This one is called system error. Back in 2018, I was going to college in the UK is two years of studying after secondary school, usually at age 16 to 18. And a larger town further over from where I lived, it took me two buses and a short walk to get onto campus and the same short walk and two buses to get home. The first bus would take me early morning from my village to a bus station, where I got the second bus into town and walked onto campus. I’d have classes from 9 a. M. To 3 or sometimes four PM and then by the time I got home, it would be somewhere between 5 and six PM this is where the weird matrix glitching situation happened. My Lark on my phone rang and I got up, got washed, dressed, grabbed my class notes and went to college.
It was Thursday, so I had sociology class, a literature class, a secondary catch up sociology class, lunch and a spare hour period. And then philosophy. I also stayed back an extra hour to do a coursework class. So my Thursdays were pretty packed. And I tend to get to the bus station on my route home as everyone was leaving work from the nearby retail center. So it was always majorly busy in the bus station and on the buses as well. I have anxiety and a learning disorder, so I’m not great at dealing with people. I always rode the bus with my headphones on and kept my attention out of the window to try to keep myself grounded. Especially when I knew that the buses would be busy Thursday says, I said, we’re always busy.
So I got on the bus from near campus heading out of town and towards the bus station. I hadn’t been paying attention to anyone getting on or off the bus, but I know that it stopped at most, if not all of the bus stops along the route. It wasn’t until the bus started pulling into the bus station that I paused my music and headed to the front doors to the bus to get off. But the doors didn’t open. The bus was just sat in the station bay, and I turned around to try to ask the driver what was wrong. But as I turned, I found that there was no bus driver. In actuality, there was no one on the bus at all. I stood for a moment looking around, knowing that its seconds before I had heard the voices of other people on the bus and no one had been in front of me when I got up to leave the bus. But I was totally alone and it was eerily quiet. In a bit of a panic, but mostly really confused, I managed to manually push the bus doors open and stepped out to find the bus station also totally empty. It was like one of those post apocalyptic movie scenes. Everything looked like it had this gray hue over it. And although there were no people in the station, there were abandoned buildings, like newspapers and bags, push chairs, like props on a set just left in their places for actors returning later. Then the bus station Tenoy started making announcements.
Error in the system. Functional halt, subject malfunction, subject conscious, subject reset. Start. What is happening right now that freaked me out completely? The bus station doors slammed shut when I ran for them and the whole area seemed like it was shaking. I knew I was being forced to forget that something had gone wrong and I wasn’t meant to be seeing any of it. I woke up then in my bed completely panicked and terrified. It all felt real. I’m sure it was real. I calmed myself down a bit, but not enough to go back to sleep. So I just stayed in bed processing it all until I absolutely had to get out of bed to answer my alarm.
It was Thursday again. And the reason I know it was real is because my class notes for that day were already in my books, including a posted note from one of my tutors marking down a meeting for the following Monday. I didn’t want whatever that reset thing was in my dream to happen again. So I kept quiet. I didn’t acknowledge any of it out loud or talked to anyone about it because the whole feeling of knowing someone was coming to get me and that I was being watched to make sure that I didn’t malfunction again had me completely freaked out.
The day was the same as the dream, but I felt like I had to change it a little, like I had to go out of my way to make sure I mix up the flow somehow so that I didn’t end up in that empty bus station. I didn’t go to my coursework class and instead opted for emailing my tutor who gave me the appointment time and place from the dream post it note for the following Monday. I even rang my ma’am and convinced her to come pick me up and take a drive to our favorite beach just to make sure that I absolutely avoided the bus station.
Nothing like that has ever happened again. And I’m always left wondering if it was a surreal dream, an actual system in the matrix error, or if I ended up in the wrong timeline or universe or something, I have no idea. But it scared me, obviously. I’m gonna tell you that I believe you and that I don’t think this was a dream. What was it? I have no idea. It sounded like some weird glitch in the matrix and then they reset you.
Error in the system. Subject malfunction, subject conscious, subject reset star. Like what? This is so crazy. I need to know what you guys think. Please let me know in the comments. Thank you so much for sharing this awesomely weird story. This was a really good one.