The Box

I’ve worked at this particular facility for a few years now. They execute simple tests: the effect of low temperatures on patients with depression, the effect caffeine has upon subjects with attention deficit disorder, etc. I never have any say in the tests and how they are carried out. I simply catalog the subjects and record their reactions to the tests presented. I’ve met many kind souls, but I’ve met just as many troubled hearts. I like to think that this facility gives people reassurance that others care about their troubles. My coworkers are very considerate and kind; always speaking about how they wish that they would cure these illnesses if they could. Each of the other testers always smiles and asks me how I’m feeling today. I guess that the dullness of the facility had gotten to them as well.

The test for today is something that the doctors have been speaking about for a long time now. They’ve just handed me the paperwork to review: It’s quite simple, really. A small, square room with a table in the middle. There is a cardboard box in the center and a light above it. Five subjects are each told something different about the box: do not open it, you must open it, the person who doesn’t wish to open it actually wants to open it, do not speak, and the person who isn’t speaking wishes to open the box. Record and make notes of the behaviors of the subjects for an hour. Testing can and will be stopped early if violence occurs. Each subject has been diagnosed with a mental disorder that leaves the patient unable to normally interact with the outside world. Examples of these disorders are-

My eyes glazed away from the paper to the white walls of the room I was in. This cannot be right. This test is unerringly cruel. These people, these poor souls, have been tormented enough by their mental disorders. This facility was supposed to be a beacon for those that have lost faith in humanity. We are supposed to help these people, not play games with their minds.

The doctor’s office was lavish. It wasn’t the feelingless white that the walls and floors were in the rest of the building. Emerald green wallpaper with wooden trim. A large (and expensive) desk sits square in the middle of the room, topped with piles of paperwork. Behind it was a man in a leather chair. The doctor was a portly man. His jowls hung from age beneath the receding gray hairline kept slicked back and patchy from faint attempts to dye it. He glances up at me with an unassuming smile.

“What seems to be the matter, Carla?” he began as leaned backward in his chair, fingers weaved together, “I know there’s something wrong; you didn’t knock.”

“What the hell is this experiment doctor?” I barked, not realizing how high I had raised my voice.

“Relax, Carla, we-”

“Relax?! We are tormenting and toying with the minds of the mentally unstable. Is this some big game to you?!”

“Carla-” he began before I cut him off once more.

“I have worked here for four goddamned years, doctor, and not once have I ever felt that a test was going too far, so I ask you, what the hell are you thinking?” I felt my fists clenched so tight that it felt like my skin about my knuckles was going to snap. The doctor stared at me in disbelief as though I was the madman. I felt sweat cut down my skin like needles through my pores. His hand was on the comms button. They heard it all. I felt a prick in my neck as the world around me started to fade into a hazy black nothing.

I woke to find myself in a dark room with a single light above my head. I heard the voices of others bickering and yelling. My vision fell upon the center of the room. A small cardboard box.