Late one quiet evening, I was browsing through the Steam Workshop for The Orville Interactive Fan Experience. My goal was simple: find a quirky mod to spice up the simulated adventures aboard the U.S.S. Orville. As I scrolled through the usual assortment outlandish fan-made mods, one peculiar entry caught my eye: "November 21 Test."

The thumbnail was nondescript—a grainy screenshot of a room in the Orville. There were no tags, no comments, and the upload date was that very day. Against my better judgment, I clicked Subscribe and booted up the game.

When the add-on loaded, it didn’t appear in the menu or modify the ship in any obvious way. Puzzled, I wandered the corridors of the Orville. Everything seemed normal—until I stepped into one of the crew quarters. The lights flickered as the door slid shut behind me.

On the desk, a laptop screen glowed faintly, showing a single message: “Welcome to November 21. Begin the test.” My heart skipped. This wasn’t part of the base game.

Suddenly, the ship’s power cut out, plunging me into complete darkness save for the faint glow of the laptop. A distorted voice crackled through the comms:
"You should not be here."

I tried to leave the room, but the door refused to open. The laptop updated itself with a map—a crude rendering of the Orville with a blinking red dot deep in the ship's lower decks. No part of the game ever took players that far down. Curious (and a little terrified), I followed the map.

The deeper I went, the more the familiar Orville became... unfamiliar. Panels sparked, corridors bent at unnatural angles, and the background hum of the ship grew dissonant. Finally, I reached the marked location: a maintenance bay that didn’t exist in the base game.

Inside, a console displayed a countdown: 00:00:15 and ticking down. Above it, a shadowy figure flickered in and out of view. It wasn’t a character model I recognized—its features were blurred, its movements erratic, almost like a corrupted file.

As the countdown hit zero, the screen froze. The distorted voice returned, now louder, more insistent:
"This was not meant for you. Leave now."

The game crashed. Back on the Steam Workshop, "November 21 Test" was gone. My subscriptions list showed no trace of it, and my search history came up empty. It was as if the add-on had never existed.

To this day, I wonder: Was it a developer’s secret experiment? A rogue fan’s creepy Easter egg? Or something... else? Whatever it was, I haven’t dared to load up The Orville Interactive Fan Experience again.