Day 712

Admittedly she was almost an hour late and admittedly she hadn't been to this particular swimming centre before but surely she had come to the right place? The signs outside and the texts her friends had sent collaborated perfectly so she must have been at the right pool.

The doors were wide open, the lights inside were dim and everything was quiet save for the faint sounds of rushing water and children's screams - presumably all in fun. The reception area was entirely unmanned and very modern. Every surface was either glistening black or some sort of neon with a strange white forest mural spanning the entire length of the room, bulking out into a 3D tree sculpture with large water-filled pods (again in varying neon colours). Upon closer inspection they almost looked like they had people inside them.

Hesitating she passed through the fluorescent green turnstile and headed for the changing rooms, following the little signs dotted about the place at strange heights and angles in the hopes that her friends would be somewhere inside.

The tree mural soon turned into a forest sculpture with dozens of trees filling the wide hallway, their pods glowing brightly in the dim lights. From one side the wall was a highly detailed depiction of some strange landscape full of glass hills and gigantic floating eels and the other side was a large window showing the pool within.

It was like nothing she'd ever seen before - the same colour scheme as the rest of the building but turned into some kind of absolute alien landscape. There were dozens of pools varying in size and depth connected by all manner of bridges, glass platforms, tubes, mesh walkways and stepping stones all glowing neon. There were even little huts dotted about the place where she saw a few people heading in from the otherwise deserted area, all the while the excited screams of children lingered in the air.

Thinking the place was closing down she decided to just turn back, her friends were nowhere to be seen even though they'd promised to meet her outside. The forest seemed a lot darker as she headed back, the lights throbbed to an unheard beat and the pods swayed to an unfelt wind. Everything she'd found fascinating before now seemed too unreal, there was something glaringly wrong with the place but she couldn't put her finger on what it was.

As her hand reached out for the turnstile, to head home and bubble in her anger for a whole before texting her friends to see where they'd gone, a voice called out to her. One of her friends was a few feet away in her swimsuit, soaking wet and laughing and asking where she was going. They'd been in a small room off to one side, she explained, in these sensory deprivation tanks. They were apparently amazing and she had to try them before they could all go swimming.

Grudgingly agreeing she followed her friend down a hallway she'd previously missed as they turned from the shiny black flooring to a rough wooden walkway leading to a couple of cubicles whose doors were made from the same wood and loosely nailed together. Her friend "stood guard" while she changed, all the while chatting away about the tanks and how the rest of the group were already in there and having fun.

Suited, clothing stashed in a nearby locker, they headed onwards to the sensory deprivation tanks and the alleged fun there was in store. The walkway took them to another turnstile (this one in orange) and from there to a well-lit small room full of the tree sculptures. The pods from these trees were pure white with a red band to show which ones were in use and which were not. She let her friend help her climb into one of the pods and seal it shut, agreeing to thirty minutes before the lid was screwed closed.

Inside the pod was a small bench where she sat, the water lapped about the bottom of her shoulders as she leant back into the reclined slope and closed her eyes. After what felt like a couple of minutes she was startled by a loud thumping coming from the outside and the lid was prised off by someone dressed as a policeman.

She was pulled out, wrapped in a thermal blanket and questioned by several other officers as paramedics checked her vitals, flitting about her like flies. They asked who she was, her age and home address, looking worriedly at each other until she snapped at them, asking what was wrong and where her friends were.

They asked her what date she had gone into the swimming centre, pausing for a few awkward moments before telling her the date wasn't 2016, it was 2046. She'd been in the pod for thirty years, not thirty minutes and she was one of two survivors. The whole place had been locked down until now, thick white vines had grown over the entrance and it had all been quiet. Missing people reports flooded the station and they all drew back there.

Glancing around her feeling terrified and numb all at once she saw all the other pods were open, from either having their lids prised off like hers or being smashed to absolute pieces. Bodybags were scattered about the floor, with soaking wet stringy remains being lifted into them. She recognised a few of the swimsuits.