The Tower- Chapters 1-5
The Tower is another one of my blog novels. Full chapters will be posted here once each is completed.
I do hope you enjoy my little game show 
and any comments are well appreciated.
The Tower
Chapter 1
1
I was still in the hospital recovering when I received the card. That coveted, and much sought after, card. I heard whispers and saw the play of shadows on the hospital wall as somebody in a heavy coat and large hat laid the card on my food tray.
Everybody knew what that card meant. I knew what it was almost before the nurse was finished setting down my tray. The pallor of her skin, and the awe in her eyes said it all. I was now a contestant.
My hands shook as I picked it up. The turn of events was just too incredible. It had only been a few months since the accident that had killed my family and almost killed me as well. And it had only been a few days since I received the notice that my home had been sold by the bank to cover my large hospital bills.
The card was everything that I’d heard. Small, but ornate. I lifted the carefully worn edge to read the script lined in gold leaf on the inside. Inside I saw my name, the largest sized letters in the card, followed by the words that many people dreamed of. I had been selected to be a contestant on The Tower.
Like most of the people on the planet I was addicted to that show, and many of my dreams had included being selected as a contestant. But I was also a realist. Given the overpopulation of the planet, and the fact that there was no way to sign up to be on the show, I had always known that I would never be on it. Yet there it was, the card.
As I held the card I started to wonder by what means I had been selected. Everybody knew that there was no way to sign up to be on The Tower, and there was no way to nominate others. The selection criteria were a carefully guarded secret, known only to the producers and staff of the show. Even how they found their contestants was a mystery.
In the three hundred year history of the show it had been that way for more than two thirds of it. Riots surrounding the lottery to select the contestants for the fiftieth anniversary season had prompted the move, and the selection process had been closed since.
The longest running reality game show in history. I was now about to be a part of it. I couldn’t help but remember the history of the show. Born in the violent death throes of the reality show craze in the middle of the twenty-first century, it was the only show of its time to still be running by the end of that century. By then the rules had already changed, and the mysterious nature of how contestants were selected along with the increasingly larger payouts and edge of your seat tension of the show made it the highest rated show in history.
For the hundredth season celebrations the network that owned The Tower purchased a channel specifically for the show. No longer did they have to be careful to isolate contestants for months after their run. The show would now run live, a new episode every day, for at least eight hours a day. Commentary and commercials would fill the other hours, creating an almost separate world for die hard fans.
The Tower. I turned the card over in my hands. It was on the back that another rumor was proved true. There on the back was a single line of text, plain and without the gold leaf, it was meant to be overlooked. The rumored opt out line. If you wish to be removed from the contestant list please contact this number.
I had never even heard rumors of somebody opting out of the show. The rumors of the line were there, but never so much as a whisper of somebody actually calling that number. Despite the euphoria at having my wildest dreams come true, I was briefly tempted to call. I knew what the show entailed, and I knew the danger of it. But almost as much as those concerns weighed on me, the thought of being the only one to turn them down seemed almost as provocative.
Noises in the hall brought me back to reality. I shifted to the edge of the bed, grabbed my crutches, and hobbled over to the closet where my coat was. Slipping the card into a pocket I wondered how long I would have to stay in the hospital before I was moved to the island. I’d heard of some contestants being moved to the private isolation island within a day of receiving their notification, others waiting for weeks to be moved.
Given the increasing noise in the hall I guessed that I wouldn’t be finishing my physical rehabilitation in that hospital.
2
Sheryl woke with a start. Sitting up on the bed she looked around and wondered where she was. She didn’t recall a room like this in the isolation dormitory on the island.
Slowly, foggy memories came back to her. She recalled feeling funny after dinner, and going to bed early.
Sheryl carefully moved her legs, making sure that the doctor was right. She had been told the previous day that her legs were healed and the doctor informed Sheryl that she was healthy enough for her run. But Sheryl had never expected that the producers would act on that news so quickly.
Sheryl placed her feet on the cold tile, and stood up. Walking over to a nearby closet she found a single outfit. She smiled. The outfit had been tailor made by the costume staff to fit Sheryl perfectly, and it had been made to her exact specifications. Reaching out with trembling fingers, Sheryl took the supple cloth and removed it from the hangars.
Sheryl smiled again. She had been on the isolation island for nearly six months. Physical therapy had taken most of her time. The producers would not allow anyone to compete unless they were pronounced healthy enough by the staff doctor.
She had trained as well. Everybody who competed on The Tower trained. Weapons, tactics, even psychological training. Not that it did many of them any good. Sheryl knew that the odds were immense. More contestants died in their run than survived. But, like so many of the others, she had nothing left to lose.
Sheryl’s chosen outfit reflected her choices in training. Tight pants, and low-heeled mid-calf boots made up the bottom of her ensemble. The top appeared to be closer to lingerie than to any proper top. But Sheryl knew better. Even the translucent areas were filled with a lightweight armor that would protect her skin while allowing her to stay cool. Across her hips hung a gun belt that held two specially made guns, as well as plenty of ammunition. Over all of it went a long duster. Lined with another layer of armor, it would both provide the most protection as well as serve as another way to carry her winnings. Sheryl looked in the mirror, and made slight adjustments to the way the outfit lay on her body, and then she pulled her long black hair up into first a long ponytail, and then wrapped that around itself and secured it into a bun.
Satisfied with the way she looked, Sheryl picked up the allowed bags and stepped out of the room. As soon as she had stepped over the threshold of the doorway bright lights nearly blinded her. A person walked in front of the lights, but Sheryl could make out no more than a silhouette as the light blazed behind them.
“Sheryl Callaghan,” the person yelled. “You have been selected as a contestant on The Tower. Do you accept?”
“I do.”
“You are aware of the rules?”
“I am.”
“You are aware of the dangers, including the danger of loss of your life?”
“I am.”
“Do you still accept your selection as a contestant?”
Last chance, Sheryl thought to herself. There’s no backing out after this. “I do.”
“Then welcome to The Tower!” The silhouette yelled, his voice emphasizing the last two words. He cast his arm in the direction of Sheryl’s tower as the lights faded on him and bright spotlights lit up the tower that she was to try and escape.
“Take her to the top!”
Attendants burst in from out of sight and led Sheryl to a waiting helicopter. The first element of danger was actually getting into the tower, and she wouldn’t know the best way in until they were closer. The attendants secured her into the seat and then took their positions for the short flight.
Sheryl closed her eyes, preparing herself for the coming day. She knew that she could very well die in her run. She reviewed what she knew in her mind as the helicopter approached the building. During the flight the audience would be briefed as to her history and her choices during training. They would also get a glimpse of the dangers that awaited her, as well as a breakdown of the building.
Of course Sheryl had none of this information. She would be running blind. She opened her eyes as one of the attendants said that they were getting ready to circle the tower.
Sheryl looked out the side to see a steeply pitched roof, and no ledges along the upper floors. After circling twice the only entrance that she could see at all was a narrow window at the top of a short ladder. She gulped. She hadn’t expected to have to dangle at the bottom of a rope beneath a helicopter trying to grab hold of a few rungs of a ladder at the top of a building.
She looked again as the copter circled again, but once again saw no other way. “String me up,” she said.
The attendants nodded, and helped Sheryl into the gear that would lower her beneath the machine and allow her to reach for the rungs. The attendants then gave her some quick reminders about line safety and helped her out of the flying machine.
Sheryl could feel the down wash of the blades pulling at her duster. But she didn’t have time to worry about that. She held onto the line as she had learned in training, somehow managing to keep upright. She signaled her readiness, and the pilot edged her closer to the building.
It was on the third try that Sheryl managed to get a hand on one of the rungs. She pulled herself closer and got her legs secured as well. Quickly she released the line that anchored her to the helicopter, and gave the signal for them to leave. The attendants nodded, and gave the pilot the command. She watched as the machine tilted and moved away.
Sheryl was suddenly scared as the wind whipped about her. She could feel the motion of the building through the ladder, and she knew that if she lost her grip she would plummet to her death. Carefully she untangled her feet and managed to get them in a comfortable position on the bottom rung. Looking up, she climbed to the window.
Reaching the window, Sheryl once again entangled her feet in the rungs of the ladder. She knew that she would have to force the window open, and couldn’t risk losing her balance. She then pulled one of her guns from its holster, turned it in her hand, and banged at the lock on the window until it gave.
Sheryl pushed the window open and pulled herself inside. She found herself in an area not much larger than a closet. She knew that her run would start as soon as she dropped down onto the uppermost complete floor, so she took the opportunity to remove the line harness. She then looked for the access to the floor below her.
She spotted it a few feet away, a simple access panel. She walked over to it and pulled it up. There was no ladder, she would have to drop onto the floor below. She moved into position, and dropped her feet through. She hung to the edge for a moment, making sure that her landing would be safe, and then let go.
As Sheryl stood back up a voice came through the speakers of the building. “Sheryl Callaghan, You have entered The Tower. Your tower is twenty four stories tall, and you have eight hours to clear it.
Your run begins… Now!”
3
Excerpt from History of a Media Icon: Understanding The Tower:
The rules of The Tower are simple.
Any contestant has until they are taken to the tower to back out of the game, but once they are on their way to their individualized tower they have no choice but to play.
Only one contestant plays at a time. It’s not a competition against other players. Instead it’s a competition against oneself. Can a contestant survive unknown dangers? Did they train well enough? Can they beat the clock? Can they beat back their own shortcomings?
The goals of The Tower are equally simple, and they are twofold.
The first, and ultimate goal of The Tower, is survival. None of the dangers within the tower are life threatening on their own, but the cumulative effect can kill. Every second within the tower is one second closer to death as the timer counts down. The countdown is what eventually kills players, for once it reaches zero the tower is brought down in a finely controlled explosion. The only way a contestant survives the destruction of the tower is if they escaped it in time.
The second goal seems almost inconsequential in comparison to survival, but the second goal can affect how a player lives and dies almost more than the first. The second goal is monetary. No contestant earns so much as a cent if they do not carry it out of the tower with them. Any contestant who manages to escape the tower still has to pay the bills that existed when they went to the island for training, and oftentimes they have to face even more bills as they attempt to keep the media and fans at a distance. Many contestants lose their life in the face of their own greed. And obtaining the money is as difficult as getting through the obstacles of the tower. It is spread out as vouchers throughout the tower, forcing contestants to search through every area of the tower to find as much as possible.
In fact the only thing that isn’t simple about The Tower is the tower itself.
Each tower is built and individualized for the contestant that will make the run. All towers are built to a height of twenty-four stories. Each story has from a single large room to a maximum of four smaller rooms, with the staircase being centrally located in the building. The staircase itself is protected. Each level requires some sort of key to open the door to proceed downward. Once a level has been cleared the contestant may not go back up, so each contestant has to weigh the options of time and money for each floor.
There are eight rooms in the tower that stop the timer entirely, one every three floors, but only for the duration of time that the contestant is in them and then only for a maximum of three hours per run for all of these rooms combined. These rooms provide amenities for the contestant, including restroom facilities and food serving stations.
The internal dangers of the tower are of three types, physical, psychological and temporal.
None of the physical dangers are designed to kill on their own, small robots and traps are meant to serve as a nuisance to the contestant as they attack. While larger robots and grander traps are meant to injure a contestant in order to slow their descent.
The temporal dangers serve as ways to make the contestant waste time on frivolous activities. Searching for codes and keys to safes that contain no monetary vouchers or rooms that lock themselves and require certain activities to get back out of. Each of these dangers could potentially cause the contestant to run out of time and be caught in the building.
The most sinister of the dangers, however, are the psychological ones. These dangers are where the planning stages of each tower really show. Certain rooms and tasks are designed to force the contestant to relive a part of their past. They are designed to make the contestant waste time in emotion and reflection. Some are cruel to the point where contestants give up where they are and proceed no further.
Of course there are tricks and tools designed to help the contestant as well.
Timer extensions are the first of the tools that a contestant can seek. Scattered throughout the tower, timer extensions can add anywhere from a single minute to several hours to the remaining time. But a contestant must use them wisely. Each contestant is allowed only three timer extensions, and besides clues that the contestants must find themselves there is no indication as to how much time the extension will add.
Shortcuts are the second tool available to contestants, if they decide to use them. Shortcuts allow contestant to skip entire floors. But they are few and randomly placed. And even if a contestant does find a shortcut, no easy task on its own, they still have to weigh the benefits of the time savings versus the monetary gain of descending the levels in the regular manner. Many contestants ignore shortcuts on the upper levels while the timer is still early in the count, and then search desperately for them as they make a mad dash for the exit.
The final, and most useful tool, for any contestant are friends. Each contestant is allowed three friends who can act as moral support and guides during the escape of the tower. The friends are selected by the contestant, and are moved to private isolation rooms for the duration of the run. Likenesses are then holographically projected into the tower along with a voice feed. Friends are allowed to give as much or as little support as they like during the run. Some will counsel a contestant throughout most of the tower, while others only answer the occasional question. Friends are also the only means that a contestant has of finding out the remaining time without waiting for the official clock. While the clock only announces the remaining time at the beginning of every hour, friends have a timer within constant view.
Ultimately, every run of the tower ultimately depends on the contestants themselves. Live or die, and how they face the dangers within, are all up to the temperament of the contestant. No amount of training can prepare some for what they face, and some could probably have survived entirely without training.
Of course nobody can predict who will survive and who will fail. Bets have always been lost due to the meek overcoming the physical traps, or the strong falling to their own inner demons.
But such is the nature of The Tower.
4
“Eight hours to detonation,” a soft female voice said through the loudspeakers.
Then another female voice came over the speakers. This second was more sultry, more enticing. “Total available prize payout for this run of The Tower exceeds three-hundred trillion credits in cash and prizes.” Sheryl felt her knees go weak at the sound of the possible payout. The last couple of contestants must have died for the prize to have rolled over to such a large amount. She couldn’t imagine winning even a fraction of that amount. The restraints on inflation imposed by the World Economic Stability Council kept many prices similar to those from the beginning of the twenty-second century. Many people still led what was labeled as the comfortable lifestyle with only a billion or so credits to their name.
Sheryl plugged a small antenna into the jack on the back of her neck and then ran an earpiece from it over her ear. “Can you guys hear me?” she asked of the friends who sat in isolation chambers outside of the tower.
Yes, came the universal reply.
“Good.”
Sheryl turned around, surveying the room that she was in. It had the appearance of a home library from more than a hundred years prior. Old style, paper, books line three of the four walls, and soft reading chairs were placed near lamps that provided the light in the room.
Sheryl grabbed a book from the wall nearest her and shook it violently. When nothing fell out she carried it over to the door.
The door opened easily as Sheryl pulled on it. She checked for obvious traps in the hall, and then placed the book on the floor so that the door couldn’t close completely.
“What are you doing?” one of her friends asked.
“Finding the door.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to get caught searching places twice. If I need keys or clues to open the doors I want to be looking for them at the same time, so I need to know what I’m looking for.”
Sheryl removed one of the guns from her belt. She didn’t want to be caught off guard if a trap was waiting. She then turned the corner into another hall. Seeing nothing about to attack she lowered her weapon and headed toward the door in the middle.
As she approached the door Sheryl could see that there were three locks. She also could make out some writing on the door as she approached.
Three Keys Seeks Thee
One you cannot see
Two you cannot hear
Three would be hard to smell
“What does that mean?” a voice asked behind Sheryl.
Sheryl turned to see the hologram of her friend Liam appear.
“I don’t know, but I’ll find out,” she replied. She turned and continued down the hall. At the end she looked down each of the shorter halls. On her right she could make out one door, to her left was nothing but a short and dark hallway.
Something clicked in Sheryl’s mind. She ran down to the end of the dark hallway. As soon as she finally had difficulty seeing in the dark she felt for ledges along the wall. It wasn’t until she reached the far wall that she finally felt one, high above her head. She stood on the tips of her toes and felt the ledge with her fingertips. Several items were placed on the ledge. Sheryl grabbed everything that she could touch and carried it back to the light.
“What was that about?” Liam asked.
“Just a hunch.”
Sheryl picked through the items. Most were obviously junk. But two pieces intrigued her. On the outside they appeared to be as worthless as the rest of the items from the shelf, small figurines. The only difference was that they appeared even tackier. Sheryl decided to find out if her hunch was correct. She grabbed the figurines and threw them against the wall.
Both pieces shattered on impact. Sheryl looked through the debris and found what she was looking for. One of the pieces had held a small cash voucher, the other had contained a simple looking key. Sheryl grabbed both, and ran back to the door. Slipping the key into the top lock she found that it turned easily.
Liam whistled behind her. “Nice hunch.”
“Don’t get excited yet. This is just a warm up puzzle. They’ll get much harder later on.”
“Humph.”
“Now, let’s check out the rooms.”
5
Sheryl peered into the main hallway again, and then ran across to the door on the other side. She glanced down to the end of the hall, but saw nothing of interest. Wrapping her hand around the doorknob, she pulled her gun again and opened.
Inside she saw a miniature shooting gallery. In front of her were four firing stations, and along the far wall were paper targets. Sheryl took a step into the room, and could see a cabinet on the same wall as the door.
Sheryl took a step toward the cabinet, letting the door out of her hands as she did so. She was just about to open it when she heard the door click shut and a lock slide into place.
“Damn it! How could I let that happen so early?”
Sheryl was about to look for a clue as to how to open the door again when she heard a whirring noise behind her. She turned to see the targets start to move.
“I get it.”
Sheryl walked over to the cabinet, realizing what was in it. Opening it she pulled out a pair of ear guards, and put them on. She then walked to the nearest firing station and aimed at the targets. She could make out the tiniest of specified targets on each of the paper outlines as they moved past her.
Close didn’t count in this game. Sheryl knew that she had to hit each target exactly where specified. Taking aim, she fired at the target directly in front of her.
A chime sounded as the bullet ripped through the paper. The mechanism moving the targets shuddered to a standstill, and then reversed direction. Sheryl aimed, and fired again.
This time the mechanism seemed to speed up and vary the direction of the targets at random. Sheryl looked on in dismay as the targets danced about in front of her. She studied the movements for a moment, and then aimed again. Another chime in her ear told her that she had managed to hit another target, but the mechanism sped up again. It had resumed a singular direction of movement, but so fast that Sheryl had to activate targeting software that she had installed into her sensory enhancement implants.
Her vision zoomed in on the target, and a crosshairs overlaid itself onto her field of vision. The software quickly calculated the timing, and a color change in her field of vision told Sheryl that it was time to fire.
“Door opened,” the female voice said.
Sheryl breathed a sigh of relief. “How much time have I spent on this floor?” she asked of her friends as she pulled the ear guards off.
Liam’s hologram looked up for a brief moment. “Ten minutes.”
Sheryl nodded. “I’m still doing ok then. But I should get a move on.”
Sheryl jumped over the barrier that separated the firing stations from the targets. Walking up to the targets she could see shadows from objects hidden behind them. She walked behind them and pulled vouchers from the back side of the targets. On the return trip a cursory inspection of the firing stations revealed two more vouchers.
Sheryl was just about to put the ear guards back in the cabinet when she realized something.
I didn’t hear anything but piped in sounds when I was wearing these, she thought.
Sheryl inspected the ear guards, and the pulled them apart. When the first pair revealed nothing, she pulled apart another. It was in the third pair of ear guards that she found a key hidden in the sound insulation.
Shoving the key into her pocket, Sheryl made her way back into the hall. She ran back through the main section, and soon found herself at the door of the library. She looked across, and was surprised to realize that she hadn’t noticed the wall opposite the library side of the hall. I need to pay better attention to the floor layout, she thought.
Being careful not to disturb the book that was acting as a doorstop, Sheryl made her way back into the library.
6
The first thing that Sheryl noticed as she entered the library was the filtered light coming through the access panel to the attic. The second was the cold.
Sheryl pulled the duster closed and buttoned the top few buttons. She then breathed a heavy sigh as she looked around the room.
On second glance she noticed how long the library was. Even though it wasn’t quite as long as the shooting gallery, it was pretty close. And books were a good place to hide things such as money vouchers and keys.
Sheryl looked at the lamps and chairs, and decided to start there. Her main goal was finding the last key, she knew that time was already running against her. And she had no idea how to decrypt the last clue. The first two were easy, they negated entirely one of her senses. But the third only made it difficult.
Sheryl pulled the cushions from the chairs before tipping them over, but found nothing. The lamps yielded similar results.
Sheryl cringed looking at the number of books.
“What’s my time?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Liam replied.
“Five minutes to go through all of these books…” Sheryl muttered. “Great.”
Sheryl though briefly about rifling through the pages of each book, but decided that even something as quick as that would take too long. So with a firm look on her face she grabbed the first two books on the shelf and shook them violently.
A small bit of relief washed across Sheryl as she saw a voucher flutter to the ground from one of the books. She then gave them a final shake, and tossed them behind her to the center of the room.
The next several books yielded nothing, and Sheryl was starting to worry that perhaps vouchers and key had actually been secured to the inside of the books. Then a small metallic clang as she pulled free the next set caught her attention.
Sheryl looked down to see a small key lying on the floor next to a voucher. “Jackpot!” she shouted. Reaching down she scooped up the key and the vouchers that she had freed.
Sheryl ran back into the hall, not even bothering to look for traps again. She pulled the other two keys from her pocket, and stopped in front of the stairway door. The first two keys, sight and sound, worked perfectly, just as she had expected. But the third key wouldn’t even slide into the lock. Sheryl removed the other keys and tried different combinations, but it was with a sinking heart that she realized that she did not have the correct third key. Throwing the incorrect key on the ground she headed back to the library.
I need to be smart about this, Sheryl thought as she walked back into the room. If there are keys that don’t work I need to be able to rule them out quickly.
Sheryl reached down and picked up the book that she thought the key had dropped out of. Turning it over, she noted the title emblazoned on the front, Beautiful Darkness. Sheryl laughed out loud. The key had fit into the lock for the sight challenge, but had not turned the lock.
“I get it,” she said.
“Get what?” Liam asked.
“That I really lucked out with those first two keys. Had I come back in here first I probably would have wasted a lot of time trying multiple keys from books with titles that made sense, but were ultimately incorrect.
What’s my time?”
“Seventeen.”
Sheryl sighed. “Ok then. Time to try something new.”
Sheryl closed her eyes and sniffed at the air. The morning cold bit at her nose, but she ignored it. After a few seconds she noticed a pleasant fragrance to the air. She turned a bit in place, and noted where it was the strongest. She then headed toward the smell.
It was about three quarters of the way into the room that she finally saw where the smell was coming from. Placed on a shelf between some books was an air purifier. Sheryl walked over and pulled it from the shelf. Underneath she saw a small key.
Grabbing the key, Sheryl started toward the door again. “Time to go.”
“Aren’t you going to look for more vouchers in the books?”
Sheryl stopped and thought about it. Then, she shook her head. “I need to be moving on.”
“But this is a good place to hide vouchers. You should at least try to find more.”
“What do you guys think?” Sheryl asked of the other friends.
“I say you should at least try to find a few more before moving on,” replied Janice, appearing for a brief instant before turning off the hologram projection again.
“I agree,” said Bria, not even bothering with the projection.
Sheryl sighed. “Ok, I’ll look a little more, but you can’t talk me out of leaving again. I can’t afford to spend too much time here.”
Sheryl walked back to the shelf and pulled at the books again, shaking them briefly before tossing them aside. She didn’t even look to see if anything was falling out as she grabbed for more books.
Sheryl was trying to keep a count of the seconds as she pulled at the books. She wanted to spend no more than two minutes on the books now that she was confident that she had the third key. As she reached the point where she felt that two minutes had passed she looked down to see that she had covered a great deal of room. She knew that she didn’t want to spend any more time there, but she could comfortable estimate that she had gone through a third of the books.
Along the floor near the shelves was a line of vouchers that had fallen out in her rush to get through as many as possible. Sheryl pulled one of her bags open and shoved the vouchers into it as she made her way back to the door.
“How am I doing?”
“Twenty-two minutes on this floor.”
Sheryl cursed under her breath. “Ok, time to go.”
She made her way back to the stairway door, and breathed a sigh of relief when all three tumblers had turned. Pulling open the door, Sheryl took a second to blink back the bright light that streamed upward, and then she headed downward.
Chapter 2
1
I arrived on the island only three days after receiving the card.
The island, a man made island deep in the Pacific. It was built to be inaccessible to outside media, and outside influences. Once contestants arrive they are completely isolated from the outside world. No outside media is allowed; even broadcasts of The Tower are forbidden to contestants.
It takes a while to get used to. I was so used to accessing the internet via implants, and talking to my friends with built in messaging programs. But these things are not allowed on the island. The satellites that we depend on for this communication ability, well, they don’t even pass above the island in their orbital paths.
The island is like a completely different world. Everybody there is either a contestant, or involved in the production of The Tower. And really, the only thing that matters on that island is the show.
I remember my first impression of the island. I remember seeing it for the first time, a tiny green speck in an ocean of blue.
I was riding in the transport with two other contestants. We had all been chatting amiably to pass the time, and then the pilot informed us that we could get our first glimpse of the island. Silence fell between us as we all gazed out the window at the speck of green.
The pilot flew us completely around the island before landing, letting us take a good look at the place that we would call home until it was time for our run.
The island is laid out in circles. The outermost ring, that closest to the ocean, is comprised of the towers. Yes, there is more than one. Of course not all of them are standing, or completed. We could see the towers in various stages of completion as they were being built. And in other areas we could see the remains of towers that had fallen and the cleanup process that would allow another tower to be built in the previous one’s place.
It’s a marvel at how fast one of those can go up. If I stood outside at night I could hear work crews clearing debris or building a tower, and I could see the light on the horizon from the floodlights that they use to be able to work around the clock.
The next ring in from the towers was the support buildings. Each tower has its own set of support buildings. These buildings are the ones where contestants are moved to just prior to their run, and where the data and all information is initially processed from each tower. When the friends are finally brought in to support a contestant during a run, these buildings are where they are housed and isolated.
The next ring is where the contestants live and train. Dormitories, cafeterias and training grounds make up this ring. There isn’t even an inch of space in this ring that isn’t dedicated to preparing the contestant for their run.
Next comes the living areas for staff. Producers, support personnel, even the vast hordes of interviewers all live in this area. Of course the amenities vary from those given to the contestants. While the contestants train constantly, the staff enjoy luxurious comforts during their off hours.
Innermost on the island is the production core of the show. Support buildings surround a central building that mirrors the show that it produces. A single tower of glass and steel that rises into the sky, sending the signal for the most popular show on the planet.
The production tower is a marvel in another respect. The amount of capital that flows through that building in advertising and sponsorships alone is enough to rival some of the monetary centers of the world. The amount of raw capital that flows through that building in a single day is more than many countries see in an entire year.
The secrets inside the production tower are some of the most carefully guarded in the world. The means by which they find and select contestants, how the amount of prize money is actually obtained, even the raw data collected from each run. These are all secrets that many people would love to get their hands on, and that desire is part of the reason for the island. It is protection from prying eyes, for both the contestants and the show itself.
2
Sheryl stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked for the next door. She knew that she would have to move faster on this floor than she had on the last. That was if she wanted to live, she would have to improve her overall time per floor.
Sheryl found the next door in the most obvious place imaginable, right next to the staircase that she was exiting. A quick glance at it told her that she was searching for a number of buttons scattered about the floor that she would have to push in order to open it.
The first thing, besides the bright lights, that Sheryl noticed about the floor was the utter whiteness of everything. Where the floor above had been dim and filled with grays and browns, this one was bright to the point of being painful and the whiteness of it all only served to reflect the light.
Sheryl noticed that the main hall terminated just past the point where the staircase that she had descended on met the hall. Looking up the other direction she saw no doors off of the hallway, so she quickly checked for traps, and headed to the place where the other hall intersected the one that she was in.
Sheryl saw that either side of the intersecting hall had two doors. She chose to start on the right side, and quickly opened the first door. Out wafted the sweet smell of breakfast rolls and the sounds of birds.
Sheryl turned to look into the room, and saw an idyllic breakfast scene. The door opened onto a room designed to look like a breakfast nook. A small, freestanding, counter stood a few feet in from the door, and past that she could see a table with breakfast laid out on it and a large window that looked upon a well-kept garden.
Sheryl shook her head, reminding herself of her situation. She knew that the setup of the tower was designed to confuse her as much as possible, but she still had a hard time accepting the simplicity of some rooms as compared to the knowledge that some rooms would be extremely difficult to navigate.
She walked further into the room. As she approached the window she could just see a hint of one of the buttons hiding under a flower in the garden. Sheryl looked for a door, but saw no way of getting into the garden. Picking up a chair, she flung it at the pane of glass, and turned to cover her eyes as it shattered.
As the last pieces of glass tinkled to the floor, Sheryl made her way through the opening and pressed the button with the toe of her boot. She then quickly scanned the garden area for vouchers, and made her way back into the kitchen.
Deciding that it would be a waste to not look further, Sheryl started pulling out the drawers and opening the cabinets. Within a few minutes she had found a number of vouchers and was confident that it would be a waste of time to investigate further in the room.
Making her way back into the hallway, Sheryl turned and continued to the other door at that end of the hall. Standing in front of it, she prepared herself for whatever she might find behind it. But as she tried to turn the handle she discovered that the door was locked. She stared at it for a second, and then decided to try and find a way to open it on the other side of the hall.
She turned and ran to the first door on the other side. Once again she stood ready for anything that she might find on the other side, but was almost disappointed as the door opened to reveal a locker room.
Sheryl walked into the room, wondering to herself what was with the cabinets and now lockers on this floor. A quick glance about the room revealed nothing more menacing than a couple of locks on the doors.
With a sigh, Sheryl started opening the doors of the lockers. She started with the ones that had no locks on them, and was glad that she did when she found a ring of keys in one of the lockers. She then proceeded to open the others using the keys, but realized that not only had she used every key on the ring but that none were of the right shape to open the door at the other end of the hall. She tossed the key ring aside, realizing that it couldn’t help her any more.
Sheryl was about to leave the room, when she realized that there was a little bit of room between the tops of the lockers and the ceiling. Stepping onto one of the benches in the room, she scanned the tops of the lockers and saw a few vouchers and one of the buttons hiding atop them.
Trying to maintain her balance, Sheryl stretched toward the locker with the button, and just managed to press it and grab the vouchers before losing her balance and falling to the floor.
Sheryl rubbed her leg where she had hit it in her fall, and then stood up. “How much time have I spent on this floor?”
“Ten minutes,” replied Bria.
Sheryl scowled. “OK, I had better get a move on with those last rooms.”
She moved back into the hall, and went immediately to the last unchecked door. Opening it, she looked into a room that she could immediately make out as a maze. Clear panels revealed a room filled with vouchers, but also gave no indication of a path to get to them.
Sheryl stepped into the room, and the first floor panel glowed slightly as she stepped on it. Another step in lit up the second panel.
Sheryl looked again at the room in front of her, in the depths of the maze she could see the last two buttons, and a mirror placed along the ceiling at the far end revealed another door, the one that had been locked from the hall.
Knowing that the only exit would be the other door, Sheryl moved away from the door that she still held open. It closed softly behind her, and a heavy click confirmed her suspicion. She took another step forward, ready to make her way through the maze.
Then, the lights went out.
3
Excerpt from History of a Media Icon: Understanding The Tower
The first airing of The Tower was in 2056. Originally predicted by critics to be the biggest flop of the season, it soon turned the dying television industry on its head.
Nobody knows quite how it happened. Television was buckling under the onslaught of consumer generated media. The average citizen could produce more engaging entertainment, for less cost, and without the deluge of commercialism. The pressure from independent sources was so much that many industry analysts predicted that television would be extinct by 2075.
The Tower was the last in a line of reality television shows that was designed to capture the viewer’s attention by the sheer outlandishness of the prizes and the lengths that contestants would go to for those prizes. It was considered a last ditch effort by one station and its advertisers. If The Tower failed, then so too did the company that produced it along with the advertisers who had failed to keep with the trends and were dying along with television.
It was literally do or die.
The first run was held in an abandoned building that was scheduled for demolition. The rooms were created by breaking down the inner walls, and decorated and furnished mostly from information gleaned from the contestant’s interviews rather than the detailed histories that we are used to. The time for that first run was also rigid, there were no timer extensions, nor were there shortcuts or friends. The contestant was literally on their own with the cameras.
Maybe it was the payout, the largest of any show. Maybe it was the raw format; even though it was pre-recorded then The Tower has always been aired as it was taped, no editing out the language or portions that may not be suitable to children. Maybe, just maybe, it was the way the contestant was challenged. A challenge that went to the core of their being.
Nobody knew what the draw was; only that people were watching. And they were watching in greater numbers than the producers could have dreamed of. Advertisers clambered to get product placements into the second season before the first was even halfway through its showing. And the producers realized that the popularity was such that they would have to completely reinvent the show.
Somehow the producers convinced the advertisers that they needed money to purchase a private place for the show. And the advertisers gave willingly, with one buying an island that had been an abandoned military base. It was small, but it kept the tower isolated during construction, and kept the contestant isolated after their run, while the shows were still airing across the world. Of course that first island is tiny compared to the island of today, but it suited the needs of the young show.
By the end of that first season the world knew that television would never be the same. The shows that had been the most popular only months before were now forgotten, and any new competitor from the start of the season had fallen to make way for the tried and true programming that the other networks hoped and prayed would be able to bring viewers back from The Tower.
The Tower was an overnight sensation, and it only got better from there.
4
Sheryl stood where she was for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light. After blinking a few times she noticed a dim red light filtering through the room. She looked to see light panels emitting the glow from high up on the walls, and looking down she saw that the floor panels were still glowing slightly after she stepped on them.
“Well, this is lovely,” she muttered.
Moving slowly, she put her arms out in front of herself in order to avoid running into one of the translucent panels. She knew that she would have to find a way to both keep moving forward, as well as find the buttons and any vouchers in the dark.
Sheryl closed her eyes for another moment. When she reopened them she felt that she was better adjusted to the dim light. Looking through the maze she thought that she could make out the dim outlines of shapes attached to the panels. She hoped that she was right.
Her fingers touched a wall in front of her. Sheryl stopped and let her fingers spread to the left and right, exploring the possibilities of where she could go. On her left she encountered another wall intersecting the one in front of her. To the right she felt another direction that was available.
Sheryl quickly ran her hands up and down the walls that she could feel, and didn’t detect anything. Hopeful, she poked her foot into the corner, and stepped on a small button. As she felt it depress into the floor, a small string of lights lit up along the floor, following the path of the maze paneling.
She smiled, knowing that it was now going to be somewhat easier to find her way without constantly feeling for obstacles in the dark. She once again allowed her eyes to adjust to the light, and then continued forward along the path open to her.
Sheryl noticed that the light illuminated just enough for her to notice the outlines of the vouchers hanging from the panels. Now all that she had to worry about was whether they were on the same side of the panel as she was or not.
With the light guiding her, Sheryl moved much faster through the maze. She kept her hands free, trying to grab vouchers as she moved past them and followed the lights along the floor.
As she progressed, Sheryl noticed a small circle of light against one wall. She moved toward it to the best of her ability, and saw that the circle outlined one of the buttons that she needed to press.
Excited, Sheryl ran through the maze, trying to get closer. But she quickly found herself against a dead end wall. As she backed up to try another route she felt something brush past her ear.
Sheryl jumped, and brought her hand up to her ear to try and brush off anything that may have landed there. But there was nothing there. Slowly she outstretched her hand, and felt something dangling from the ceiling. She wrapped her hand around the object, and pulled on it.
The object came loose from the wire that attached it to the ceiling. Sheryl turned it in her hand, and quickly realized that it was a glowlight. She shook it for a few seconds, and then turned it on. A dim light diffused from the light. Sheryl shook it a little more, and was satisfied. Shining it through the walls about her, Sheryl noticed a path that she had missed and quickly made her way to the button.
Sheryl hit the button, and prepared to move on. Then lights flooded the room for a brief instant, leaving trailing after images interrupting her eyesight for a moment. Sheryl cursed under her breath at the tactic, and then waited for her vision to adjust itself again.
As soon as she could see even slightly, Sheryl started moving again. She knew that the room had eaten too much time, but she also knew that she couldn’t move much quicker through it. As the last of the after images cleared from her eyes, Sheryl took the glowlight and shook it violently.
A bright glow came from the light. Sheryl made sure that she kept it turned so that it wouldn’t blind her again. She shone it around the room, looking for the last button. At last she spotted it, in the corner opposite the wall that she was standing at. She turned off the light, and followed the pattern of the floor lights until she decided that she had plotted the most direct route to the button. Then she set off toward it.
Sheryl was glad for the light as she headed toward the last button. She could see many vouchers that she might have missed without it. She scooped them up as she walked past and shoved them into the pockets on the duster. She quickly reached the button and pressed it.
“All doors unlocked,” the female voice said through the hidden speakers.
Sheryl waited for another light to blind her, but none came. Shaking the light again she pointed it to where she thought the exit door was. Finding it almost immediately, she once again plotted a course.
“How bad is my time?” she asked.
Bria was the first to come back with an answer. “You’ve spent twenty-five minutes on this floor.”
“Damn it!”
Sheryl quickly double checked her planned route, and started moving towards the door. She managed to only get off of her planned course one time, and then found it again quickly.
Before she exited the maze, Sheryl stopped for a moment and moved the vouchers that she had collected from the pockets of the duster to the bags that she was carrying. She then looked at the light that had helped her through. She didn’t want to carry dead weight, but she didn’t know if she would find as useful a tool if she needed it later. Deciding that it was better safe than sorry, she shoved the light into the bag as well.
Sheryl blinked at the brightness of the hallway again as she exited the maze, and made her way to the door that led to the next level.
Wanting to make up for lost time, Sheryl opened the door and almost ran down to the floor below. She barely even noticed the transition from the smooth white of the floor above to the brushed stainless steel walls that now surrounded her.
Chapter 3
1
As soon as the island’s doctor had seen me for the first time I was required to choose a training program. The training would become part of my physical therapy at first, and eventually replace it.
I had always wondered at the varied skills of the contestants, but I could never have imagined the options that were presented for training programs. Physical training was present in all programs to some degree, but it varied from minimal endurance training to ensure that the contestant could keep moving for at least eight hours, all the way to heavy arms training.
The couple of days before I met with the doctor I had been allowed to observe some of the training regimens, already being pushed to make a decision. And for several days after I would be allowed to observe the physical portions while my psychological training started.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make.
I always knew that the tower is customized to the contestant. And some of the customization comes from the physical training that the contestant chooses. But I couldn’t justify an easy course of training when I knew that it would cause the psychological portions to be absolutely brutal.
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that I decided on a gunslinger course, but at some point it happened. At some point it seemed to be the most logical choice for me considering the condition that I was in, and my apparent aptitude with the guns.
Training was never easy. Early in my training I spent more time in the psychological portions since I was still fairly limited in my movement.
Psychological training is probably the worst kind. The questions… the questions will make you doubt your very existence. Of course the object of even this training is to make sure that the contestant doesn’t get held up in the tower on some fond memory, or sad one. The very essence of the psychological training is to break the contestant, and teach them to remove themselves from the emotional influences around themselves. It’s to teach them to move on no matter how much their soul doesn’t want to. And no matter how much a person relies on physical skills to escape, many contestants would give up and die without the psychological training.
As my leg healed, and my movement was less limited I was able to begin the physical portion of my training. Early on I was restricted to the shooting galleries.
I shot more paper targets than I can remember, each one a check of my aim and later instincts.
Eventually my physical therapy turned from healing to building strength. That was when I was finally sent into the training runs.
The training runs are like giant obstacle courses. Some are static, meant to be run multiple times so that improvement can be tracked. Others are dynamic, changing every few days so that the contestant is constantly challenged.
The last part of my training was simulation runs. Mini towers in the training areas prepare a contestant for generic scenarios that they may encounter in the tower. Ranging from a single floor to a six floor tower the contestant can get a feel for how the tower will test them. And it’s the only way that the trainers can beat ideas into the contestants.
Remember, nothing is sacred.
The last hurdles to any contestant are the signatures. There are two signatures required for any contestant to be declared ready for their run. The first is that of their trainer. If a trainer feels that a contestant is not ready, no matter how much time was spent in training, they will not sign off. The second is the signature of the island’s doctor. A contestant must be in perfect health, or they will not be allowed to make their run.
Once the training and the signature requirements have been met, it’s time for the run.
2
The first thing Sheryl noticed as she descended was the brushed metal cylinder standing in the middle of the floor. She moved to the far side as she exited the stairwell and saw a simple combination lock holding it closed. She studied the clues to finding the numbers.
The first number was the number of minutes spent in the first clockwise room from the cylinder. The second number was the number required to leave the second clockwise room. The third number, according to the cylinder, was painted on the wall of the third clockwise room.
Sheryl turned to look at the floor layout. The stairs had brought her down against a wall and then out behind the cylinder. A short jaunt of the hallway right of the cylinder opened out into a central square area. One door was located in the hallway, with another three from the central square.
She turned in place, making sure that she hadn’t missed anything, and then she moved back into the hallway to open the door there.
Opening the hallway door, Sheryl immediately saw a sign on the wall opposite the door. It identified the room as one of her break rooms, and informed her that as soon as she crossed the threshold into the room the timer would stop.
Sheryl backed away, and closed the door. She didn’t want to go in there yet. Moving back into the central square, Sheryl looked at the doors available to her. Deciding that clockwise was the simplest decision, she moved ahead of and left of the cylinder.
“Somebody note the time as soon as I open the door, ok?”
“Got it!” replied Bria.
“Thanks,” Sheryl replied as she reached toward the handle.
Opening the door, Sheryl felt a wave of nostalgia wash over her.
“Liam, can you see this?” she asked softly.
Liam’s holo appeared behind her. “Yeah.”
“It’s just like…”
“I know. I can’t believe it either.”
“They didn’t ask you about it?”
“No. Of course there wasn’t a lack of people that knew about us, and any of them could have been the source of information.”
Sheryl nodded. I knew their research was as good as it came, but I would have never expected this, she thought to herself. Liam and I were only romantically involved for a few months before deciding that friendship was the better way to go. And the loft we shared burned down only a few weeks after we moved out.
Sheryl moved to touch the bedspread that hung down past the edge of the raised platform that it was on. Even the bedspread is the same as we used back then, she thought, running the fabric through her fingers.
“Sheryl?”
“Hmm?”
“What are you doing?”
Sheryl realized that she had been caught up in the nostalgia of the moment. Shaking her head, she focused on the task at hand. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Sheryl took a deep breath. She knew that all she had to do was walk out the door for the first of her numbers, but she decided to see what was hiding in the room. She climbed up the ladder to the bed area.
Looking out into the room, Sheryl could see all the nooks and crannies that vouchers could be hidden in. She looked above the door, where there had always been a storage nook, and saw that even that small detail had not been forgotten. She could also see that something had been placed in that nook.
Sheryl sighed. When she and Liam had lived in that loft they had always used a ladder to reach that nook, but she had no such luxury now. She gauged her chances. There was no way that she could jump from the bed area and make it. She looked down at the floor and decided that she wouldn’t be able to even jump high enough to reach the ledge if she jumped from the floor.
Sheryl decided that her best option was to jump from the ladder that led to the bed and hope that she could catch the ledge. It would get her a bit closer than the main bed area, but wouldn’t be stable enough for her to try and actually land on the ledge of the nook.
Sheryl turned and ransacked the bed area, wanting to make sure that she had thoroughly gone through it before jumping. She didn’t want to have to come up the ladder again. She found a number of vouchers hidden in the bed, and she shoved them in her bag before dropping that to the floor below.
Gauging the distance, Sheryl climbed down to a rung that she felt would give her the best chance of grabbing the ledge. She then turned and faced the nook.
“Are you sure about that?” Liam asked.
“Absolutely,” Sheryl replied. “There’s something there, and I want to find out what it is.”
Liam scowled, but didn’t say anything further.
Sheryl took a deep breath, and jumped.
3
Excerpt from History of a Media Icon: Understanding The Tower
One of the hidden dangers of The Tower is that it’s meant to be as confusing to the contestant as possible. Not confusion in the physical sense, but confusion in the psychological sense.
Most contestants walk in with some preconceived notion of what they’ll encounter, and they prepare themselves mentally for what they expect. Former contestants have later said in interviews that they had some level of expectation even before they started their training, and that the expectations even guided their choices during training.
So while the designs and the factors used in building each tower are strict secrets, it would be naïve of us to assume that these preconceived notions aren’t noticed during training. And it could also be gathered that going somewhat against these notions would be step one in creating a tower that is psychologically confusing to the contestant.
Every contestant knows that they need to be prepared for any scenario that plays out within the tower, so many train to their fears. A person who feels that they are not up to the physical challenges of The Tower, will train to overcome those dangers that await. While a person who is afraid of the demons in their own closet will work to ignore them.
Viewers can see exactly how a contestant prepared themselves for The Tower as soon as the contestant enters. The contestant who worried about the physical dangers is cautious about movement, and defensive in posture. They try to minimize the damage.
The contestant who worries about psychological traps is confident in their movements, but nervous in their search. They try to minimize contact with places or objects that could stir memories.
The problem with both of these approaches is that the designers of each tower seem to take these concerns into their building design. And they design to the opposite tactic.
The confusion starts as soon as the contestant begins their run. Those that expected a physically easy run consisting mostly of psychological dangers find themselves confronted with traps and attacks. Those who approach with an adrenaline rush, ready to defend themselves, are often confronted with the mundane.
As the initial shock of their original expectations being dashed wears off, then the contestant is then greeted with a mix. Seemingly randomly placed elements work to both elevate the adrenaline, and bore a contestant. All of this within a single floor.
The contestant cannot settle into a rhythm that would allow for a single emotion to be present for most of their run. And by coupling changing stressors with the time limit, it often leads to mistakes being made by the contestant.
Of course, the audience loves it.
4
For a second, Sheryl feared that she would lose her tenuous grasp on the ledge. Then her fingers found their grip, and she pulled herself up into the nook.
“You ok?” Liam’s holo asked from the bed area.
“Yeah.”
“Well, what’s up there?”
Sheryl looked around for a moment. The only thing up in the nook was a brightly colored box. She knelt beside it, and lifted the lid.
“Well?” Liam asked, impatience in his voice.
Sheryl smiled as soon as she got a good look at what was in the box. “We hit the jackpot,” she replied.
“Vouchers?”
“No, better. This box holds a couple of clues for timer extensions.”
Sheryl pulled out the documentation, and saw nine buttons sitting in the bottom of the box. She looked closely, to see if the buttons had any indication as to how much time they would add. But the only thing she noticed was that there were three color groupings, and the buttons only varied within the group by the brightness of the color.
Scowling at the vagueness of the buttons themselves, Sheryl turned to look at some of the paperwork that came out of the box. What she had originally though of as a treasure trove of knowledge turned out to be mostly gibberish, except for a couple of pieces.
“Well?” Liam asked again.
“My buttons come in three color ranges. The hue indicates how much time will be added. Each color range represents a different increment.” Sheryl flipped to another page, and back again. Scowling again she added, “It appears that the increments are single minutes, quarter hours and full hours. But I can’t be sure. The clues are very vague on that.”
“What colors do you have?”
Sheryl looked into the bottom of the box again. “Green, blue and purple.”
“Are you going to use one now?”
“I don’t know…”
“You might not get another chance to compare the colors side by side again.”
“I know, but I don’t want to waste one of my three extensions so early.”
Sheryl sat there and looked at the buttons for a second. “Any feelings on this?”
Liam’s holo appeared thoughtful for a second. “Green.”
“What shade?”
Liam shook his head. “Sorry, all my gut is telling me is green.”
Sheryl sighed. “Ok then, I’ll go for middle of the road,” she said as she reached for the medium hued green button.
Her fingers resting on the button, Sheryl closed her eyes and pressed.
“Thirty minutes added,” the female voice said. “Time remaining: seven hours, thirty-five minutes.”
Sheryl breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s not great, but not completely wasted either.”
She made sure that she hadn’t missed anything in the nook, and then dropped down to the floor below.
Trying to avoid wasting any more time, Sheryl looked only briefly where she thought that vouchers may have been hidden. Stuffing her findings in her bag, she left the room.
“What was my time in there?”
“Nine minutes,” replied Bria.
“Thanks. That means that the first number is nine.
Now, let’s find out what is behind door number two.”
5
Sheryl went back to the cylinder, and made sure that there was nothing else to the clues than she had first read. Once she was satisfied that whatever number she was looking for in the second room would both unlock the door to the second room and provide the second number of the combination, she headed to the second room.
Nostalgia turned almost to annoyance as she saw what the second room contained. As she walked in she saw a replica of a children’s fair. Games filled three of the walls, and a prize center filled the fourth.
Sheryl looked at the prize wall in the vain hope that the number she needed would be where she could read it. But she wasn’t surprised to find that it wasn’t. Sighing, she let the door slip from her fingers so that she could start in her task to get the required number of tickets to leave the room.
Walking across the room to the prize wall, Sheryl took careful note of the games. Darts and ball tosses mingled with skill tests and competition games. Sheryl decided that she didn’t want to go up against a robot in any competitions, even if they were designed to act and look like children.
It took a moment for her to find what she was looking for amidst the worthless junk of the prize booth. There were a couple of false leads, keys and such, but Sheryl quickly figured out that the prize marked key code was the one she was wanting. She looked at the required number of tickets, and gulped. She needed to obtain one hundred and fifty tickets to get the code. As she headed out onto the floor, she hoped that the booth vendors weren’t stingy with their tickets.
Sheryl obtained a set of game tokens, and made her way around the room, making sure to spend extra time at the booths where she seemed to receive more tickets. As she came back around to the prize booth, she realized that she had more than enough. Luckily she didn’t have too many extra.
As she handed over the tickets and received a card with the key code on it, Sheryl hoped that she hadn’t spent too much time in the room. She rushed back to the door, and welcomed the sterile coldness of the brushed metal as she exited the game room.
Sheryl moved to the last door, dreading more a repeat of the room she had just left than an attack. Opening the door, she was confronted with a sea of red.
“What is this?” she asked as she walked in.
Liam’s holo wavered into place behind her. “It’s a new room this season. They’re calling it a colorblind. Everything in the room is a single shade of a single color.”
“Great…” Sheryl muttered. “And the number is supposedly painted on the wall in here too.”
Sheryl looked around, and saw that there was actually plenty of wall space exposed. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to be moving things around to find it, but didn’t really see another way to have it on the wall and not be a different color.
As the door closed behind her, blocking out the white light of the hall, Sheryl realized why the room was called a colorblind. Even the lights were tinted red.
Sheryl felt disoriented within seconds of the door closing. Ambient lighting kept most of the shadows away, and as she walked around she kept running into things. I gotta break the effect of this room, she thought to herself.
Reaching into her bag, Sheryl pulled the flashlight from the maze out and shook it. Shining it around the room, she instantly felt better. As shadows fell from objects in the room, she made her way through it, looking for clues as to where the number was painted.
Frustrated after a moment in the room, Sheryl started pulling objects off of the surfaces. She threw them and watched as they shattered or fell. Vouchers fell out of some, glaring in their color differences. Sheryl didn’t even bother to pick them up as she went. She was more concerned with finding the number.
Sheryl realized that the color was affecting her. She stopped in her rampage, and left the room.
6
Sheryl splashed cold water onto her face. She then pulled the towel from the rack and dried herself. Looking into the mirror above the sink, she could see the strain already starting to show.
Reaching to the back of her neck, Sheryl pulled the plugs for her microphone from the jacks.
“Come on Sheryl, get it together,” she said. “You can do this, just as long as you don’t lose your head.”
She sighed, not wanting to admit how much that room had affected her.
“I know that red is a powerful color, and that colors can effect moods. But I had no idea that the effect could be so overwhelming. I need to be smarter when I go back in there.”
Sheryl moved back into the main portion of the break room. She looked at the clock, she had been in the room for fifteen minutes. She was glad that the timer stopped in these rooms.
Walking over to the vending unit, she picked out an energy bar and drink. She wasn’t really hungry yet, but knew that she needed to eat something as she was already burning through a lot of energy.
Taking her meal to the small table in the room, Sheryl sat and ate. She knew that the producers wouldn’t mind her having her microphone unplugged as they would be using this time to advertise her choice in food along with other related information.
She ate quickly. She didn’t quite feel ready to go back into the red room, but knew that she didn’t want to waste her valuable break time either. As she tossed her garbage in the trash bin she checked to make sure that she didn’t need anything else in the room, she didn’t want to have to come back.
Sheryl made her way back into the hall, plugging the microphone back in as she went, and stood before the door to the red room. She took a deep breath, and opened it.
As the red enveloped her vision again, Sheryl steeled herself and walked into the room. She picked up one of the objects that she had thrown on the floor in her earlier rampage, and used it to prop the door open.
With white light flooding through the open door, Sheryl once again shook the flashlight, and shone it about the room. The shadows and different sources of light helped to negate the effect of the red.
Sheryl picked up the vouchers that she had uncovered earlier, and shoved them into her bag. Once she had finished that, she looked for clues as to where the number was. As the flashlight reflected off of the walls she noticed a place where the reflection was different.
Slowly, Sheryl traced the area with the light again. There was definitely a different quality to the reflection there.
Sheryl walked over to the wall and touched the surface. The feeling was different there as well. She closed her eyes, and traced where it felt different. Knowing that she was onto something, Sheryl picked up a broken piece of something laying on the floor.
Holding the broken thing in one hand, and tracing with the other, Sheryl etched the difference into the wall. Once she was confident that she had got it all she stepped back and shone the light on her work.
It was there, shaky, but there. A single number painted onto the wall with matte instead of gloss paint. She quickly committed it to memory, and then made her way out of the room.
Back in the hall, Sheryl made her way to the cylinder. She entered the combination, and opened the tube to reveal a ladder downward. She secured her bag, and took hold of the cold metal rung.
Chapter 4
1
My life before being selected as a contestant was nothing extraordinary. I come from a modest background, and really did nothing to stand out from the crowd.
I was born in a small farming community. Only about a million people live there, even today. We didn’t have the luxuries of the mega cities; even our tallest building was less than fifty stories.
My parents were well respected in the community. They owned several restaurants, and tried to make sure that the community was healthy around each of them. Before moving to my hometown, they had both been residents of one of the megas, and had seen first hand the ruin that can come of an infected part of society.
I can still remember the scars on my father from where some desperate person had first drugged him and then tried to rip the implants right out of his head. No doubt to be sold on the black market. It was then that my parents decided that a mega was no place to raise a family, and they moved to my hometown to establish themselves.
My hometown once had a proper name, but by the time I was born nobody remembered it. Everybody calls it Beantown, it’s even listed as that on maps of the area. And as you can guess, the major crop is beans. Soybeans to be precise.
As kids, we used to always wonder how society survived before soy proteins became the main staple of food. We couldn’t understand how animal meat and wheat could sustain a growing society. Sure, they were tasty, but much harder on resources, especially the animals.
Of course I later learned that soy protein wasn’t the panacea of food shortages and improper nutrition that it was made out to be. It still had to go through massive processing to remove most of the estrogen that is naturally occurring in it. And for meals where the sole nutrient was variations of soy protein, there still had to be other vitamins and minerals added to prevent disease.
Still, despite those processing concerns, it is a fact that the world would be in trouble without the soy crops. And Beantown was more than happy to provide the beans necessary.
2
Sheryl could hear the sound of birds and smell greenery as she descended. A crunch of dried leaves and soil beneath her feet told her that she had reached the floor.
She turned to see a forest scene laid out in front of her. Carefully molded columns looked like trees as they rose up to a painted ceiling.
Sheryl stepped out of the ‘tree’ that housed the ladder and looked around. She hoped that the way to the next floor would be nearby again, but found nothing that would indicate a way down.
Sheryl moved away from the tree, and started looking for the way down. Since she didn’t see any obvious place where there was a stairway down she figured that the way down must have been hidden in a tree as the way onto the floor was.
Sheryl pulled one of the guns from the holster, and turned it so that she was holding the barrel. Walking through the ‘forest’ she tapped each of the trees with the butt of the gun, listening for the hollow sound that would indicate a passage.
As she walked, Sheryl could see and hear the movements of the small robots that were meant to act as the forest animals. Birds flew from the upper branches of the trees, while rodents scurried out of sight.
Diffuse light made Sheryl wonder what time was supposed to be represented on the floor. It wasn’t bright enough to be a middle of the day light, but wasn’t defined enough to signal whether the effect was supposed to be morning or evening. It also made Sheryl wonder what time it was outside of the tower.
Continuing through the trees, Sheryl was starting to wonder if she was on the right path. She had tried to move in a circular fashion out from the tree that she had exited, but had only found solid trees so far. She looked around the floor; she didn’t have many trees left.
Finally, Sheryl found a tree that was hollow sounding. She tapped her gun against it once more to make sure, and then circled it.
Sheryl found the door to the passage on the far side of the tree. A single keyhole was the only clue on how to open it. She inspected the mechanism as best she could. After a moment of looking at it Sheryl decided that she was looking for a fairly heavy key, one that would act as a doorknob as well as key once it had been turned. She looked around for clues as to the key’s location. But nothing was written anywhere on the tree.
Sheryl sat on the floor, silently pondering on the locations that the key could be hidden in. She doubted that it would be buried without some sort of clue. There was too much dirt and area for that. So she started thinking about the animal robots. If left where one of them could get at it, and if they were programmed correctly, the key could have easily ended up in one of their dens.
Sheryl stood back up, and looked for a place where the key might have been. She didn’t see any evidence of a nail or other place where the rodents could have gotten to the key. She was about to question the animal den hypothesis when she looked up to see a tattered bit of string hanging from an overhead branch.
She looked at the tree, and the others nearby, and found a way up to a branch that she felt would support her. Climbing up, Sheryl soon was able to reach the string. Plucking it from the branch, Sheryl realized that if the key really had been hanging from it there was no way that the string would have been able to support the weight of a robotic mammal.
Realizing that the key must have been pulled from the string by a flying animal, Sheryl smiled, and started looking for nests.
3
Excerpt from History of a Media Icon: Understanding The Tower
Injury was always a draw on The Tower. Even the first contestant was injured in their run, exiting the building holding a broken arm.
Now the injuries can be more severe, but won’t stop the descent on their own. The modern towers have first aid equipment on every floor. Included in the equipment packs are pieces that many hospitals use for emergencies. Bone repair injections provide a temporary fix for broken bones until a doctor can evaluate the need for further treatment, and there are even quick packs for heat and cold in case there is a need for something like that.
Of course the contestant still has to avoid injuries. The timer is still counting down during and first aid treatment, and the worse the injury the longer it takes to treat. And despite the best advances of medical science, first aid is still only first aid. It’s only a temporary fix until a doctor can properly diagnose the problem.
The tower designers, however, don’t make avoiding injuries easy. While overt threats exist, it’s the subtle methods of causing injury that often cause greater damage. Forcing contestants to make risky decisions on how to move, and making them risk themselves for minimal rewards is part of the designer’s job.
4
Sheryl looked down to the floor below. Deciding that it wasn’t too far of a fall, she dropped her legs over the side and held on to the branch until she felt she was prepared for the drop.
She landed on the floor a bit harder than she had hoped, but felt ok. Standing straight up again, Sheryl listened for the sound of the robotic birds. She thought that she heard a few, but noticed that the room had gone eerily silent since her discovery of the string.
Sheryl scowled, and turned her face toward the ceiling. She realized that the robots were programmed to keep her from finding their dens. Slowly, she moved through the trees, looking for the signs of nests.
After a couple of minutes, Sheryl realized that looking from below would take quite a bit of time. Of course the alternative would take considerable time as well, but she hoped that she could eliminate needless climbing and descending but looking from a level similar to that of any nests.
Sheryl took hold of the lowest branches of the nearest tree, and pulled herself up into them. Climbing up, she realized that her duster could be a problem. Securing herself on a branch, she took it off and stuffed it into her bag. With the coat secured, she climbed until she could touch the ceiling with her fingertips.
Sheryl looked around. From her vantage she could see several nests, but she could see into them enough to see that there were no keys in them. She looked one more time, making sure that she had found all of the nests. That was when she saw the voucher, carefully colored to blend in with the foliage of the forest.
She realized that she had completely forgotten about collecting the vouchers on that floor. She had been so focused on finding the key and moving on, that she would have overlooked the monetary gain.
Sheryl looked at the nearby branches, and saw several vouchers within her reach. She grabbed hold of them, and pulled them from the branch.
Shoving the vouchers into her bag, Sheryl made her way back down the tree.
From the ground, Sheryl made note of the trees that she had been able to search from where she had been. She decided that she had been able to see roughly a quarter of the room from the top of the tree. Looking around, she chose another tree to climb into.
“Liam?” she asked as she made her way toward her chosen tree.
“Yeah?”
“How am I doing for this floor?”
“You’ve spent ten minutes on it so far.”
“Thanks.”
Sheryl reached her target, and pulled herself up into the branches again. Without the duster, she felt the branches scratch her arm. It wasn’t bad, however, and she ignored it.
Sheryl was almost to the top again, when she spied a nest only a couple of feet away. She climbed a bit more and peered into the nest.
Sheryl squeaked with joy as she saw the glitter of metal within the nest. Reaching into the nest, she pulled the key free and made her way back down the tree. As her feet touched the floor again, Sheryl headed to the corner where the exit door was.
“Aren’t you going to look for more vouchers?” Bria asked.
“No. Going up and down the trees in this room will waste time. I’d rather gain back a few minutes by going now than possibly lose more by searching for vouchers that I could probably find easier on other floors.”
Sheryl could hear Bria getting ready to argue, but it never came. She waited a moment for the argument after reaching the door, and then slid the key into the lock.
Feeling the click of the tumblers as they key turned, Sheryl pulled on the key. The door opened onto another ladder. Sheryl grabbed onto the metal rung, this time warm instead of cool, and proceeded downward.
Chapter 5
1
My childhood was fairly typical. At least as far as a small town childhood can be.
I received my cyber implants not long after I was born. Mostly because the studies at the time suggested that it was less likely to cause permanent damage to the brain if they were installed early rather than waiting for the brain to develop. Of course my implants weren’t activated until I started school.
I did ok in school. While I wasn’t an outstanding student, I managed to hold my own in most subjects. I did worse on my yearly psych evaluations. While the therapist never mandated drug intervention for me, some years it was a close call.
Like most people, I am only child. My parents put in their application for a second child almost immediately after I was born, but like most, it was never granted. I could see the hurt in my mother’s eyes from time to time. We all knew that she wanted more children, but the rules were as strict then as they are today. Any pregnancy that results in a second child for a family will be terminated unless an application for a second child has been approved.
I had many friends growing up. Of course part of it was that my parents were so well known in the community. There were always people coming into our home, and they were always welcome.
To fulfill my extra-curricular activities requirement I participated in dance teams and debate. And despite the fact that I wasn’t particularly good at either, I feel that both helped to shape my temperament as I grew up.
I first visited a megalopolis when I was twelve. My father had to go to negotiate a business transaction and he took me along. I couldn’t believe the scope of that city. A single city that encompassed what would have once been several states. As we entered it we flew above most of the rooftops, and looking down I couldn’t see the ground below, the buildings were that high. And as we descended to our destination I looked up and could only see the smallest sliver of sky through the tops of the buildings that towered above.
Even now, I can pinpoint that first trip as the point in which I decided that I would not want to live in one of the mega cities. I decided then and there that I would live in a town much like the one that I had grown up in.
2
Sheryl found herself in a long hallway that terminated in an intersection. She could see no doors at all from where she was. She moved toward the intersection. She could see that the next door was not next to the ladder, and she needed to find it.
As she approached the intersection, Sheryl could hear scraping noises. She paused and pulled her gun from its holster. Turning the corner, she expected to encounter whatever was making the noise, but there was nothing there. Sheryl reholstered her gun, and proceeded to where she could see a number of doors.
As she walked, Sheryl stretched her arms out to either side and felt the walls along the hallway. She could see three doors at the end, but wondered if any of them was the door downward.
As she moved, Sheryl noticed a sign along the wall on her left. She stopped to read it. It informed her that she had three tasks to complete to open the door. It said to read the notice on each room door in order to determine the tasks assigned to her.
Sheryl nodded at the sign, and proceeded to the end of the hall, where there were three doors. She looked at each of them and studied the instructions for each room.
On the door to her right hung a note that instructed her to place particular objects on places marked on the floor. They had to all be in place at the same time for the lock for that room to be released, if one had been moved since she had placed it she would have to return it to its spot before the lock would release.
On the door straight in front of her, simple elementary school lettering told her that she was on a scavenger hunt. Beneath the lettering hung a not telling her what objects she was looking for. Sheryl smiled as she saw the list, which included things as a red crayon and length of purple yarn.
To her left, she was instructed to press a number of buttons. Sheryl blinked a couple of times, making sure that she hadn’t missed anything important to the instructions. She even pulled the instructions off of the door and turned the page over. But she discovered that there was nothing more detailed than pressing a number of labeled buttons, five of them to be precise.
Sheryl wondered what the catch was to the room. She knew it couldn’t be that easy, but there was no indication of what was behind the door.
Curiosity getting to her, Sheryl opened the door on her left.
3
Excerpt from History of a Media Icon: Understanding The Tower
When The Tower was still in the early seasons, nobody guessed that people would truly be willing to risk their life for money. By the fifth season, rumors were going around that the producers wouldn’t allow a contestant to die. That they would do something to prevent death on the show.
These rumors, of course, did nothing to decrease the popularity of the show. And after they had started there was almost a morbid fascination with the possibility of somebody dying.
The producers vehemently denied rigging the game to prevent death. They told the world that the risks were real, and since they show’s popularity only continued to climb they had no reason to rig it the other way either.
Nobody knows what would have happened to the show, however, if contestants had continued to survive.
It was the ninth season. That was the first contestant to die in their run.
The producers held off on releasing the season because of the death, at least according to news reports of the day. Media clamored for the story afterward. The show was being sued by the family of the contestant for wrongful death, and various religious groups were staging protests due to ethical concerns of airing a person’s death on television as a game. The government convened panels to discuss the appropriateness of such scenes on television.
In the end, the protests and lawsuits were for naught. The carefully worded agreements that the contestant had to sign prior to their run prevented any argument for wrongful death in the courts. And the fact that the show had psychologists on staff and called in others prior to any paperwork being signed showed that no contestant could be considered mentally ill and therefore unable to make proper decisions.
That first death took the show from merely successful, and skyrocketed its ratings. Re-airings and collectors sets brought in huge amounts of money, and even more advertisers came on board for subsequent seasons.
At the start of the tenth season, the prize money had quadrupled. The tower itself had become more complex, and the show was officially on the path to become what it is today.
4
The door opened to reveal a climbing wall. Actually, it revealed three climbing walls, once anchored to each of the non-door walls in the room.
Sheryl walked into the room, looking at the door wall to see if there was anything on it. But it only held some hand powder.
Sheryl dropped her bag to the floor, glad that her duster was still stowed inside of it. As she made sure that her hands were well dried and coated in powder, she looked for a harness. She didn’t see one.
With a scowl, Sheryl made her way to the center of the room. She wasn’t worried about hurting herself in a fall, but a ceiling mounted harness would have allowed her to make some jumps from one section of wall to another. She would have to climb instead.
Sheryl stood in the center of the room, looking for indications as to where the buttons might be. She could see shadows of objects hidden in the nooks and crannies of the walls, but she couldn’t make out enough details to pinpoint a course of action.
She headed toward the wall on her left. Working the toes of her boots into the crevasses, she pulled herself up along the wall.
She found one button almost immediately. It was bright green, and had an image of a door emblazoned upon it. Pressing it, she heard a loud click. She knew that the noise was more for her benefit rather than any actual action occurring.
Sheryl kept moving along the wall. She had tried to map out the nooks and crannies that she had seen shadows in from the floor, but she realized as she moved along the face of the wall that she couldn’t count on that information to guide her.
As she reached the top of the first wall, Sheryl found a button hidden behind a voucher. She heard another clicking noise as she pressed it. Checking to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything on that wall, Sheryl started heading back to the floor.
Sheryl moved onto the second wall as soon as she was on the floor. She decided that she would pick up the scattered vouchers once all the buttons had been pressed.
Climbing, Sheryl realized that her strategy would have to be different on the second wall. It was significantly wider than the walls on either end of the room. She decided that her best strategy was to work her way up one said and back down the other, feeling blindly into the crevasses on either side to check for vouchers or buttons.
Sheryl was moving across the top of the middle wall before she found her third button. Realizing that she was running short on time for the room, she pressed it quickly and moved on. Not finding any more buttons on the middle wall, she moved back to the floor and onto the final wall.
Sheryl attacked the last wall, trying to make up for lost time. She was too worried about how long she had spent in the room to even bother to ask for a time. Scaling it as fast as she could, she was horrified to find only one button hidden on it.
Sheryl cursed herself as her feet touched the floor again. She knew that she had missed a button somewhere on one of the first two walls, but she had no idea where.
Sheryl looked at the vouchers scattered on the floor. She could see that a good number had been hidden in the room. She gathered them up, and shoved them into her bag.
Turning back to the walls, Sheryl thought about the missing button for a second. She realized that the chances of her having missed it on the first wall were slim. She had investigated too many nooks and crannies on that wall in an attempt to figure out the room to have missed it there. And she had thoroughly checked the third wall once she realized that she was still missing a button. So all that was left was the middle wall.
Sheryl stared at the wall right in front of her for a second, wondering where she might have missed the button. Then it dawned on her.
Sheryl ran back to the wall, and made her way up to and across a middle section that had been missed as she had made her way across the wall earlier. About halfway across, she found the button, along with a few more vouchers.
With a sigh of relief, Sheryl pressed the button and jumped back down to the floor. Grabbing her bag and shoving the vouchers into it as she headed toward the door, she made her way back out into the hallway and across to the door on the other side.
5
Sheryl heard the scraping noises again as she opened the door. She glanced at the note on the door one more time before heading completely into the room.
She could see robots moving about in the dim light of the room. Each carried a box from one location to another. The boxes ended up moving in a circular fashion around the room.
Sheryl could see that the boxes were numbered, and as she walked through the room she could see where the scraping sounds were coming from. The boxes were piled at the end of one conveyor, and the robot that moved the boxes from it to the next had to moved them and sort to find the correct number to keep the boxes in sequence. The speed of all the other robots in the room were determined by that one, but they each checked numbers along the way as well, or so it seemed.
Sheryl decided to test her theory, and removed a box from the conveyor just before a robot station. She carried it a few feet away and placed behind another object on the ground.
The robot continued it’s checking of the boxes until it came to the missing one. Once the sequence was broken, it set down the box that it had picked up and abandoned its post in order to find the missing box.
Sheryl moved out of the way and timed the robot. She could see that a sensor must have been activated once the robot noticed the missing box, as it moved directly toward it. Within a minute the robot had located the box and placed it on the conveyor again.
Sheryl cursed at the speed of the robots, and started thinking about how she was going to finish the challenge in the room. Moving back into the main portion of the room, Sheryl looked to identify the boxes that needed placed, and the locations that they needed to go. She also watched the robots as she moved, trying to decide which ones moved the slowest.
Sheryl quickly decided that the slowest robot was the one that had to shuffle through the boxes as they came off of the conveyor and fell to the floor. She stood just past the last station before that bot, and grabbed a small box as it went past. She guessed that she had about three minutes before the robot would come looking for her.
Sheryl waited where she was until the first of the specially marked boxes came through. She then grabbed it and moved it to the marked location. As she made her way back, she could see the next of the boxes in the section of chain that she was trying to break.
Grabbing the next two, Sheryl could hear the scraping stop. She knew that the robot would now be looking for her. She quickly moved to place the boxes. She didn’t want to be close to the moving robot as she grabbed and placed the remaining boxes.
Sheryl watched the last two boxes fall onto the pile. She moved as far from the pile as she could and stood still. The robot lumbered in her direction, sensing the missing box that she still held. At the last minute, she moved out of the way and ran back to the pile of boxes. The ones that she was looking for had been covered by the continued falling of others.
Sheryl dug through the pile, and finally found the boxes. She turned to see the that the other robots were starting to sense the delay and were looking for the missing box as well. One of them was almost to where she was. She quickly moved out of the way, avoiding robots as best as she could, and ran to place the last of the boxes.
As the click of the door unlocking echoed through the room, Sheryl tossed the box back into the middle of the room. She watched for a second as one of the robots moved to pick it up and place it on the conveyor. She then saw them quickly locate the other boxes as they found them missing, and within only a could of minutes the conveyor was moving as if nothing had interrupted it.
Sheryl moved back into the hallway. She only had one door left. She opened it, and blinked as the bright, morning sunshine blinded her.
6
For a brief moment, Sheryl thought that the building crews had done a wonderful job of simulating the morning light. Then she realized that the light, and warmth, was streaming through actual windows.
Sheryl paused. In her entire life she had only seen a handful of towers built that had actual windows. She walked over to them and put her hand to the glass. She could feel the warmth of the sun through it, and looking down she could see large portions of the island.
“Liam,” Sheryl asked, “have they been adding windows to more of the towers lately?”
“No,” Liam replied, his holo resolving beside her. “Why?”
“Because these are actual windows and not set props.”
“Are you sure? The designers hardly ever use real windows.”
Sheryl watched a bird fly past the tower below her, and then saw one of the equipment trucks moving just at the edge of her vision. “I’m sure,” she replied enjoying the warmth of the sun.
Liam nodded. “You’re one of the lucky ones then.”
Sheryl returned the nod, and then proceeded to investigate the room. It was designed to look like a children’s classroom. The panels set into the desks were flashing choices of textbooks and activities. Along the front was a display board, with one of the iconic alphabet charts above it.
Displayed on the board was the list of items that Sheryl needed to find. She pulled the list from the door out of her pocket and double checked it against the list on the board, but they were the same. Placing the paper version of the list on the teacher’s desk, Sheryl started to look for the items.
She had twenty things to find within the room. Since she was already at the teacher’s desk, she decided to start with the items that were most likely to be there. Sheryl looked at the list again. The items that were most likely to be in the desk that she was at were the display pen, the controller for the student displays, tape, and a confiscated toy.
Sheryl dug around in the desk, finding a number of vouchers along with the items that she had thought would be in there. She carried the items to the collection bin, where they were promptly counted.
Turning back to the board, Sheryl noted the other items. The rest were things that she expected to find in the student desks. She made her way through the room, grabbing the items as she found them.
She was looking for the last item when she came across a cabinet at the back of the room that would not open. Sheryl tugged at the handle a couple of times before giving up. She moved on to the next cabinet and found the final item.
She carried the rest of the items to the collection bin, and as soon as they were counted she heard the distinctive click noise that told her that part of the lock had just released.
“Stairwell door, open,” the now familiar female voice said over the speakers.
Sheryl moved to the door, ready to head down to the next level.
“Aren’t you going to check that cabinet again?” Liam asked. “It may have opened up once you found everything.”
Sheryl sighed, she hadn’t even thought about the cabinet, but now that Liam brought it up she decided that he did have a point. Walking back to it, it opened with ease.
Inside were a couple of vouchers, and a button, a purple button. Sheryl stared at the button. She knew that it was a timer extension, but she didn’t see any clues nearby to help her determine if that was one she wanted to press of not.
Sheryl stretched her hand toward the button, but withdrew at the last moment. Turning away, she headed toward the door.
“Aren’t you going to use the extension?”
“No, I don’t have enough information right now to make an informed decision. I don’t want to waste one of my chances without more info.”
Liam’s holo wavered out of sight as she left the room. Sheryl was glad that he didn’t try to argue with her about using the button, she had been too tempted anyway.
As she reentered the hallway, Sheryl could see that the stair door now stood wide open. It blocked the back end of the hallway.
The staircase itself was circular this time. She ran down, noticing that the brushed metal of the floor above seemed to continue to the floor that she was headed to.