I only signed up for the Experimental Education program because I was desperate. I’d been out of a job for four months, and I had no savings left. I was going to be homeless in a matter of weeks, so I started lying on my resume. I put whatever I thought companies wanted to see. Eventually, I scored an interview, and they actually gave me the job after I confidently walked in and bullshitted my way through. A handshake sealed the deal. I would be making two hundred grand a year working with peptides.
The only problem? I was due to start in two days, and I had no idea what peptides even were, let alone how to work with them.
My whole life was about to implode, so, naturally, I sat around drinking beer and scrolling the internet all Saturday night. It was there that I saw a sidebar ad for the Experimental Education program. They claimed that, using virtual reality, I could learn a new skill in under three minutes—not just a new skill, but any skill, regardless of complexity.
Right. Impossible. Sure. Drunkenly, I responded to their ad with an email, asking if I could learn molecular biology in under three minutes.
It was 2 AM on a Saturday night, but I received an immediate response from a Doctor Jensen, claiming that, yes, that was possible.
Right. Sure. Rolling my eyes, I signed up for one of their prototype trials the following morning.
I awoke hungover that Sunday morning to an alarm that my past self had set. It read learn molecular biology 12:15. God, really? Well, I had nothing to lose. I dragged myself out of bed, showered in a funk, and drove out to the offices of Experimental Education.
Parking outside that nondescript office building near downtown, I remained ready to bolt at the first sign of a multi-level marketing scam. The parking lot was astoundingly solitary and lonely under that grey drizzling overcast, which I took, paradoxically, as a good sign. If there’d been dozens of other people heading in, then we were all probably marks for some PowerPoint pitch.
As I approached, a bespectacled older man in a white lab coat stepped out of the automatic glass doors. Through his medical mask, he said, “You’re late.”
I looked at my cellphone. “It’s 12:16.”
“The process only takes three minutes,” he chided me. “That could have been a third of another appointment if we were fully booked.”
“Oh, shit, sorry.” I awkwardly followed him into the building without further protest. The halls within were standard art deco, and had definitely been rented by his team rather than built for this purpose. I might have even been there before for something else years ago; it was impossible to tell.
He showed me through a door, where an office full of medical equipment waited next to two impatient nurses. They were both wearing masks, just like the doctor, but I was not. I reached in my pockets pretending to look for a mask, but they ignored my attempt to save face. One nurse guided me to the central chair, while the other prepared a syringe of neon green liquid.
It was the doctor himself who handed me a clipboard with several sheets of paper on it. I briefly scanned it, noticing some medical terms and molecular biology written in cursive halfway, but he shoved a red pen in my hand.
I asked, “Is this the waiver?”
“It’s the contract,” he said flatly. “You’re already late, please just sign it.”
Both nurses stopped and stared at me.
Feeling intensely pressured, I awkwardly wrote my signature in red on the bottom and handed it back to him.
He stashed the clipboard, then returned with a helmet that looked straight out of a science fiction B movie.
Confused by its colorful lights and exposed technological hardware, I asked, “Is that the virtual reality helmet?”
As he slid it on over my head, he said, “No Matrix jokes, please.”
My senses went black as the helmet covered my eyes, ears, and nose. “Where are the controls?”
Nobody answered me. Instead, I felt a jab in my arm. I could only figure that the nurse was injecting me with that neon green liquid, but it was too late to ask why.
A white light appeared in my vision, first as an intense dot, but then expanding into an all-encompassing flare that simultaneously numbed me and made me feel like I was rising out of my body. Heat needled every inch of me, and then I sat up.
I was in a white-walled room only slightly bigger than my college dorm room back in the day. The bed underneath me was thin and uncomfortable. Had something gone wrong? Had they brought me somewhere else to recover? I shakily stood, finding myself clothed in a basic white shirt and basic white pants. Both were thin, like hospital gown material. A nearby sink was made of white porcelain, and I walked over to it.
No mirror. I think that was what first tipped me off. Mirrors were a processing cost that most games weren’t willing to pay, and it was even harder in virtual reality, where the coders could never guess what the protagonist looked like in real life.
The next thing that tipped me off: there was no door. There was no actual way to enter or leave the white-walled room. The only other thing present was a white table stacked with books.
Out loud, I said, “Holy crap, am I in virtual reality right now?”
My voice sounded normal. My hands and arms seemed to be my own. My legs even ached a little.
If this was virtual reality, it was insanely good. I actually felt like myself, just cast into a new environment. Maybe the injection had been some sort of hallucinogen? Maybe the helmet’s visuals weren’t really this good, but I was perceiving them as realistic? If that was the case, then learning a new skill might be difficult.
I approached the table and sat in the only other furniture in the room—which was, of course, a white chair. The books were all thick texts pertaining to molecular biology.
Okay then. This was what I’d signed up for, this was what I’d needed, and it looked like it was really happening. Opening the first book, I started reading.
It was heady and complex stuff that tired my brain quickly. After about half a chapter, I sighed, looked around, and decided to take a break.
Screw it. Nap time.
I awoke in a blink, feeling as if I’d never slept at all.
Hmm. That wasn’t good. I returned to my textbook, and made it through to the end of the first chapter. Okay, I now vaguely knew how a cell worked.
I was feeling better, actually, which I chalked up to my hangover fading. I continued on through another chapter before breaking from the textbook with bleary eyes.
Time to eat! I stood and looked around.
No food.
Simulating hunger was a new thing I’d never expected, and I was honestly wondering why they’d programmed that in without providing any food. I turned on the sink, but the water that came out was black, and stank of rotten eggs.
Mortified, I shook my head and backed away.
I reclined on the bed and slept again, but I woke up with a start, feeling like only a split second had passed. The only indicator that time had passed was that the rotten egg smell had faded. I was still hungry and tired.
As great as this simulation was, it was terrible in certain very fundamental ways. Maybe that was up to me to point out when I gave feedback. After all, this was a prototype.
I returned to my textbooks, pushing through what learning I could, until my hunger, thirst, and tiredness became too distracting. They’d created something amazing here, and I was indeed learning molecular biology, but was I supposed to read this entire stack of textbooks while starving, parched, and sleep-deprived?
I needed to do this for my new job, so I kept at it, forcing myself to focus. I actually finished reading and understanding the first entire textbook before the screaming inside my body became too overwhelming to continue.
Maybe the information from the single textbook I’d read would be enough to fake my way through a Monday morning. I had to give up on this. Standing, I tried to speak.
Instead, I coughed.
I hadn’t spoken in—how long? I couldn’t tell.
After a few more coughs, I said weakly, “I’d like to leave now.”
Nothing happened.
“End the simulation!”
Still nothing.
“Okay… Computer, freeze program?”
Nope.
I shouted, “Existenz is paused!”
Just silence and white. The longshot quote had failed. My heart hammered painfully in my chest as I began to realize that there was no way out. I’d entered this experiment to learn molecular biology, and that was what I was going to have to do.
As I sat and forced myself to read, I started fearing a time limit. My body was slowly but surely getting weaker and shrinking from starvation. The hunger burned, making me aware of the very engine of life inside myself as it consumed calories. I wasn’t dying, because this wasn’t real, but the thirst was driving me mad. I turned on the sink a few times, desperate to drink the black water that stank of rotten eggs, but I couldn’t make myself do it even in the darkest depths of my agony.
Sleep was pointless. I became a husk. I sat, I studied textbooks, and I flipped pages slowly with emaciated fingers. That was all I was, for what felt like months. It wasn’t enough to read the textbooks: I had to understand them, too. Learning while mostly insane from hunger and thirst and insomnia felt like a monumental task.
I was certain that I was never going to escape. The program would never end. This would be it for me, forever.
I spent an entire week screaming, to no avail.
I raged at the walls, chipping away at them, just uncovering more white plaster.
I was perpetually dying, but never actually ceasing to exist.
I broke the sink, and black rotten-egg water spewed onto the floor, then down a hard-to-see white drain. I sat in the stench, my feet wet, and continued to learn.
What other choice did I have?
This was never going to end.
I flipped through the pages for eternity, truly giving up on the concept of escaping, right up until I closed the final book.
When the helmet lifted away and I found myself in that room with two nurses and the doctor again, I sat in a disbelieving daze.
The doctor asked, “How was it?”
I stared down. My hands were normal again. My arms had their former strength. I touched my face, finding that I was not a husk. Wide-eyed, I fixated on his question. “It was horrible. I was starving and thirsty and tired the entire time.”
He nodded. “That’s a manifestation of the cost of thinking so rapidly. You just experienced seven months of intense thought and learning in three minutes.” He nodded at the empty syringe in a nurse’s hand. “That liquid we injected you with contained concentrated neurochemicals, electrolytes, vitamins, and the like. We were hoping it would lessen the pain involved.”
I grabbed his arm. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever been through!”
“Yes, but did you learn molecular biology like you wanted?”
Thinking it through, I realized: I had.
“Then that’s a success. All that’s left is refining the technology.”
I let go of his arm and grimaced apologetically. Rising shakily, I wandered for the door. They didn’t even lead me toward the front of the building. The three just went about their business, readying the room for their next subject.
I wasn’t even sure how I got home. I just lay there all evening and all night, staring at the ceiling as intense trauma rushed around the edges of my awareness. When my alarm went off to wake me up for my first day of work, I was still just lying there with open eyes.
But I did know molecular biology.
I was already dressed. I just dragged myself up, drove to my new office, and floated through my first day at my new job. They gave me some training, and I actually understood the science.
What I didn’t understand was how Experimental Education’s technology was even possible. The naive young version of me that had gone into that machine would never have questioned the fundamental technologies at play, but they’d just forcefully taught me everything I needed to know. All day long, instead of doing my job, I thought about just how powerful that neon green liquid would have to have been to do what they claimed. The brain was the most expensive engine in the human body, and running it for seven months would require far more than a syringe, no matter how densely packed the contents.
That night, I remained awake, still staring at the ceiling. I hadn’t slept in seven months, so closing my eyes and trying to do it still felt unnatural. The nightmare I’d gone through felt simultaneously like an eternity and a mere instant. I just kept coming back to the same question: how?
I tried to ignore that persistent question, and I did manage to take some fitful naps filled with flashback sensations to that white-walled room, but I only made it two more days before I couldn’t take it any longer.
That Wednesday night, I drove back to that office long after it had closed. The front door was locked, but the signs for Experimental Education were still up. Returning to my car and fetching a tire iron and a bag, I carefully crept around the corner, along the shadowed side of the building, and toward the back. There in the darkest and quietest corner of the alley, I found a low window that would serve.
Was I really going to do this?
I had to know.
The tire iron shattered the window with just a light tap.
I winced. Somewhere, a dog barked. I waited, but nobody human seemed to have noticed the sound of falling glass. Steeling my resolve, I carefully lowered myself into the basement.
In the dark, I felt my way past stacked chairs, tables, and other generic office equipment. Nearing the dim light of the stairwell, I felt something soft, warm, and wet. It was fabric, but—
It was a person.
He groaned, and I hurriedly backed up.
Standing there in the dark, I waited, terrified. I was busted for sure. Someone had found me… right?
When he didn’t say anything, I sensed that something was wrong in a very different way than I’d expected. Moving further, I found a light switch, then turned around to look.
A tan-skinned man of vaguely Middle Eastern appearance was hanging by both arms from two thick chains embedded in the ceiling. He was wearing a black business suit that had been sullied by assault, and long trails of blood—both dried and fresh—ran from his head, ears, and neck. It was immediately obvious that someone had beaten this man half to death and chained him here in the basement of this office building, but knowing that only made me even more frightened.
He blinked awake, and his eyes settled on me. I would have expected him to seem hopeful, but his gaze held only defeated apathy.
Noticing his silence, I moved forward and pulled a balled cloth from inside his mouth.
He spit blood, then looked at me with sullen askance.
I prompted, “Um, do you need help?”
I couldn’t place his accent. He said simply, “Release me.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said quickly. “I’ll go get help.”
“No,” he responded wearily.
“Sorry, what? You don’t want me to get the police?”
“You have to make the choice to release me yourself.”
I hesitated. “What the hell does that mean?”
Of all the responses he could have given, I didn’t expect a laugh. His tired snicker echoed throughout the basement, setting me on edge. There was something very, very wrong here; something very, very wrong with him. I had no idea what his relation was to Experimental Education, if he even had one, but I backed away with an increasing urge to run.
He just stared at me, never blinking.
I found the stairwell and stumbled my way up, keeping my eyes on him as long as I could.
When I finally closed the stairwell door quietly behind me, a palpable primal fear drained out of me. Something about that chained man had frightened me in a way that was deeper than logic, and deeper than mere emotion. After I was done here, I was going to call the police, and I was never going near him again.
I moved through dark hallways lit by red exit signs until I found the room I remembered. The equipment was all still inside, and, after waiting and listening for another few minutes, I dared enter and turn on the lights.
Quickly, I moved to the biohazard container. A whole pile of used syringes lay within, and I could see neon green glimmering in most of them. I picked out a handful and threw them in my bag. I could take them to someone for analysis later. Next, I found a stack of waivers.
No. Not waivers. They were contracts, exactly as the doctor had said. They were written in odd archaic legalese, and while I could recognize some language pertaining to learning skills and to ‘amenities provided’ that mentioned a bed, a table, and a sink, the rest made no sense to me. What the hell was I reading? Why had I been asked to sign this?
Stuffing them in my bag as well, I moved on to the crown jewel of the room: the virtual reality helmet.
Lifting it high, I examined it closely. I looked for cords, but there were none. I opened the back panel, but it only contained a few batteries to power the lights on the outside. Prying at a bit of the outer hardware, I popped off some pieces that looked like computer chips.
They weren’t connected to anything.
None of it was connected to anything.
The helmet, the goggles, the ear covers—it was all fake. It was nothing.
The helmet looked like a B movie prop because it was.
Then what the hell had I experienced?! I had absolutely gone somewhere. I had spent seven months starving and thirsting and sleepless. I’d learned an entire field of study in three minutes. Or had I just imagined it all as part of some sort of mental experience?
Of course. It wasn’t virtual reality at all. It had to be some sort of new super-drug. The neon green liquid would hold the answer.
Clutching my bag, I readied myself to escape the building—which meant another encounter with that man in the basement. I stepped quietly down the stairwell, but he already knew I was there. He watched me with icy eyes as I passed.
I paused below the window, wondering if I could really just leave him here.
He said, with genuine hate, “Your suffering will be legendary.”
I turned, locking eyes with him.
His anger turned slowly into an understanding grin. “Oh my. It already was, wasn’t it?”
His mocking laugh followed me as I climbed out the window and ran for my car.
I didn’t call the police. Something about him had been far too strange. I just sat at home the rest of that night, catching what nightmare-filled sleep I could, and then brought some of the neon green liquid to a coworker the next day for analysis.
Then, I did my best to try to get on with my life. My sleep was tortured, I was constantly on edge, and I was fearful at random times, but I finally had a job. My landlord was coming around asking for rent; I told him I’d found a position and was about to get paid, but he reminded me that I was already extremely behind and very close to eviction.
No problem. It was almost payday.
Except, when payday came the next week, I opened my paycheck to find a statement for $0.00.
Of course, I went to see my boss, who looked at me with confusion. He said, “Didn’t you read your hiring contract? Training is unpaid, and you’re training for the first month.”
I had not read that, no. I tried to argue, but he dismissed me.
I went home with a gnawing sense that my life was about to implode.
When I faced my landlord and told him it’d be another few weeks, he grew angry, and he told me I was done. I argued that he couldn’t do that, but he told me to read my lease, and he took my key right from my hand.
What else could I do? I wandered onto the street and found a bench to sit on. I had no money and nowhere to go. How the hell could this have happened to me? I’d always tried to work hard and do my best, but now I was sitting on a park bench, homeless.
The world seemed to know somehow. Every dog that passed barked at me as if it was afraid. I got up and tried to go to a church for charity, but the door wouldn’t open for me. Strangers seemed to get chills if I stood too close to them. I simply felt wrong, and, somehow, I wanted to blame it all on Experimental Education.
It didn’t take many days like that for my boss to fire me. When I asked why, he said, “No, your work is fine. You just… smell. And you look like shit. You come off like a homeless guy.”
“I am homeless, because you’re not paying me, asshole,” I shot back, finally snapping.
“Why should I pay you?” he asked. “I’ll just keep getting free months off people, since they can learn the skills to do this job in three minutes, just like you. You’re completely replaceable.” He made a noise of disgust and stalked off after threatening to call security if I wasn’t out in ten minutes.
He knew about Experimental Education. He knew I’d gone. How?!
I gathered my few things in a box, wondering how my life had come apart so forcefully.
On my way out of the building, my coworker stopped me. “Hey man, you know that green stuff you gave me? I took a look at it.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I told him, too overwhelmed to care.
He briefly gripped the edge of my box. “You should be careful with that stuff. It’s lethal.”
I froze. “Lethal?”
“They use those chemicals in executions,” he insisted.
Pulling my box away from him, I shook my head. “I was injected with that. I’m still alive.”
“No way. This stuff induces brain death almost immediately. You’d need to have a counter-injection in like, three minutes or less, or you’re not coming back.”
What? Three minutes?
That knocked me out of my darkness. I told him I’d be careful. Then, I hurried to my car. Something was snapping into place for me. Experimental Education hadn’t been using virtual reality at all. The truth was far darker and more twisted than I could have ever guessed. I drove back to their office building and waited until I saw the doctor and nurses leave. The back window had been hastily patched with wood, but I removed it with my tire iron. Then, I slipped inside.
The strange and frightening man was still chained within. His head was leaking fresh blood from a recent wound, but he was smiling as I approached.
I held my contract in my hand. “I read it.”
“Good,” he said with a grin. “What did you learn?”
“Now that I finally understand what they’re actually doing, the archaic language makes sense,” I told him. “They’re killing people. They killed me, at least for a little while. Then they brought me back with a counter-injection… but I signed a contract for the experience I would have while dead.” I pointed at his head wound. “The red pen. It was filled with your blood, wasn’t it?”
His grin widened into a smirk. “You’re beginning to understand.”
“Those assholes,” I replied, filled with equal parts admiration, disgust, awe, and hopelessness. “They actually managed to commoditize the human afterlife. They actually managed to turn Hell into a product. Just another way to make us even more expendable.”
He nodded, his eyes filled with animal fire.
“If I free you,” I said slowly, the same fire raging in me. “What will you do?”
“I’ll kill them,” he replied, genuine in his anger. “Then I’ll kill their masters. And their masters. Right up the chain, until I reach the true monsters. I will topple this world one brutally torturous murder at a time. I will burn it all down, and sink humanity into a lawless age of darkness.”
I didn’t need to look for the key to his chains. In a sense, I already had it. I touched my contract to the metal links, and they rusted away. All I had to say was:
“Good.”
