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Document Control Number: TS-IKA-LEVEL-2010-000

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Distribution Statement: Unauthorized disclosure, reproduction or circulation is absolutely prohibited and will result in the official containment of those involved by the powers-that-be. No exceptions are allowed.

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THE GREEK SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM (IKA) BACKROOM LEVEL

Survival Difficulty: Unsafe, Unsecure, Medium Entity Count 

“The IKA backroom level exists to remind people that a life without accepting the uselessness of bureaucracy equals a miserable life. To accept the absurdity of the human condition as living under set rules and protocols that thwart their progress, means to live, and consequently, die happy.” 

-Michalis Dialektopoulos, Administrator (2000-07)

“When newcomers survive our level, it’s the ultimate job interview: we hire them as secretaries, doctors and officials of IKA because they’ve proven their endurance in the adverse face of capitalism. This is the only way IKA, and companies or agencies like ours, can continue to prosper. The backrooms have given us an opportunity to train citizens on the impossibility of bureaucracy, so they can mindlessly accept it and toil away. If they see through its non-human-friendly processes, and understand the cannibalism capitalism brings about, but still praise how the system works, they become one with it. This is what creates perfect winning conditions for us.” 

-Giorgos Saraglis, Second-in-Command (2006-12)

Description: 

On specific periods of time (national holidays and from early July to late August,) getting lost in the IKA corridors is easier, since the administration welcomes it. When most of the staff is on leave, and the lights are off in places where people used to gather in queues to meet their assigned doctor, this is when the lines between reality and the backrooms are at their thinnest. A wrong turn, an incorrect elevator button, a long-lasting ringing of a telephone that no one will pick up, these will lead a Wanderer to the IKA backrooms—a nonlinear office space, where rooms look almost the same but never identical. 

Estimated at around two hundred million square kilometers, the IKA backrooms have no clear sense of direction; the monochromatic beige walls, the old carpets on the floors and the hum-buzz of the fluorescent lamps, confuse visitors—or Wanderers, as we call them. Everyone loses their sense of time and space. Since this is the only IKA level existing (the Hellenic bank for example has more than ten different levels,) it is crucial that it stays unsafe and unsecure for all. As a result, it is devoid of human life. Most Wanderers die from dehydration, cardiac arrest, fatigue and hunger, in corners that stretch far beyond what our mind can conceive of—thus, when another passes-them-by, they might think of them as dark spots on the walls. However, non-human life thrives (see page 6).

There’s only one exit in the shape of a trapdoor, on the last floor opposite the psychiatric section, that changes position every time the lights entirely turn off—the hum-buzz symbolizes how often Wanderers die. Most though, do not discover this escape pod; they’re either afraid to approach this floor, or they get lost earlier. The few who do are the ones worthy of employment. 

This has been the way IKA recruits new blood for over a decade now—and the results are impressive. We do not want rebellious streaks in our century-old establishment. This is the way we’ve also been teaching non-committed employees the importance of accepting the absurdity of bureaucracy. Backrooms like our own or the ones in the Parliament or public hospitals oil the gears of the Greek social and economic system. 

Hallucinations:

Hallucinations are usual in our level, and they’re the first symptoms of depression and mania—disorders which inevitably lead to a variety of mental conditions that exacerbate hunger and thirst. Entities tend to arrive when Wanderers go through their first mental glitches. 

Below you will find a detailed (but not exhaustive) list of the types of hallucinations Wanderers experience:

1. The appearance of new doors and stairs as they struggle to bargain with their new reality. 

2. Polite telephone voices speaking through the megaphones. 

3. Annoyingly happy tunes playing through the megaphones, reminding them of Music on hold. 

4. Incessant paper stapling and paper printing. 

5. Humanoid faces in front of rooms wearing doctor capes asking them to get inside and close the door. 

Entities: 

The IKA backrooms list five different entities that Wanderers might encounter. All of them are equally dangerous, but can be avoided if the person understands the meaning of bureaucracy. Entities switch rooms—finding Gut-Eaters, for example, doesn’t mean you’ll find Voicers, and vice versa. Wanderers don’t always meet all of them—some prefer to hunt specific age or race groups. 

1. Gut-Eaters are former visitors of the backrooms that have died of starvation or thirst. Extremely tall, and with a face that rests on their half-eaten stomach, these creatures seek the organs of Wanderers. They appear when someone stands underneath thresholds leading to another room. They walk too fast, and are very talented at reading vibrations, because they’re blind, deaf, and have no sense of smell. They can only be avoided if the individual stays where they are, silent and motionless until they’re gone. 

2. Voicers are shadows with nothing but a high-pitched tone that might deafen you. They’re the bodies of old recruits of IKA that decided to quit and become whistleblowers, because they didn’t accept to bow before the system. We rounded them up and locked them in the backrooms, their bodies slowly fading away, until nothing but mental struggle kept them alive. Voicers emit incoherent sounds as if they speak through megaphones (check the telephone voices hallucination) and they manage to bore Wanderers to death. To survive them, Wanderers must build soundproof devices, for example, earplugs. We have also noticed that older people with partial deafness survive them as well. Some Wanderers, the more unstable ones, decide to pierce through their eardrums by using pencils found on the floors of many rooms. This strategy is also successful. 

3. Record Bucklers are the extreme bureaucrats—those that created tension within IKA because of their too material values, of their obsession with reducing the human lives to nothing but paperwork. Mr Stratos Papazoglou,,the former general secretary during Dialektopoulos’s reign, is one of them. IKA aims at creating the illusion that its employers’ lives matter—thus we must purge all potential delinquents for the sake of keeping IKA and, by extension, the Greek financial order, sustainable. Record Bucklers are passionate about paperwork and procedures—they’re towering figures made of envelopes, signed papers and dossiers taped together—their faces overgrown with stampers and hole-punchers on their eyes, nose, and mouth. They fight Wanderers with an ulterior motive—to convert them to their cause. To save themselves, Wanderers must come up with a way to light them up or chop them down. 

4. Memory Lanes are ghosts with no distinguishing facial characteristics and very long hair, hair that can whip individuals and drag them to their death. Memory Lanes are the most dangerous of all entities and are found close to the final exit. Few encounter them because few reach the final floor. Memory Lanes take the form of loved ones and can perfectly mimic human speech. Only when Wanderers are close enough do they notice that their faces are not the same as their favorite people’s. For example, the distance between the eyes of a Memory Lane is a bit too narrow, the nose almost non-existent. To run away from them would be suicide. To stay where you are would be madness. The only way you can win over a Memory Lane is if you accept that there’s no real meaning in fighting for your life—the moment you welcome self-defeat, and willingly offer yourself to it, the trapdoor will open by itself and you’ll enter the administration’s office. You’ve successfully exited the IKA Backrooms. 

Footnotes: 

1. A group of visitors has managed to form a secret society inside the IKA backrooms. They call themselves “The Liminaries.” We’re doing our best to instigate attacks to their headquarters so that they’ll be eliminated. We’re thinking that they’ve found a way to create their own backrooms, safe and purified by Entities. Their powers stem from reaping the unique benefits the Backrooms as liminal spaces have—they can, at their own will, bend time and place to create new levels that are uncharted for us. As of 2015, the administration is currently putting together a task force to track the Liminaries down. Unfortunately, because the Entities have somehow made the IKA backrooms their own lairs, we cannot control them entirely—as a result, the search for the Liminaries is still underway, because of the uncertain reaction the Entities would have toward any infiltrators we send for the Liminaries.

End of document. If read, please store appropriately for a month. A new one will take its place once the month passes. Metric system is in place. If the nano-security system identifies irises that do not belong to Officials, the document will be torn down and the person reading it will lose their hands because of a nano-eruption. Safe travels.