!!!!!! 1 is not contained by IamFear12[]
I could hardly contain my excitement when I found my old Zoo Tycoon 2 game disk. It was one of my favorite games growing up. A fun park building game where you could build and manage your own zoo. The part I loved most was the amount of customization, I could design one exhibit hundreds of different ways. I immediately put the disk into the computer and it still worked like a charm. I then set to work creating a zoo on a rainforest map. Within a few hours I already created different exhibits for gibbons, elephants, and zebras. After building for a while, I noticed I had a few modded animals. I then remembered that years ago many people online had made various new animals and objects as extensions for the game. This sparked my curiosity, I wondered what else the community had made as time passed. After searching online and I learned that many users had made amazing realistic remakes of animals and objects throughout the game. I didn’t even count how many mods I installed but it was a lot.
Through my searching one Zoo Tycoon 2 forum caught my eye. The forum was called ZVD, I had know idea what the initials stood for. The forum itself was pretty much dead with only the administrator being active on the forum and posting topics from time to time. I pitied him because most of the topics were just him replying to himself. But I didn’t let that stop me from checking the downloads section on the site. The administrator had posted a download titled "Zoo Tycoon 2 Realistic Scenery Pack." The description only read, “this pack makes the gameplay more enjoyable and amusing.” I downloaded the file and dragged into my Zoo Tycoon 2 game folder without a moments hesitation.
I rebooted the game and was eager to see the changes the download had made. However, when I loaded my save file and looked around, nothing was altered or modified. It was only when I went into guest mode that I saw one major change. Instead of it being sunny, the sky was completely covered by storm clouds. The dark clouds were unsettling. It looked like a violent storm was about to erupt at any given moment. With sky being the only change, I grew annoyed that administrator had lied and took an ingame screenshot to use to complain against him for later. Then I continued on with my building my zoo, trying my best to ignore the sky.
The next hour, I had just finished laying out the boundary fences for a new exhibit for wildebeests and as I scrolled through the animals tab to select them, something strange caught my attention. In the animal section there was an outline of a dark figure. From the shape it, looked more like a man than an animal. Promptly I clicked on it, to see what exactly it was. The name of the mysterious creature just read, “!!!!!! 1.” Despite my click it was invisible. Thinking it was a glitch, I then thought that maybe if I placed it in the exhibit it would reappear so I could see it. I did exactly that and nothing happened. The exhibit was completely empty containing nothing at all. I went to guest mode expecting to see something but to no avail.
At this point I grew more frustrated and I knew that this particular creature must have come from that recent download file I obtained from that dead forum, ZVD. The administrated had not only lied but added a made-up creature and changed the sky in order to troll people. I immediately saved my game, and went back to my desktop to remove the file. Yet when I searched through my game folder, I could not find the download file anywhere. I tried different keywords but was still unable to locate the file.
With nothing left to do, I went back to playing the game. When I loaded my zoo back up, I immediately noticed something was wrong, a section of fence was broken on the wildebeest enclosure. It was the same exhibit I had placed the invisible animal in. A message bar at the top of the screen and read: “!!!!!! 1 is not contained. Guests will not view an animal that is not contained.”
I looked around the zoo and found nothing. So I just shook it off at some sort of weird glitch. I rebuilt the broken fences and continued working on my zoo. Within next hour, some strange occurrences stared happening throughout my play through. I noticed the zookeeper’s doors to my other exhibits would open by themselves, and some of my guests would randomly start running away as if a wild animal was near them. I continued to see the “!!!!!! 1 is not contained message” but there was nothing I could do. I had no way of finding the animal, whatever it was since it was invisible to me. I expected my zookeepers to hunt down the escaped creature and tranquilize it but they did nothing but tend to the other exhibits and sit on benches all day as usual. Back at home, it was getting late and I was going to call it a night. When I saw a complaint by one of my animals in the message box.
“Crested Gibbon 2 is not happy.” I went over to her and saw that she was running around back and forth in the exhibit. I clicked on her and her status read: “Running from !!!!! 1.”
I noticed the other male gibbon was displaying the same behavior I clicked on the animal and the status was the same. “running from !!!!! 1.” I began to feel a little uncomfortable, whatever I had installed was starting to mess up my zoo. I went into guest mode in their enclosure to see if I could see what was frightening them. I didn’t see anything but the gibbons running around and panicking. I thought if this problem continued tomorrow I will go ask for advice on a game forum. I saved the game and went to bed.
The following day I loaded my game and got back to work expanding my zoo. However, again something was amiss. My two gibbons were missing. There exhibit was empty and their fences remained unbroken. I looked around the map to see if perhaps they had escaped by running against their fences which is a common glitch but they were nowhere to be found. The game would have also notified me the second they had escaped with “Crested Gibbon is not contained” message but I received nothing. The only message that popped up was, “!!!!!! 1 is not contained. Guests will not view an animal that is not contained.”
I decided to go into guest mode and look in gibbon exhibit one more time, perhaps they were hidden or glitched somewhere in their enclosure? I looked around the trees and walked past the food their empty food dishes, and that’s when I saw it. One of the ferns in the middle of the exhibit appeared to be covered in blood. Baffled, a series of questions raced through my head. If my gibbons really were dead, wouldn’t I have found there carcasses by now? Normally when an animal is killed in the game they immediate turn into a meat carcass. But after searching my whole zoo both by sky and in guest mode I found no trace of the Gibbons. All that remained of them was the bloody fern in their exhibit.
I took pictures of the sky, fern, “!!!!!! 1 is not contained message”, then promptly left the game. I spent hours on different Zoo Tycoon 2 forums explaining what had happened in my zoo. I was either laughed at or dismissed entirely, being accused of making the entire story up even with the pictures. They found my claims farfetched because Zoo Tycoon 2 was a kids game and there is no way a bloody fern would be in it or let alone be created by anyone in the community. The only advice they suggested was that I delete that file I downloaded from ZVD. When I told them I had already tried that and couldn’t find the file, they again accused me of making the whole story up. At this point, the only option I had left was to continue playing and hope whatever was attacking my animals would eventually starve or disappear. I hesitated when staring the game, I remembered that whenever I returned to my zoo something would change. I clicked on the game and thought that whatever happens I could easily replace the animals or start a new a zoo on a different map.
As soon I got in I was greeted with message, “Zebra 2 has escaped, guests will not view an animal that is not escaped.” Sure enough, one of the zebras had escaped. I could see him running across the concrete path as guests ran away panicking. I picked the zebra and dragged him over to his enclosure. The fences were broken but I could see the other zebra on the ground still inside and sleeping. I placed the escaped zebra back in and was about the replace the broken fence when I saw red on the sleeping zebra. I zoomed in and was horrified. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The zebra was dead, I could see red scratches and even guts visible on its body. I stared at the corpse in disbelief, how could this all happen when I wasn’t playing the game? I took a picture of the zebra’s corpse, perhaps people would believe me now when they see my dead animals instead of a meat carcass in the game!
The message then repeated, “!!!!! 1 is not contained. Guests will not view an animal that is not contained.” I then thought about my other animals and quickly ran to their exhibits. I saw there fences were broken into and the same fate befell my elephants and wildebeests. All their bodies were lifeless and torn open. In all my years of playing Zoo Tycoon 2, I had never seen anything like this. As I looked at the elephants corpse in guest mode. I saw something dart over the hill outside the exhibit. I gave chase, when I got to the top of the hill I saw a dark man in the distance. It turned around and looked my direction. It was staring directly at me with its piercing red eyes and blood covered hands from my animals. I could somehow feel its eyes looking beyond the screen. I took the game’s camera and zoomed in on it.
As soon as I snapped the picture, a new message box popped up, “!!!!! 1 is not happy.” It started to walk in my direction, I tried to get back into sky mode but the game wouldn’t let me. !!!!! 1 started getting closer. I held down the shift key and darted for the zoo entrance. When I turned around I saw !!!!! 1 sprinting towards me at full speed. With no options left, I shutdown my whole computer holding down the power button, right as he stopped in front of me. Its red eyes staring into mine.
The day after, I went to the ZVD forum to demand an explanation but soon found out that the administrator had deleted the whole forum. I went to other zoo tycoon forums, asking around but nothing came out of it. A few days later, I deleted my zoo, and tried to start a new one on a different map but before I built anything I was met with the message, ““!!!!! 1 is not contained.” I stored my game disc back in its case and stills remains there to this day.