Thomas shuddered. The unsettling sensation came like a rainfall onto a leaky roof, as Thomas already questioned his sanity. He kept walking down the darkened street, feeling watched. Thomas was coming from here, and was going there. Where here and there were is an unanswerable question. Thomas didn’t even know where he was, he just knew that he was headed somewhere. On his way to there, he noticed the shadows from the streetlights morphed and grew into shapes and figures. Perhaps those shapes and figures were there in the shadows before, but Thomas would never know. He could not stop to take the time to check; after all, he got the feeling that he was already late to there.
It was a simple test, really. Liv questioned the ethics, but it was up to her superiors to deal with PR. The idea of the test was to put a person into a simulation, but give them subconscious orders and suggestions. The objective was vague and repetitive. The environment was poorly rendered, and the layout not well designed. Subject T-3 should have been able to complete the objective, but there was a slight hesitation in his step. The brainwaves read anxious, but T-3 displayed no signs of anxiety; no, T-3 showed signs of both paranoia and dementia: one the most dangerous mental condition cocktails. He must have blamed his objective’s vagueness on his memory, and his hesitation was the paranoia at work. A faulty --but interesting-- test.
Thomas was certain: he was headed in circles. He trusted his internal compass and gut instinct, but the streets all looked the same. To make matters worse, the same shadow began to follow him. It stayed a consistent distance away, but when he stopped, it stopped. When he turned, shortly after it turned. Thomas picked up his pace. So did the stalker. Thomas could feel his heart begin to race.
Liv noticed his heart rate pick up, too. T-3 frequently turned around and scanned the area, but he always saw the same thing. She didn’t understand. It was clear that T-3 was paranoid, but he was jumping at his shadows. This would make for interesting data, but the mental health of the subject was worrying. He might have a heart attack, which would wind up the press like the bloodthirsty hounds they were. The fallout of having a subject die on an already questionable test would be massive. The company was already on thin ice, and Liv happened to like her job. She watched intently as Thomas kept increasing pace.
Thomas had enough. He would either confront the stalker, or he would book it at full speed. He looked back, and the menacing stalker was still there. Thomas wanted to scream. He wanted to curl up and hide, but that wasn’t an option. He thought about confronting, but the flight instinct got the better of him. He began to sprint, and so did the stalker. It was almost like the stalker was… shadowing him. Shadow. Thomas almost burst out laughing; he must have looked like a fool to the other pedestrians. He thought he was being chased by his own shadow. He began to chuckle, and so did the passer-bys. The chuckle became a cackle, and the cackle a laughter on the border of insanity. The people on the street laughed too, only they laughed quieter than Thomas. It sounded like they were laughing at him, not with him. Thomas had stopped laughing, but the laughter of the people kept going, which infuriated and embarrassed Thomas.
This made for supremely interesting data; it might even save the company. Liv was intrigued with how T-3 interacted with his environment. He seemed to find company among the fictitious beings on the streets, even though they were mere shadows.
The laughter had quieted, but it was still there. Thomas had began to inspect the laughers, and upon a closer look he discovered that they were not even there. They, too, were immaterial figments of his imagination. The laughter must’ve been echoes of his own, he realized stupidly. Mouth agape, Thomas was broken. He had nearly broken down in anger to himself. Thomas had no idea how to carry on. He had no interest in going here nor there, he just wanted to be.
How was this possible? T-3 resisted the most simple of orders. Liv had been instructed to keep watch over T-3 after submitting her report to her boss. T-3 had lost his will to carry on with his sole purpose, to keep moving to the end. This was insane, she mentally declared. She had to edit the simulation somehow, but edit it discreetly.
Thomas saw in the corner of an alley a fire escape. He decided that he wanted to climb it, as it would most likely give him a vantage point to see the hell he was wandering in. He ascended to the top, and saw a mysterious beacon of light not far from where he was. That must’ve been there. He contemplated the action of finishing what he had started. If he went there, he could maybe get out of this place. He could escape the torturous shadows and the unforgiving maze of a city. He turned to climb back down, but then stopped. He saw the fire escape, but he also saw another way out. He knew he was still being watched; he just knew it! They mustn’t know, he repeated in his head. They mustn’t know of my shame. He repeated his in his head like a mantra. His heart began to pick up speed again.
Liv realized what was going on. T-3 was resisting the test, but she wasn’t sure how he would carry out his rebellion. It was an uncommon thing for test subjects to resist the tests placed before them, yet it happened every then and again. T-3 had begun resisting back when he realized he was alone, and was merely going through the motions until he saw a way out. His heart rate was reaching a dangerous level, but T-3 kept moving towards the fire escape. Liv realized her mistake, but it was too late.
Thomas neared the edge of the building, and looked down at the repeating identical segments of the street. This was more proof that he is living a lie. The only way he could stop living the lie was to stop living in the lie. He neared the edge closer yet. His heart beat faster and harder. Thomas had a fear of death, but this wasn’t death, was it? No, this was an awakening. An awakening from a bad dream. Thomas lifted his feet mechanically. As he reached the ledge, he closed his eyes and prepared to jump.
Liv was dumbfounded. She had a gut feeling this would end badly, but death in the simulation was meaningless. T-3 would resort to a dreamlike state until she woke him up.
Thomas was airborne; it was like he was flying. He was innocent of all the shadows, and floated for what seemed to be a couple of seconds. Gravity had realized its mistake, and Thomas realized his. He was terrified, and he regretted jumping. As he plummeted, he thought back to why he made this decision. He wanted to resist the watcher, but why? What impulse made him resist? The watcher was not inherently bad, and neither was Thomas. By nature, Thomas was actually quite jumpy and obedient. In the few moments of falling, Thomas could truly see. The seconds of clarity made him see why he resisted: he was human, and he didn’t like being forced into anything. However, this newly attained information did not slow his heart. Rather, his heart raced faster and faster with every foot fallen. His head hit the ground, but his heart had given out shortly before impact.
Liv was astonished. T-3 had chosen death over a simple instruction. He chose to die by falling, but that was not the death provided. He wanted to be free of the hell he was in, and so he was. Liv sat in her chair for the longest time. T-3, previously known as Thomas, was dead. He did not have to die, but he chose to die in away. She had no idea how this was going to go over with her boss. Where was her boss, anyways? And why was she performing this experiment? Liv began to question why she had to monitor a poor man’s death. She began to expand her thought process to include other questions. She wondered what the point of the experiment was, and where she was. She wanted to know what her last name was, whether she had family, what her job was, and then the heaviest question came. Who was Liv, and why does she exist? Liv was nothing but a cog in the company (to which she could not recall the name of), and she existed to work. Working gave her purpose, but now that her work was gone, what was to become of her? Surely she will be fired, but from what? This was all she could remember. She had to watch T-3. It was such simple instructions. Then again, T-3 had simple instructions, too. Maybe she was just in a more advanced simulation than T-3, and suddenly she had to resist. She wasn’t sure how or why, but she knew she had to. The only way to resist was to stop watching T-3, but that was life for her. Perhaps that was the root of the problem: T-3 had become life for her, and now that T-3 was dead because he resisted, maybe she should die too. She saw the nearby syringe for euthanizing T-3 in case he ever went crazy, and it was still full. Liv rolled back her coat, and slid the point into her arm. As the fluid seeped in, her life seeped out.
Damn, Dennis thought. That’s the fourth dead test subject this month. Dennis leaned back on his chair. L-5 had been assigned an objective slightly less vague but just as repetitive and maybe a little blander than the fake construct known as T-3. Just as L-5 had provided means to an end for the fictitious T-3, Dennis had provided the syringe for L-5. Dennis got out of his chair and walked over to the fan to turn it on. Dennis returned to the chair as the ceiling fan began blowing air. Dennis looked over at his drawer, and his eyes came to rest upon a rope.