*** Patrick ***
Patrick walked into a nondescript studio apartment of decorated in a uniform ash grey. Only the red door that he was currently exiting and the black 3x6 table. A green notification light blinked on the table. Patrick sat in the table’s single chair and touched the table. The notification light disappeared and text scrolled onto the table.
‘huh, it feels more like stone than glass, weird’.
“ASSESSMENT AGREEMENT”
Sign below to acknowledge that you understand that your participation is voluntary and you may leave at any time via the red door.
Patrick signed; thinking ‘seems reasonable’.
The table’s screen changed to contain a long, scrollable, wall of legalese. On first glance it looked like a boiler plate hiring contract. Given the weirdness of the situation though Patrick buckled down and read through it carefully. Then read through it again before signing. As part of a pysch class in college he had participated in several user studies and this contract similarly went to great lengths to reassure him that no harm would come to him.
‘This is all pretty sketchy, but it seems the only way out is through. The red door is an option, but I’ll save that as a last resort.’
A checklist appeared next with tasks related to exploring the apartment. Patrick tried swiping, tapping, and randomly gesturing on the table to try and skip them in vain. Resignedly he went through the checklist of exploring every nook and cranny of the apartment.
It wasn’t a total waste of time with a few items of note. A small home gym replacing the kitchenette was a bit odd. He also discovered a locked door that he hadn’t noticed when he first entered. The most surprising discovery was a wardrobe sized empty cabinet labeled ‘Deliveries’. After completing the “open Deliveries cabinet” task, there were two subtasks: “Order and Get Breakfast”. The breakfast options were a variety of flavors of milkshakes. Patrick chose a mint-vanilla shake, then the Deliveries cabinet door immediately shone with a light green glow. The previously empty cabinet now had a large thermos with a thick straw.
Taking a sip, “Not bad; how did it get there though? Just one more weird thing.” Patrick muttered under his breath. It occurred to him that he was unnaturally calm about how in-stride he was reacting to everything. The apartment “tutorial” just reinforcing how game-like it seemed and how detached he was feeling.
Walking back to the table it now showed a list of daily goals, a clock, a daily calendar, and a shopping menu. The time read 0:4:5:b:3, the last digit ticked up each second. Instead of rolling over at 9 though it continued through the letters, a through f before rolling over, and the ‘b’ in the time changing to a ‘c’.
‘huh, I wonder if all of the time units are in hexadecimal, base-16, instead of decimal, base-10. ‘
The daily calendar showed sixteen hours labeled 0 through 9, and then with the letters a through f. The calendar only showed the current day, and two events: “meet and greet neighbors” from 6 until 9 and then “sleep” at the b hour. Exploring the interface a bit Patrick found a settings option to display the time using decimal numbers instead of hex. The new configuration showed the “sleep” event at hour 11.
The shopping menu required “coins”, and Patrick currently had 0 coins.
‘It looks like I can earn coins by completing the different goals.’
The goals were all relatively simple; either exercise related things that could be done in the small gym, or skill based games that could be played on the black table. The only goal that was locked was “compete in blackjack tournament”.
‘That one must be related to meeting the neighbors.’
About an hour and a half later Patrick had completed a few tasks, he reopened the shop menu and could now see some different options.
‘Nothing too exciting in the shop, might as well get some cookies and take a break. Not too long before the meeting.’
The Deliveries cabinet lit up, and Patrick retrieved his snack. After eating a few, he took a shower and got cleaned up. Putting on a fresh pair of sweatpants and t-shirt from the closet full of them. He sat back down shortly before six and waited for the door to unlock.
—-
At six sharp the door simply disappeared, becoming translucent. On the other side of the doorway was a large room, with one large table that had ten chairs in the middle of the room, and a half dozen smaller 4 person tables spread around the edges. There were no windows; entering the room Patrick saw seven other doorways similar to the one to his apartment. Looking back he could see into his room, but all of the other rooms were dark. Three other men were entering the room, each from their own doorways.
Everyone migrated towards the center of the room and made awkward attempts at small talk. Five minutes later another three men had joined. Scott raised his voice with a smirk, “ahem, I now call this Star Trek convention to order.” Some snide comments about Star Wars versus Trek were made. Scott’s joke stemmed from everyone looking like middle-aged nerds. Scott continued, “I know this is weird, but let’s introduce ourselves and then brainstorm a bit about what we can do.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
In addition to Patrick and Scott, the rest of the neighbors were: Fred, Erin, Syd, Caleb, and Harvey.
After the introductions Fred, a 60ish year old with a stock build and a big bushy beard of rusty colored hair, said, “Nice to meet you all, I think the main thing is for us all to do what we can to get through this abduction.”
Patrick replied, “My question is if the government really participated in this, and why? Is this some sort of black-ops site, and why us?”
“The nukes are definitely why the government turned us over.” said Erin, who could have passed as Fred’s brother, except with longer hair and a fuller beard.
“You lost me, what do nukes have to do with anything?”
“How did you miss the US trying to nuke the dragon?”
“I still have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Three days ago the US sent 73 nukes to try to take out the dragon, and got stomped for it.”
Disagreements broke out about how long ago the nuclear attack occurred. After a minute Fred spoke up, “Quick question, let’s go around and have everyone say what day they were taken on.”
It quickly became clear that the kidnappings occurred over a two week period. Patrick was the first, 16 days ago, and Harvey was the last. Sydney spoke, “There is no way to know how long it has been since we were all unconscious and everyone was awoken today.” After several minutes of people trying to lead the discussion in different directions Patrick asked Erin, “So what happened with the attack?”
“It failed, the dragon ate them.”
“How?”
“That’s about as much detail as anyone knows, a couple of hours after that the internet became useless.”
“The dragon attacked the internet? It was designed back in the 60s to withstand nuclear war.”
Fred said, “The internet still worked, just anything related to the dragon was throttled by all of the social media and news platforms as disinformation.”
Scott added, “The dragon used some sort of tractor beam to collect all of the missiles, and then it literally ate them, before spitting out 73 laser beams in retaliation.”
“They weren’t lasers,” said Erin peevishly. “Lasers are made up of light.”
“They looked like lasers on all of the videos,” Scott replied.
“Lasers can not pass through the planet to hit something on the other side.”
Patrick interjected, “you’ve lost me.”
Erin continued, “Some of the targets were on the other side of the globe and there was no evidence that the beam passed through the whole planet.”
Fred asked, “So what were they?”
“No one knows, but definitely not lasers. I call them death rays.”
Harvey chimed in, “To me the laser/death rays weren’t the scary part. Within seconds they targeted and took out the top 73 officials in the US chain of command. No matter where they were in the world. poof, all gone at the same time. Some were in foreign countries, others in underground bunkers, in aircraft, and one was even on a sub. Assuming the dragon had not planned that before the attack, to figure out and locate all of those people in a few minutes is what is really scary.”
The conversation lapsed for a few moments after that. Breaking the silence Erin looked at Patrick and said, “That’s why the governments turned us over, because, to stick with the theme Scott suggested, ‘resistance is futile’.”
Fred spoke up, “This may sound strange, but I am glad to see all of you here. We are all prisoners here, but it is reassuring to me that I am not alone. My suggestion is that until we have more information that we participate in this ‘interview’ process.”
Everyone else expressed similar sentiments, to varying degrees. There was a general sense of unease with the situation, but no one had a better idea.
People started talking about the goals from the checklist and what they had purchased through the shop. So far only snacks of various types were all that anyone could see. Everyone else had also had a breakfast shake.
After 45 minutes of conversation Caleb spoke up with a tired smile, “Sorry to interrupt, but I am running out of energy, how about we play our required Blackjack tournament, then us older folks can get to bed, and you whipper snappers can stay and plot out your escape.”
Caleb already had the cards, only two decks though, so it was agreed that the cards would be shuffled after each hand. Twenty one hands were played so everyone had three turns as the dealer. Sydney handed out a thousand points of chips to everyone, and Caleb reviewed the house rules they were going to use. Everyone, except the dealer, would make a bid before the cards were dealt. Then after the cards were dealt players could choose to ‘stand’ ( not take any more cards ), ‘hit’ ( be dealt another card, maybe more ), ‘double’ ( get exactly one more card and double their bet ), or ‘split’ ( if the first two cards were the same, play two hands with an additional bet ).
The tournament got off to an uneven start, but after a few hands everyone forgot about their situation for a bit. Harvey got off to an early lead through aggressive bidding, but fell back to the middle of the pack by the end. Sydney played a very conservative strategy of always betting the minimum. Patrick and Erin were relatively inexperienced and bet randomly with some unforced errors in how they played. Caleb and Scott traded the lead several times, with Scott winning with twenty three hundred points.
After the last hand the table came to life in front of Scott with a prompt asking him to select a game for the next day. The list contained forty three options. People chimed in with their opinions as Scott scrolled back and forth over the list. Finally he chose Settlers of Catan. The next menu showed options for beverages for the group. Scott immediately chose Vienna Lagers before any comments could be made. The ‘Deliveries’ cabinet next to the game shelf immediately lit up. Erin was closest and opened it revealing 8 pints of the drink. Sydney went over and he and Erin handed the drinks out.
The small talk was a bit stilted, but less awkward than it had been at the beginning. There was a lot of complaining, speculating, and theorizing.
Caleb was the first to leave, staying long enough to be sociable, but clearly worn out from the day. Patrick left at that time too. The ‘neighbors’ seemed ok, but he wanted to process what he learned about the attack on the dragon. He was the only one in the group that had been taken before the attack. It sounded like the whole world was turned upside down afterwards, and he just wanted to be alone for a bit.
— 7:43 —
Returning to his room Patrick was mentally exhausted. Meeting new people always sapped the energy out of him, but everything was just too overwhelming.
Forcing himself to get up he went over to check the time on the table. ‘I need to get a clock or a watch or something.’ It was 8:07, just barely over halfway through the strange 16-hour day.
‘I need to do something. Doing nothing won’t change a thing, I need to do something.’
One of the daily tasks was to go five miles on the treadmill. Patrick had gotten to almost three miles before the meeting. Patrick wasn’t an athlete, with an average build for his 5’8” height. He walked every day with his Husky Charlie. On the treadmill he spent the first ten minutes fretting about how Charlie was doing. Being in motion always helped Patrick think. He remembered that the night he was taken he was going to have supper with his son David and his girlfriend Allison. ‘David would certainly check on Charlie if I went missing.’
Patrick walked, and walked, feeling guilty about all of the complications his abduction would make. He knew he wasn’t responsible, but still felt guilty.
Patrick walked, and walked, wondering if he would ever see them again.
Patrick walked, and walked, and walked to try to get away from what was happening. And when it felt like it was closing in he would run until he was out of breath. Still he kept on walking though.
Eventually he couldn’t go any further. The table showed that it was 11:36. Patrick was now physically exhausted too. The ‘Deliveries’ cabinet was glowing, with another shake inside. Patrick didn’t realize how hungry his body was until he took a sip. He slurped down the rest of it.
