The Wheel

72. Max

I'm sitting at the table, readjusting my glasses and watching at the screen where there is a picture with a hidden camera in a cubical room: Sam is clapping his hands and the guys come to their senses. Well done, Sam! Good job! Looking around I see a small room with technical staff: looks like everything is great. I look through the chat with the comments of the viewers: the messages with people's impressions were coming so fast, I didn't have the time to read them.

"Max, you can start," Jeff told me, a slightly overweight bristled guy wearing a cap, jeans, and an orange T-shirt; he was the chief operator of this event.

I nodded and started clapping. A full VIP hall of spectators in Guy Fawkes's masks joined me. One of the sides of the cube started to divide into two parts, like a double-leaf door, and those exhausted students could finally leave their cell.

Jeff directs the camera at me; I readjust my suit quickly and start speaking.

"Seven people. Seven stories. And once again we ascertain a simple and a rather ordinary thought that almost everyone has a unique and pretty unrepeatable life that we can't even guess the person has. Sam," I say to my colleague, "lead them here!"

Seven people are following Sam, looking over our huge hall: they thought they got into an experiment or into the hands of a psycho, but not on a show. Last time someone was convinced that he got on some kind of a show, and when the room opened he was exclaiming: "I told you! I told you!" By the way, he was a big fan of 'Black Mirror", so there is nothing to be surprised about.

When I realized I got too deep into recent memories, the students of a private university of Chicago were sitting in front of me in a long black couch. The gaze of the heavyweight Mike was the most furious one.

"To avoid awkward situations," I say to the guys, smiling, "I must warn you that you are surrounded by snipers that will shoot sedative darts at you, if needed. So everything is going to be alright, if you behave in a calm manner. Especially I'm talking about you, Mr. High."

As I expected Mike's gaze became even more furious.

"You must have some questions," I said my favorite phrase that I repeat at the end of every stream of "The Wheel".

It's the same every time: everybody asks a million questions at the same time, not even giving me a chance to make out anything. I drink a glass of water and look in the chat: looks like everyone wants to hear Michael High – no wonder, he's their favorite.

"Mr. High, it would be better if you started," I said.

"Why did you set it up? Where is my brother?" he asked. "What's going on?"

"As regards to you brother – don't worry, Mr. High: he won't remember anything when he wakes up in his room in a dorm. What's going on? Welcome to DarkHOLEnet! Why did we set it up? Well, firstly, our viewers adore this show – it's the most highly rated one – secondly, our online program is appreciated by the participants themselves: believe me, after what happened in that room, you will see the world differently. Thirdly, we make money: our viewers watch 'The Wheel' live, by buying s monthly subscription and paying for it with our crypto-currency Paradox: as you are aware confidentiality means a lot to us. Also, I would like to congratulate you, Mr, High, since according to the results of the voting you became viewers' favorite, that's why your 'session of talking' with Ayama was special," I started clapping again and VIP spectators who were sitting in the hall, wearing Guy Fawkes's masks, joined me.

"Bastard..." he said quietly.

Sam was also clapping – the guys looked at him hatefully.

"Ms. Wilson," I said to a cute girl in a burgundy suit, "looks like you want to ask something, too."

"What if one of us refused to go to this 'quest'?" she asked. "Why didn't we remember anything? Were we hypnotized? Why did you pick us to be the participants of your show? And how did you get this?" she pointed at her orange leather diary.

"Oh, those are good questions!" I said joyfully. "It was quite easy to make you go to 'The Wheel', but there were some situations when people flatly refused to be the participants of our show: in this case, Sam had to resort to manipulation techniques, for example, NLP and implicit hypnosis – he is professionally trained in all of these areas. We train our Loki on a highly level: we call Loki the ones who ensnare people in our different shows with their cunning and elaborate methods. We call them like this in honor of the trickster god in Norse mythology. And also this is the founder's of the 'Wheel' favorite Marvel character. So, not even one person in the history of our show who was picked to be a participant of 'The Wheel' escaped their fate. Why did we pick you? It was aligned in the stars! There were so many random people on our show, and each of them had interesting and unique stories! You can make a movie out of them! Sam was perfectly fit to be a student: he chose the faculty himself, and he got acquainted with you, guys, and made this fun company, so to speak. And you're completely right about hypnosis: when you came here, we hypnotized you and during the trance we gave you an instruction to forget some parts of your lives. Sam, by the way, was also hypnotized, so that he would behave realistically: he was thinking, acting and even picking the food as if he was your group mate, Veronica's boyfriend and an ordinary guy, who didn't like social networks: as you could see he had his story all made up for him.

Emma pointed at her orange 'book of secrets', letting me know that I forgot something.

"Oh, yeah," I continued, "Sam was hypnotizing you long before going to the 'quest': we had to make sure that today's session of hypnosis would be successful. And during those preliminary sessions our colleague got to know more about your darkest demons that you told about our viewers: he knew about you all the needed information even before the show. He got from you the necessary objects by putting you in a trance a couple of days before today's stream. Thus, we got not only your diary, Ms. Wilson, but also Mr. Keep's red plushy dragon."

"You such a bastard," she told Sam.

"I would be really hurt if you did something to my Red Dragon!" declared the guy named Miguel who liked to act like a child.

The tension was building up and Sam's look was telling me that he wanted all of this to be over.

"Believe me," I decided to step in for my colleague, "Sam is not the one you should hate."

Jeff glared at me, as if telling me I was a complete idiot, because I dropped a hint that Sam didn't' want to be Loki: the viewers have to think that every Loki do their task because they want to. Oh, everybody knows that people like Sam are practically forced to be liars: never-ending discussions of our streams prove that right – nevertheless our administration prohibited talking about this to the ones who work in DarkHOLEnet.

"Some of you thought you were a part of an experiment," I interrupted an awkward silence, "to some extent it's true: we use recordings from the cameras in the cubical room, and the indexes from sensors on your clothes for a neurobiological research."

The guys started looking over their clothes more carefully.

"They are hidden very well, believe me," said Sam who didn't touch his white jumper and smudgy white pants.

"Why did you dress us like this?" asked David.

"It's our partner's new line of clothes," my colleague answered for me, "and those glass phones in your pockets are called onePhone, they were provided for us by our other partners."