I had asked for freedom - for us to be returned to our homes, our lives. I told them we would not cooperate - that I would do everything in my power to subvert them and their objectives. Then...

My memories were still hazy, returning in waves.

...Addy warned against pissing off our captors, shouting the message across the hallway. If we failed to cooperate, we might be eliminated and replaced. We couldn't be sure how expendable we were. I shook my head furiously, pacing around the vault, kicking cubes, and...

An occasional click or beep pricked my ears. I could hear the rumbling of machines in the distance. A vent somewhere above me was alternating between sucking in air and expelling it.

...and I conceded the point to Addy. Waving my hand dismissively back and forth, I retracted my statement about not cooperating. As angry as I was, I valued my life above all else. But that wasn't to say I was happy about the situation. Addy nodded firmly, sharing my sentiment, while Blaine helped Brad up from the floor...

My lazy vision meandered across the ceiling, glimpsing an illustration etched in white against a black backdrop. A black hole, drawn with fine, silver lines, surrounded by stars.

Where was I? NASA? NASA's laundry room?

...Brad collapsed back to the floor, unconscious. Blaine's eyes went wide, and he grabbed Brad's shoulders. Slowly, he brought himself lower, close to Brad's sleeping form. I thought he might try to steal a kiss before Blaine suddenly collapsed on top of Brad, out cold. I realized what was happening at the same moment I felt the warm pressure washing over my thoughts. The last thing I saw before passing out was Addy slumped against the elevator doors, sliding into a sitting position.

They drugged us again. And they moved us to a new location. To another simulation? My head ached at the thought. As I stood, swaying from the sleepy fog in my ears, I looked around.

I usually liked the cyberpunk aesthetic, so long as it was done properly; a wall of monitors here, motherboard patterns in the carpet, everything clean and dusted.

Whoever had designed this facility had taken it too far.

The floors and walls consisted of rusted sheets of metal, bolted together. Piles of loose black tubes ran along the corner where the floor met the wall. A tangle of black and green wires was taped to the ceiling. Next to us was a 19-inch monitor displaying a white bar graph against a green background. The bars were tracking ‘Power’, ‘Water’, ‘Heat’, and ‘O2.’

Yeah, whoever had built this place had gone overboard on the sci-fi aesthetic. I felt like I was on a movie set.

This is ridiculous.

The others were standing from the ground, getting their bearings. Addy cranked his head side-to-side, stretching. I watched him take in the scene and make the face of someone taking a swig of expired milk.

He gets it. He agrees.

In contrast, Brad was marveling at every little detail. Like a kid visiting Disney World for the first time. It was sad.

Addy noticed Brad’s wonderment and scoffed, “Do I really have to point out what just happened?”

Brad offered a non-committal shrug, and said, “Huh?”

Addy opened his mouth to speak. Realizing that it wouldn’t be enough, he moved so that he was directly in front of Brad and stabbed a finger towards Blaine, “He just betrayed you, after I fucking called it! And you don’t have the decency to be upset about it!”

“I trust him,” Brad said. He turned away from Addy, treating his friend like he no longer existed.

I watched as a nuke went off on Addy’s nose, spreading his mouth and eyebrows to the borders of his face, “You-! Are you fucking deluded? A couple of weeks ago you told me - and this is a direct quote - that I'm ‘dead to you,’ yet you’ll forgive the man who literally just stabbed you-,”

“Inappropriate use of ‘literally,’” I mumbled.

“-in the back? Tell me how that makes sense. I'm waiting.”

“Addy, do yourself a favor and fuck off,” Brad said, in a calm voice that surprised us all, “I trust your judgment - I do - but I also trust Blaine. Blaine pulled a clever move to win a game. Will I trust him in future games? Not as much. Should this affect our friendship? No, that would be silly.”

Wow. That was a surprisingly good argument.

I squinted, observing Brad with fresh eyes.

Addy squinted his eyes to convey suspicion, “And if you look out your left window, you’ll see one of nature’s saddest predators, the croc-of-shit.”

“Alright, Addy,” I said, rolling my eyes, “Can we drop it? Maybe figure out where we are instead?”

“Yes,” Blaine agreed, saying the word with more bite than usual. He chose a direction and started walking down the hall, expecting us to follow. All three of us hesitated.

"Never say I didn't warn you," Addy mumbled to Brad.

"I'll bear it in mind," Brad replied.

We moved to follow Blaine down the hall, and then halted when he came to an abrupt stop and looked over his shoulder. There was a question in his eyes.

Addy waved for him to continue walking. Blaine ignored the gesture and looked to me.

I threw my hands out to the sides and asked, “Why did we stop?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He nodded and resumed his pace.

The hallway had a subtle curve to it that would eventually take us in a wide circle. The worn-down cyberpunk theme continued. To my right, a glass case was mounted to the wall. There was an array of small power tools inside. On the ground to the left were white bags with hazard symbols printed on them in green ink. I rolled my eyes hard.

So cliché.

The curving hall eventually terminated with a black metal door, which slid open as we drew close. To the left of the door...

The window.

The moment called for a collective show of surprise, but instead, there was an awed silence.

This isn't a movie set. It can't be.

At first, I didn't know what to think. As moisture began to tickle my eyelids, I observed the others, looking for cues.

Brad stared for two whole seconds before spinning to look at his surroundings. Observing them in a new light. Recontextualizing and wearing a smile that was growing by the second. Unlike myself, he was capable of living in the moment. And he was very much in the moment right now.

Addy was reacting in a way I respected. Humble, appreciative, taking it all in. Allowing himself to not only to live in the moment, but to understand the moment. I wished I could feel the same.

Blaine looked for half a second before retreating from the scene. His back slammed against a wall, and three or four emotions swept across his face. Fear, bewilderment. The grandeur of the moment was lost on him. He was focused, trying to keep the moment from turning into an episode.

And then there was me. Feeling nothing. Missing an opportunity.

I hated that I couldn’t appreciate the moment for myself.

I used a finger to remove a tear from my eye. The logical part of me said that the tear was warm against my skin, and yet the moisture served to cool my finger with an intensity that spread to the rest of my body and blood. Chills.

'You might as well send us all home.'

What a fucking joke.

My hand went to one of the notaguns at my side, which rested in a black leather holster that I couldn’t remember putting on. I gripped the cold metal of the handle hard enough for the blood in my hand to run hot.

Then I released it. Fight or flight had kicked in and fighting wasn’t an option. I wanted to shoot the window...

Not an option. Definitely not an option.

Before the others could notice my swelling rage, I escaped through the metal door frame, leaving the others behind. Giving up my last chance to participate in the moment.

I don't want to be here. They can't expect us to be okay with this.

The room past the metal door was eerily familiar. Most of the room was barren. In the center was a marble desk with a computer monitor. To the left of that, a marble pedestal, the surface of which was glowing with a ghostly green light.

The same layout as my office in the Tower of Reason. My rational mind cracked into irrational thought fragments, causing my lips to quiver.

Damnit, damnit, damnit! No! I told them no more! I told them! I told them we wouldn’t play! And Addy-

This isn’t even fair! None of us agreed to this! What the fuck am I supposed to do to get out of this! What the fuck do I do?

We were trapped. Again. We had failed to escape the first two games, and there was no way in hell we were escaping this third one.

Maybe there will be a fourth simulation. If there is, then that's my chance. I'll do whatever it takes. I'll go fucking wild with creative problem-solving. Our captors can't account for every contingency. And if they adapt, I'll adapt faster. There has to be a way out!

Next time. That's what I was telling myself. It felt wrong, like I was procrastinating.

But it was my best plan. And I would make it work. I had to.

I didn't know what I would do otherwise. I didn't even want to think about it.

Gradually, I slowed my breathing, forcing myself to calm down.

Cooperate, for now.

I would focus on getting ahead of the others in the new simulation. Lose myself in the competition again. Keep my spirits up. I returned my attention to the room and its contents.

The computer mostly contained links to instructional guides on how to fix plumbing, mechanical, and electrical issues on our vessel. Besides that, there was a button that opened a bar graph when tapped.

Once again, each of us had a bar, and each colored rectangle was composed of four smaller bars that stacked to create one larger bar. The smaller bars were labeled ‘Hunger’, ‘Thirst’, ‘Energy’, and ‘Happiness.’ Everyone’s bars were mostly full and approaching the 100% mark on the graph. Even our happiness bars were full, which was surprising given Addy’s recent outburst.

How do they expect to track our happiness in real time?

Addy and Blaine entered the room, and I filled them in on what I had discovered so far. Then, realizing who was missing, I asked, “Where did Brad go?”

“He’s checking out the rest of this place,” Blaine replied.

Addy chuckled, “The kids tweaking out. Told us our voices sounded distorted and then power walked away like a madman.”

I frowned. Brad needed to be here learning how this new game worked. Exploration could wait until after.

“Ok. I’m going to get him,” I said, my steps brisk as I walked past them. They didn’t protest.

As I walked back through the door frame, I felt the impulse to stop and stare out the window. Even though I had a task, and it wasn’t right to be indulging myself when we were trapped outside of the fucking atmosphere, and-

The earth glowed with a faint blue aura, impossibly large despite its insignificant size in the grander universe. All of human history, all of our accomplishments, they all existed on a lonely rock floating through the void.

It felt wrong. Why was the universe such a vast and lonely place? There had to be other forms of life out there, but they were too distant and rare for it to matter. Until we escaped the bounds of our planet, this was it. We would live and die in the same place, having never moved.

Behind the cover of clouds, I could see the shape of South America, a mostly green land mass surrounded on all sides by blue ocean. Clouds were mostly gathered at the borders of the continent, white plumes that melded with the colors of the water. Wispy storms that would enrich the land and bring disaster. How many millions of humans were toiling on that land at the mercy of those bittersweet wisps?

Too many. Far too many. I wanted badly to seize the clouds and shake them furiously until they submitted.

No more storms, no more floods, just enough rain to sustain.

Loss, pain, death, there was too much of it in the world. Our planet was a terribly small point in the vastness of space, and yet it bred so much... bad. Negative utility. I held onto the optimistic belief that one day the humans would rid themselves of all the bad. It was moments like this when I felt the overwhelming impulse to discard all of my previous plans and pour everything into bringing that day closer, even by one minute. So much bad could happen in the span of a single minute.

As was the routine, my cynical self arrived at the scene, too.

If I wanted to bring effective change, I needed wealth. The more the better. Ideally, I needed power. Humanity was selfish, short-sighted, and would steer themselves off of a cliff unless somebody with honest moral goals grabbed the wheel.

I hated when these thoughts crept in, and yet I believed in them firmly. Wealth and power. Once I had these, I could save the humans and...

And treat myself. To private transportation. To beautiful women. Every flavor of exotic food and entertainment.

Hell, if I had wealth and power, why even bother with the rest of the humans? What utility would I provide myself by building schools in another continent?

There was a storm swirling in my head, and my heart was pounding. I couldn't understand how these selfless and selfish thoughts were able to share space within the same brain. The conflicting ideals rattled me. I felt nervous, jittery, and altogether unworthy of the selfless thoughts.

Am I a good person?

Does it matter?

Fuck me.

I tore myself from the window and forced myself to walk down the hall in pursuit of Brad. I had a task, and introspection could wait.

As I power walked across the sheets of metal, I had one last fleeting thought. It was stupid, perhaps even illogical, but I wondered if there was a way - any way at all - to bring the two conflicting halves together.