Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 1 - Pimbep Cottage

PANEMDEMIC - 1

They said her name with a modified sense of entitlement. They knew - they knew her to be monotone, and so they mocked her with a calling over the intercom the same way. Perhaps she was only looking into it too much, but she could've sworn that woman'd gone and called out the previous names with a tinge more intrigue.

The way they said it for her made it seem settled.

"Pimbep Cottage."

And that was settled.

She was alone in her walk to the doors, for Kaleo had already taken his test, showed his skills, received a score he couldn't see. He was gone now, probably off to the designated Nine floor. He wouldn't worry himself sick over whatever he'd scored. He would be at ease.

Pimbep, however, was a different story in the way she fidgeted with her knuckles and skimmed a nail over another nail. Kaleo was irrelevant to her now, and so she made it a mission to push him out the moment her hand fell upon that cold knob, and push him out she did, right along with the door.

It took a bit of blinking for her to notice the darkness.

She waited outside for quite a bit, waiting for the lights to flick on - maybe there's an outage, she thought - but when she heard the monotone of her name again, she figured this was part of the plan, and no amount of waiting or fidgeting or biting into her lip would turn them back on. That was okay with her. They wouldn't see her trip, or scratch her nose, or make any other little mistakes she was prone to making. The joke was on them. She didn't laugh.

When she delved, she delved with a straight back and a lifted chin. She was not unconfident, and she held herself to prove it to herself - there was no point in doing it for the watchers, for they couldn't see. Nor could she, but her steps were careful enough to avoid a stumble if her toe struck a rod or cord. It took quite a bit of walking, also, to adjust to things herself. There were no outlines to search for in an empty room, and so she stopped moving, a bit lost and crinkly in the nose.

Pimbep recalled that they called these the "training evaluations." What was there to evaluate? Her ability to walk in a straight line? The skill she held in knowing where she put her feet? Maybe it was to take great care in dark environments - would they start throwing sacks at her, like mutts?

This guess made her squirm in the chest, and so she turned, squinting through the dark to see if there was anything swinging for her. But instead of burlap, she saw blinking; it was white and bright, but small, and if she took a few steps forward, even more little blinking dots popped up around it. Now, they were no potato-sack-mutts, which was disappointing (since she'd spent so long coming to that conclusion), but if she knew anything of tricks and games, it was that they wanted her to go towards those little flickers. And they'd make her, too, if she wouldn't on her own.

So she did. It was simple.

She approached with arms crossed over her chest. The thought of taking them away was omnipresent, and she wasn't cold in the slightest, but her fingers felt comfortable in those little crooks, especially as she grew closer to the lights. They blew up in faint hues of green and white and red, beeping steadily. The sound hiccuped here and there, but she thought it normal because the skipping matched those little lines crossing over the screen. She saw no issues, no problems, nothing to fix.

But then she looked to her left.

First, she saw a wheel. It trailed up into the foundation of a cot of sorts, glinting metallic greens until it found a sheet. They were crisp until they were wrinkled, for two little lumps pulled at the cloth. She followed these lumps until they'd gone and developed into legs (which she knew was correct because she wasn't an idiot when it came to identification), then a chest - one that heaved and dropped unlike how a chest should - until it blossomed up to a neck with all the little chords popping out, even more prominent with the greens flushing over the dips and rises. They pulsed and the hollows shifted before deflating back to their original places.