My world is small. Just this one floor where we are housed.

No one calls us prisoners. But I can think of no better word to describe us. I hear “audience,” “contestants,” and “guests.” That last one lodges in my ears like a cruel joke.

I can freely move about the lounge. There are two communal showers. A corridor with some administrative offices. None of our private rooms have locks, so I can, if I wish, explore those. The large industrial kitchen is also apparently not off limits, but the people working back there don’t seem to enjoy being disturbed. I made a cursory tour of the kitchen and the pantries, even the walk-in cooler. There is no door leading out from there to freedom.

As for doors, there are plenty. I know them all intimately, particularly the locked ones.

And though we are not referred to as patients, it still seems possible we are convalescents in here for treatment. Damaged or deranged. Lunatics? Maybe we’re held here for our own safety. Or for the safety of the world outside.

What lies beyond this small world is unknown to me. Just that staircase that leads up to the studio, and the studio itself—a realm where we can only enter with our escorts, our “handlers.”

Beyond that? Maybe we’re deep underground, waiting out some nuclear winter. Maybe I was injured in some apocalyptic war.

Memory is a strange thing. I don’t remember what city I grew up in. Nothing about my parents. However, my brain is filled with all manner of information. For instance, I know all about memory—facts I read in books, I suppose.

I have those facts in my head, but not the context on how I acquired them.

The facts are part of my semantic memory. They are as easy for me to access as it is to squeeze toothpaste on a toothbrush or to tie my shoes—and if you’re curious, those types of basic every day routines belong to a cluster of implicate memory known specifically as procedural memory. All that useful subconscious cognitive busy work you can do without wasting time thinking.

The explicate memory is what’s causing me frustration. It involves information that is consciously retrievable. I’m doing great with those semantic memories. Much better than people are supposed to. A gift I have, it seems. But the problem is my episodic memory—that ability to recall autobiographical events.

I reach out, so to speak, and there’s nothing.

I should be able to dig around in my mind and find that episode from my past when I learned about explicate and implicate memory. Was it a book? A lecture? A documentary film?

Nothing comes to me beyond the information itself.

I stand in front of the mirror in my bathroom. The face confronting me has no qualities. Is it the face of a kind person? Intelligent? Secretive? Humorous?

These words elicit no response.

How about handsome?

This all seems to be a waste of time.

If I want to trigger memories, I need to find some other method.

The fact is, I do not know this man looking back at me. A symmetrical face. Healthy. Not young. Not old. No missing teeth, nor apparent dental work. My hair has been cut so short I can’t discern its natural color.

Is this how I normally present myself? Shaved head?

Was it cut for me?

They do that to patients and prisoners sometimes. But the other people here—the other “guests”—don’t all have shaved heads.

I hear breathing, and I shift two or three inches until I can see, reflected in the mirror, the man standing in the open doorway behind me.

“My grandmother’s cockatoo would do that, too,” Ed says. His eyes find mine in the mirror. “Just look at himself in a mirror. For hours, sometimes.”

The words could have been delivered in a belittling or haughty fashion. I played them back in my head, analyzing the intonation of his delivery. But, no. It was neutral. Devoid of emotion. Just a puerile observation.

“I hope you slept well,” he says with little concern. Probably how he spoke to his grandmother’s bird.

I had. And this new day in this tiny world…I find it all to be the same as yesterday. People tell me it’s Tuesday, and that later, in several hours, we will all go upstairs to watch them broadcast another episode of that infernal game show.

“You have an appointment,” Ed says, stepping back out of the doorway. I am to follow. “The doctor will see you now,” he adds with a chuckle.

“Dr. Hetzel?” I asked. “The woman who came to talk to me yesterday?”

Ed appears surprised.

“Yesterday? Well, I guess you made quite an impression on Dr. Lydia if she wants to see you two days in a row.”

Still looking into the mirror, I observe my own actions. Without giving it any thought, I tuck my shirt into my pants, fasten the topmost button at the collar, and perfunctorily wash and dry my hands with no wasted movements.

It seems I am fastidious. Maybe even cultured.

I turn and follow Ed out of my little domicile and down a corridor.

He opens a door that I had previously found locked in my earlier explorations.

Dr. Lydia Hetzel looks up with a smile when I step into her office. Ed closes the door, leaving me alone with the doctor.

She shifts her head and drops her chin.

I lower myself into a deep cushioned chair pulled up close to the wide desk she sits behind.

“Is there some problem, Dr. Hetzel?” I ask.

“Excuse me?” She seems thrown but either my question or how it is phrased.

“Ed thought it odd you wanted to check on me two days in a row.”

“Ah, Ed.” She nods. This makes sense to her. “No problem, at all. And, please, call me Lydia. I’m simply curious on how things are going. Your mental acuity has progressed more quickly than usual for our guests. I’m simply trying to see if you might need any additional accommodations.”

I wonder what sort of special accommodations would be needed for someone who is improving? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? And does this progression of my mental acuity mean my memory will soon return? Could I be the subject of an experiment? Me and all the others. Maybe that little white room I came out of—a place and time I have no memories prior to—is actually some sort of memory-erasing closet. If so, did I consent to the experiment?

I watch Lydia’s face for more information. She flinches, so slightly, and glances down to the surface of her desk.

I, too, lower my gaze. Eye-contact, it seems, is best to be used sparingly around her.

“I can’t think of any extra accommodations,” I finally say.

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“That’s wonderful to hear,” she says, brightening. “We try our best to be gracious with our guests, providing shelter, clothing, food. And of course, there are numerous social diversions in our processing lounge. In addition, I’m sure you’ll agree, Serpientes y Escaleras is even more entertaining than table tennis or Yahtzee.”

My noncommittal nod seems appropriate. She tilts her head like a bird.

Before I can decided if I’m expected to speak, she continues.

“I’m going to guess that you have so many questions you don’t even know where to begin. Banish those worries, August—free yourself from such things. All that you need, has been provided.” She takes a deep breath, and when she exhales, it is clear she is giving me an example of what it looks like to be free of worries. “We are, each of us, on a journey, August. That’s all life is. You, along with the rest of our guests in this place, come to us a little shaken. Maybe confused. You remain in our care for a day, a week, maybe even a month. And then, you head on to your next stop on the journey.”

I am quiet taken with Doctor Lydia Hetzel’s hands. When she talks, they begin to move. Not fiddly, not nervous. No fast, jerky motions. Sometimes they lift up, as if in flight. Other times there will be something small. Maybe her thin thumb will slowly rotate around the tip of an index finger. Like a bird so far up in the sky it’s a black dot. A lazy dot circling up there.

I hold onto that visual of the bird high above the clouds, and there are mountains with patches of snow on the slopes. It lingers—that mental image—then dissipates. It had a different quality than all my myriad memories of facts. They don’t come to me visually. This bird in the sky, I had seen it before. I know I must have. But not here. There are no windows. That bird and those mountains were memories, from the past. My past.

So, it is still there. My life. My memories. I now know it. I need to be patient.

A wave of optimism descends on me so warm I realize my shoulders slump, relax. Have I been that stressed? Guarded?

The doctor notices, and she smiles. Smug in her assumption that she has assuaged my fears with her preposterous talk of life’s journey.

I find that I like the doctor. But I don’t trust her.

She pauses and waits. I look across at her and I smile. Then I look down. I nod.

From the corner of my eye I see her frown. Am I not relaxed enough? She opens a manila folder on her desk and studies a piece of paper.

“I’m happy to entertain any questions you might have. But please know, I can’t answer them all. Not at once. Too much mental clutter is far from therapeutic.”

I consider asking what sort of therapy involves game shows. But I say nothing.

When I don’t speak, she runs a finger across the sheet of paper.

“Valerie reports here that you were able to remember your name with very little prompting at the very moment of your arrival. That’s unusual. Quite unusual.”

She does it again. Waits for a response. I look at her concerned face, but I then do what a submissive dog does, and shift my focus a few degrees from her eyes.

I decide it would be kind to go ahead and ask a question. Let her feel useful.

“Will it return?” I ask. “My memory?”

“Of course, August,” she says with a sweet smile. Her words and expression are given too fast. “Everyone is different and I don’t know how long it will take for you. But keep in mind, you’re doing so well.”

As I try and think of another question—one that might be answered honestly, I hear the door behind me open.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," I hear a woman's voice from behind me. "I wasn't aware you were—”

I turn around and see that woman, in the open doorway. That scowling woman in the tailored pantsuit Ed had referred to yesterday as a Network executive. When she sees my face, she chuckles.

“Ah,” she says to the doctor, “just one of them.”

The doctor nods with a hint of indulgence, excusing this interruption. But instead of politely withdrawing, the woman enters, closes the door behind her, and drops into a deep sofa behind me.

"What a morning!" She exhales heavily. "I've spent over an hour with Silverio Moreno and Saligia Jones. I’d forgotten how tiresome they could be. Good lord, Lydia, how do you put up with them?"

"They are colorful characters, Ida, I’ll give you that," the doctor says. She cuts her eyes, momentarily, in my direction and lifts a finger slightly to let me know our business, whatever it is, is not yet finished.

"Colorful?” Ida makes a snorting sound. “Willful and impulsive—and I'm being kind. The perennial challenge of working in show business. You come from a different background, Lydia. All that academic and science stuff. But try not to forget who really holds the entertainment industry together. People like me. Clearheaded administrators. Not the talent. Never the talent. Sometimes we have to placate them, sure. Give them a sense of their own, how should I say….”

"Their own agency?" the doctor asks.

"See? You're just like me, Lydia. Pragmatic, insightful. And I have to give you credit, you're much more tolerant and ready with a pleasing euphemism to make your scatterbrained coworkers feel good about their colorful nature.”

“There’d be no show without the Silverio’s of the world,” the doctor says. She smiles to Ida and shifts in her chair, a clear attempt to indicate that she desires to continue her consultation with me.

But even with my back to this joyless woman, Ida, I know she is not yet ready to leave.

“Don’t remind me,” Ida says. “Babysitting the likes of those people is one of the unacknowledged aspects of our jobs—one we are not properly compensated for. And I hope you understand how much the Network appreciates you, Lydia. If all of my other obligations didn’t keep me in my office back in Los Angeles, I’d be out here more frequently keeping the troops in order on this screwy production.”

As Ida prattles on about how the “level of professionalism has plummeted on Serpientes y Escaleras,” I can find nothing useful in her words, so I let my attention return to the doctor.

I quite like the features of her face. The doctor’s cheekbones rise high, curving back towards her ears. The woman simply has a beautiful shape to her skull. The quality to the outer zygomatic ridge—the pale white skin so thin and tight at that region it was almost blue. Why this fascination? Does Dr. Lydia Hetzel remind me of someone I know, but can’t remember? Simple sexual attraction? Maybe emotional transference that patients often develop toward their doctors?

“You have a way with everyone, Lydia,” Ida continues, dishing her calculating and phony praise upon the doctor, who I can tell enjoys it. I am all but forgotten. “Not just the preposterous self-importance of the cast and crew of this show, but also these, well, ambulatory pumpkins wandering the halls. What is the technical term you use? REINCORs?”

The doctor’s face seizes with displeasure—I notice she checks my reaction from the corner of her eye.

“Ida, please. We don’t openly discuss such things in this room.”

“That’s another thing you do so well, dear,” Ida adds. “You maintain your staunch professionalism. And that’s why I need you to stay on top of your game. We can’t have another episode like last week with that woman jumping out of the window. What you’re doing right now is what I’m talking about. Interrogating these pod people. Make sure they’re not hiding some twisted neurotic whatever.”

The doctor’s lips compress but I don’t doubt Ida remains oblivious to her continuing gaffes.

Though to be honest, I’m still too clueless to be offended. But I am getting bored with all this banal shoptalk. I decided to see what happens when the subject is changed.

“I’m afraid of them,” I say cryptically with a slight quaver in my voice.

I hear the squeak of springs. Though I cannot see her, I know Ida is leaning forward on the sofa.

Dr. Hetzel’s face melts in compassionate concern as she directs her full attention back to me.

From behind me, I hear Ida say: “They speak?”

The doctor sighs and looks over my shoulder.

“You know they do,” she says.

“I know they speak, yes,” Ida says. “I just don’t think I’ve heard one articulate itself unprompted.”

“Who are you afraid of, August?” The doctor slides both arms across the surface of the desk, inviting me to let her take my hands in hers. But I don’t.

“Not a who,” I say. “A what. That door—both of them. The ones upstairs in the TV studio.”

“They’re just doors,” the doctor says. “In a wall. Nothing more.”

“There’s no way out of them,” I explain. “Just little rooms.”

“Of course there’s a way out,” she tells me. “You can’t see all of the walls in there from where you’re sitting. I assure you, they’re roomier in there than you think. And there’s a corner, and then you walk down—”

“No,” I say, and I look up to meet the doctor’s eyes. “I had a comprehensive view of what’s beyond the doors. I was in the middle row, second seat from the left. I could see everything behind both doors. Tiny rooms about five feet by five feet.”

“This one is clever,” Ida says. “I’ll give it that.”

“They are people,” the doctor says to Ida. “Like you and I. Some haziness, where memory is concerned.”

“His memory sounds better than mine,” Ida says. She makes a grunt, and I know she has stood up.

“Don’t worry, August.” The doctor says this with soft reassurance. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

“Besides,” Ida adds as she steps around to look me full in the face, “sooner or later your number will come up. Maybe it’ll be tonight! Then you’ll know what’s on the other side of those doors. Well, one of them at least.”

She lifts a hand in farewell to the doctor and leaves the office.

That woman is pure evil. Gleeful and mocking.

“Sorry about that,” the doctor says to me. “Ida lacks social graces.”

She closes the folder—my folder—and places it in a drawer of her desk.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of here, August,” she says as she stands. “You’re among friends.”

I rise from the chair and give a submissive nod and a brave smile before I leave Dr. Hetzel’s office.

It is a simple matter, really, for me to come to the conclusion that—at least as far as these people are concerned—there is nothing in this place for me but those doors they plan to push me through.

If I don’t do something about it, I, too, will find myself in front of the cameras just like Gertrude and Kyle. Sitting passively in a chair while those people, those make believe psychics, pretend to act out incidents of my past. And judge me.

As for the consequence of their judgement, I do not know. When we, the audience, were lead back downstairs, I assume someone let Gertrude and Kyle out of their little prisons on stage. Unless there is a trapdoor in the floor that is used for their disposal. What I do know is that once the show ended last night, we did not see those two again.

And because no one will tell me where the contestants go, I have to think that it can’t be good. I have to find a way out. These are not good people. Friends don’t keep secrets from you, and they don’t hold you captive. And they certainly don’t exploit you for crass entertainment.