Chapter 6: Lunchtime, Advancement, Writing on the Wall
White walls. White floors. White ceiling with fluorescent lights. White plastic table and chair. White refrigerator. White pantry. Black Camera. Silver Doors. Black deactivated panels.
~[PLEASE EAT. THEN WE CAN BEGIN.]~
Lilith was exhausted. She was dragging her feet on the floor. Her white socks were already beginning to crust on the bottom. Her white shirt was wet with sweat stains; she took it off and dropped it on the table. She paused, pulled her hand out of her bra, and tossed it onto her shirt.
The fridge had two items again. One large glass of orange juice stood next to an identical glass of clear violet liquid. Lilith placed them on the table one at a time.
The pantry contained three things; a BLT on wheat toast, a single serving size bag of chips, and a banana. Lilith recognized this meal, too; it was the lunch she ate nearly every day at work.
"I know you can afford to give me better food than this," she said, too tired to fear or care, her consciousness teetering on the edge of hysteria.
~[OUR RESEARCH RESULTS INDICATE THAT A STUDENT PRODUCES BETTER RESULTS WHEN THEY MAINTAIN SOME CONSISTENCY FROM THEIR FORMER LIFE. PLEASE ENJOY YOUR PROVIDED CONSISTENCY.]~
Lilith sighed as she picked up the banana and placed it in the crook of her left arm. She lobbed the chips onto the sandwich plate and picked it up.
~[PLEASE DRINK THE BEVERAGE FIRST.]~
Lilith slid her plate onto the table. "Then tell me what's in it."
~[YOUR BEVERAGE SERVES MANY FUNCTIONS, THE MOST IMPORTANT OF WHICH ARE YOUR FLEXIBILITY, ENERGY, AND ABILITY TO BE DIVIDED WITHOUT SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH. EACH BEVERAGE ENHANCES THESE ABILITIES."]~
"So if I didn't drink this, I would die? I could just let you kill me."
~[YOUR ENERGY AND MOBILITY RUN OUT. YOUR DIVISION ABILITY CANNOT. YOU ARE HERE TO PRODUCE RESULTS. DRINK THE BEVERAGE.]~
Lilith stared down the camera while she sat down. She picked up the glass with the intent to sip and taste, but could not stop drinking once the violet liquid touched her tongue. Her mind screamed at her in panic, telling her to have as much of it as she could. Only a second passed after the last drop was drained before her addict-fit disappeared.
She felt rejuvenated. Her body was relaxed, her mind felt clear. Then her stomach rumbled. She cleared her plate, only impeded by the struggle of opening the chips and holding the sandwich with one hand. Lilith used the time to think through what she heard.
("Research showed that a student learns with consistency...research on who? Are there other students? On top of that, there's the 'beverage.' They know it works and what it does. How else would they know but by using it on other people?")
Lilith peeled the banana held in the bend of her arm. It went back and forth between hand and elbow to bite and peel.
("That addict feeling when drinking it was...frightening. It felt like that odd deja vu feeling I kept getting in the test chambers, that feeling like I know something I don't know.")
She dropped the peel on her plate and drank half the glass of orange juice.
("...can I really not lose the division ability? Does that only last while I'm in this crazy facility? Or does this last...well, forever?")
Lilith looked to the camera.
("Will I be here forever?")
She clenched her hands. One of them brushed the table. The other balled up her shirt. Lilith turned her head to her severed hand and froze.
Her shirt had been covered in discolored splotches from her sweat. It had sat under her own hand like a file she needed under a paperweight throughout her meal. But now it was as clean and burning white as it was when she first started this...
("...experiment. I'm in a sterile, no-variable testing facility like a rat in a cage. Can they clean me, too? Have they already?")
Too many questions beckoned in her mind. None of them were intelligible. They crammed her ability to think like a crowd of men all pushing to be first through a door designed for only one.
~[PLEASE REATTACH ANY DIVIDED PARTS YOU MAY HAVE, THEN WE CAN BEGIN.]~
Lilith looked down at her wrist in a daze. She pushed it lightly against her hand. The pieces almost snapped when coming back together. She gripped her shirt and put it on.
She turned to face a set of elevator doors as they slid open. The black panel above it activated. A timer was counting down from five minutes. Her number, which was at 500 when she started this never-ending ‘instructional facility,’ was down to 274.
(“The Minotaur...that evil chance puzzle...I had large drops after both of those rooms...and the worst of the deja vu flashes during them...so many scenes of my own death and dismemberment, too tangible to be mere hallucinations...”)
The answer to what the number represented was right in front of her, but she refused to consider it. To admit that answer to herself would be equal to admitting that she was in hell on earth, doomed to insane tortures until her final breath. She shunned it and all of the questions that brayed at her for responses. Lilith walked into the next room. Her efforts to stave off answers of madness did not work for long.
Lilith’s beginner classes were over.
——————————
(“That circle...it’s blue...when was the last time I’ve seen that color? Wait...this room...”)
Four glassy black pillars towered almost to the ceiling of the square room. Memories of the Minotaur flashed through her mind, grisly and corrupting, before the truth sifted through the pain and hit her; she was back in her first classroom. Lilith turned to look back into the room she was in. The doors were closed.
(“Was that the room where I woke up to this...this...is it a loop? Is there no exit?”)
~[PLEASE STAND IN THE CENTER OF THE CIRCLE, THEN WE CAN BEGIN.]~
One step dragged after another. She had the energy to run, to sprint; yet, the mental weight of her literal and emotional captivity restrained Lilith.
(“Please... just be stretching... something sane... anything but more half-truth memories.”)
A projector (had it been there? had it appeared?) flashed on, coating the pure white tiles with numbers and graphs and data in a static image. Lilith turned to face the video and stood stiff, shoulders scrunched, fingers twitching. Her eyes grew wide gradually at the information written on the wall.
She saw the number 274, highlighted blue, at the top left. According to the color key, Lilith “Exceeded Expectations”. This only heightened her growing horror, all spawned from the two words that proceeded the number she had come to recognize as her own;
“Lives Remaining: 274”
~[CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING THE ONE OUT OF EVERY TWENTY-SIX-POINT-ONE-NINE STUDENTS TO REACH THE ADVANCED LESSONS.]~
Her legs could no longer support her. She kneeled by flopping to the ground. Her hands kept her upright, barely breaking her fall.
(“How many students have done this? How many people have been trapped here?”)
Her eyes darted around the screen in front of her as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
(“...what happened to the others? The ones who ran out of lives before getting this far?”)
She breathed in labored gasps. Hysterics threatened to set in to wring tears and sobs from her.
~[ONE OUT OF EVERY TWO-POINT-EIGHT-ZERO-ZERO-SEVEN-TWO STUDENTS WHO REACH ADVANCED LESSONS WITH AT LEAST 100 LIVES WILL COMPLETE ADVANCED LESSONS AND BEGIN THEIR EXAMS.]~
The panic and horror festered inside as the statistics ran through her mind. One of 26 made Advanced courses. One of every 307 made it to Exams. One of every 1,560 made it to the Champions Gauntlet.
Only one out of every 36,398 students completed the Gauntlet.
The words in Lilith’s thoughts shattered under the insurmountable weight of mental anguish. Her cries of sorrow became bellows of rage. She screamed, beating her fists on the floor, spit flying from her gaping maw of madness, blood rushing to her face and boiling like sunburn under her skin. She faced her head skyward and yelled with everything in her lungs, an insignificant mortal challenging the gods.
“WHAT IS THIS FUCKING PLACE? WHOOO ARRRE YOOOU?”
She slammed both fists onto the ground. The shock traveled up both arms to her shoulders with mad tingling of pain she could barely feel.
“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?”
The answer she received silenced her rage in a fleeting moment. The vacuum left by the instantaneous withdrawal of carnal emotion left Lilith dazed.
~[WHY? YOU CHOSE TO BE HERE TO PRODUCE RESULTS FOR US.]~
(“I...I chose this? When did I...”)
Lilith sat in the blue circle with her eyes fixed on the ground but focused on nothing. She racked her brain, trying to think of when she agreed to such insanity.
(“...what did I do before I would up here? What was my life before this...this...”)
Lilith tried to remember what she could. She saw herself being taken by two men and stabbed with a needle that knocked her out. The dot-sized wound was still on her arm, unchanged from when she woke up. She remembered everything in the classrooms...
(“...but what about before? My life before this?”)
Lilith could not remember. Her earliest memory was of her kidnapping. Nothing else came to her, almost like her life began the moment she was taken. Distraught, distracted, and depleted, she offered no resistance to Mr. Logic when he spoke again. The projector shut off at the same moment.
~[IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO CONTINUE PRODUCING RESULTS. ENTER THE NEXT CLASSROOM, THEN WE CAN BEGIN.]~
With the grace of a zombie, Lilith got to her feet and shambled to the new open door. Her eyes and mind knew her surroundings but didn’t register them. She fought her own memory for information it would not or could not yield.
She stayed in this trance state until her next test chamber began. Lilith was unaware of how she got there when Mr. Logic spoke up to give her her next task. She listened to the instructions without moving, without thinking, like a living mannequin, like a puppet without anyone pulling her strings.