With the test nearing its not-so-climactic end, Troy was beginning to feel a certain type of hunger welling up inside him. It was not the typical hunger, which one would feel normal, but one signalling the coming of a bottomless void.
It had been a good while since Troy had felt such a thing. It nearly took him back on a nostalgia trip. If only those memories had positive feelings behind them, it would all have been so much better.
As he stepped outside the room of stupid puzzles, the new light nearly blinded him. Troy had been outside here previously in the day, yet then it had seemed so less bright.
Had they turned on the floodlights, while he was inside?
“If you want to get to breakfast in time, you'll have to hurry, in getting your clothes on”, Dr Fidelis stated, as he simultaneously stared deeply into the screen in front of him, his fingers tapping away with the same ferocity.
If anyone wanted to state that humans were incapable of true multitasking, Troy would gladly show them this scene, to prove them wrong.
“Why aren't we just getting something delivered to this room, instead of spending a good ten minutes on travelling between locations?” Troy asked, as he got down the stairs, as quickly as his feeble legs could carry him, before moving to the so-called changing area. “Like, if we're so focused on today being as efficient as possible, why not cut out all the travelling time?”
The curtain had already been drawn, hiding Troy from the two others and vice versa. This meant that the only sensible response that he received was a sigh. Not one of tiredness but frustration.
“I'm a small bit stressed on getting the next ready, as it is in the already experimental portion, of what this room of ours can handle,” Dr Fidelis said in the distance, his typing speed markedly increasing with his words. “Dr Hale, can you be a valuable employee, and explain it for me?”
“I certainly can, sir”, Dr Hale answered, her voice not sounding even close to the upbeatness of her words. “While your idea of cutting down unnecessary travel times is sound in logistics of it, it has already been thought of, assessed, and has been opposed by management for a variety of reasons.
If my memory serves me correctly, as it should at times like these, the most popular and important reason, for our instant denial in the proposal, was due to the safety risk that such procedures would cause.
While the machinery count in here is in the single digits, nearly everything can be near-instantly lethal, if used improperly. Say, if food is brought into the puzzle room, the automatic targeting system can take it, as another body part, which must be protected. If this food gets out of reach of the person inside the room, protocols will immediately take it as an accidental amputation and will attempt to cauterize the wound to prolong the life expectancy.
Of course, such lesser thinking, which would cause such actions would immediately be stopped by either myself or Dr Fidelis. But, in the eyes of management, letting such a thing be even possible, is seen as too much of endangerment of personnel.
That's why we have to waste time, in an already tight schedule, on travelling times to mandated break rooms.”
On second thought, Troy could accept the five-minute walks. Giving himself another way to brutally get scared, or even killed, did not seem like the smartest decisions in his lifetime.
Getting the rest of his clothes, he went out to the other two, ready to move to the already late breakfast. Before such a thing could occur, though, Troy still had one final question to ask.
“Dr Fidelis”, Troy began. “If food isn't allowed in here, and you never leave this room during the day, when exactly do you eat?”
“One of my many roles, in this facility, is the job of being a supervisor to my department”, Dr Fidelis explained. “The great thing about that is my own lack of supervision to my own actions.”
Should have known. They cared so much about the opinion of what management knew about, and, in the moment, where their eyes couldn't see, there was free rein to do whatever one pleased.
“Come on”, Dr Hale encouraged. “If we hurry, we will most likely be able to meet up with Charlie.”
That was something, at the very least. Troy would be able to share his sorrows with someone, who was emphatically handicapped. Or, maybe they weren't, and just didn't care. The chance of that being so, was actually much higher, than the first thing.
It didn't matter much. The end result was the same, and Troy had no way of changing it. The only thing that he could currently put an end to, was the growing emptiness in his stomach.
As they moved outside the room, leaving Dr Fidelis to his setting up the next test, and the secretive consumption of organic goods, Dr Hale seemed to be in the mood of talking with Troy for once.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“There's something, which you will need to know,” Dr Hale said, stopping the regular stillness between them from occurring. “It's about these future tests.”
A warning? More specifically, a warning meant to help Troy? It was hard to believe, as his mind was still focused on the fact, of her stating that she was waiting to give Dr Fidelis incriminating news about him.
“What's there to know?” Troy questioned, more than a little suspicious of Dr Hale's reasons, for speaking up. “You're not even allowed to tell me anything about them.”
If they were following all those regulations, they weren't allowed to. But, from the latest amount of behaviour, it seemed that it was more a so-called guideline than a straight-up rule. Bloody pirates, they were.
“Shut up about the rules, okay?” Dr Hale sent straight back, sounding more full of emotion, than Troy had ever seen. Even the dramatized outburst, which he had witnessed his first day, was not even close to this display. He could see in her eyes, how much this meant.
Troy didn't know what she was trying to tell him, but he felt no amount of passion in being a dick about it any more.
“Sorry”, Troy meekly uttered. “Please, continue your warnings. I'll try to take them more seriously.”
This apology of his seemingly set Dr Hale back in her usual prose of indifference, leading Troy to think how far that layer of hers went. Did the shell show off the core, or was there more to her, than he had originally thought?
“Keep your tone that way in the future, for both of our sakes. Disloyalty is not looked at kindly, in a governmental place like this,” Dr Hale started it up with. Troy was beginning to see the severity of the future sentences, uttered out of her mouth. “Dr Fidelis has told me what the long test will be about. I won't tell you what it will entail. Even I'm not stupid enough to utter things like that.
He has bugs around everywhere, for your information. Just like Charlie has, but he uses them for more than just showing off abilities. Never say anything, you don't want to be heard. If you want to continue communicating with Adam in complete secrecy, write it down for him to read, instead of letting Dr Fidelis simply hear it. Give him some useless information, though. It will not be good if he realises that you have caught on.”
Troy would already be checking for the last thing, with the help of Adam. But, the first, unfinished warning had some underlying concepts, which he was hoping would be delved into further.
“The day-long test will be combining everything you've done, until this very moment. The task will not be told to you,” Dr Hale continued. Troy hoped that she would be done soon. In not too long of a time, they would be within earshot of others. “You will have to find it yourself, within the test itself. Don't trust anything you see inside it fully, or you will be cheated. Also, just as a piece of final information bit, the test will take place tomorrow, if you hadn't realized it, so try not to go into any other escapades in the afternoon. Go straight to bed, or you will certainly pay for it.
That is all. And, for the record, we have never had this conversation.”
The sheer number of underlying warnings, in her sentences, made Troy want to run. If this was metaphorical, or literal, he wasn't too sure.
They were being overheard? Troy already knew that he had some bugs on him, courtesy of Charlie. But, it had already been discussed. These bugs were purely for show and were just a joke, which was fun to play, once you got into it.
No, Dr Hale was talking about literal listening devices, which were being actively used against him. How many times had Troy muttered angry curses at his coworkers? How many times had he talked to himself, about what he had done with Adam? How he had used him, for his own gain?
If it was ever revealed, nobody would look at him the same way.
The thing about the task being unclear… Troy could easily live with that. Making a good answer wasn't in his job description. He was simply that hand, which moved at Adam's command. Hands weren't supposed to be moving of their own accordance. If they did, one would need to go to the doctor or something.
And, the test was tomorrow? Troy wasn't too sure if he had been told yet. If he had, he had been too sleepy to even notice. And, it was heavy news. Incredibly bad news. In under twenty-four hours, he was expected to be Adam's acting body for a whole, entire day. Or, as near as could be. With what he had been told earlier, he wouldn't even get to eat, during the whole debacle. What were they gonna do? Chock him full of food, and hope for the best? God, he wanted to complain.
The point of it all, made Troy unable to do so, though. Dr Hale had ended it all up, by openly stating, that this whole thing had never been told to him. He was expected, to act like nothing was wrong, for the next twenty-four hours of his life. Twenty-four hours, where he would constantly be stressing about it.
What was he gonna tell Dr Fidelis, when he was asked, why his pulse was so high? Why the sweat was pouring down, through the valuable, custom-made suit?
…
It was funny. For a second, Troy had actually misled himself into thinking that they would ask for his opinion about it. They wouldn't. Instead, it would just be an offhand comment made during the debriefing, which Adam was a part of, instead of him.
Troy was a part of the research team, dedicated to bringing the greatest results. Yes, he was but an assistant, but he was a gear in the clock, like every other person, working on the project.
Getting left out may have caused him less work, but his inferiority complex was not letting such a thing pass by. He was important to the department, just like every other entity within. He held the thing up with his shoulders, like every other being. He contributed, like every other being. And, he deserved respect, like every other being.
“Get your normal expression ready,” Dr Hale said from the side, bringing Troy out of his thoughts. He had been getting drawn in too easily, this last while. Sleep was becoming more and more essential to his lifestyle, with every day that went by. “We have reached our destination.”
Looking away from Dr Hale's face, Troy saw the bright letters indicating the cafeteria was near. How he hadn't heard the increasingly loud murmur of people's voices, was something which he would wonder about forevermore. Well, the answer was obvious, but simply stating it, made the blame of it all the more directed at a certain person.
The sound made his nerves all the more. Troy had always been fine with people, but, in sub-optimal conditions like this, his mind simply couldn't process it. His head just had the regular response of beginning to rhythmically pound itself from the inside. If this was meant to be a warning, an uncontrolled form of self-torture, or just a mix of both, Troy had no idea.
Dr Hale was correct. He needed to get his head in the game. Charlie was still here. if Troy had the correct sense of time, which was not likely, but still. There would be somebody, who would actually ask into his current mental state.
Charlie was nice like that. Why wasn't the others the same? If everybody just got along and agreed not to-
Troy slapped his face. No! He was not going down the path of anarchist communes today. Certainly not on a day like this. He was meant to be taken seriously. How could Troy be even looked at, if he expressed the desires, which he felt from within? The humiliation would be a deserving punishment.
No, the inner focus was needed. If Troy just kept reminding himself of the needed willpower, it would all go over. Breakfast wasn't long after all. Dr Hale would probably just be pushing him into gulping down his food, without even chewing, so they wouldn't need to sit down for more than a minute or two.
The mindset was created, and Troy took his first step into the overcrowded cafeteria. It did not take long, though, for him to notice an inconsistency,
Something was radically different today than what was normal. A new face had shown itself here. And, a rather tall face at that. Sitting down beside Charlie, at an otherwise empty table was Darlow, who was happily waving at an annoyed-looking Dr Hale.
Troy already knew that he was in for a world of trouble, with these two together.