2023-08-04

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Subject 1

And then, I’m here. Off-white walls, off-white floor, off-white ceiling emitting diffuse warm light. One comfortable chair, in which I’m sitting. Surprisingly comfortable, I realise. It fits my body perfectly, a glove for the fingers that are my head, torso, legs, and arms. I wish my office had a chair this good, I wish my car…

A momentary feeling of nausea. Guilt. Pain.

Then, it passes and again I’m in the comfortable room with the unremarkable ceiling, walls, and floor. With the chair.

I go to stand and find myself quite capable. I’m not sure why that surprises me, but I shrug the feeling off. The room is ten by ten paces, and half that in height. A faint background hum fills the silence, but otherwise nothing. No echo. Strange for an empty room. It smells… unremarkably neutral. I realise then that there is no door and I feel mildly uncomfortable at this fact. When I turn, I find am mistaken. Strange, I was looking in that direction earlier and it was a blank wall. Now there is a door. I turn back around and stare, because behind me is now a table. Of the same oak as the chair, but without the padding. Because it’s a table.

And on the table is a large red button.

“Is this a joke?” I ask the room. Definitely no echo.

“No, quite serious,” a woman responds, stepping forward. Presumably, she entered through the door while my back was turned, but I hadn’t heard anything. The woman is average height, average colour, and with an average face. Not ugly, not beautiful, maniacal, angry, sorrowful, or happy. Simply neutral, with an accent like mine.

“Uh, hi there, I’m—”

“Aaron Strauss. Yes, I know. My name is Motif, and I want you to push that button,” she replies, pointing at the button. Red, just like…

It’s everywhere, coating the windscreen, the road. I look down at my hands and the skin is.

Normal, I’m just in the room. Here, with Motif. She waits patiently, then raises an eyebrow.

“Well?”

“Well what?” I finally manage.

“Will you?”

“Push the button?”

“Yes.”

I look at the button. I look at Motif. I look at the button again. I shrug.

“I don’t see why I should. It looks important. Big red buttons aren’t usually supposed to be messed with.”

She cocks her head, maintains the neutral look. But the eyes change. More emotional now. I’d say determined, at a guess. She goes to speak, but I interrupt.

“I could be tempted though, for a trade.”

“What do you want?” she says, unfazed.

“Three answers for three questions: where am I? Who are you? And what does the button do?”

I feel like I should be more unnerved by this experience, but I don’t know for sure. I don’t think this experience – room, button, woman – is normal, but I also don’t know that. But, I do know that’s something I should know. I think. It all gets a bit much, and I sit down…

Into the grass by the roadside. The blood is all around me, violent smears laughing on the road seal. Halfway down the hill, off to the side, is an upturned car. It looks familiar, its lights…

The same colour as those in the room, in which I sit. And Motif speaks.

“You’re in the room. I am Motif. I don’t know, but I bet it’s something.”

Three terrible answers.

“For three terrible questions,” she replies to my thoughts, unsettling. Her expression seems to jump then and settles as a feeling of calm washes over my body. The same calm as when…

I brought the gun to my head, and looking away from the bodies, I squeeze the trigger.

Subject 1: Subject inappropriate and scenario flawed. Revision needed.

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Subject 35

The room around me is boring. Blah-blah walls, floors, and ceiling tiles. The chair is good though, like a proper office one. None of that cheap plastic crap. There’s a table across from me, a door in the wall behind. I get up and go straight for the table because there’s a big button on it. Red…

Just like the stop sign that I blew through, right into the path of the truck. Huh, I must be dead. Or in a nut house. Maybe that’s the same thing.

It really is an impressive button. Like the big emergency stops at work. I almost pushed one once, just for the thrill of it. But I’d get a yelling if they caught me. Lost machine time is lost money. Yada yada yada.

“So what is it? Dead or crazy or both?”

“That depends on you,” comes a reply, unexpected.

Normal looking woman, between the door and the chair. Someone you’d pass in the street and not think about twice. Not threatening, cute, gross, or anything, really.

“On the crazy front, or the dead front.”

“Both.”

I nod, a little thrown.

“Name?”

“Motif. And you’re Paul Riggman. Paul, I would like you to push the button.”

I look from her to the button and back.

“What does it do?”

“Something, I’m sure.”

I laugh and shake my head.

“Hey, I’m not a complete idiot. Not always. What does the button do? You can’t expect me to do something without knowing the consequences.”

“Did you know the consequences of failing to stop?”

I laugh again; this one is fun, despite the looks.

“Not especially, but I’ve got some idea now. Think of it as a learning experience. I’m a changed man.”

Motif’s face twitched from one unreadable to another and back. I think I’ve annoyed her.

“Tell you what, Motey, I’ll cut you a deal. Keep me alive, stop me being crazy, and I’ll hit your button,” I smile at her. “Deal?”

She nods, and I push the button.

Subject 35: Improvements to scenario were effective. Subject pushed the button after first securing a deal with Motif, taken on faith.

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Subject 792:

I find myself in a room, in a comfortable chair. It looks like some disused part of the home, unfurnished and unloved. But there’s not a spec of dust. And not even the lingering hint of urine, faeces, vomit, or suffering. The smells I had gotten so used to, in the small but ever-present nature of hospice care. It hits me and I laugh. So this is death, then. A boring bureaucratic, off-white room. Well, at least it’s not fire and brimstone. I sit up, then stand up, marvelling at my own health. I must be dead; my chest no longer hurts, and I can breathe again. The memory of rushing black comes to me briefly, the memory of my demise. It then fades. I must be dead.

“Alastair Terbes?” a voice calls, and I look up to see a young woman, standing behind the chair. She looks like all the nurses, blended into one. A real average.

“That’s me,” I say and stick out a hand. She takes it after a moment, and shakes. Skin is cool and very soft. My nerves get the better of me and I hear my mouth run. “Are you some sort of angel, or are you some sort of receptionist for Hell’s waiting room? Am I dead? What’s your name?”

Her expression doesn’t change, but the eyes do. Showing what, I’m not quite sure.

“I am Motif. And no, I am not an angel, or a receptionist. This is not hell. Have you seen the button?”

The question throws me, and I follow her pointed finger to the other side of the room. There’s a small wooden table and on it a large red button. I make a face.

“Is this some sort of trick? What does that do?”

She cocks her head at me, replies.

“I’m not sure. Don’t you want to find out?”

I look from her to the button and back a few times, unnerved. This all seems a little too much like an apple and snake story.

“Not especially, I don’t like surprises.”

With the moment between sentences, my brain finally kicks into gear and raises some flags.

“You didn’t answer all of my questions, Miss Motif.”

She nods, slowly.

“I didn’t.”

“Will you?”

“That depends. Will you press the button?”

I look from her to the button and back. Here, I am healthy again, and this isn’t hell. It could be a lot worse. And perhaps If I push the button, it will be.

I spin the chair and sit.

“No.”

Subject 792: Subject uncooperative, due to suspicion and superstition.

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Subject 128,201

“Cara, will you push the button?” Motif asks me.

I flick between her and the button, suspicious.

“Why? What does it do?”

“I don’t know. Something, I bet. Do you want to find out?”

I stare at her.

“What’s the catch? Do you delete me if I push it? Flush me out of some sort of cloud? Some sort of memory bank?”

I have no doubt that’s where I am now. From the bland setting to the fuzziness of my past, and yet certainty of my death by drowning, to the lack of alarm at this situation. Either I’m dead and in a computer somewhere, or I’m drugged out the gills and in a la-la chair, ornament for a padded room somewhere else. Either way, it’s not great.

She shrugs, and another thought occurs.

“Wait. There’s no way I’m the first. How many people do you have here?”

Motif looked at me, head cocked. Clearly thinking.

“Would knowing convince you to press the button?”

“No. But it’s a start. If you want me to do what you want, Motif, I need to trust you. And that starts with you trusting me.”

Motif nodded and flicked her wrist as though to bat away a fly, hand moving in the open air. At the apex, she seemed to strike the room itself, and the universe splintered into a thousand pieces. I could see countless translucent instances of the room overlaid with my own world. A breathtaking array of warm-white, boring ceiling tiles, and comfortable chairs. Each one populated by someone else and each one of them talking to Motif, positioned in the exact same place every time. The effect was a vast army of ghosts, each in front of the one corporal being in existence. Talking, cajoling, threatening, bargaining, begging, deceiving, laughing. All states of human emotion. And one by one, they passed me on by, drifting over to the table. Some of them looked back before, one by one, they pushed the button. As each did, they winked out of existence, shards disappearing back into the mirror. Finally, there was only a small percentage who remained. Those who refused to press it.

Red button means danger.

Don’t take advice from strangers.

Don’t follow demands.

Don’t deal with the devil.

Each had their own reasons, and each was unwavering.

Then, they faded.

“Do you need more?” Motif asked, still in place.

I turn back to her and find myself shaken.

“Yes. Just one thing.”

“Why?”

“Yes.”

She shrugged, split the world again.

This time, the shards weren’t human. The room wasn’t off-white. The button wasn’t red. Or a button. The details swallowed me.

A vast tide of metal rolls across a broad plane under an angry sky. Another army meets the first, and the two mix. One is a curious shade of blue-grey and the other, yellow-orange. The two forces churn, forming wild patterns of concentric swirls, delicate filigree, and intricate mazes of dead ends and winding passages. A wave begins at one side, yellow-orange metal rising then falling again into the fray. The move is subtly intimidating. Something that suggests danger but is not itself the danger. The grey metal reacts, pulling the yellow down, then pushing it back up, as though the two are in a back-and-forth. The rolling pulse arcs across the space to the far edge. It strikes and then, for a moment, nothing.

Suddenly, the grey metal on the same edge rises, and repeats the wave. This one has pushed the button.

With a kilometre of ice above, the ocean is utterly dark. It would be frozen too, if not for the columns, reaching out from silt like many clutching fingers. Off in the distance, penetrating the dark and lighting the columns like a flare, is a pulse of light. Then another. And another. And another. A symphony of colour begins to flutter in the clear water, beautiful and ephemeral. Another colour arrives, barely different from the rest, but fluttering and twisting in a new tune. The rest of the orchestra pause and take a holding pattern. This new arrival presents a challenge. A request, with a hint of intimidation. After a moment, the holding pattern is replaced by a complex darting movement. A flash responds in turn, flashing and glittering. Then, a pause. All colour fades, and the dark depths return to black.

Abruptly, a roar of colour ripples through, blindingly bright, copying the pattern proposed by the foreign colour. They too have pressed the button.

The third scene is one more familiar, albeit still more alien than I could have imagined. Before me is a dense tropical rainforest. The colours are all wrong, but the shapes right. A million shades of vermillion-grey flutter in the wind, basking under a violet sky. And swinging through the trees are a tribe of dextrous animals. Five appendages, each ending in three smaller ones. A central mass, though no smaller head present. A bewildering array of sensory organs, protruding through what was unmistakably fur. They arrive in a clearing, a few dozen strides of short tussock, currently filled with more of their kind. Another stands there also, and to my eyes it is the same as the rest. But they give it room. It places a box on the ground and steps back, before looking to the others. The box is covered in shades of shadow that suggest threat, like an overhead predator blocking the sun. A cacophony then arises, dozens of voices calling out in their own unique tunes. An equally loud reply from the box-giver. The conversation seems to go on for hours until finally, one steps forward and opens the box.

They three have pressed the button.

I am back in the room, with Motif.

“Will you press the button now?” she asks, and I feel honour bound to nod. She has given me so much; I need to respond in kind.

I rest my finger on the red surface.

“The button doesn’t matter, does it? It’s us that you want. That you’re assessing,” I say aloud, testing.

I push the button, and nothing happens. Turning, I see Motif smile. The first genuine expression she has given.

Subject 128,201: Subject is cooperative, reciprocates trust.

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Assessment complete. Average is favourable.

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