I awoke with a slight jolt and a twitch of my shoulders. Something was off - I felt hostile. I didn't remember dozing off, but there was a lingering feeling of inevitability in the back of my head. As if I hadn't been given the choice to sleep, but I had slept all the same.
Instinct told me to ignore my thoughts and to turn my brain off. To settle back into the sheets and let the fuzzy feelings whisper me back to sleep. For a moment, I listened, pulling a tuft of the blanket up against my chest and tucking it under my chin. A fan blew overhead, keeping my body cool and comfortable. It served to distract me, but I eventually acknowledged the little discomforts. The pillow was more rigid than usual. The tie around my neck was choking me and my belt squeezed at my waist like a pair of vice grips. Light was coming in from the wrong side of the room and it was bright.
This wasn't my bedroom. These weren't my clothes
Where was I?
“Good morning, Alec,” came an accented voice at the foot of the bed. Distinctly digital and British to a fault.
What the hell?
I forced my eyes open and immediately regretted it. Orange rays of light assaulted me, and I threw up an arm to shield my retinas.
This was not my bedroom. For one thing, there was a fucking hot tub in the corner. And as my eyes adjusted, they took in the wall to my right, which was all glass from corner to corner.
My mind dumped the fragmented memories from my dreams and began recalling all of the events leading up to this point.
Addy and Brad had fought. Brad had screamed and experienced hallucinations. The cards had glowed, signifying the end to our 'game'...
Everything that followed was harder to grasp.
Blaine had... left to look for a public bathroom in the park. Brad had... gone with him in the hopes of finding a water fountain. I... I had taken a seat in the grass... and then laid down... I had laid down in the grass... for a nap.
That wasn't like me at all. For one thing, I hated sleep. Naps were out of the question.
We were also in danger.
Nothing about the nap made sense. I just remembered... feeling drowsy. Like I suddenly had to sleep. Drugged, probably. Sleep dart?
And now I was in a stranger's bedroom, wearing a stranger's clothes.
“Hello?” I called out, disoriented and only half-lucid. I loosened the tie, loosened the belt, and then slid out of the four-poster bed, my feet landing on warm floor tiles, despite the cool air flowing through the room.
A voice had spoken to me, and yet there was nobody else here.
No, a digital voice had spoken to me.
The response came from a speaker mounted to the ceiling, “Hello, Alec. I am Childe, a prototype intelligence from the Machine Intelligence Development Institute, your personal guide and assistant. Please address me if you need anything.”
It took a second, but I nodded in assent, my mouth gaping. I could think of two dozen things I needed, and more than half of those things were answers.
I would start asking questions as soon as the grogginess wore off. In the meantime, I made my way over to the glass wall.
The expansive window overlooked an unfamiliar city. Far below was a grid of white homes with clay shingles. They looked expensive, and when I squinted, I swore I could see palm trees. Jutting out of the well-manicured metropolis were the occasional office buildings, most of which were stout relative to the building I had wandered into. Wherever I was, I was high up.
Directly in front of me was a slick office building made of black stone and tinted black glass, reaching up twenty or thirty stories. It seemed to mirror my building in appearance and structure. Furthermore, the room I was in looked the same as the one in the building across from me. A young man was walking about his version of the bedroom, pointing at the ceiling and laughing hysterically.
It was Addy.
All of the residual drowsiness diminished and I began to jump up and down, waving my hands manically above my head.
I failed to get his attention.
“Would you like to call Andrew Delainy?” the speaker on the ceiling asked. 'Childe.'
“What? Yes,” I confirmed.
A dial tone began to play. I watched as Addy looked up at his ceiling and sliced a hand through the air. In the same moment, the dial tone stopped, and Childe said, “Andrew is not available at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?”
I locked eyes with Addy from across the gap between buildings, tilting my head as if to say, “Seriously?”
“Yes,” I spoke.
“Proceed.”
I cleared my throat.
“Hey, this is Alec. If you aren’t too busy jacking off, I'd like to discuss what the hell is going on and how we got here. Important topics like that, kay? Kay.”
Aggressive and to the point.
I watched Addy receive the message and form an amused expression. He held his index finger up, telling me to “wait,” and then swapped it for the middle-finger. Following this, he dashed to the bedroom door, flung it ajar, and entered an office, which was also visible.
It was difficult to imagine what he was thinking, not to mention highly frustrating.
My eyes drifted to another building beside his and diagonal from mine. Again, identical in design.
I could see Blaine sitting on the side of a bed. He was speaking to the glass window in front of him, and only then did I realize that there might be a fourth building to the right of mine. It was impossible to see from my window, but it would complete the symmetry. Four buildings forming a two-by-two square. Would Brad be in the fourth?
“Ok. Childe, was it? Tell me what’s going on. How did I get here?”
“Please proceed to your office for further instruction.”
Following that was a low-tone beep.
I ground my fingers into a fist, then remembered what I was dealing with. A 'prototype intelligence,' not a human. I couldn't blame it for disregarding my queries.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
That's assuming Childe is who they say they are. I've effectively been kidnapped. Can I trust anyone anymore?
Still, Childe had promised that the next room would contain answers. Desperate for clarity, I pushed through a decadent ebony door and entered an unnecessarily large office.
Most of the room was barren, with large stretches of polished hardwood reflecting sunlight from the window. In the center sat a marble desk with a computer monitor. To the left of that, a square marble pedestal.
My vision paused on the top surface of the pedestal, which glowed blue with the same eerie light of the cards. Similar technology.
There was also a singular plaque on the wall, containing two lines of golden script. The first line contained my name: ‘Alec Silver’. The second line read: ‘Tower of Reason’.
Oh. A-ha.
I recognized where I was.
Ted Lax was a hot name in most media circles. I knew this because I rarely paid attention to whatever the media was spewing, and yet I knew so much about him. The guy had earned his first million while still in business school and had ridden the momentum up and up, building the most notable and controversial business of the present.
Cause.
It wasn’t clear how Cause made its money. Its function seemed to change every couple of months. Ted knew where to follow the money to, and he had chased it from kitchen appliances to mining companies to electronics distribution overseas. Recently, there had been rumors of new resorts being opened on islands in the Pacific.
But of all of Ted’s endeavors, I appreciated his donation service the most. Ted had personally selected six or seven research labs which he believed were not getting enough attention, packaged them together, and had gone across the country encouraging people to donate. Scientists studying artificial intelligence, dark matter, and other such topics had received millions thanks to Ted’s efforts.
To further emphasize his optimistic view of the future, Ted had constructed the Pillars of Humanity: four towering office buildings in the heart of the Silicon Valley. They represented technology, health, joy, and reason.
The plaque on the wall had read ‘Tower of Reason.’ And here I was.
And now the question to ask was “why?” Why was I in such a distinguished place and why was my name on the wall?
“Childe, can you tell me what’s going on now? I’m in the damn office.”
“Use the computer to earn capital. Hitting wealth milestones will grant you ‘competition cubes.’ Place competition cubes on the board next to the computer to activate ‘power moves.’ The business day ends at 5:00 PM. Have a happy time.”
The reply hit me like a sucker punch. Childe had just described... a new game. One with totally different rules from the card game.
Which confirmed that the cards had been a game. Only now they meant nothing.
My mouth was dry. The explanation also hadn’t answered my query but had instead delivered additional ones. Who had kidnapped us from the park and brought us here? Why were they having us play through a business simulation? What was the point of the harrowing events of yesterday?
Was Ted Lax behind all of this?
I looked around the empty office, waiting for the colors to blur and be replaced by the truth. A good truth. A dreadful one. I was willing to take either at this point, as long as I had some truth to cling to.
There was a new set of rules to learn. My friends and I had finally figured out how the card game worked and it had been discarded and replaced with this. In a way, I felt robbed. Played.
I didn't want to play. If I couldn't get answers, then I wanted to go home instead. Would I be allowed to? If I couldn't, would I be safe here?
I ignored the tantalizing glow of the ‘power moves’ pedestal and favored the computer instead. Confusion aside, Childe had delivered some vital information, and the computer would hold more. Better to play along, get as much intel as possible, and then escape this mad dream under the guise of compliance.
The monitor powered on the moment I sat down in the office chair. Four rectangles were arranged in a two by two on the touch screen, each of them grey and occasionally pulsing with a faint color. The rectangles each contained one word in black text, which read: ‘Sales’, ‘Services’, ‘Stocks’, ‘Scams’. In the center of the screen - and cutting into a corner of each rectangle - was a black circle containing a blue dollar sign. I tapped on that icon first.
This took me to a screen showing a graph with four bars, side by side. Each bar had a name underneath it - my name and the names of my three friends - and each bar had the number ‘$100,000.00’ written above it.
Except for Addy’s which said ‘$42,331.39’ and was shrinking by the second.
I looked out the window, across the gap, and saw Addy busy at his own computer. He was concentrating hard, rapidly tapping through menus. Acting on instinct. Whatever he was doing was directly affecting the bar graph.
My gaze returned to my own computer. Text in the top-right corner said: ‘Next Milestone: $120,000’. I tapped a 'Back' button in the top-left and was presented with the original screen.
“Childe, explain what each of these mean,” I asked the box on the ceiling. Apparently, Childe was installed in this room as well.
“In ‘Sales’, you will gain capital by creating and selling products. In ‘Services’, you will gain capital by performing tasks of increasing difficulty. In ‘Stocks’, you will gain or lose capital by investing your current funds. In ‘Scams’, you will gain capital by placing deceptive phone calls and organizing misleading press conferences. You may also steal directly from another player by traveling to their vault.”
With the new information, it didn’t take much to guess what Addy was up to. My friend had always talked loudly about his prowess in choosing winning stocks, and it would explain why his money was depleting. It was a smart opening move, too, albeit a risky one.
I need to show compliance. Play the game and demand little answers along the way.
My fingers hovered over the four options and selected the one which was glowing with a faint cream color. Sales.
I was taken to a new screen with two adjustable sliders. One was for ‘Fun’, the other for ‘Practicality’. The header read ‘Create A Product’.
Um, okay.
Moving one slider up caused the other to go down. I set both to 5 out of 10 and clicked ‘Accept’. A thud behind me caused me to jump. I turned to face the noise.
Resting on the hardwood was what looked to be a small handgun.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Seriously? Just as practical as it was fun? I could understand why some people would think so. Personally, guns made me nervous.
I stood, walked a few paces, and sheepishly picked up the firearm.
Then aimed at the wall dividing the office from the bedroom and fired. At not quite the speed of a bullet, a metal wire spooled out of the gun nozzle and anchored itself in the wall. Plaster and painted chips exploded from the hole.
I stared at the grey cord extending from my gun muzzle to the wall. Was this weapon supposed to be non-lethal? Without giving it much thought, I pulled the trigger again.
My entire body slammed against the wall with enough force that I felt the beams shift. I collapsed onto my butt and then my back.
Oh. Not a gun. A grappling hook.
“Sir, you are receiving a call from Blaine Irving,” Childe spoke.
“Answer it,” I groaned, unwilling to move.
There were a click and pause, and then Blaine’s voice came over the speaker, “Hello? Alec?”
“Hey, Blaine.”
“I was watching. It looked like you just died. How did you do that?”
“Found- ...made a grappling gun. Didn’t go well.”
“I can see that. Dude, do you have any idea what’s going on? How do I get a grappling gun?”
“Is there a voice coming from the ceiling in your place?”
“Yeah, my boy Childe.”
“Ask him. More efficient than asking me. Better explanation than I can give. Also, don’t say ‘my boy Childe’. Sounds like you’re the father.”
There was a half-hearted laugh, and then Blaine said, “That’s fair. Did Childe tell you why we’re here?”
“No, he refused. Let me know if you learn anything pertaining to that question.”
“I will, dude. Thanks.”
Another click signaled the end of the call.
Like a zombie rising from the dead, I stood. The pain wasn’t as bad as I had suspected, but I would be aching for the next day or two.
I grabbed for the grappling gun, whose nozzle was anchored to the wall, and it didn’t budge. Pulling the trigger again allowed me to pull it away from the wall, the wire extending. Pulling again made me crash into the wall once more but from a much safer distance. Next, I cocked the slide on the top of the gun, as if to reload. The wire detached from the wall, darting back into the nozzle. Ah.
When I returned to the computer, there was a text box prompting me to name my ‘product’. After much consideration, I shrugged and typed ‘notagun’. Stupid. The next page said:
‘When you are ready, proceed to room 22-5 for your sales pitch.’
22-5? How did I get there?
I left the office, found myself in a hall with ornate black carpeting, and turned around. Hanging on the outside of the door were silver numbers: 23-1. Intuition told me I had to go down a level to get to 22-5. There were two elevators further down the hall.
I called for one, got in, and selected ‘22’. As the elevator began to move, I noted that the numbered buttons ranged from 10 to 24. It started counting at 10?
I exited into a hall that looked similar to the previous one and followed it until I arrived at a door with the label ‘22-5’. I knocked, then thought better of it and barged in. My captors didn't deserve formalities, no matter who they were. The door continued to swing open and smacked against a wall. I stepped into the tiny office and leveled my gaze at-
My heart skipped.
Standing in the empty room was a man with carefully gelled hair, wearing a gray suit and the iconic golden bowtie.
Ted Lax smiled amicably, and said, “Good morning, Mr. Silver.”