A Man Trapped In A Room | ERERI

Chapter One

Levi POV:

Three years ago, I was looking at the local job classifieds online when one of the ads caught my eye, not because of what it said, but because it said so little. Best I remember, the ad just read "Job available, good pay, no benefits, discretion required." It then listed an email address and that was all.

At the time I was managing a tea shop, but I had already started hearing rumours we would be shutting down in the next year and the likelihood of a transfer to another store was slim. So I sent an email.

Half an hour later I had a response, telling me to go to a particular office building in an upscale part of the city at a precise time for my "screening". I went, and after waiting for a few minutes in the lobby, I was taken into an office where I was given a series of forms and questionnaires to fill out. They collected them and told me they would be in touch.

I had almost forgotten about the whole thing until a month a month later I got a call saying I had moved on to the second stage of the hiring process. I was again given an address and time, and when I arrived, I was met by a man who introduced himself as Mr. Smith. He escorted me into a large room that contained a chair and a desk. On the desk were two large monitors, a keyboard and mouse, and a bolted down metal box with two oversized buttons on it: one red and one green.

He told me this room was a model for the place I would be working if I took the job. He described the job as follows. I would be working seven shifts of six hours every week. My job would be simple, I would arrive at work ten minutes early and enter an outer area that was like a locker room. I would have my own personal locker and I would store all belongings in the locker and change into the provided work clothes.

I was never, under any circumstances, to carry any item of my own in the surveillance room or to take any item with me from the surveillance room. As for what I was to do in the surveillance room, I was told that the monitor on the left would constantly show a live stream from a high-definition camera in a remote location.

My job was simply to watch the camera. Once and hour, I would get onto the computer attached to the right monitor and enter a brief log describing anything interesting that occurred in the last hour. I would have no pens or pencils or paper, and I should never try to take any kind of written notes about the work.

As for the red and green buttons, the red button was only to be used if there was an emergency. This meant something on the video or in my workspace that required outside help. The green button was to be hit if I saw something on the video feed that was particularly noteworthy. It would tell other people somewhere that, at least in my opinion, something interesting was going on.

Smith stressed that while I was given discretion on when to use this button, I should err on the side of only using it if something "of real significance" occurred. He pointed out the camera on the ceiling of the room we were in. He said the real room would be the same. My work would be observed, and other people were watching the room on the video feed as well. He said I was only a redundancy in case other systems failed.

The pay was very good: Thirty-five dollars an hour. This worried me, I was already thinking this was some kind of psych experiment or secret government job, which I was okay with. But that kind of money to sit and watch a screen? My mom, before she died, always told me that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and this was seeming too good to be true.

I asked if I was going to be doing anything illegal, but Smith laughed and said no. I asked if anyone was going to get hurt, again, he shook his head no. He said the reason they were paying so much was because they needed employees that were motivated to be professional and discrete. The work they were doing was important, and for various reasons it couldn't be discussed.

If I took the job, I would have to sign papers promising I would never discuss my work there or I could be sued or locked up. I'm only breaking that now because  of everything that's happened..

__________

(13/11/2022)

-E_Jaeger12