Chapter 3
Sheila and Henry were sitting next to each other in the big plush chairs in front of the TV. The credits were rolling on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
“Oh I forgot to tell you,” Sheila said. “They had my Aunt Jenny walk in today. You know what I said to her?”
“Considering how many times you’ve asked your hologram mother to do a handstand, I don’t know, did you tell her to hop on one foot and flap her arms like a chicken?” came Henry’s reply with a yawn.
“Haha, no but I think I will next time. I asked her if I should watch Shawshank Redemption.”
“Now you’re asking the important questions. We’ll truly know whether hologram Aunt Jenny has any taste in movies.”
“She said ‘no’” Sheila said. “I always liked Aunt Jenny, I trust her opinion.” A wry smile spread over Sheila’s face and she looked at Henry from the corner of her eye.
“Well that settles it. None of your holographic family has any sense of quality. I see where you get your affinity for Prisoner of Azkaban from.”
“I thought you’d like that.” Sheila turned to face Henry. “I think that settles our theory about the holograms though, they will answer a yes or no question but it’s always the answer you don’t want to hear. Remember when I told you about asking ‘my brother’ if he loved me and he said ‘no’? As hurt as I was at the time, the funny thing is, when I was thinking about it later, I actually felt relieved. How could he have been so cruel to me all the time if he did love me?”
“Well it was just a hologram whose purpose is to strain your emotions, that doesn’t necessarily mean your real brother feels that way,” Henry replied.
“I know it’s not actually him, but it made me think. Maybe my brother really didn’t love me. Maybe my mom didn’t either. And that thought makes me feel so much better, it’s liberating. Why should I waste my energy worrying about what they think of me if they don’t even love me?” Said Sheila.
“That’s really sad, Sheila. I hope your mother and brother do love you. But even if they don’t, you’ve always got me. I promise I’m not going anywhere. No one is more important to me than you.” Henry said.
“I know Henry. I really appreciate you,” said Sheila. “Now, are you ready for the best movie in the series? Nay, the best movie in the world?”
“I think you’ll have to watch this one alone, I can’t do three in a row. Besides, I’ve got plans later.” Henry said slyly with a grin.
“Oh yeah? Watching movies with a masker?” Asked Sheila.
“Whoa that’s a creepily good guess. Yeah I am, I saw a masker looking through the movie collection and we started chatting. Turns out he’s a huge movie buff and he’s never seen The Bourne Identity!” Henry said.
A strong sense of jealousy surged within Sheila. Again, Henry was going to be spending time with someone else and didn’t so much as ask if Sheila was okay with it!
“Hey, you’re not jealous are you? No one is more important to me than you, Sheila. If there is anything I can do for you, I’ll do it, just say the word.” Henry said. He had noticed Sheila’s face turning red and her jaw clenching.
Sheila relaxed. She knew that it was irrational to try to control someone’s every action. And what harm is there in letting Henry watch a movie with a masker? He must have his daily share of teaching lessons with maskers just like Sheila did and she didn’t feel jealous of that.
“No Henry, of course you can watch the movie with the masker.” It took every iota of self control for Sheila to keep her emotions in check and get the words out.
“I knew you’d understand!” Said Henry with a wide smile. “I’m gonna grab some food, I’ll be right over in the mess if you miss me too much.” Henry squeezed Sheila’s hand and walked toward the dining area.
Sheila, now alone, decided that a movie should distract her enough to calm down again and crawled in front of the bookcase of movies. She pulled Chamber of Secrets out of the player and put it back in the case and then grabbed Prisoner of Azkaban from the shelf. As Sheila opened the case and reached down to grab the disc, she stopped short, shocked at the discovery of a folded, yellow piece of paper resting on the disc. Sheila looked around to see if anyone was nearby. There was a group of people playing soccer across the way and a woman reading alone in a bean bag next to the endless bookcases in the library section but no one close enough to pay any attention to what was happening in front of the TV.
Sheila hesitantly picked up the paper and set the case down on the floor. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen paper. She had convinced herself that this place was so futuristic that paper was simply obsolete. Yet here was a folded note, inside the case of her favorite movie. She turned her back to the rest of the room to hide her handling of the seemingly forbidden artifact and carefully unfolded it. A message was written in pencil across the page, it read:
YOU DON’T BELONG HERE. I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT I WILL GET US OUT
Sheila sat staring at the note for a moment, trying to process what it could mean. Who wrote it? Get out of where? Who is “us”? Was the note even intended for her? Was she being held here against her will? No. This place had been so comfortable, so welcoming that she had never really considered leaving it. It had been a long time since she entertained such an idea. Thinking about the possibility she was some sort of captive gave her a deep sense of dread and disgust and was one of the first emotional control victories she had experienced during her early mental fortitude training sessions. She easily recalled her emotional control expertise once again to level herself out so she could analyze this situation.
“Maybe I should tell a masker about this,” Sheila thought to herself. “But if this note is legitimate and is meant for me then the maskers must be the ones keeping us here. Whoever “us” is.”
The only person Sheila had any contact with that wasn’t a masker was Henry.
“This must be Henry’s doing. It’s probably a prank actually.” Sheila felt herself relax at that thought. Besides, she liked it here. The maskers were always so kind and accommodating, she enjoyed her learning sessions, she had plenty of time for recreation, and she regularly enjoyed the company of her first and only true friend, Henry. Plus, Henry obviously liked it here too. There was never any talk between them about “getting out” or even doing anything that wasn’t there in the infinitely enjoyable recreation room. Still, it was odd and shocking.
“I bet this is a test. Just like my holographic mother,” Sheila thought. “They’re trying to see if I can remain in control when confronted with something odd and shocking. Well, I’m not gonna play along this time. I bet I’m ‘supposed to’ run to a masker and confess what I’ve found and then I’ll be praised and rewarded.”
The potential praise and adulation from her masker teachers was extremely appealing to Sheila however and she was nearly compelled to get up straight away and go tell the nearest masker she could find. But recently Sheila had been practicing applying her mental fortitude techniques to positive emotions as well. The thought had occurred to her one day when she and Henry were sarcastically teasing each other and she couldn’t keep a straight face when trying to pretend that she disliked a movie or book that Henry was gushing over. So she leveled herself out once again, closed the case, and went to find Henry to ask him about it but he wasn’t in the mess area.
“Focus on your breathing. Find your center. Your thoughts do not control you,” Sheila whispered to herself as she crouched in front of the TV holding the open movie case for 50 First Dates. Earlier that day Henry had insisted that she watch it despite her protests on the grounds that sappy love stories never really interested her. They seemed so unrealistic. Besides, Henry wasn’t even able to watch it with her. He couldn’t say why, just that he really had to do something important but he wanted nothing more than to hear what Sheila thought about the movie, even to the point of making her promise him that she would watch it. And there in the case was the reason, another folded sheet of paper. It had been some time since she found the last one and she had all but convinced herself that it was a test from the maskers after Henry seemed genuinely oblivious, even claiming that he hadn’t seen a physical piece of paper in his entire life. Sheila popped in the movie and it began to play as she secretively unfolded the note.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
STAY CALM. FOLLOW THE OPEN DOORS. I WILL WAKE YOU UP.
Wake up? The thought of sleep hadn’t crossed Sheila’s mind since…ever. In fact, Sheila couldn’t remember the last time she saw a bed. There must be one in her room, she thought. But as she tried to picture it and, no, there was just…the room. Sometimes there was a desk she used for her studies, sometimes there wasn’t, there was always the silently sliding door, and the strange ever-changing walls, but never a bed. Curious.
Sheila’s thoughts then turned from sleep to other mundane, routine tasks that she performed back at home, before she arrived here. She did eat here, occasionally, though she never actually felt hungry. Eating was always a social event, an excuse to hang out with Henry, but never was done out of necessity. She also never went to the bathroom. She never brushed her teeth or her hair, never had to clean her room. As she revisited her memories she couldn’t even remember a single occurrence of discomfort, boredom, or pain that lasted more than a few seconds. She tried to remember something more recent. Her mind told her that she must have woken up this morning, had breakfast, used the bathroom, then walked here to the rec room. She intuitively knew she had done these things this morning, it was a matter of fact. But when she really tried to piece together her day, step-by-step, she couldn’t.
Sheila’s mind began to whirl. What was happening to her that she couldn’t remember walking from her room to this room just moments before? Or was it hours before? Was she last here yesterday or was it last week? What was “yesterday” if she couldn’t remember going to sleep and waking up?
Something was wrong. Something was wrong with Sheila’s mind. “I must be crazy. I must be in an insane asylum, or a coma. Do I have amnesia?” She thought. She slammed the movie case closed and wildly spun around and stood up. She had to find Henry. Somehow he was connected to all of this, he knew what was going on. She frantically headed to the rec room calling for him, “HENRY? HENRY!”
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Sheila blearily opened her eyes. She was lying on her back in a bed. The room was dark except for a soft yellow glow that emanated from an open doorway across the drab concrete floor. Sheila sat up and immediately noticed that this wasn’t her room. This one was much smaller and the walls were plain. In fact there was nothing in this room except for the bed, which was firm and had no sheets or blankets. As she swung her legs over the bed she felt an odd sensation in her mouth: she was thirsty. Sheila couldn’t remember the last time she was thirsty and as she tried to think about where to find water, a headache progressively intensified behind her eyes.
STAY CALM. FOLLOW THE OPEN DOORS. I WILL WAKE YOU UP.
The memory of the note Sheila found flashed into her consciousness. The door to her room opened into what looked like a dark hallway. She took a deep breath and calmed her emotions, although she mostly felt groggy, confused, and curious. She stood up out of her bed and walked out of the room. The hallway stretched far in either direction until eventually curving away, breaking the line of sight. It was lined with closed doors, each displaying a number and every 10th door or so, a light fixture illuminated the corridor just enough for Sheila to see her way through the otherwise dark hallway.
Sheila turned right out of her room and walked. The doors that lined the hallway gave no indication of their contents and Sheila wondered what the numbers meant. As her bare feet pattered on the cold hard floor, carrying her further down the seemingly endless corridor, she eventually saw a new source of light spilling into the hallway from the left side. An open door. Excitedly Sheila picked up her pace and made her way to it. Peering in, Sheila found a wide rectangular room with more doors lining it. In this room the floor was carpeted and the walls were colored a warm reddish brown. Artwork hung between the doors and toward one end was a sitting area with a couch, chairs, and cabinets that housed books, lamps, and a houseplant as well as a long table with several chairs arranged on one side so they faced the middle of the room. The doors off of this room weren’t numbered like in the hallway behind her but instead were marked with strange characters that Sheila couldn’t make out. As she stepped into the room, the walls changed from their solid singular color into one of the familiar yet ever unique landscape scenes from her usual room. The couches, cabinets, paintings, and lamps vanished in an instant. All of the doors that were once visible were now gone as well except for the usual single door on the wall Sheila was facing. If Sheila hadn’t just seen the room as it was seconds before, there would be no way she could distinguish this room from her own familiar room where she’d been living these past months. Or was it years by now?
The door in front of her sat open. Sheila half expected a masker to enter and ask her about an emotionally fraught hypothetical situation, but none did. After standing there with her breath held for what felt like minutes, Sheila walked toward the opening. Making her way toward the door with the intention to walk through it was utterly peculiar. She couldn’t remember ever walking through the door out of her room.
“Deep breaths, keep calm. This is probably a dream,” Sheila whispered to herself. But this was definitely not a dream. This was more real than any experience she could remember since she’d arrived here.
On the other side of the door was yet another room. It was expansive and mostly dark except for the wall to Sheila’s right, the entirety of which was made up of screens which cast a harsh white glow bright enough to illuminate the row of desks that sat facing it. The desks had on them what Sheila guessed were computers, except instead of the usual plastic and glass that made up a computer monitor in Sheila’s memory, these were two panes of extremely thin transparent glass. Also atop the desks were physical books, files, and papers. But Sheila only peered across the room for an instant before being captivated by what was displayed on the countless screens on the wall. Each one portrayed a room that looked like the one Sheila woke up in just a few minutes before. Small, drab, a single bed and nothing else, and a person. Every one of whom was asleep on the bed in the same position, face up with their hands crossed and resting on their chest.
Sheila walked up to the wall of screens to get a better look and analyzed one at random. Beneath the video feed of the room with a sleeping man was some information: “488 - Flavius Romulus Augustus - SCI: 0”. She looked at the screen next to it which displayed the expected scene of a tiny room with a person sleeping: “1962 - Fyodor Jonins - SCI: 0”. After inspecting several more screens only to find the same unhelpful information displayed upon them, Sheila walked over to one of the desks in the center of the room. As she rounded the desk, the wall of screens caught her eye once more. There were several larger screens grouped together among the rest and Sheila instantly recognized what they displayed, it was the rec room from various angles. The areas that were often occupied by the other residents: the soccer field, the mess, the gaming corner, sat empty and still. However, in the TV area Sheila saw movement. Abandoning her exploration of the desk, she walked closer to the wall of screens to get a better look. The screen showed that the camera was angled so as to view the plush chairs of the seating area but not the TV itself and there in plain view, looking directly at the camera, seemingly straight into Sheila’s eyes, was Henry. He was holding up a sign with a crudely written message on it, it read
SAY OUT LOUD “SECTOR 35E LIGHTS DIM”
Henry looked anxious and was taking deep breaths, no doubt in an attempt to calm himself. He was repeatedly looking over his shoulder to what Sheila now noticed was a man sleeping in one of the plush TV chairs, the seat next to him was littered with wine bottles and food wrappers.
“Sector 35E, lights dim,” Sheila pronounced. The lighting in the TV area darkened and Henry looked relieved as he excitedly put the sign down. He stepped closer to where the camera must have been located until Sheila could only see the top of his head.
“Sheila! Is that you? It worked!” Came an excited whisper from the wall of screens. “I can’t hear you but listen up, there’s not much time. I’ve been learning more and more about this place we’re in. It’s some kind of…space prison. We’re being held captive here but I don’t know why. They, the maskers, can control our minds. They have a device, like a remote control, that allows them to manipulate our emotions, erase our memories, make sure we’re always content with our current situation and never want to leave.”
Sheila simultaneously couldn’t believe what she was hearing and knew that it was true. Too many things didn’t add up about this place. Why didn’t she ever remember something as simple as walking from one room to another, or going to the bathroom? Why is she so content and happy here despite having been abducted from her family and subjected to continual emotional stress testing? They were controlling her mind, making her do whatever they wanted and she was perfectly happy going along with it all. A deep smoldering anger kindled in her belly. The natural trust of the maskers she’d developed throughout her time here was misplaced. They didn’t love and respect her, they were her captors, they were experimenting on her.
A groan sounded from the wall of screens and Sheila saw the sleeping man behind Henry stir. Only now she noticed that he wasn’t an ordinary man, this person was too tall and slender and his eyes, despite being closed, were extremely large. Additionally, he had no nose, no hair, no lips, though there was a line where one would expect a mouth to be. Stirring awake in his chair, after presumably passing out from too much wine, was a masker.
“As long as we’re dumb and happy,” Henry continued hurriedly, “they keep us alive, but if we’re not, they execute us. Sheila I…I think…Listen, I have to go but tell the computer to ‘list the highest SCI scores’ and then go back to bed immediately! I’m going to get us out of here. In the meantime keep calm and act normally. I love you.”
On the screen, Sheila saw Henry hurriedly fall into a chair next to the masker and pretend to be asleep. The masker opened his giant eyes revealing no defining features such as pupils but rather a solid, deep black. He sat up and looked at Henry then looked directly at the camera. Sheila started, it looked as though the masker was peering through the screen directly at her. Sheila’s face flushed hot and sweat formed across her forehead as she quickly ducked away from the screen.
Sheila, crouched in front of the wall of screens, took a deep breath. “He probably can’t see you, relax. Get back to the cell.” Sheila said to herself and hurried to the door from where she came. Just before crossing the threshold she stopped, remembering what Henry told her. She turned back.
“List the highest SCI scores,” she announced in a shaky voice.
The wall of screens resolved into a single display that showed an immeasurably long list of text. It was a list of the data that was displayed under each screen, a number, a name, and an SCI score. Next to each entry in bold red letters was the word TERMINATED.
Sheila could glean nothing from the data except that everyone on it had an SCI score that was significantly higher than zero, whatever that meant, and everyone on it was dead. Looking up the list to the top of the wall, Sheila could see that the first entry on the list was too high up to be read but instead of bold red letters where the rest of the entries showed TERMINATED, this entry had bold green letters.
“Show the highest SCI score,” Sheila commanded.
The list scrolled so the first entry was now in the middle of the screen, low enough so Sheila could read it.
2020 - Sheila Goddard - SCI: 6,943,432,927 DETAINED
Sheila hurried out of the surveillance room and found her way back to her firm, sheet-less bed where she laid down and felt an immediate overwhelming exhaustion come over her.