. There was no bed, but there were two couches, which was good enough. Between the two couches was a small table, which had on it a potted plant and a box of Nilla Wafers. I sat down and ate the wafers.
There was also a TV in the room, which looked like a CRT from the '70s. All it played was the music videos for the album on repeat. Any attempt to change the channel was met with it snapping back to a music video, though I did manage to get a news channel on for half a minute. This room, interestingly, also had a window. From the window, I could see a high-up view of a city, suggesting that we were in a skyscraper instead of some weird alternate dimension. Unfortunately, the window was too difficult to break, and was small enough that it would be very difficult to get through, and even if you could, there would be no way of surviving a fall from this height.
As I was preparing to rest, someone suddenly broke into the room and starting attacking me. Somehow, I pulled out a beam katana, and fought him in the style of a No More Heroes boss fight. After fighting for a minute, I managed to behead him, then finally got some rest.
When I woke up, there were government agents in my house, who brought me to a remote building and started asking where I was and what I was doing for the past day. I was then brought to some medical building where doctors started running tests on me, and asked me questions about my mental health, living situation, and overall quality of life.
Eventually I was returned home, unsure what to make of the events that had transpired, and simply went about my day as usual.

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