“I honestly, truly didn’t think you’d fall for that trap.”
Her voice has this uncanny ability to sound like it’s coming from everywhere at once. My gun, smooth and white with an alternating blue and orange light cradled in the center, constantly occupies my right hand, making it impossible to cover more than one ear at a time. And anyway, that’d probably just make her more spiteful.
“In fact, I designed a much more elaborate trap further ahead for when you got through with this easy one.”
I usually try to get up the iridescent metal stairs as quickly as possible. Each step brings me closer to the elevator, closer to my next test. The tests are hard, but at least she keeps her vocal script turned off during most of them.
“If I’d known you’d let yourself get captured this easily, I’d have dangled a turkey leg on a rope from the ceiling.”
Sigh.
I climb over piles of twisted metal, lost screws, and broken machinery, in order to get in the transparent tube that will transport me to my next test. She starts to utter another remark, but thankfully, because of the whirring of the doors sliding shut, I can’t hear her very well.
I’ve been fixing the lab up for months (I think—it’s hard to tell time when you don’t see the sun) running test after endless test, stuck under her merciless command.
The tube lets me out in a hallway that almost exactly resembles the one I’ve just left, replete with more piles of crumpled metal and the ever-appreciated snide remarks. God. It’s like she’s inside my head, she’s so loud. No, don’t want to think about that.
The circular metal doors slide open in front of me, unveiling an equally familiar scene: the test room. I’ve never been in this room before, but I know what I have to do. The doors slide shut behind me, and my sarcastic tormentor is silent.
I look around the room. Next to me are two white panels at different angles. Above my head are two metal platforms, one with a red button, and one with a door – the exit. It’s clear my exit depends on my ability to redirect a laser into a receptor on the other side of the cavernous room in which my test is taking place. But where is the laser?
I am thinking it must be above my head somewhere, so I start to wander. I am staring at the ceiling when I feel the sharp burn on my leg that makes me jump. Mystery solved.
I’m sure her reception wires are running a laugh command to her main circuits as this unfolds. Thankfully, I can’t hear it.
Laser located, I prepare my gun. Taking aim, I shoot a person-sized blue oval into the blank wall. I turn and shoot a similar orange one onto the wall above my head. With a deep breath I step through the blue oval.
The movement is quick, a moment of nanoseconds really. But an indescribable feeling goes through me every time I teleport. Sort of like the fifth go-around on a looping roller-coaster after you’ve just eaten Chipotle. Ok, so maybe it is describable. Anyway, I really don’t like it all that much. But it’s extremely necessary for this lab. I would be stuck back in test one without it.
Once I’ve figured out the placement of the portals, the rest of this puzzle is easy. I sort through it in a few minutes. The puzzle has me using a lot of conserved momentum – essentially sending me flying through the air from portal to portal to platform – in order to complete it. These kinds of puzzles are my favorite, I feel like an acrobat or a performer and not just a human subject.
But now I’ve reached the door.
“Well done. Here come the test results: ‘You are a horrible person.’ That’s what it says. We weren’t even testing for that.”
I’m debating creating makeshift earplugs out of the loose screws at my feet as I get in the elevator for the next test.
