Platformed

Chapter 3

3

The woman led her down a hall and into a room that resembled a hospital room, with a large bed surrounded by machines, a screen on one wall, and a call button beside the door. It had a tiny attached bathroom. Everything was exactly as she would have imagined it—clean, white and full of empty spaces where she would not have known what details to include. Sparse, but not spartan.

“You’ll be here for a few days,” the woman said, still smiling serenely, and left.

Sara stood shivering by the door for a moment, trying to process what had happened. Were they just going to leave her there? Why had they taken all of her belongings?

She thought of her backpack, sitting alone in that room. It had contained a book that she hadn’t finished reading and a sweatshirt balled up in the bottom that she really could have used just then.

Upon emerging from the changing room, she had clutched her phone out of some desperate hope that they would not take it from her, but the woman had just shaken her head and pried it from Sara’s fingers, tucking it away out of sight. The phone felt like an extension of herself. It was bizarre for it to be gone.

They even took the hair ties from around her wrist; her hair hung stringy and limp around her face. She hated it. At least they let her keep her emergency-kit glasses, though they took the case and cleaning cloth.

She stood shivering long enough to realize how ridiculous she was being. The room had a bed and blankets. She could at the very least warm up.

Feeling like maybe she could be dreaming and vaguely hoping that she was, Sara walked across to the bed, peeled back the comforter, and retrieved a synthetic woven blanket to drape around her shoulders. Never trust a hotel comforter.

If she was dreaming, when had it started?

Maybe the fire, tearing through the hills. Maybe when her parents called to say they, too, had fled—a different fire, flames bearing down on San Francisco Bay from all directions. Maybe when Bea convinced them all, even Zach, to give themselves over to the Community.

Or earlier? When the startup folded. When it became clear it would fail, a full year before the fire took their home.

She was not dreaming. Her life was not a nightmare.

It seemed odd that they had not given her anything to do. Was this some kind of test? See if you could withstand boredom?

She knew how boredom worked. It did not faze her.

But the lack of information was unnerving. She had refused to imagine what life would be like in this place before they arrived, but being left alone for hours in an apparently normal hospital room was too absurd to have occurred to her even if she had.

Unless they were testing hospital equipment?

She sat on the floor wrapped in the blanket and stared into space.

A few years before, when things were what she still thought of as normal, she went to an escape room with Zach and Bea and a few other people whose faces she couldn’t recall. Friends who apparently didn’t matter. The sort of casual weekend activity sandwiched between brunch and cocktails that had filled so many years of her life.

It was a haunted asylum, or something like that. Cursed, maybe. Padded walls, hidden doors, and they had had to escape. She couldn’t remember now how they did it, or even if they did.

Maybe this was also an escape room.

But that seemed unlikely. The door was obvious, to start. And she had thought she would be testing products here. They weren’t testing her.

Right?

She wondered if asylums were actually like that. Did they still lock up the crazies in rooms covered in pillows? That didn’t seem half bad, though it would get lonely and boring.

Rather like this.

She pushed to her feet, keeping her hands tucked inside the blanket, wondering why they kept the place so cold and why they shared so little information.

Bea would hate this so much.

It seemed like exploring the room was the thing to do, so she did, taking stock.

Walls: white.

Floor: concrete (cold).

Bed: twin sized.

Table: rather like that in an Apple Store.

The door had the kind of handle you would sooner find in an office than a home and a window cut into it, covered with paper from the outside. So they hadn’t thought of everything when they first designed this place.

Speaking of windows—how strange that the room did not have one. No wonder the walls felt claustrophobic.

The screen mounted on one wall, high and large and empty, might have acted like a window if she could turn it on. But she tried all the wake words she could think of to no avail.

How much time had passed? She had no idea.

The lights didn’t seem controllable either, which was frustrating. She was so cold and so bored that sleep would be a good solution. It had been days since she slept well; she was confident that now she could. This place was unsettling, but at least she felt safe. But the damn lights.

Maybe she was testing an I-want-to-sleep sensor. She climbed into bed and snuggled into the blankets—plush, fresh, all those bedding words. The mattress probably came in a box.

Maybe she was testing bedding.

The lights did dim eventually, but she was pretty sure she laid there cradled by the fancy mattress for at least an hour before they reacted, so she assumed it had nothing to do with her trying to sleep. But maybe the AI was just really bad at predicting human sleep desires.

She spent that hour trying as hard as possible not to think. Repeating nothing nothing nothing empty empty empty over and over and over.