The Manipulation Room

Chapter 18 - Science

Manipulation Room victim no. 201923
Name: Mariah Devis
Age: 81 years old
Occupation: Retired
Family Member: 24-year-old grandson, Stephan
Description: Throat and neck under immense pressure from strangulation, death after 8.3 seconds of choking.

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"Lyric? Lyric, are you okay?" 
I looked up from my daydream and saw Ezra sitting on the tree trunk next to me, staring at me concernedly. His eyes were ten times bluer, ten times larger and ten times more beautiful. "How long have you been sitting there for?" I asked, rubbing my temples and sitting up to face him.
"Long enough. Are you okay?" 
I shook my head slowly, "Not really. It's been a rough couple of days, I guess." 
He nodded, biting his lip, "Don't you just wish it was all over? All of this?"

I scoffed, "More than anything. This shouldn't be our live, we shouldn't be growing up around all this...this suffering." I dropped my head in my hands and sighed. Ezra moved along the trunk so he was sitting next to me, "Do you ever wonder...what any of this is for?" 
"What do you mean?" I asked, looking up to see him seemingly uncomfortable and restrained. I folded my arms, "What is it?" 
"I...I found something." He gulped, clenching and unclenching his fists. 

He grabbed his backpack from the ground and lifted it up onto his lap, pulling another notebook out. It was different from his sketchbook, less square with thinner pages. Inside, every page was filled with italic writing and diagrams. It was a strange observation but he had gorgeous handwriting. Gorgeous handwriting that I'd never seen before because he never paid attention in class or took notes. "I was researching. The things Thanatos says, I don't believe any of it. It just doesn't add up. So...there was only one way to find out." He explained, flicking through the notebook. "Elaborately drawn diagrams and pages of writing?" I laughed. He looked up and smirked, "Science. Turns out school work can be a lot more interesting than I thought when learning about useful things."

"Who'd have thought it...what have you found?" I leaned forward so I could see the diagrams clearly. "Thanatos believes that we are running out of oxygen and the only way to prevent this is to slowly decrease the population by having us murder our most loved people, every six months...right?" He began. I pulled my legs up to my chest and rested my chin on my knees, "...yeah."

He stopped at a page and help it up to show me, "Gravity is holding our oxygen. Not a magnetic field, not just the air...gravity. Our planet will run out of oxygen when our planet's core cools because it will not have the gravity to keep the atmosphere. This has nothing to do with us and how much oxygen we breath."

He held up another page to show me and pointed at an intricately-drawn diagram, "We depend on the oxygen in the atmosphere for a sustained life. There is no replacement for oxygen in our biology, nor is there any engine that can generate oxygen in such a quantity." Another page. "It took roughly 900 million years from the start of cyanobacteria creating oxygen as a waste product to having enough oxygen accumulating in the atmosphere to make a difference. We can't just make it come out of nowhere in such vast quantities, we can't completely get rid of it so easily either. It's a reliable and sustainable source."

I took the book from him and stared absent-mindedly at the pages, chuckling to myself. "Wow...you really know your stuff." I laughed. He shrugged and laughed with me, "I try." 
"So, you're saying...Thanatos's theory makes no sense and the Manipulation Room isn't required for us to survive?" 
He tapped the side of my temple and grinned, "Precisely."

I handed him the notebook back and he put it into his bag. "What are you going to do with these life-changing discoveries then?" I asked. He grinned again, "Physical research, not just words in a notebook." 
"You're going to go to the Manipulation Room?!" I gasped.
"Not at first. I'm gonna start small...maybe a strike or two. A few interviews here and there, with important people. You know, soldiers, people in government. And then I'll go big...the Manipulation Room itself." He ran his hands through his hair and glanced at me expectedly. I threw my hands in the air, "Well...you've really got this all sorted out. Haven't you?"