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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/silvergrundle on 2024-07-01 19:15:47+00:00.
The 1924 expedition to summit mount Everest was crude. It was a ragtag band of english survivalists guided by Sherpas who were more often than not treated as disposable. They were at their wits end, and on their second expedition in 2 years. That kind of pressure can change a man’s psyche. A man’s psyche can emanate something into the unknown. An event that significant can have ripples through mediums we haven’t even begun to understand. Man has always conquered extremes, but the highest point on Earth is by definition an ultimate extreme. It is the tip of something more than us.
Over 4000 people have made their pilgrimage to the peak of our little world now. Everest no more than an expensive vacation for 20 somethings with trust funds and adrenaline addictions, but it used to mean something.
The first true summit attempt was different, and it wasn’t because it was the last time George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were seen alive.
Something else happened that day on the mountain that is still unexplained.
It was their third attempt during this expedition that something happened on the mountainside. It was as if God himself cursed humanity for our hubris. Mallory and Irvine were seen close to the summit, and the clouds rolled in. They were never seen alive again. The event was biblical.
At times reality can be stranger than fiction. It’s hard to write a story that compelling, hard to outdo reality in its endless capacity for chaos. Sometimes the chaos aligns and you can practically see the fractal ticking clock of the universe at work. It’s a mystery so tantalizing that to this day it casts a tiny lingering doubt on the 1953 official first summit of the mountain. It is believed that Irvine and Mallory did not make it to the top of the mountain by many. But this tiny sliver of doubt, this possibility of history being rewritten remains trapped on the mountain like a flashing episodic memory burned into the rock face. Something sinister sits at the rotten core of that mountain.
Reality is stranger than fiction. I know it, because I have stared into the reality of what really happened on that fateful day in 1924. I’ve seen the photographs they took in their final moments.
When Mallory and Irvine went up the summit, they took a camera with them, to take a photo of Man’s great achievement. It hasn’t officially been found. That is, the public and climbing community know it to be missing still. I’m here to tell you that this obfuscation of the truth is completely and entirely purposeful, and is orchestrated by powers you could never imagine. It is exactly what they want you to believe.
I developed the film myself. I’ve gazed into the abyss, and the abyss has filled me up past the brim. I carry the burden of what was captured on that rudimentary technology.
I don’t have long left. That’s the only reason I’m laying this burden down. I’m not old, but sick beyond my years. Maybe releasing this ballast will let me finally rest in peace, knowing that someone else will believe the truth about what happened up there. What became of Irvine. For his sake I hope he was killed instantly. I think that’s what bothers me the most, is never really knowing what happened to him. He could even still be out there somewhere, in a different form that we can’t even percieve.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Every scrap of information about that day has my head spinning.
The Kodak organization of course is known best for photographic film, cameras, and development procedures. As a budding chemical engineer in my field it was difficult to imagine that my life have dwindled to the shriveled speck it is now. I had so much career hope, so much optimism. Now I find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. My piece in this puzzle has been set, fated from the start, and my part in this picture is long over. I was killed off in the first act, and I’m just waiting silently in the wings for it to be all over. This silence must be broken.
Kodak became very comfortable with the government over a long period of time. When the United States began nuclear tests in the nevada desert, all our x ray paper was splatter painted with high energy particles. We never got hush money like that again. We were in cahoots whether we liked it or not. We knew and we didn’t squeal. The kids and I had a great vacation that year. Analog photography and the United States were just chummy. they scratched our backs in return for our silence. Men in suits and badges always coming in an out without warning. They never took a damn thing. They just asked us some vague questions, and made wretched forced smiles, lingering in our labs and warehouses. They knew something we didn’t, and we had to sit there and take it. You could hardly look over your shoulder without someone hovering, taking little notes, and speaking sweet nothings into each others ears. Get a room.
Any questions we asked got polite smiles and condescending chuckles in return, like we were school children asking where babies came from.
It was clear they had a plan for us. They were developing us, making us comfortable with their presence, waiting for the right time for us to bend knee and accept orders. That time came in the mid 2000s when we learned about that fateful roll of film.
One day they burst through the door of the lab, and from down the hallway I could see a cart being pushed through film stock inventory into the development lab. It was a long hallway, and that one free spinning castor wheel squeaked multitudes past shelves of equipment and undeveloped rolls of memories. It was surrounded by armed militants. This time they were armed. Something bigger than all of us fit into that little steel box.
It seemed to be a heavily modified safe, a little one you’d see under the counter at a gas station. It had some kind of climate control system attached, something that didn’t need external power. It let off hints of frion and old book smell.
2 large men pushed the cart into our lab, and a man I would grow to resent appeared before me for the first time, followed by several lackies.
He wore a slim fit suit. It was too slim for his figure. The stress of his position was carried on his alcoholic gut and protruding love handles. The bags under his eyes and thinning head of blonde hair spoke volumes to what the man was carrying in his head. They had broken him in. I don’t think he would fit in bagging groceries or slicing deli cuts anymore. He wasn’t fit for society. He was one of them, and they had put out the light in his eyes.
He had that type of paranoid exhaustion you get from always looking over your shoulder, like any moment could be your last. He was as kind as he could be given what he had seen. God knows my involvement in all this took its toll. This was just another day at the office for him.
His name was Jerome Newton, and I don’t fully blame him for my ruination. He was just following orders. Look at me. I’ve got Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve always been a fucking pushover.
We shared an amicable handshake and some polite conversation, but the distracting nature of the 100 pound elephant in the room and its security detail quickly became the subject of the conversation. It had been found.
Irvine’s camera had been found. Decades ago, in fact. They had been waiting for the right moment to see just what was on it, and they chose our lab to do it. They never told us how they recovered it from the mountain, or where it was, and at that time I was given no information on Irvine’s body.
In hindsight it all checks out. They knew our curiosity as men of science would override any resistance we had. We had a feeling we couldn’t say no, and no one ever did.
My biggest regret is not being able to explain what happened to my boys, and my wife. In their minds I went to work and never came back. I wish I could see you all one last time.
My involvement in this operation erased me from the public record without my permission. I became a ghost. As far as the good old USA was concerned I had gone missing. Of course we resisted, and things came to a head, but human beings fear what we don’t understand. We never understood what they were capable of doing to us.They made it clear that unspeakable things awaited us if our new accomodations were unsatisfactory.
We worked onsite at our discreet location. Kodak had several manufacturing sites away from the public eye, and our development lab was chosen as the most unassuming.
They provided our every need, food, water, shelter, but information was on a need to know basis.
We got to work ensuring the film was preserved to the the utmost leves of care.
It was old film, and was on the mountain with blinding snow and the elements for decades. For all we knew it would turn up blank, but we wouldn’t know until we started developing.
We spent 2 weeks discussing every possible scenario in which this film could be safely transported to our proper station and developed. Every single precaution was painstakingly detailed. The floors of the lab were coated in a rubberized substrated to prevent accidental slips. We were given daily sterilized uniforms and trained on containment breach protocols. They were incinerated after every day of work. The room was swept of every speck of dust. Air filtration systems were installed. It may have been the cleanest clean room on earth for that 2 week period.
Any tool, any machine, any chemical at the world’s disposal was sent …
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