ZOOM BACKGROUNDS TRANSPORTED MEETING PARTICIPANTS TO ACTUAL LOCATIONS
Video conferencing glitch sends remote workers to exotic destinations permanently
SILICON VALLEY, CA – Corporate executives are scrambling to cover up what tech insiders are calling the most catastrophic software malfunction in history, as dozens of remote workers have vanished from their home offices only to materialize thousands of miles away in the exact locations of their Zoom virtual backgrounds.
The nightmare began last Tuesday during what should have been routine quarterly planning meetings across multiple Fortune 500 companies. Within minutes of logging into their video calls, employees using popular Zoom background filters found themselves physically transported to beaches in Bora Bora, mountaintops in Switzerland, and even the surfaces of alien planets.
Margaret Chen, a 34-year-old marketing coordinator from Des Moines, experienced the phenomenon firsthand during her 9 AM team standup. “I selected that tropical beach background as a joke because it was snowing outside,” Chen told this reporter via satellite phone from what appears to be an uncharted island in the Pacific. “Suddenly I felt this weird tingling sensation, like static electricity, and then I was actually standing in the sand with palm trees swaying around me. My laptop was gone, but I could still hear my boss asking about the quarterly projections.”
Tech industry whistleblowers claim the incident stems from a secret partnership between Zoom and a shadowy government research facility known only as “Project Quantum Mirror.” According to leaked documents obtained by Weekly World News, the collaboration was designed to test experimental teleportation technology disguised as innocent video conferencing software.
Dr. Harrison Blackwell, a theoretical physicist who claims to have worked on classified teleportation experiments before going into hiding, explained the terrifying science behind the glitch. “What Zoom stumbled into is quantum entanglement at a macro level,” Blackwell revealed during a clandestine meeting in an undisclosed location. “The background replacement algorithm wasn’t just swapping pixels – it was creating genuine quantum tunnels between the user’s location and the background image’s source coordinates. When the system overloaded, these digital portals became physical gateways.”
The corporate cover-up machine kicked into high gear immediately after the first disappearances were reported. Zoom’s official statement dismissed the incidents as “isolated technical difficulties” and claimed affected users simply experienced “temporary connection issues.” However, family members of the vanished workers paint a drastically different picture.
At least 47 employees from companies including MegaCorp Industries, Synergy Solutions, and Global Dynamics Inc. remain missing and scattered across the globe. Some, like Chen, ended up in tropical paradises. Others weren’t so fortunate. Three accountants from Phoenix reportedly materialized inside an active volcano after selecting a “lava world” background, while a customer service team from Minneapolis found themselves stranded in Antarctica after choosing a winter wonderland filter.
The few who have managed to return tell harrowing tales of their ordeals. James Rodriguez, a software developer who spent six days trapped in what he describes as “a generic office space that existed in some kind of interdimensional void,” claims he encountered other displaced workers who had been missing for weeks.
“There were people there who disappeared during Zoom calls months ago,” Rodriguez whispered nervously. “They told me the backgrounds aren’t random stock photos – they’re portals to real places, alternate dimensions, and locations that might not even exist in our reality. The company knows, and they’re using us as unwilling test subjects.”
Meanwhile, federal authorities have launched a classified investigation into the disappearances, though official sources refuse to acknowledge the supernatural elements of the case. Anonymous intelligence operatives suggest the incident may be connected to foreign espionage efforts to weaponize American video conferencing technology.
As remote workers worldwide continue to vanish during routine video calls, one question remains: How many more innocent employees will be sacrificed in the name of corporate profits and government secrecy before this digital nightmare ends?
The characters and events depicted in this story are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is unintentional and purely coincidental.
