How Far One Goes

Prologue

 Copyright © Moses Park 2012.

        I look straight ahead and although I view only darkness, I know that five other individuals are somewhere in the room, pondering the same thoughts as myself. We make no attempts to converse; we refuse to let human interaction console us.  

        The first day was the hardest. Dumped in here, with nowhere to go. Trapped. Left to rot in a room that’s already rotting itself. Abandoned with no idea how to leave. A candle in each corner of the room as the only source of light for our greedy eyes to consume.

        Confused and lost, we huddled into a circle and introduced ourselves.

Who we were, where we came from, what we wanted to do when we came back to our real lives. The memories and people we clinged onto.\

        Perhaps we thought that by sharing our stories that we would keep our identity, our humanity. Work together to find out why we were all here, and maybe even escape. How naive of us.

        But we know better now, we know what we need to do in order to leave this place for good. It’s an unpleasant task that nobody is willing to do.

        Every day at 7 in the morning, a television monitor would emerge from the ceiling and inform us that another day had gone by, and when we should expect incoming food and water.

        We were accustomed to this routine when after two weeks, they dropped a bomb on us.

        A nasal voice uttered, “We are now ready to begin our research. Allow me to fill you in on your task. We will be splitting the six of you into three pairs. I suggest you get comfortable with your partner, as you will be be forced to make choices together that could end your lives at any moment, and spending all of your time with each other.

       When this monitor slides back into the ceiling, the door will open. The names on the monitor have been grouped into their respective teams. Each team should take a candle with them and then choose a direction to go. Your goal is to leave this desolate prison. When you exit this room, there will be three different doors, each with different challenges to go through and its own unique path.. Each team will choose one to go through; once you choose one, it will lock after you so that no more than one team is on each path. The first team to get to the checkpoint will get a distinct advantage for the second part of the game. There will be countless trials, and by the end, only one person will remain alive to reap the fruits of success. But we’ll get there one step at a time. I bid you adieu.”

        And now, here we are. From this point on, all trust we had reluctantly forged vanishes. It is an unfortunate truth, but only one can survive.

It will be me.