Subject 52 was in a muddle. Scanning the environment carefully, he attempted to capture each detail with his mental camera in case he would ever be interrogated on these circumstances.
The sinking feeling of entrapment was a heavy stone sitting at the pit of his empty stomach.
“What is the purpose of all this?” he asked, eyes bright with the unrelenting fright of knowing oneself to be entering another sphere entirely.
“Not to worry Subject 52. Or actually that is a complete lie, this will be incredibly painful. Let me quickly give you an overview: you are among the lucky who have been destined to become part of an inexplicably crucial trial, the findings of which we have hypothesized could dramatically improve the workings of the human race as we know it,” replied the man clad in white, dressed as would be expected of a typical villain born from science.
“Is this all part of an incentive to manufacture a new pill to alleviate the anxiety that comes with being hyper social at every moment of the day? Or ahh I know, it must be a device that allows one to speak any language in the world,” interjected the 53rd from behind 52.
“No, both of your idiotic guesses are obviously wrong. I cannot reveal much about the circumstances to which you will be succumb, but I may let you in on the fact that the ultimate goal is to re-establish the limits of terror as we currently understand them,” continued the expert, formally known as Scientist 1.
It was then that Subject 52 knew, without question and without rhyme or reason, that he was shortly scheduled to be shipped off to his personal hell.
Unflinchingly unempathetic, the operator maneuvered the claw to grasp the bold numericals painted onto the shirtfront of the poor paralyzed being.
Consciousness departed from the 52nd as he was absorbed into the surrounding walls.
Subject 52 was now sat in a container zooming along a set of silver rails, searching feverishly for an escape. It became immediately apparent that this was impossible. Having confronted this reality, 52 looked instead for a shard of intelligence that could clue him in on the events occurring outside the moving chamber.
It was no use. The mobile container continued along unceasingly.
Waking startled from his forced slumber, Subject 52 was blinded by white. This is honestly no exaggeration: the surroundings were as utterly and completely starkly unstained as could be. Truly, the only discoloured squares that could reliably be made out among this façade of experimentation were a quadruplet of shitty speaker attached to the inner right corners of the square. It seemed the case that these perceptible patches had been placed here in conjunction with the construction of the other more basic aspects of the room. Yet, the combination of the wonderful details of these inventive additions made them seem so organically natural that one would have no trouble believing them to have sprouted from nothingness at the same time as the rest of the residence. Despite the unusually homogenous colour scheme and unanswerably fitting speakers, Subject 52 concluded the environment to all in all be surprisingly unthreatening.
The same constitutional radio-transmitters described at length above were now emitting a raspy sound. Guitar chords and hard beats ricocheted off the inward barriers.
The intro was soon joined by voice of a young man. Little did the 52nd know that his fate was being currently foreshadowed:
‘Fell in love with a girl, I fell in love once and almost completely…’
It was as if the scientists who had developed these circumstances had deviously encroached into the store of memories of this ill-fated participant, extracting this vital snippet.
His only notable recollection of hearing the compositional chords underlying these lyrics was tied to the experience of being sat with Sandra Wright in his well-loved Chevy before Winter Formal of Sophomore Year.
And oh, look who it was! It was Sandra, with the same flowing blonde hair and pinkish, stretchy jean overall dress that she had been wearing all those years ago in honor of said momentous happening – she had been a system-hating ‘indie’ anarchist type who had blatantly refused the sparkly dresses sported by the rest of her similarly gendered classmates.
Although there was definitely something about Sandra that turned heads, this was not exactly the type of unattainable beauty that would usually be possessed by a character with such a leading role. Indeed, Sandra had not been gifted with particularly pretty features, but had been fortunate in another arguably equally significant respect: Sandra was one of the most symmetrical entities, both outwardly and interiorly, that Subject 52 had ever had the fortune to cross paths with. The truth (that Subject 52 remained incognisant of) was that this was due to Sandra having been constructed with a mould of a higher caliber than warranted by the rest of her appearance when edited into existence between the gridlines of the ‘Interplanetary Graphical Matrix System’.
“Wow she’s still really hot…can’t believe I broke up with her to get with Kim Mollinger instead,” he reflected.
Subject 52 concluded that there was absolutely no use living in the past and resolved to right his wrongs by going to have a little chat with this bygone bae.
“Maybe she’s still single..?” he thought.
As he moved to meet her, the eyes of 52 became openings of incredulity.
There had definitely only been one Sandra previously, but now there were two!
As he walked closer still, a third Sandra appeared to the left of the original.
There were three. Then six, then nine. A trio had morphed to a squad and then to a group.
Before long, the growth of the Sandras became exponential.
Just a few moments later, Subject 52 was stood facing a squirming swarm of his past.
It was not only in their sheer number, but also the unsettling way the mobs of Sandras wafted to the close proximity of his soul that threw Subject 52 into the plush palm of the mitten of befuddlement.
“Now I remember why I broke up with her in the first place,” he realised.
The white space was soon swamped with loads and loads of pink overalls, positioned so close that none of them had any space to breathe.
Subject 52 had first been quite confused and a bit scared but was by this point 100% terrified.
Bolting towards the high wall on the right of the room and proceeding to search fruitlessly an exit-purposed opening, window, or even a latch of some sort.
There was no use.
The Sandras were upon him like flesh-deprived zombies, using their well-polished finger-nails to tear at anything and everything covering the stark nudeness of our Subject.
The unusual whiteness was overtaken by unusual dark.
Back in the mobile, 52 gasped for air.
“What the fuck just happened,” he thought.
He was alone. There was nothing to distract him from the here and now. The Subject was still stuck in the experiment, possessing not a single useful with which he could attempt to stop the vehicle as it sped on towards new frontiers of fun.
Subject 52 awoke to the awareness that his movements had been constricted to floor level.
“There is no doubt an invisible Magical Space Stone weighing me down,” he concluded.[1]
The same surface tying him to that random location began to vibrate. At first, this was a tender sort of shake, but it did not take long for the sensation to become similar to one derived from those massage chairs at the airport.
“I thought I supposed to like, um I dunno, get tortured or something…I wonder why I’m out here getting a fucking full body rub,” thought 52.
Unfortunately for our main, trembles of the soft sort were short lived. Exactly two minutes and seven seconds following the commencement of the movements, the foundations of the building were racked with such unworldly vigor that one could only be believed by one having witnessing this undertaking in all its unedited glory[2].
Poor Subject 52 slid unwillingly from one floorboard to the next.
Glancing to the left, he discovered a loose piece of wood, perfect for him to grab onto in this time of crisis. He immediately settled into the safety of this sanctuary.
A new issue made itself known. Minuscule segments of debris were travelling higher and higher, propelled up into the air to conjoin with the rest of the cool currents being floatily pushed about the upwards region above his confused head.
52 was momentarily blinded, temporarily distracted from his surroundings by the must.
Chocking and coughing, he struggled to make it towards one of the non-polluted areas that hopefully still existed somewhere in the vicinity. At the midpoint of these doings, an oddly specific all-encompassing escalator scent wafted towards the entrance of his nose. To the Subject’s astonishment, the strange smell seemed to have the power to wipe out the rest of the wooden debris into inexistence.
As the wood-particles – but not the bizarre elevator scent – cleared, the hopeless institutional pawn was exposed to the most abominable scene he had ever had the displeasure of viewing.
It was his family, standing with each of their bodies lined up vertically to face his crippled being.
Dazed by this confusing recognition, Subject 52 shot the directness of his forward-facing gaze to meet their petrified eyes.
In depressing bewilderment, he noticed that all six refused his gaze.
His older brothers were visibly exhausted, looking as if they had just won a night-long match of Fifa. His parents, on the other hand, were busy clutching each other’s palms and Subject 52 knew his mother to be on the verge of tears. But it was his younger sisters who were worst off. While usually vibrant and rich in nervous movement, they had been struck unmovingly dumb with fear.
At this moment, Subject 52 knew himself to be only an unreal and transparent electronic projection of sorts, a ghost who was to remain imperceptible unless the scientists controlling the operation decided to slip into the carefully-coded lines converting this experiment into existence.
It is now necessary to describe how the characters were placed in the electronic experiment: Subject 52 was at the backmost right corner, while the rest of those who shared his last name were ornaments decorating the heavy speaker at the central most locus of the hall.
Behind them, tall and hooded, was the executioner.
“How shall I proceed?” he asked Subject 52.
The heartless killer switched on the beatbox. Simultaneously, a rope dropped down from the large wooden T-ended pole next to the musical carton. The accessory of death was a repurposed long intestine, pulled directly from the stomach of the monster of terror.
With ‘We Do What We Want’ bopping in the background, the figure lifted the youngest female of the clan towards the afterlife.
The girl’s neck encompassed; the floored humanoid let out a high-pitched howl.
“NOOOO please, take me instead,” he said from his socket hole level.
“I am sorry Subject 52, this is for your own good.”
The sound of choking is never a pleasant one to be bear witness, but the organly sensation brought about by being exposed to one’s family members losing their breath in the hands of another are quite literally gut wrenching. It is also no secret that adjunct visuals only worsen the prickling pain.
To the numbing disbelief of Subject 52, these events repeated themselves sixfold.
His sisters, brother, father and mother now flopped like dead fish along the topmost peaks of the microscopic mountains of dirt inhabiting the shiny parquet.
Mouth gaping wide open, Subject 52 had no time to reflect.
In flash, he was right back to flying towards the next awful anchor of torture.
There he was, on the way to the third. Our participant was now falling down a set of winding stairs, headed towards the bolts disciplining the swirls of the linoleum floor into rigid conformity.
Unruly clocks appeared around him, ticking ominously.
A voice crawled straight through the winding wormhole into his ear:
“You are late, you don’t have time. You will never make it on time.”
One of the clocks surrounding him swooped under his legs, configuring itself to be an Aladinnian Carpet.
Subject 52 was propelled forwards.
‘Relax Your Mind’ by Saito played in the background.
The third. Not the worst, but still high up there in relation the previous painfuls: it seemed that the scientists had made a syntax error in the program code and had interchanged the ‘Familial Death’ stage to be the second when it should really have been set as third (the experiment was meant to build up towards the most gruesomely terrifying).
So the second stoppage, masquerading as the third, began along these lines:
Subject 52 was part of a marching army.
With the sharp scent of clay permeating the crowd’s immaterial core, the males marched on with the adamant force of blatant ignoration for the new integrated peripheral.
Ah, our Subject took no time to comprehend the underlying message of this stoppage. This was assuredly one of the most powerfully hurtfully types of ammunition in the repertoire of the socially savvy scientists.
Less intense situations of this kind were unfortunately very familiar for our Subject. Refusing to n use his personal history as a guide, Subject 52 decided to make contact, swiftly swivelling his gaze towards the marching man on his left flank.
It was in the very bottom of the other army members looking things that 52 for the first time regarded the flags that flap in the sea.
The same Magical Space Stone that had previously held him down in hollow helplessness was once again shackled to his ankle, plunging him deep into the pits of the cadet’s maritime universe.
Feet stuck deep into the sandy sea-bed, Subject 52 absorbed the energy of the incredibly bedazzled banners.
Above the sea, beyond the army, and outside the reach of the painful mainframe, an understanding blotched its stain onto the perceived wits of the makers.
“Wait, Subject 52 seems to have found a glitch in the code,” Scientists 1 lazily mentioned to Scientists 2.
“Oh, let me come over there, it may take me a second to reprogram this whole section but I know that it can be done,” replied Scientist 2 as he rushed towards the system within which 52 was currently absorbed.
Still in his aquatic wonderland, 52 was graced with the reward of music.
It was ‘Konets Sveta Minimix’, emanating from the molecules of H2O and other.
To his great upset, the beating cymbals displaced the metallic bondage confining him to the Magical Space Stone, forcing him to resurface and to rejoin the army.
He spilled seamlessly to where he had been before. Following this rebirth, Subject 52 was washed over by one of those inexplicable horrible feelings that stem from an overexertion of one’s strength of livelihood. However, there was also another equally confusing sensory activity taking place within his conscience: while he hated everything about this situation, Subject 52 had honestly never felt himself to belong so completely and genuinely.
But these mixed feelings had no arresting impact. 52 and the troops marched on and on and on and on and on. Time lost its true significance, inching along more slowly and steadily, yet also more certainly than ever before during this experiment or in the real world.value. For all Subject 52 knew, the journey could well have lasted for hours, for weeks, for years, for decades. While teh temporal layout was fuzzy, one thing was for certain: Subject 52 was now one with the millions.
The inkling that had transfixed itself in the mind of our condemned contributor at the outset of the investigation had evidently been correct: he was in fact being carried off to the mournful domain of his finishing.
It was only when 52 found himself to be nearing the absolute last drop of juice in his mental engine oil that the same companion whose mind he had formerly entered twisted to face him once more.
It was ‘Konets Sveta Minimix’, leading from its home of blue irises of the correspondingly foreordained.
Subject 52 expected the song to carry out as it had done during his s last deep-sea dive when the path of the ballad took a faulty turn.
It was all disconnected, wound forwards at double or triple speed, nearing its finish faster and faster and faster.
By the time the song had practically reached its point of termination, Subject understood the trick.
The trick was this: all 52 had to do was to construct the Magical Space Stone in his mind’s eye, and then somehow manage to fasten it to his ankle in the same way as it had been before.
If he handle this, he would not end up beneath to sea streamers again. No, this time it would take him out of this dreadful place.
Just as Subject 52 had begun his act of exertion, his life-form short circuited.
‘Run away, turn away, run away,’ played in the white mobile device.
A divine room of an old brothel is where it all ended.
Upon the arrival of Subject 52, Scientist 1 was busy being caressed by electronic depictions of bear breasted grape bearing blondies.
“So this is new,” said the same chilled experimenter, “never had anyone short circuit like that before,” he continued.
Subject 52 was speechless and praised the heavens for having survived the three stops on the trifecta of horrible pain.
“You see, now that you can no longer be of use to us and must be dispatched, I can safely tell you what this is all about. Our team begun its work following 9/11 – the goal was to discover novel means which we could use to interrogate individuals caught on raids,” explained Scientist 1.
Scientist 2, who now emerged from behind his unprofessional college, stared at his affiliate with nasty disapproval.
“Subject 52, I formally apologize for the state of the lab at the moment…In any case, as you have now exited the simulation, I can explain to you the context underlying our actions. So what you have just been part of has been an experiment with the goal of the extraction of information from suspected terrorists. Scientist 1 and I were first tasked with this mission following the debut of the War on Terror, but have recently ramped up our attempts following the recent cyber raid of 2025 in Shanghai. While our intentions are good, it appears that we have been mistaken: your identically-named counterpart whom we thought to be you has been hiding out in Vaduz. It is probably needless to say that our efforts with your torture have been heavily misguided,” stated the more put together, “But that is of no matter now! Our system tells me that we have managed to destroy the remnants of your sensitive energies, so I see no other choice but to allow you roam free once more.”
It was then that Subject 52 was again unwillingly seized.
A sharp needle entered into his streaming life juices.
Devoid of the rasping undertone of anxiety that he had carried with him before the experiment, Subject 52 strolled easily into the light of day.
[1]Subject 52 recalled having spotted one of these on sale the last time he had had been to a Plant Dispensary to acquire a new solar-powered speaking cactus.
[2]Subject 52 was not familiar with the Richter Scale, but the omnipotent narrator will know the earthquake to have been about a 3.5 in magnitude.
WAST WRTNG 