Secret Facility

Ah, let me tell you a story—a story as old as the bubble itself, as whispered and tangled as the wind through the red cliffs of Harley Dome. It’s about a place, a place as strange and secretive as the town’s twisted fate: the Secret Facility.

Now, the official name—if you were to go by the dusty old signs and the yellowing papers—is Formerly Secret Facility. A name the labcoats gave it after the Incident, thinking themselves clever. And maybe they were. Maybe there’s something funny about a secret that's not really a secret anymore, sitting there on the edge of town for all to see. But to the Domers, it’s always been Secret Facility. It’s what they’ve always called it, long before the bubble closed them off from the world.

You can’t live in Harley Dome without knowing about the Secret Facility. Some say it’s the heart of the town, beating silently behind its thick concrete walls, while others swear it’s the source of all their troubles. Maybe it’s both. But here’s what everyone agrees on: without that strange, shadowed place, life in Harley Dome would be much harder—if it would even be possible at all.

Long before the Incident, when the roads out of Harley Dome still led to the far corners of the earth, the Secret Facility was already there. No one really knew what the labcoats were up to back then, but it didn’t matter much. The racers and thrill-seekers had their eyes on the dirt tracks, the cliffs, and the dusty berms, not on the folks in white coats. Every now and again, a burst of light would flash from the Facility at odd hours, or a strange hum would rattle through the desert air, but the town turned a blind eye. The races were all that mattered.

But then The Incident happened.

One day, without warning, the bubble appeared—sealing off the town, warping the roads, and bending gravity itself. That was the day everything changed. People whispered that the Facility had caused it all. "Some experiment gone wrong," they said. “Some portal they tried to open and couldn’t close,” others claimed. There are those who swear to this day that the labcoats knew the bubble was coming, that they’d planned it all from the start. Conspiracies buzzed through Harley Dome like flies in the heat, each one wilder than the last.

But for all the distrust, for all the rumors and strange tales, the town couldn’t deny one thing: after the bubble closed into a perfect, all-encompasing sphere, it was the Secret Facility that kept them going.

You see, the labcoats might be quiet and strange, but they’re clever. When gasoline dried up, and no more shipments came through the looping roads, it was the Secret Facility that helped the Domers rig up gravity-powered machines. It was their generators that kept the Jumbotron running, their strange technologies that helped the Domers navigate the warped landscape, where east and west blended into one in a way the Beatles never could have imagined. The Facility still hummed with secrets, but those secrets kept the lights on, kept the water flowing, and kept the rigs rolling faster and faster with upgraded mods.

But even as they rely on the Facility, the Domers keep their distance. Some nights, when the moon hangs low and red over the desert, you can see the Facility from the town square—its dark silhouette against the cliffs, like an eye watching over the town. Folks say strange things happen out there. Some claim they’ve seen figures wandering the desert at night, labcoats that aren’t quite human, their eyes glowing faintly in the dark. Others tell stories of machines inside the Facility—machines that think and speak in ways no person should. A few brave souls have tried to get closer, to sneak inside and see what really goes on behind those walls. But none of them ever came back with answers. [Editor’s Note: You put Gary the Elder in front of a campfire and he spools out yarn like a sheep with a spinning wheel, but the truth of the matter is that Secret Facility is quite open about what it’s up to. Anyone can show up for a tour at any time. As far as anyone has been able to tell, Secret Facility is basically just a machine shop, some super-advanced house-sized 3D printers, a chemistry lab, some generators, and an impressive sci-fi and fantasy library.]

And so, the Secret Facility remains—beloved and distrusted in equal measure. Without it, the town might collapse under the weight of its isolation. But with it, the town lives under a shadow, always wondering what the labcoats are up to, what new mysteries lurk in the hallways of that strange place.

Some say the labcoats are still working on a way out, a way to reverse the Incident and free Harley Dome from the bubble. Others say they’ve grown used to the bubble, and now they study it like a caged animal, content to keep the town locked away forever. No one really knows for sure. But every night, as the Jumbotron flickers to life, casting its warm glow over the town square, everyone is aware of the uncertain alliance with Secret Facility. What is the truth? Who’s to say. No one knows better than the Domers that the truth, much like the roads leading out of town, has a way of looping back on itself.