Level 946, as it has been coined as by the M.E.G., is an indoor technological hub. It is regarded as one of, if not the most important technological achievement in the Backrooms. It is the home of the General Public Database, often shortened to the GPD, which is where all digital knowledge across almost the entire backrooms has stored been 1943.

Description

A few servers of Level 946.

In the current day, Level 946 is a complicatedly laid out series of thin hallways and conversely large rooms and auditorium spaces. The level does not have any anomalous properties or an entity presence, apart from the entities that are employed or live inside the GPD's residence areas. The rooms are modern in design, or at least as modern as they can realistically be, and are fully equipped all sorts of amenities for comfortable and permanent residency. Electricity is in constant supply, originating from generators operated by a variety of Backrooms anomalous objects, as are tamed and modified Window entities that have had their figures replaced with scenery to alleviate feelings of claustrophobia. Most importantly, heating and cooling equipment to regulate temperature and airflow through an otherwise stagnant complex of rooms. While this homeostasis greatly aids the inhabitants of the level, it is also intended to regulate the near hundreds of thousands of complex and sophisticatedly designed served blocks that are interconnected through a mix of wiring and remote connections.

While Level 946 is mapped, it is incredibly easy to become lost within it. The hallway and room layouts are often nonsensical, with entire complexes of rooms looping back on themselves through confusing design and not any non-Euclidean properties. The servers themselves are often incredibly messy, with wires and exposed hardware and, although rarer, GPD staff occupying space in the rooms to do maintenance and software examination.

To cut further preamble, these servers are what the entirety of the General Public Database’s archives are stored on, split between seven floors, each with hundreds and hundreds of rooms that are segmented into different sections. Most rooms are dedicated to the servers that the General Public Database is known for, which also make up a great deal of these sections of Level 946. The servers hold both digital and analogue information which has been digitally scanned or otherwise archived, such as ancient papers from The Lost or groups that lived and died before commonplace computer usage.

Server sections

Rows and rows of physical hard drives. Since the capture of this photo,³ these servers have been upgraded.

As the GPD primarily specialises in digital archival and contemporary writing, a majority of Level 946 is taken up by state of the art servers. Although outwardly looking like facsimile duplicates of ones found on Earth,⁴ these servers were originally custom built using the best accessible technology for 1943, and have been constantly repaired and revised for the past seventy six years. Because of this, while the servers have had inspiration taken from modern servers, and servers from other levels like Level 120 or Level 502, their likeness to real ones is mostly coincidental and not a result of Liminal Echo. Server distribution is micromanaged with a variety of sections and subsections. Entire floors are used for the documentation of levels, with certain floors, areas, and individual rooms being used for increasingly more specific subsections such as indoor levels, indoor levels that are modern, indoor levels that are modern and inhabited, etc. Including duplicate subcategories between sections, it is believed that there are other one thousand different areas of the GPD's servers.

As a benefit to being built from the ground up, the GPD's servers are fitted with many kinds of anomalous objects to aid in their data storage. Pockets are used to store more CPU's and SSD's than could traditionally be fit into a single tower, and while hundreds could be fit into each one and still adequately powered by the series of Lightning in a Bottle's, only a few of these and other hardware components are kept inside these pockets to ensure reliable operation and ease of maintaining. Wayback Machines are stripped for parts and built into almost every server to easily retrieve corrupted or deleted data by physically reverting the condition of the CPU's and SSD's to before the information was lost. Other objects used are Memory Jars, which are used to store the complete life's of deceased GPD residents, the (most likely) AI software from Office Terminals are used to adequately itemise new information using external advice, and Light Wires are used to instantly send data across Level 946's large and confusing layout.

A common misconception within the Backrooms, especially as almost everyone from the General Public Database's foundation has passed on, is that Level 946 is the origin for the Backroom's anomalous Wi-Fi. While it is true that The GPD were one of the first to discover these passive wavelengths across the Backrooms and utilise it to transmit information, it is not created nor transmitted from Level 946. That being said, through the help of benefactors, Wi-Fi waves have been modified across the Backrooms to grant access to the General Public Database on any electrical item made or brought through from the Frontrooms.

Non-server sections

A section of Level 946's object storage warehouses.

As well as digital work, much of the General Public Archive's preservation and cataloguing goes towards the safekeeping of physical material. Although the quantity of analog items is statistically outweighed by the number of online files, photos, videos, etc, there are still sections of each floor dedicated to things not online. Many types of electrical appliances are compartmentalised, even menial items like blenders and microwaves, as are at least one of each kind of computer, laptop, smartphone, smart watch, and similar kinds of internet accessing devices. Hundreds of rooms are dedicated to individual parts of larger machines, and tens of rooms are reserved for cataloguing and holding as many anomalous objects as possible. One-off objects or immovable objects, such as The Phonograph or Voidstone, are obviously not in these archives.

While the General Public Database keeps as many things digital as it can, anything that was written before digital technology became common⁵ also has their original paper documents saved. Documentation done by The Lost, the PUG, the Church of the Veiled, Emstable, and the early years of The Leaders are all archived and itemised, as are an estimated 49,000 photographs, film reels, paper advertisements, and recreations of logos.⁶ More specialised containment areas are also present, such as freezers for storing cell and meat samples, clothing racks for clothes, and purpose-built greenhouses for storing plants. As to be expected, some shelved objects are kept to a greater degree of security due to the danger they possess for the archives, mainly Reality Fresheners, Lightning in a Bottle's, and Anywhere Camera's. None of the items, regardless of danger to oneself or the databanks, are allowed to be taken from Level 946, and are only present for the sake of documentation and record keeping.

Due to ethical and safety concerns, with the exception of the aforementioned Windows, entities are not stored within Level 946, even if their documentations are. Despite that, entities do reside in Level 946. The GPD themselves employ sentient entities, such as Facelings and former members of the Backrooms Remodelling Company, and keep a handful of non-sentient entities as helpful pets to aid in level upkeep, particularly MVC's.⁷ The only entities that live in Level 946 that do not serve a tangible purpose are Blub Cats, Lucky Cranes and Swindlebirds, which all exist to serve the role of typical household pets.

An area for actual employees of the General Public Database to relax and have down time between shifts of work.

Although it is a small fraction of the total rooms, Level 946 has dedicated spaces for its population to reside and have breaks during work—regardless of if that work is to do with the database or not. There are individual and communal bedrooms, kitchen spaces, dining rooms, a handful of areas similar to that of a mall for trading, and many recreational places to keep inhabitants happy. As a sizeable portion of Level 946's population do not actually deal with the servers, many live exclusively in these residential and communal areas, growing crop or storing supplies from supply runs. There are also specialist quarters for the GPD's own expedition teams, which frequently leave with a myriad of equipment to try and find yet more levels, entities, objects, or encounter new phenomena.

The only other truly unique sections of Level 946 are the areas that individuals first arrive in when going to it. To ensure safety of the archives and its people, all rooms connected to entrances from other levels open into reception rooms that are staffed by some rudimentarily trained guards and a handful of receptionists and guides to help people who have arrived. As the GPD does not openly advertise its home base, but also does not keep it hidden, many people who arrive at Level 946 are clueless of where they have actually ended up. Many are either turned away or are given rooms to access the servers if they want them, anyone documenting the level are given guided tours, and anyone wanting habitation is given it after a few tests and forms to ensure good character and productivity. Due to the fact that the GPD has cemented itself as a neutrally aligned cornerstone in Backrooms societies for the better part of a decade, hostile parties going to Level 946 is rare, but not necessarily uncommon. However, all are dealt with as peacefully or non-lethally as possible, and no incursions have caused damage in over fifty years.

The GPD

A small room in Level 946 which has been created to allow cross-platform interaction between many individual servers and the General Public Database's.

While the General Public Database write a myriad of their own articles, our archival efforts extend to just about every single other database they can get access to.

Level 946, while being the largest human created archive of knowledge that is known to exist, it is not the largest. The Largest ever would be the one owned by the Corpus Cores in the Middlesorts, which operates on a similar basis to the GPD itself. It stores its own information and archives, but it also has access to hundreds of other databanks—including the GPD themselves. We are aware of

Using the GPD

History

At its initial founding and development, The General Public Database set up rudimentary places to eat and sleep while servers were being established. While these rooms were turned into servers and warehouses a few years down the line, when the General Public Database began to exponentially expand in the 50's and 60's the idea was revisited. The figureheads and those passionate about archival moved in immediately, and the general safeness of Level 946 attracted more.

Discovery by the M.E.G.

Future

Entrances And Exits

Entrances

As Level 946 was deliberately chosen to be the General Public Database's home turf due to its isolation, it only has a handful of known entrances, all of which lead to the reception sections. The main entrances are from Level 293 and Level 713, with an additional entrance from Level 495. To date, no other entrances are known.

Exits

While there are many areas to exit Level 946, there is only one destination that each of these exits lead to. As previously described, they all lead to Level 374.