①
Was that all it was? Boy, she certainly felt stupid. All that worrying for nothing!
“Finally!” The Administrator cried. “Couldn’t you hear me knocking?!”
The Girl turned away to suppress a fake cough to avoid looking the Administrator’s way.
“...I didn’t hear anything,” the Silver-Haired Reporter confessed.
“I was hanging on for dear life, trying to get back in! It was terrifying being left isolated all alone in that vast emptiness.”
The two of them peered down the doorway the Administrator came from. Instead of an inky black void, he saw the hallway leading back to his workstation, and she saw the street leading back to her place.
“I was wondering where the Administrator had gone to.”
“So, he was a Turned the whole time?”
“Likely didn’t become one until later.”
“Sounds more articulate than I expected.”
“If you’ve seen one Turned, you haven’t seen them all.”
“Well,” the Silver-haired Reporter tipped his head, “looks like my job here is done.”
“But, you didn’t do anything.”
“But I did it very well.”
②
“There’s something that’s been bugging me,” the Silver-Haired Reporter piped up. “You said that there would be a dead body in the room, but you never said which one of us it would be.”
{It didn’t seem important}
“Not important?! This is our lives we’re talking about!”
{What do your lives have to do with it?}
“Well - we don’t want to die. None of us want to die. Just tell us which one of us it is, and get it over with!”
{Do you want to die so much?}
“Let me restate the question - this dead body - which one of us is it?”
{None of you}
“What? But you said.... did you lie?”
{We don’t lie}
“Wait, I think I see now. You said that a dead body would be in the room in 3 days time, when we were done, but didn’t specify on the actions for a corpse being here. Meaning, the circumstances for a corpse being in the room hadn’t arrived yet.”
{It’s not exactly a corpse}
The Girl couldn’t follow this trail of logic.
“I’m going to take a wild stab here. Before we came, you foresaw there would be a dead body. Is the to-be dead body in the room with us right now?”
{No, not yet}
“Was the to-be dead body in the room at the time?”
{Yes it was}
“Don’t you see? They said a dead body would be in this room. They never said it was going to be one of us.”
And the Silver-Haired Reporter grabbed the handle of the door, twisted it downwards and opened the door inwards.
A dead body plopped through.
It was the Administrator who introduced them to this room.
③
The Silver-haired Reporter was about to make his dramatic exit when he was temporarily barred by the Administrator who blocked his way.
“Before you leave, be sure to fill out these evaluation leaves.”
“Nothing’s stopping you from doing your duty, huh? Not even death.”
The Girl looked upon the lined sheets with dismay. She hated these things. Why did they always give these things out at the end? If they’d given them out at the beginning, she would’ve paid better attention. Now she’d have to recall everything that happened - events she would sooner forget. And those things were always fishing for compliments. Worse still, if she gave a honest answer, the recipient could be punished for receiving a lousy grade. It was a rigged system and she wanted no part of it.
“You can put whatever glowing reference you like. Give yourselves top marks, give yourself failing grades, whatever you want!”
“I agree with her sentiment. I have more pressing matters to attend to than dealing with trivial matters like this.”
“You misunderstand. It’s to document efficiency between group members.”
“Fine. Just write in, ‘Met appropriate conditions’, or whatever qualifying stock quote that’ll pass.”
“Same for me. You fill it in for me as well”, she dismissed.
“But... you’re supposed to rate your teamworkers...” the Administrator trailed off.
The third day ended without the evaluation sheets filed out.
No comments:
Post a Comment