[Fiction] The Facility: a getDare Sci-Fi

[pm90]

Please note the change of title, above. Read the following few replies to see why this was necessary.

Prologue, The Night Watchman

He always felt guilty about it of course, but he knew nobody would ever find out, and besides, it was almost part of his job description. He started recording the data feed onto his portable drive, adding it to an already extensive list of files he had been collecting since he'd started this job over a year ago.

Security Monitor. It wasn't a very classy job title, and it wasn't Earl's top pick of jobs, when he applied, but now he wouldn't leave this job for the world. It didn't pay great, but it was enough, and all he had to do was watch the screens, which wasn't very entertaining most of the time, but was exceptionally exciting every now and then, and although very little was happening right now, he had a feeling that it was going to be a good night. He could usually tell somehow.

He scanned through the other rooms and halls on his monitors quickly, before returning his attention to the feed he'd enlarged right in the center of the view screen, the feed he was downloading to his drive.

His job would have hardly been possible just a few years ago, but Quantum computing and Infinitely Variable Radio Frequency Refraction had revolutionized technology. The engineers could barely keep up, the technology was being developed faster than it could be put to use.

But now...

The project was privately funded by one of the original developers of the IVRFR technology, Mr. Tobias Finch. Finch had deftly manipulated the legal system, and held all the rights to the bursting new technology, making a killing overnight. He founded a company with his ill-gotten wealth, researching new technologies and designing consumer and commercial products with impressive numbers of patents. He kept private ownership over the entire enterprise, and made billions practically overnight, quickly becoming one of the richest men in the nation. Finch Industries, Inc. had their fingers in almost every new electronic product on the market, and was one of the most powerful and influential entities known, despite having seemingly materialized out of nowhere in a matter of months. Needless to say, Finch had money to waste, and the project that Earl worked for was one of Finch's little pets.

The project, referred to at the Red Rover Project by the staff, was conducted in a small facility in an industrial part of the city. From the outside it really just looked like a modest warehouse, with a couple side buildings and plenty of parking. It was backed up to an abandoned railroad switch yard that hadn't seen traffic in over a decade. Maybe the old and worn warehouse packaged food products, or maybe it was a metal goods manufacturer. A generic sign on the building, with faded lettering and broken light bulbs, simply said Finch Industries, Inc. It could have been anything from the outside. But inside... inside it was something completely different.

The ground level of the main building had a series of large rooms with large equipment for specialized purposes, kept in pristine state, and each looked like a medical pathology lab or a chemistry research lab. Each specialized machine had the Finch Industries, Inc. logo on the side. But a single elevator took employees down below ground level, where things looked very different.

The first sub-level was artificially lit, and had row upon row upon row of hydroponic equipment, growing all varieties of food crops. Temperature and humidity were carefully controlled, and light levels were measured and adjusted for maximum growth. Water was fertilized and recirculated through the system. The plants were all practically bursting with large, perfectly grown foodstuffs.

The second sub-level was quite different, being simply a mechanical level, full of water tanks, pipes, electrical wiring, circuit breakers, air hoses, and no small amount of grease, dust, loud noises, and bad smells. It was here that the entire complex's waste water was recycled and recirculated, where all the solid waste was broken back down into chemical energy, where all the thermal energy from hundreds of yards below heated the water and air systems, and were the majority of the entire complex's waste energy was reclaimed in some way or another. It was almost a closed system, and only a relatively small draw of power from the city grid to keep the system running.

The third (and final) sub-level appeared clean and sterile-looking like the first two levels, but there were fewer industrial machines, and didn't have the same warehouse feel. Rooms were smaller, and were connected by mazes of hallways, which were laid out in a logical order, but didn't appear that way at first. The central rooms were larger, some of them with exercise equipment, others with long tables and benches, next to the rooms with cooking equipment. The rooms farther from the center were smaller in comparison. Some of them were filled with SmartDesks sporting Finch logos. Some of them had couches.

And some of the rooms had bunk beds from wall to wall.

Each bunk was triple stacked, one mattress near the floor, one in the middle, and one near the rather high ceiling. Four bunks on each of the two facing long walls, making sleeping room for 24 people, and every bed was full. Each group of 24 had a mix of people representing a variety of ancestries, and a wide range of physical characteristics. But that was the only thing about their groupings that seemed fairly random. Their ages ranged from about 10 years old to about 20, and they were separated accordingly. Each of the ten age ranges was split up into three groups of 24: one group was all male, one group was all female, and the third was evenly split, 50/50. There were thirty groups in all, making a total of 720 subjects in the building.

That was a lot of kids. During Earl's orientation after he'd accepted the job, they'd explained to him how they'd all come to be there. They took advantage of another new technology resulting from the invention of the Quantum Computer: neural manipulation. The machine they used had some fancy acronym that he could never remember. But as he understood it, they recorded an exact image of each subject's brain upon entry, at a molecular level, capturing every neuron and every chemical reaction in progress, every single electron transfer, and every resulting image was archived. And that was the easy part. The Quantum computer analyzed each image, synthesized it into a manipulable format, and displayed it for a technician. The technician then removed all traces of personal experience from the image. The revised, depersonalized neural image was then (and this was the part he didn't really understand, because it was all about photon particles and chemical restructuring) printed back into the subject's brain. Out walked the new "clean slate" subject, with a basic understanding of how to function as a person, and how to communicate with others verbally and non-verbally, all with only a limited loss of personality. At least that's what they told him.

In this state, they were introduced to a sterile environment, free of prejudice and preconceived notions about social interaction, so that they could be observed as they developed. He wished he'd thought to ask what exactly the goal of the Red Rover Project was, but he'd been so overwhelmed at the time that it hadn't occurred to him.

His new supervisor, while giving him the relatively brief orientation, explained that some of the kids were from rich families, who paid quite a bit to send their kid here, and in return their kid would be returned, reprinted with all the original personal memories, and with an education superior to any that could be attained via traditional means. During those ten years, however, they wouldn't be allowed to see or visit their kid, and wouldn't even be told the location of the complex. They wouldn't know many of the details about the project, and the 'student' would remember very little of the experience.

It was really a pretty extreme process, and there weren't a whole lot of affluent parents lining up to enroll their ten-year-olds and say goodbye for a decade for the sake of a superior education. So the rest of the 720 subjects comprised of orphans, homeless children, and juvenile delinquents who would have otherwise been in juvenile detention until they were old enough to transfer to prison for a very extended period of time. Children who could be given something of a better life and who wouldn't be missed by society. But the rich parents enrolling their children didn't know that, of course.

After each ten-year-old was admitted, scanned, and reprinted with their new identity (or non identity, Earl thought), they were given a new name and ID number, and assigned to one of the three groups: male, female, or mixed.

Each group was color coded with three-stripe wrist bands embossed with that particular individual's unique ID number. The metal bands were a little bulky and couldn't come off, but were relatively lightweight so as not to be too cumbersome.

Those wrist bands were the only colorful thing they wore. They were given simple black athletic-style clothing that was both comfortable and easily cleaned and taken care of, with simple sizing and ample use of elastic. It made the logistics of clothing 720 growing bodies in the same uniform much much simpler.

All of the subjects in the Red Rover Project did everything as a group. They ate meals, took classes, exercised, and operated as a single unit. Meals were shared with groups in the same age range, but interaction between the groups was limited. Their days were strictly scheduled, and their movements monitored both by the Security Monitors like himself who sat back and watched from afar, and the Facilitators who interacted with them directly, leading them from room to room. A Facilitator was necessary, because they were locked into every room they were in, until a facilitator's ID wrist band unlocked the door and they were led to the next room.

Earl didn't really know why they were there. He knew it was some sort of study or experiment. He assumed it was a psychological or maybe sociological experiment. But it was Mr. Finch's pet project, and aside from the fact that the kids were treated like a cross between cattle and a preschool daycare, they were very well taken care of. Occasionally he heard stories of disruptions and aggressiveness from the day shift Security Monitor, but he'd only ever really seen one fight between a couple of boys during his night shifts. One had accidentally elbowed the other in the face, and a decent brawl had ensued.

Earl never interacted with the subjects. He didn’t even work in the same building. He worked in a darkened room in a smaller, separate building next door to the main “warehouse.” His job was simply to monitor the feeds from the cameras, to make sure the subjects were both safe and "compliant", to sound the alarm if there was an emergency (or if one of the on-call Facilitators needed to break up a fight), and to document and record any "unusual activity" he observed on the feeds. There were so many quotation marks in his job description that he could almost interpret it any way he liked. There were no airy quotation marks in the confidentiality statement they made him sign, though. Not that that really mattered. If he said one slightly revealing word outside of work to anybody, he was fairly certain he would find a bucket of cement on his doorstep in the morning with his favorite pair of shoes sticking out the top: a warning to go back to work, and remember to keep his mouth shut. Nobody ever told him that, and maybe it was a little bit of an exaggeration, but that's kind of how the job felt whenever he interacted with any of the administration, wearing their matching pinstripe navy suits. So he just happily sat in front of his large viewscreen, and watched the feeds scroll by, never breathing a word to anybody about what he did every night.

The feeds that he watched came from millions of microscopic cameras throughout the facility. Each camera consisted of a lens, a photo plate, an extremely low power ambient energy supplier, and an IVRFR chip. They operated solely on captured ambient radio noise, without the need for batteries, and could be used to wirelessly capture low-grade video images. Individually the devices weren't all that impressive, and the videos were jerky, grainy and practically useless compared the modern camera quality. But the facility had millions of the little buggers, located EVERYWHERE.

Each individual video feed was retrieved by the facility's central Quantum computer. Then the real magic happened. Millions of low quality, grainy video streams were synthesized together into a single high quality three dimensional video map of pretty much the entire facility, which was displayed as several single-viewpoint video streams that would flick from room to room, much like a traditional security monitoring station, except each individual stream could be enlarged, the viewpoint could be rotated and moved around, or zoomed in and out. The viewer could virtually wall the halls and look at anything from any angle. Cool in principle, but Earl was afraid that the novelty of it would wear off quickly.

He only worked the night shift. Easy enough. He walked into his 'office,' relieving Theo (the afternoon day shift guy with bad breath) just before each group was being filed back into their respective rooms. The majority of his shifts he spent simply scrolling through the same screens of the subjects sound asleep in their beds. Occasionally one of the subjects would get up to use the bathroom. The system automatically opened up a new window feed of any movement it detected outside of the confines of each bed, and he would watch as they stumbled into the bathroom, relieved themselves, and climbed sleepily back into bed. Occasionally a couple of them might find themselves awake at the same time, and would converse together in the lounge attached to each suite, before getting tired and going back to bed. The rest of the time, he just watched the facility through multiple scrolling viewpoints of the computer's three dimensional video map.

After his first night, he didn't know how long he was going to last at that job. Eight hours of doing essentially nothing, and watching essentially nothing. But he stuck it out, because he needed the money pretty badly, and there weren't a whole lot of jobs around that paid like that with his limited qualifications. And he didn't have to interact with anybody, which was a plus. He'd had a lot of jobs where he couldn't stand the people he worked for or worked with. And while this discrete branch of Finch Industries, Inc. wasn't exactly friendly or forgiving, they paid fairly well, and mostly just left him alone. It was going to be boring, but he thought he could make it work.

After his first week, though, he changed his mind. He could definitely handle the job.

The change came about when he'd been idly scrolling through the screens, sipping on coffee to keep himself awake, when he noticed that there was a girl in one of the older groups who's sheets had been kicked down, and only covered her up to about her navel. And, rather unusually, she had chosen not to wear the t-shirt that they were supplied with to sleep in. Without even really thinking about it, he zoomed in to look closer at her. She was sixteen, according to the data file that popped up helpfully next to her feed. And her dark hair contrasted impressively with her pale skin. But he barely noticed that, he was too busy ogling her exposed chest of moderately sizable proportions, with small darkly colored nipples, which, he realized, were stiff. Was she cold? Why didn't she pull the sheets back up, then?

Then he noticed her bottom lip, drawn slightly between her teeth. Only then did he recognize the angle of her arm, and approximately where that would put her hand, covered by the sheets.

His eyes had bulged wide when he saw a slight, but steady and rapid movement in the sheets about where her wrist should be.

Needless to say, he sat attentively in front of the screens every night after that, and watched the map through it's automatic rotation of synthetic viewpoints. This was definitely a job he could handle, no problem. Over the weeks and months, he'd gotten good at picking out the subjects, from all the scrolling feeds, who were doing interesting things discretely under their sheets, or occasionally not so discretely, and not under their sheets.

Tonight he watched as Subject 235.M.A "Colin," one of the subjects in the 13-year-old all male group, suddenly jerked his head off his pillow with his mouth slightly open and eyes tightly shut, and shot white droplets of shiny fluid onto his chest, lowering his head back down to his pillow, and relaxing the muscles in his face, followed by his torso and the rest of his body. After a few moments of panting, he used the corner of his top sheet to wipe off his chest. He pulled his boxers up from around his knees, and sat up to put his shirt back on.

“Julia,” a 15-year-old in the mixed group was washing her hands after briefly using the toilet.

He kept both feeds open until he was sure that he'd fallen to sleep, but he turned his attention to the other feed he had enlarged off to the side, a feed of the lounge in one of the older girls' suites. Three of them were sitting on the couches, talking and gesturing. Without audio he couldn't be sure, but it appeared that they were speaking quietly, and didn't seemed too excited about anything. He kept the feed open, though, to keep an eye on them, and just in case anything interesting ended up happening.

Another feed automatically enlarged in the center of his view screen. It was another one of the boys' suites, an older one, and the automatic viewpoint was looking directly at subject 397.M.C "James," according to the subject profile data that appeared next to the feed. Earl swiveled the view around and zoomed in to watch in crystal clear quality as the subject swung his leg over the edge of the top bunk, and carefully started climbing down.


... ... ... ... ...


This is a story that I've wanted to tell for a very long time. I certainly hope that you all enjoy it. I will update as I can, but I make no promises, and I'll warn you that updates may not all be this long. Also, the majority of this was written on my phone, and my computer doesn't have a spell checker (a problem I'm in the process of fixing), so I apologize for typos and grammar errors. Your feedback is greatly appreciated, and I'm always open to suggestions if you wish to leave me a private message.

~pm


EDIT: This post has been edited and revised by the author in an attempt to differentiate it from a similar story written and posted by another member.

[Dylan xX]

Umm The Facility. by chubbsman7 is almost the exact thing.

Is this your own personal version of something you read? If it isn't how did you get the idea to write an extremely similar story? :P

[pm90]

...huh. Well, thats slightly unnerving. Thanks for pointing that out. I would have felt like even more of an ass if somebody had waited until I was two or three posts in to mention anything. That's a pretty good story he's got goin' on there. I wish he'd continue it! lol.

No, I hadn't read that story before. This is a story I've written and re-written countless times over the past decade, and every time it gets just a little bit different. It started as a fascination with the concept of how Utopias and Concentration Camps are often quite similar in modern science fiction. Then as I gained an understanding of Psychology, I wanted to incorporate that into the framework of the storyline as well, with sexuality, gender roles, and social development as the main themes. So, I guess that in that sense the two stories are really very similar. I would say, however, that his plot had a definite Utopian bend to it (at least as far as we can tell from what he's given us. Too bad he never finished it.), while i would intend mine to be decidedly less benevolent.

Also keep in mind that that was just the Prologue. The majority of the rest of the story would follow one of the subjects, rather than our creepy friend Earl.

I suppose, though, that if I decide to continue after this somewhat awkward moment, I should go back through and change some details. ... Like the title, for starters. What do you think?

Clear Skies~

[gayboi25]

A change in title could be prudent. Apart from that, I'd say your safe.

I am greatly looking forward to the continuation of this story.

[pm90]

Okay. Thanks for the encouragement, boi. I'm headed back to the drawing board to make some adjustments, I guess, but I will return relatively soon, with a new title (hopefully an original one this time), and, like I said, a few other changes. Those of you who've been around longer, do you think it's better to continue posting in this thread and get a Mod to change the title for me, or should I just start a new thread?

Anyways, sorry about that guys. brb...ish.

~pm

[Dylan xX]

Oh, well apart from the title you have a pretty individual enough storyline so far, so I think your good.

By all means, continue!

-Dylsterr

[pm90]

Alrighty, folks. I edited my original post, and it now has the revised version of the prologue instead. Really, I didn't change a whole lot, but I did add quite a bit of backstory into the nature of the complex, as well as added a more detailed description of the layout, so it's worth skimming back through and getting caught back up, I think. Again, thanks Dylsterr for pointing out the issue.

Can I get a Mod to change the title please? "The Red Rover Project" would be appropriate, I suppose. Thanks!

Oh, and I'm revising chapter one, I should have it up soon. I'm off to a party at the moment, though, so not tonight. Anyways, let me know what you think of the revisions. Thanks guys!

[The Judge]

excellent work. I applaud your efforts and ask that you present your case as thouroughly as possible.

[pm90]

The Red Rover Project
Chapter 1: Sleepless in Snoresville


James fidgeted his toes, feeling his toenails scape the fabric of the sheets. Of course, he was supposed to be asleep, like everybody else, but he could never fall asleep before some of the others started snoring, and then it was nearly impossible. And he wasn't really that tired, anyway.

Scrape up. Scrape down. Scrape up. Scrape down.

He rolled onto his side and peered over the edge of his bunk. Nobody else was moving, that he could tell. The boy on the middle level of the bunk next to him got stuck mid-snore with an odd snort, before he violently flopped over onto his side and resumed snoring. James rolled back onto his back and sighed, listening to the ragged drone filling the room. Why in the world were they so loud? Couldn't they just breath quietly, and let him get to sleep? No. Of course not.

Frustrated, he threw the sheets off and sat up, stopping himself just in time before hitting his head on the ceiling as he had done so often before. He crawled to the end of the bed, trying not to shake the entire frame, and looked around to make sure he hadn't woken anybody up. Not that his mouse-like noises could be heard over the room full of Snorlaxes. He still would have felt bad if he'd woken anybody up, though.

James swung his leg over the edge of the bunk's painted metal frame and found the first textured rung of the ladder with his toes before swinging his other leg over and starting his slow and careful descent. Still careful to make as little noise as possible, he lowered himself down past the middle bunk, reassuring himself that Alex, who slept below him, was asleep, and continued down until his foot found the cold polished concrete floor next to the bottom bunk, where Daniel also was still asleep, with his hand in its traditional location: inside his boxers. After rearranging his sleep shirt and the waistband of his boxers, James crept toward the doorway. The lounge room, with all its couches and cushions and pillows and small tables, glowed faintly from the light spilling in from the bathroom, off to the side.

He walked through the open doorway into the softly lit bathroom, the largest room in the suite. A series of floor length urinals ran along the left wall, generic blue plastic-walled stalls along the back wall, and sinks along the right wall, facing the urinals, which awkwardly lined up so that anybody washing their hands could see the backside of anybody standing at the urinals reflected in the mirror that ran the length of the wall above the sinks. The center of the room was set into the concrete floor slightly, and finished with white tile and stainless steel. It was the open shower space, with shower heads suspended from the metal grate ceiling, soap dispensers on a low wall that kept water from splashing out excessively, and round drains set in the tile floor.

James came in here frequently when he couldn't sleep at night, even if he didn't have to use the toilet. He just liked that the light in here was always on, and the shower area gave the room a much more open feeling than either the bunk room or the lounge, which had so many couches and pillows and tables that it felt crowded even when there weren't people in there. No, this room was simpler, not to mention farther away from the sounds of sawing logs.

Even though he didn't necessarily need to, he walked into one of the stalls, pulled down his boxers, pinned the hem of his t-shirt under his armpits, and sat down on the cold toilet seat, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his interlaced fingers. As an afterthought, he kicked the stall door closed and stretched forward to lock it. Then he listened.


... ... ... ... ... ... ...


Earl sighed as the subject sat down on the toilet and kicked the door closed. The door of course posed no problem, he could easily zoom in through it, it was probably covered in thirty or forty cameras alone, plus the cameras on the walls of the stall and in the ceiling. No, he was just disappointed that the boy wasn't doing anything interesting. This particular subject had proved oddly entertaining. He seemed to be a curious sort, and would stare intently at all sorts of objects for minutes at a time, sometimes moving in to examine them closely or stepping back to judge them from afar. Always curious, though.

Earl zoomed the feed in through the stall door anyway, but turned his attention to the other feeds. Rooms and rooms of subjects scrolled by, each showing familiar scenes of kids and teenagers asleep in their beds. Colin had quickly fallen asleep after his rabbit jerk-off, Julia, after wiping her hands dry on her t-shirt, had crawled back into bed, and also looked fast on the way to sleep. He closed both of their feeds. The girls in room 209B were still talking on the couches. One of them stood up and walked to the bathroom. He followed her on a third, separate feed, trying to split his attention between all three.


... ... ... ... ... ... ...


Generally the building was quiet, and he couldn't even hear as much of the room full of snoring boys next door. Every now and then he could hear an air vent system whir to life, or some of the pipes rattling. Occasionally he could make out the faint flushing of a toilet somewhere nearby. Once he even thought he heard voices, but he really couldn't be sure. But it was always calming listening to the small sounds, rather than the chainsaws in the other room.

He sat and pondered all the small things. Like how the crack in the concrete floor stretched in a jagged arc away from one of the posts supporting the stall walls, but seemed to fade and disappear only a meter or so later. Or how the blue plastic walls of the stall always seemed to look clean despite the deep scratches graffitied into them, but if you looked at the door hinges, they actually looked relatively old in comparison. And the metallic coating on the handle was starting to chip slightly around the edges to reveal the gray plastic underneath.

He relaxed a little, and felt his bladder start to empty. He knew he should get in the habit of doing that before trying to go to sleep, but he just could never remember to because he never felt like he needed to. But by the amount he felt coming out and causing a warm updraft, he must have needed to anyway. Maybe he could have gone to sleep easier if he'd done this before.

Knowing that his bowels weren't going to empty themselves, and that his business was concluded, he stood up and pulled his black boxers back up, and readjusted the hem of his shirt. He leaned against the door of the stall, staring at the concrete wall behind the quietly flushing toilet. He tilted his head back, resting it against the plastic door and looking upward at the metal grate ceiling. The bathrooms were the only places in the complex that he'd seen that had that type of ceiling. They were square tiles of deep metal grating, about half a meter to each side, and they rested in a system of suspended rails. You couldn't see anything through them unless you were looking almost straight up, then you could almost make out the shapes of pipes up above.

Curious, he stepped up onto the seat of the toilet in front of him, and reached up toward the ceiling. He could touch it, but he wouldn't be able to see anything. Carefully, he stepped up again, this time balancing precariously on the pipes that sat up above the back of the toilet, providing fresh flush water. From here, he lifted the grate up, moved it aside, and poked his head up to see what he could see above the ceiling.

At first he had to blink so furiously from the cloud of dust that had been kicked up that he really couldn't see anything. Once he'd cleared away all the scratchy particles and tears from his eyes, he could blearily make out the shapes of pipes and wires traveling in seemingly every direction, all lit from the bathroom light below through the metal grating.

All that dust, he knew he would probably sneeze any minute. That's how it worked when he put too much pepper on his potatoes at dinner, almost without fail. About a minute and a half later, he always had to sneeze. So he quickly pulled the square section of grating back into place, and stepped down off the toilet.

Sure enough, almost as his bare feet hit the cold concrete, he could feel all those small muscles in his chest start to tense up, and he braced one hand against the wall of the stall.

When you sneeze, you always get that tight feeling, and suddenly everything else around you starts fading, and no longer seems important. Then you realize what's happening, and you experience that brief, intense moment of clarity, where your awareness of your surroundings spikes, before you inhale, lose control, and completely obliterate all awareness of your surroundings for another moment or two.

In that brief and intense moment of acute awareness, he heard scuffling from somewhere in the bathroom.

“Dude, why-”

“Shhh!”

And then, as always, he felt himself lose control in a single intense spasm. “AAAAAAHH--




Hey guys! Thanks for reading, and I want to remind you that your feedback is always greatly appreciated! I'd love to hear from everybody. I hope you enjoyed it, and I'm already working on the next part, so keep checking back.

Clear Skies,
~pm

[gayboi25]

I love the detail! When are you turning this into a novel?

[pm90]

@gayboi: lol. This is it, bud! My novel-in-progress.



The Red Rover Project
Chapter 2: Awake


--CHOOOO!”

He stamped his foot and shook his head involuntarily

Nope. Definitely not a coincidence. What did they think, that they were gonna be able to sneak up on him? Certainly not when he'd been actively listening to his surroundings. To bad he couldn't figure out yet who it was. He wondered briefly if he should try sneaking up on them in return, but dismissed the idea when he realized there really wasn't any way to sneak out of the bathroom stall.

After a few seconds of silence, James stood and pulled his boxers back up. Hearing no further noises from the boys, he unlocked the door and stepped out, with the toilet flushing itself quietly behind him.

Standing sheepishly in the doorway were Alex (he was positive that he'd made sure that Alex had been asleep) and Dmitri. Both wore the same solid black t-shirts and boxers that the Facility provided for them.

"Hi guys," James said, making plain that he knew they'd been trying not to get noticed.

"Oh. Um, hi James," Alex tried pathetically.

"He heard you get up, and decided to follow you and wake me up, too," Dmitri explained, sounding a little perturbed. "I'm not sure why he thought I would rather be awake. Or what he thought we were gonna do." He was glaring a little with his arms crossed.

"Well I... don't know. Sorry man. Hi ... again."

"Whatever," James said, shrugging. He really didn't care that much. It had just surprised him at first.

"I just hear you come in here all the time, and I always wonder what you do in here, cuz you don't just use the toilet and come back."

"You do? I always thought you were asleep. Huh. Well I don't do much, really. Just, you know. Sit and think."

"...Isn't that kinda boring?" asked Dmitri, who was yawning, and looked like he just wanted to go back to sleep.

"Well, yeah, but so is listening to you guys snoring in there."

"Oh." Awkward pause. Dmitri looked a little sheepish at that one, but he couldn't stifle the next yawn.

"Think about what?" Alex asked, actually looking a little interested. Dmitri finished his yawn loudly and readjusted his shirt.

"I dunno. Just stuff, you know? Like how the shower heads are laid out in a pattern that doesn't match the cieling grates," he said, pointing up. "So they probably had to cut holes in each of those grates by hand just so the shower heads could be in that specific pattern. Or about stuff that happened that day. Like the time Daniel and Ned got in that fight in the laundry room and Ned got a bloody nose. Or ... sometimes about some of the girls at the table next to us in the cafeteria."

"Huh. Yeah, I guess I think about pretty much the same stuff," Alex said, then shrugged. "I just don't have to get out of bed and sit around in the bathroom to do it."

"Well I just like it better in here, you know? Its quieter. ... and there's light." Actually he didn't really care if there was light or not. But he liked feeling alone in there. After spending all day with the other boys he liked feeling alone for a little while. But he couldn't very well just tell them that, could he?

"Yeah, I kinda get it," Dmitri said, a little more thoughtfully than James would have expected, given how droopy his eyelids looked. "But you really think about the pattern of the shower heads and the ceiling things?"

"Well... yeah. I mean I think about all kinds of stuff. But I guess I do think about the cieling a lot. You know its different in here than the other rooms?"

"It is? How do you notice that kind of thing?"

"Its definitely different. The other rooms have concrete cielings. I know, because I hit my head on it any time I sit up in bed too fast." Luckily he didn't bruise too easily, otherwise he'd have a permanent purple spot creeping out from his hairline.

"Oh... ouch," Dmitri said, actually looking pretty sympathetic. He slept on the bottom bunk, damn him.

"Do you ever wonder what's up there?" Alex asked, looking up at the metal grating.

"What do you mean?" said Dmitri.

"Well, I mean what's behind those grates. If you look hard enough when the lights are on bright you can see pipes and stuff up there."

"Oh... I guess I never really thought about that" Dmitri said.

"I do sometimes," offered James. "I got curious one night and stood on one of the toilets to look. Really, there's not much to see. Just a bunch of wires and pipes and stuff. And a lot of dust."

"Really?" asked Alex, sounding kind of excited, and almost forgetting to keep his voice down. "I wanna see now!"

"Well, I suppose you could, but like I said, there's really not much to see up there," James said, a little surprised by Alex's sudden enthusiasm.

"Yeah, I'm gonna do it!" Alex said, rushing over to the nearest stall. James and Dmitri followed him, both a little socked and amused, and watched as he stepped up on the toilet and stood up. The cieling really wasnt that high, and he couldnt stand up all the way until he reached up and moved the section of grate directly over him up out of its slot and off to the side. He blinked furiously as dust trickled down over him. After rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, he balanced himself against the wall and went up on his tippy toes to see up into the cieling.

"I thought you said it was boring up here," he said accusingly. "This is way cool. There are pipes and stuff everywhere! I wonder what they all do?" Still on his toes, he turned himself around at different angles, trying to see as much as he could.

"Okay, you're gonna fall, bud. You got to see. You should probably come down now," James said, halfway inside the stall, hands not raised, but at the ready incase his groupmate came tumbling down.

Alex wasn't paying him any attention. "I think I see something," he said, straining up onto just one foot to get a better look, and causing Dmitri to suddenly look more alert and try to push into the stall with them. He only succeeded in squeezing himself against James, however, and though they both had their hands up protectively, neither of them was in any position to actually catch Alex if he needed.

"Yeah," Alex continued, "there's a big hole in the wall where a bunch of pipes go through, and I can see light on the other side. I think there's enough room for me to get through there..." and without warning, he grabbed the edge of the hole in the cieling, tested his weight on it, and hoisted himself up, until the bottom of his ribcage rested on the edge and he could shift his grip and push himself up the rest of the way.

James and Dmitri watched him struggle up into the dark hole in the cieling, dust clumps falling all over the toilet and floor, and billowing in clouds around him.

"Dude, whay do you think you're doing?" James said, surprised that the cieling was holding him, and wondering how they were going to hide the mess from all the dust. Dmitri was apparently having a different thought process, however.

"Great view, thanks Alex!" he said with a smirk. And with that comment James realized that Alex's boxers were pulled tight around his small tight ass, and they had the front row seats. A little to the left and they probably would have been able to see straight up the leg of his boxers.

"Yeah, whatever, man," Alex grunted, almost kicking them both in the face flailing his leg around as he hoisted himself the rest of the way up into the cieling amid another shower of dust.


... ... ... ... ...



He watched with concern as the subjects head and shoulders dissapeared into the cieling. He hadn't seen anybody do anything like this before, and wasn't sure if this qualified as "uncompliant" or not.

Each group of subjects was locked into their respective suites each night, and were expected to sleep the whole night. Of course that didn't always happen, and they were allowed to break the rules a little by staying up and talking, unless they did it too often, or were too active. Of course he was supposed to report any kind of destructive behavior immediately, so that it could be stopped, but he wasn't sure how to handle this. So he just sat and watched, and hoped he didn't get in trouble later. He reassured himself that nobody was likely to find out about it anyway.

[pm90]

The Red Rover Project
Chapter 3: Meanwhile... Girl Talk


“...think that Ernesto isn't too bad, either. I saw him in the gym yesterday, and you could see the muscles of his shoulders through his shirt, you know. Mmmmm.”

“Audrey, Ernesto's a creep, you know that. And I don't think he's very bright, either.”

“I know that, but it doesn't mean I can't still look at him, right? Don't say you don't agree with me, I see how you look at Blake, despite all those disparaging remarks you always make about him, too. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I've ever heard you actually speak well of any of the boys here.”

“Well... I mean... yeah, I guess I don't say a whole lot of nice things about them, do I? But they're all just jerks, you know? And dumb. Testosterone sucks, I think it melts their brains or something.”

“Yeah, but also makes them big and strong and hairy and-”

“Not James,” Hannah said quietly. She hadn't had much to say up until that point, not that she ever really had a whole lot to say.

“What's that, Hannah?” Taylor asked, as if she hadn't heard. Audrey frowned slightly at having been interrupted, but didn't say anything.

“James” she said, a little louder. “James isn't a jerk.”

“You mean the spacey blonde kid?”

“He's not spacey,” Hannah defended with a little more enthusiasm than she intended to show, “I think he's just really pensive. And he's not a jerk, he's actually really nice. I talked to him one time while our groups were on laundry duty together.”

“What, you mean you like him?” Audrey said, surprised. “But he's not tall, and he hardly has any muscle, and... well he's just so skinny!”

“I know...” Hannah said quietly again, but she forgot to hide the smile twitching at the edges of her lips.

“Oooooh,” Taylor said, laughing. “Hannah's got a crush! You like the skinny boys, eh?”

“Well....yeah. I guess I do. He's cute, you know? And nice.”

Audrey just frowned. Obviously she didn't share Hannah's opinion. “If you say so..”

Taylor just laughed again. “Audrey, we already know you like your men with an extra helping of testosterone. But not all of us do. Hannah obviously doesn't, and I don't really, either.” Audrey just responded with a pout.

“What about you? Who do you like?” Hannah asked, realizing that not only had she never really heard Taylor speak kindly of any of the boys in the Project, she hadn't even really seen her express interest in boys at all, except perhaps “Blake?”

Taylor blushed. “Blake's... nice. And not as dumb as most boys. And yeah, I like him, but not in that way, really. I think he's just somebody I like as a person. If we had the chance to talk more often, I think we would be good friends. Besides, he's not really like other boys. There's something different about him that doesn't feel so... threatening.” Hannah nodded. She knew exactly what Taylor was talking about. Blake was one of those boys who seemed friendly and easy to talk to, and who was always smiling a simple little smile.

“But I just don't really like him in that way,” Taylor repeated. “I don't really like any of the boys in the Project that way. It's not like we have a whole lot to choose from in here.”

“Yeah, that's true,” Aubrey agreed. “What do you think it's going to be like, when they let us back out? With all the men you could want, everywhere, of all different kinds? It'd be like a buffet of men...”

“I don't know, I'd be kind of scared to be around that many men. That many people in general, really. Not knowing anybody around you? Not knowing who to ask if you have questions? And what do you do all day? We learn about economics and stuff in class, and about different types of businesses and careers and commerce, but it all seems so complex and chaotic and overwhelming. I guess everybody is supposed to have a job so they can make money and pay for everything that they do. You remember when Instructor Dale explained how people outside the project even have to pay for food and their … what did he call them? Houses? Yeah. And the areas of ground that their houses are on? It just sounds like a lot.”

“Oh...” Aubrey said, “I hadn't thought about all that stuff.”

“Yeah, I had,” Hannah said. “I think it would be kind of exciting though, don't you think? New and interesting. Instead of the same old thing every day. It can't be that bad, either. Everybody else in the world lives that way, and they're all just fine. Even we were living that way until our parents sent us here.”

“Yeah, I guess you're right. But I don't remember any of that. Nobody does. They say we'll get our memories back when we graduate out of the Project, but who knows, right? Nobody's ever come back after they left. At least not that I've ever heard of. What do you think our families are like?”

“Rich,” Aubrey stated. “They had to be able to afford to send us here, right? And they had to want us to learn a lot.”

“Yeah, but are you sure they actually care about us all that much? I've never heard of any other practices in history where the parents send their children away for a decade. At least not as young as we were. Maybe they didn't like us. Or we were bad students. Or they just didn't want to be parents.”

“Well maybe your parents didn't want you, but I'm sure my parents loved me.” Aubrey said with resolve.

“And another question,” Taylor started again. “Why are we here? I mean our parents sent us here, of course, but what does the Project want with us?”

“Cassie told me once that she'd overheard some of the staff talking about growth and psychology and development and social interaction and stuff like that.” Hannah offered. “Maybe they're experimenting on us. You know how they're always testing us and taking blood samples and having us stand in those scanners and having us sit in those chairs with the funny lights and stuff? I've never heard of them doing any of that kind of stuff outside of the project, except in like hospitals and stuff.”

Aubrey eyes went really wide, and she gasped, “You think they put drugs in our food?! And we eat that sutff every day! Are we going to grow extra eyes and toes? Or all get cancer and die? I don't want extra toes! Or eyes!”

“Aubrey!” Taylor said sternly. “Don't be silly. I'm sure they're not drugging us. Besides, how would they even do that? The groups all take turns taking care of the plants and harvesting, and cooking the food, and serving. The staff hardly ever even touches any of it, except when they eat it too. Or did you forget that they eat the exact same stuff that we do?”

“Oh...”

“I think they're probably just observing us. To see what we're like.” Hannah said. “I don't think they actually want to experiment on us, just study us. See what we do. How we think, how we relate to others, that kind of stuff. They've made this into an artificial community of sorts, and made us forget everything about the real world. And they only tell us a little bit about what goes on out there, and a lot of times they won't answer your questions if you get too interested about it.”

“Yeah,” Taylor nodded, agreeing.

“I think they just want to study human growth without any outside influences,” Hannah finished, looking directly at Aubrey, who was frowning, as if trying to decide if that made any sense or not. “I gotta pee. I'll be right back.” Hannah stood and refrained from rolling her eyes until she was facing away from Aubrey. She always got the same confused look on her face any time they started talking vaguely philosophically.

As she was walking towards the bathroom, she heard Aubrey ask Taylor “Are you sure they're not drugging us?”

“Yes, Aubrey,” Taylor said, and Hannah could almost hear Taylor's own eye roll in that simple statement. Hannah just shook her head, and stepped into the light of the bathroom, and entered one of the middle stalls. Her favorite stall. Not that it was any different from any of the other ones. She just liked that particular one. No reason.





Hot off the press, ladies and gents. Hope you enjoyed. Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Critiques? General words of encouragement? Leave a reply, folks. Your feedback means more to me than you might think. Thanks, all!

As always, Clear Skies,
~pm

[pymani96]

This is turning out to be a very good story. If there is any critisism, then it's spelt ceiling. Very good story anyway.
Pymani96

[pm90]

Thanks for commenting, Pymani96. Yeah, I thought I'd fixed all of those, but I guess I missed a couple. Like I said, most of this was written out on my phone, so spelling and grammar aren't guaranteed. I did finally get spell check on my computer... sort of. It doesn't do grammar check though, near as I can tell. So bear with me. ... or would it be bare with me? See? That's what I get without a real word processor. Anyways, I gotta be at work before 5am tomorrow, so no post tonight. Sorry.

Off to saw a few logs. Night folks.

~pm

[kmacroxs]

this is an awesome story
please continue