[Fiction] The Facility: a getDare Sci-Fi

[daremaster 1]

Originally Posted by pm90

I'm writing more as we speak. Chapter 17 will be veeery different, but I think you guys are gonna like it. Stay tuned.

Can't wait to read it then.

[kmacroxs]

Again.this.story.is.so.awesome.please.keep.continu ing.if.you.stop.i.might.die.

[TheFloss]

I just wanted to chime in and say I hope this story didn't die! It's basically the only reason I've kept checking back to the site for the past month! Fantastic work

[Vladimir]

Same here wit me!

[kmacroxs]

same with me
if.this.story.has.died.I'll.die.with.it

[pm90]

...yes. I know it's been a month and a half since the last chapter. I'm really really sorry about that. Writers block sucks, and depression is even worse. And thursday was my first day off from work in three weeks. But as I promised before, I won't abandon you guys.

Anyway, this next installment is only the first part of chapter 17. If it seems like it ends abruptly, that's probably because IT DOES. I'm sorry. But it was getting long enough that the forum wouldn't have let me post much more in a single reply anyway. And I know I've deprived you guys long enough. So, without further adieu, ...



The Red Rover Project
Chapter 17: Daytime, Part 1



“Good morning, Earl,” Jerry greeted, entering the dim room at precisely 5:30am.

“Good morning, Jerry,” Earl yawned.

“Slow night?” Jerry asked ritualistically.

Earl gave his traditional reply. “Slow as ever.” Jerry never doubted it. His job was boring enough. He couldn’t imagine watching those damn screens while nothing was happening all night long.

“Well you best be home and sleep, then.”

“I thought I might stop off and get some breakfast first, actually,” Earl said, getting up from the room’s only chair.

“Yeah? You know McDonalds has those excellent crepes now.” Jerry hated those crepes. But they were the kind of junk he knew Earl liked.

“Are they good? I haven’t tried them yet.”

“Yessir. Tasty.”

“Alright, thanks for the suggestion. Have a good day, Jerry.”

“Same to you, Earl.”

Jerry settled into the office chair, and watched Earl close the door behind himself.

He kicked off his shoes and began his eight long hours watching the viewscreen. It was 5:33am. Just 27 more minutes before the lights in the facility turned on, and the Subjects would begin their day.

… … … … … … …

Normally James woke up when the lights turned on in the morning.

This time he slept through the lights. He even slept through the bed shaking as Alex and Daniel both climbed out of bed. It wasn’t until the showers turned on in the bathroom and the boys started conversing loudly that he opened his eyes and threw the sheets off.

In that groggy, woke-up-late adrenaline rush he ran to the bathroom to join in the shower, already naked from the night before. He was quietly thankful that nobody noticed or commented on his uncharacteristic tardiness to the showers.

The boys finished their showers quickly, and they each grabbed a neatly folded white towel from the cart by the doorway. Inside the doorway of the bunk room, the used towels were deposited in the laundry barrel, and the boys grabbed their clean black boxers, pants, and t-shirts from another cart, where clothes where again neatly folded, and stacked according to size. Each was printed with a white Finch Industries logo. Sticks of generically scented antiperspirant/deodorant were in a basket on the cart, and were passed around the group.

The last boys out of the shower were just pulling their t-shirts on when the suite’s door slid open with a whoosh in the lounge. Facilitator Ed greeted them as he stepped in, and the door whooshed back closed behind him.

“Good morning, boys. Breakfast this morning is plain or spicy scrambled eggs, and oatmeal with your choice of banana or mango topping. Oh, and the dishwasher is broken again, so you’ll be folding your own banana leaves.” The boys groaned. Folding the banana leaves into bowls was easy, and they just threw them in the compost bin when they were done eating, but this also meant that they would be eating their breakfast with torn strips of banana leaves twisted into scoops, a less-than-efficient delivery method. “After breakfast, you’ll be sharing agricultural Duties with groups 13B, 16M, 17F, and 19F. Obviously, there’s going to be a little extra compost today. After lunch you’ll be doing your weekly physical exams, followed by four hours of academics. You’ll be on clean-up Duty after dinner, with 12M and 15F. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” Henry whined, “when do we get a new dishwasher that doesn’t keep breaking all the time?”

Facilitator Ed smiled a little and shook his head. “I can’t answer that one. I think they’re still trying to figure out why the one we already have keeps breaking, but they don’t pass that kind of information along to me. I’m sorry. For now, though, just be glad that your clean-up duties this evening probably won’t involve as many dirty dishes. If there’s nothing else… let’s head to breakfast.” He turned and touched his identifying bracelet to the pad next to the door, unlocking it. The door whooshed back open, and the twenty four boys filed out into the hallway, each touching their bracelets to the pad next to the door on their way out.

“I can’t believe we have to use banana leaves again,” Blake grumbled behind James. “And then we’re gonna have to carry all that junk upstairs too? Ugh.”

“At least it’ll smell like bananas,” James offered. “And mangoes.”

Single file, they tapped their bracelets to another ID pad and entered the dining hall. The eggs smelled good this morning. That wasn’t always the case.

The dining hall was about three quarters full already; there were only a few groups who hadn’t arrived yet. Several stacks of banana leaves sat where the plates usually were. James grabbed one and deftly folded it while waiting in line for the food.

“You’re better at that than I am,” Blake pouted, indicating his own bowl, with uneven sides and folds where they didn’t belong.

“And you’re better at that than Ernesto,” James said, indicating their large group mate ahead of them in line who’s leaf looked like it had been wadded up like scratch paper. “I feel sorry for whoever has cleaning Duties in here this morning. They may not have to do many dishes, but they’re gonna be busy mopping, I’ll bet.”

“You’re probably right,” Blake agreed. They scooped themselves their eggs and oatmeal. James elected to top his porridge with mangoes. He’d always felt that bananas were rather boring on their own, and were best when mixed with other fruits. Blake, however, served himself a generous portion of bananas.

James grabbed an extra banana leaf, and they took seats at their group’s banquet table, separated from the other groups by glass partitions, which helped keep the noise down in the large room. Breakfast was a messy affair for most, but James tore a wide strip from his extra leaf and folded and refolded it into a rough spade shape, which was fairly effective on the scrambled eggs. He had to tip the bowl up to his mouth to eat the mango oatmeal, though, and his spade simply expedited the process of shoving the gloop mouthwards.

James was one of the first to finish eating, while the others continued to struggle with their food. Some even gave up, and used their fingers, or just tipped the contents of their leaves into their mouths all at once.

As the groups finished their breakfasts, the compost barrels began to fill. Extra barrels had been placed out that morning, in preparation for the increased volume of waste. Once all the groups had finished and were being led off in all directions by the Facilitators, the five groups on agricultural Duty assembled, and gathered the remnants of waste from the tables. James exchanged smiles with Hannah and Taylor in greeting, but carefully avoided appearing any friendlier than usual. Aubrey, on the other hand, was talking animatedly with Alex, and James noticed Dmitri giving Taylor a funny look.

It took two people to carry each of the barrels, and most of the 16- and 17M boys volunteered out of courtesy to the younger group and the seventeen- and nineteen-year-old girls, who would have struggled more with the task. Facilitators Ed, Nancy, and Jane oversaw the five groups’ work, and escorted them through the maze of hallways to the large freight elevator that would take them up to the agricultural floor.

The elevators were large, but certainly not large enough for 123 people and several buckets of waste to all go up at once, so the elevator ended up taking six trips up and down, with the compost going last. James was right, the compost mostly smelled like fruit, but they still always took it up the elevator last on principle, to give it time to air out before the groups rode the slow machine back down later.

James, assisted by Carl from 16M, lugged the compost barrel off the elevator and down the wall a couple hundred feet to the large compost hopper. Over the next few hours, the hopper would slowly feed the waste through a decomp-acceleration system to rapidly convert the biological matter into useable fertilizer, and capture much of the excess energy released in the process in the forms of heat and various flammable gasses. Then they both set about their responsibilities.

It was a busy day on the Agricultural floor. Group 13B was harvesting the spinach, celery, and green beans, as well as thinning out the carrots and onions. 16M was split, some collecting eggs and tending the chickens, others planting new rows of taro and leeks, and some collecting the potatoes and adding more soil on top. 19 F was also split, most of them collecting berries, but some of them milking the cows and sheep. Hannah and Taylor’s group, 17F was spreading freshly processed compost over the herb shelves and through the orchards. And James’ group, 17M, was split between the wheat and the rice fields. James had consulted with Facilitator Ed, and was harvesting more banana leaves from the orchard, for lunch and dinner to be served on.

Couple more days, he thought to himself, and these banana trees won’t have any leaves left. They better get that dishwasher fixed. Or replaced.

“Hey James!”

He spun around, thwacking Hannah in the face with the freshly cut leaf in his hand.

“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry! You surprised me, are you okay?”

Hannah blinked and laughed. “It’s a banana leaf, James. It’s not like you hit me with a steel pipe or something. Yes, I’m fine.”

“Okay, good. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Really. Hey, Facilitator Nancy needed somebody to work on the bees. I volunteered us, is that okay? Oh, and she said the dishwasher works again, so we don’t actually need the leaves anymore.”

“She did? Good. Because these trees can’t keep up anymore. Sure, we can do the bees, I guess. Help me carry these leaves over to the compost first.” They both grabbed large stacks of leaves, and hefted them back to the hopper on the composter.

There were three bee hives in the facility, one servicing the layered fields (where the rice, wheat, soy, and other basics were grown in layers that stacked one on top of the other, and could be raised one at a time to allow access for maintenance and harvesting), a second was smack dab in the middle of the vast array of hydroponic shelves (growing the lettuce, spinach, celery, onions, carrots, squashes, basil, parsley, mint, beans and peas, peppers, and all manner of other veggies and herbs), and the third hive pollinated the “orchards”, which by far took up the most space at the far end of the enormous room.

Since the groups were mostly working the fields and shelves, Hannah and James suited up and started with the hive in the orchards. They weren’t really orchards, which generally had only one or two species of tree. Instead, this end of the room had clusters of four or five trees of each species, including the traditional apples, oranges, peaches, pears, cherries, and lemons, but also the tropical fruits, like mangoes, papayas, pineapples, avocados, and bananas. In addition to the trees, however, there were also rows of other crops which couldn’t be grown suitably in the fields or shelves, such as the raspberries and grapes.

“Ready?” James asked Hannah.

“Yeah.” She opened the gate on the steel can she was holding. It looked like a cross between a teapot and a watering can. Smoke drifted in thick curls from the spout, and as she directed the smoke into the artificial hives James quietly counted the seconds.

“…Okay, that should be enough,” he said, but she was already pulling the smoker back and closing the gate.

“You get to lift the lid,” she told him, and stepped back a couple paces to wait with the collection bucket.

They worked quickly – but carefully – inspecting the hive for signs of disease or other problems and removing the frames that were ready for harvesting. Then they reassembled the hive (minus a few frames) and proceeded to the hive near the fields, where they repeated the process. And again for the hive in the hydroponics shelves. It took both of them to carry the honey-laden frames in the collection bucket back to the extraction room (right next to the tool shed). A full frame could weigh as much as thirty or forty pounds.

The extraction room wasn’t just a shed. In a shed, the bees would come in hordes, attracted to the honey being processed, and would eat half the honey before they even got the remnants of comb filtered out. No, the extraction room was a sealed chamber with a filtered ventilation system, and was accessed through a negatively-pressured entrance breezeway to keep the bees out and the smell of honey in. The bees were pretty docile, but keeping them away from the extraction kept production levels higher and reduced the risk of accidental bee-squashing and subsequent swarm behavior.

The extraction itself was a fairly straightforward process of uncapping the combs, draining the honey, and separating out the leftover wax. In less than an hour, they’d almost completely filled a fifteen gallon pail with the thick, dark amber fluid. They sampled a little on their fingertips, still runny and warm from the hives, and agreed that it was an especially good batch.

With the equipment cleaned and their hands, faces, suits, shoes, and everything else that had come into contact with anything that had touched anything that had had honey dripped on it or had been used while handing the frames thoroughly cleaned and eventually de-stickied, Hannah and James exited the chamber through the negative-pressure entrance and made the rounds of the hives again, this time replacing the now-empty frames that they had removed the first time.

Proud of themselves for having completed the process without getting stung, they returned their equipment to the shed, removed their suits, and once again washed off all the sticky spot before screwing the lid on the pail and lugging it out to the elevator. Fifteen gallons of honey was a heavy load, even shared between them, and they stopped to switch carrying arms twice before they met Facilitator Ed at the elevator.

“Nice job, guys,” the Facilitator said. “Is that thing full?” They dropped the bucke to the ground at the elevator doors with a dull thud.

“Very,” James confirmed.

“How could you tell?” Hannah asked, massaging her wrist.

Facilitator Ed rolled his eyes and tapped his bracelet to the wall pad. The elevator doors slid open, and they got in.

“Is it a good batch?” he asked, eyeing the bucket as the doors closed and the elevator began its descent.

“Oh yeah, definitely a good one,” Hannah said. “Wanna try?”

“You bet I want to,” the man grinned. James chuckled and unscrewed the lid for him. The man gleefully dipped the tip of his index finger in, and let it drip off briefly before quickly shoving it in his mouth.

“Mmmm,” he moaned with his eyes closed, and sucked his finger clean. “I love honey. And you’re right, that’s definitely a good batch.” James dipped his finger, too, and sucked the warm sweet creaminess off while he screwed the lid back on one-handed.

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid back open. James grabbed one handle and Hannah reached for the other.

“I got it,” Facilitator Ed said, waving her aside and grabbing the second handle. She thanked him, and they set out down the corridor, destined for the kitchen. The Facilitator waved his bracelet in front of the ID pad next to the kitchen door, and it unlocked. James dropped the honey pail into his other hand and waved his bracelet in front of the pad as well, following the Facilitator through the door. Hannah came in behind them. She cleared a space on the counter, next to the baskets of fresh produce, and the men hefted the bucket up on to the counter. The lunch crew was bustling around, and wouldn’t bother with the pile. They’d probably leave that for the clean-up crew to deal with. Regardless, the three quickly left the kitchen again, and made their way back up to the agricultural floor.

Their time was almost up, so James and Hannah decided to help the younger groups collect detritus and take it to the composter in wheelbarrows. The six groups gathered at the elevator, and were taken back downstairs to the cafeteria for lunch.

[daremaster 1]

Can't wait for more!

[kmacroxs]

this is awesome. please continue and try to overcome your Writer's Block and depression as soon as possible. this is truly one of THE greatest stories on getDare.

[Doctor Octogonapus]

Excellent stuff, but Depression is serious. Writing a story can wait, if you need help, get it.

[pm90]

The Red Rover Project
Chapter 17: Daytime, Part 2 (*cough*)


Lunch was simple, a rice and veggie soup. Pretty hearty, with a thick broth and heavy spices. And it was, thankfully, served in real bowls, with spoons. A light bread was served on the side. It was good. Filling.

Facilitator Ed came back once their meal was finished. It was time for their weekly medical visit again. He led the group out of the cafeteria, down Hallway A towards the elevator, and around the corner, where they each tapped their bracelets to the ID pad on their way into the waiting room.

The waiting room was nice – it had several couches and lots of comfy chairs, and end tables with haphazard stacks of tablet readers.

James grabbed a tablet reader and took his favorite velvety maroon wing-backed chair at the back of the room. He sunk down into the invitingly worn cushions, and opened Wikipedia to the “propolis” page, and began reading. He was already halfway through the page on “Parsnips” when they called in Alex. He was studying CO2 scrubbers when Dmitri’s turn came, and theories of Artificial Intelligence when Blake was taken back.

He’d just followed the link to the “Story Archetypes” page when Facilitator Jenny stepped out of the exam door.

“Subject 397.M.C,” she called, “James?” He stood, tossing the reader tablet behind himself onto the chair cushion.

“Good afternoon, James,” she said, waving him through the open door. He tapped his bracelet to the pad on his way through.

“How are you doing this week,” she asked as she snapped the blood pressure cuff around his upper arm, as usual. They made small talk, about the food, the dishwasher, and the fresh batch of honey while she recorded info about his blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, body temp, and body mass into his file on her tablet.

“Any injuries this week?” she asked, tablet at the ready.

“Nothing major. Hit my head pretty hard late last week.”

“Well that was a poor decision, wasn’t it?” she joked. Looking back through his file, she added, “You seem to be hitting your head pretty frequently.”

“It’s harder to learn from your mistakes when your mistakes kill brain cells,” he joked back, absently rubbing the bruise on the back of his skill. She grinned, and pulled a well worn allen wrench from her pocket, and used it to unlatch his bracelet from his wrist. He rubbed the exposed skin, and she waved him through to the next room.

It wasn’t really a room, so much as a small closet with a bench, directly in front of him. Above the bench, in bold letters, the familiar old sign read “PLEASE REMOVE ALL CLOTHING BEFORE ENTERING THE SCANNER”. The door to James’ left led to the scanner. The door on his right to the exam room.

He slipped out of his shirt and pants, leaving them on the bench. He dropped his boxers, too, and kicked them up onto the bench as well.

Completely naked, he stepped through the door to his left. The scanner was a circular room with rectangular cut outs, one at the doorway, and one directly opposite.

“Please stand in the center of the room, and match your feet to the diagram,” Facilitator Jenny’s recorded voice instructed. He stepped into the metal chamber, and placed his feet on the worn sillouettes of foot prints. Door on his left. Scanners on his right. Distorted reflection of himself in the curved steel wall in front of him.

“Scans commencing, please hold still.”

The first scanner came gliding out of the recess on his right, two wide-set bars from a monorail in the ceiling. They always gave him the impression of giant tuning forks. Each bar, or “tine” of the two-pronged fork was oval in cross section, and had an intensely bright white light running down the inside. The bars passed him, one in front, one behind. Then they doubled back, and stopped at his midline, pivoted, spun 360 degrees all the way around him, and then continued off to his left.

The second scanner approached from his right, and followed the same path. This one didn’t have the bright lights, though. Just black stripes.

The third scanner made its pass, with odd rhythmic thumping noises. The fourth scanner had no distinguishing features, aside from being oddly quiet.

After the fourth scan had completed, all four scanning units followed the monorail back to the right side of the room, and Jenny’s recorded voice came back. “Thank you. You may exit through the door, and get redressed. Doctor Hanes will be waiting for you in the exam room with your ID bracelet.”

“Thank you, Jenny,” James said, and walked out the door. He knew it was a recording, and that Jenny never heard him thank her, but it was kind of his own private little joke with himself each week. He smiled, pulled his clothes back on, and walked through the opposite door to the exam room.

“Good afternoon,” Doctor Hanes greeted brusquely, and held out the ID bracelet. James inserted his wrist, and the Doctor used another allen wrench to clamp the lightweight metal back closed. James hopped up onto the sparkly black vinyl exam table, and the Doctor turned his attention to the tablet in his hand, with James’ open medical file.

“Subject 397.M.C,” the Doctor said. He never used James’ name. Just his ID number. “Says here you hit your head again?” He had a funny way of talking, like he wasn’t really paying attention. And his eyebrows were so bushy James could never tell if the Doctor had his eyes open while he was talking or not; he thought not, though.

“Yes sir. On the ceiling again, sir.” … well it was kind of the truth, at least.

“Well I suppose there isn’t much we can do about that, is there? Wish I could just have you sleep in a helmet or something. But we couldn’t have that, no. Well, any dizziness, light headedness, loss of vision…?”

“No sir.”

“Good. Any other complaints?”

“Not really, sir. No.”

“Good.” He added a note on his tablet, eyes completely obscured by his eyebrows, and started giving instructions. “Stand up, legs together, ankles touching. Arms straight out from your sides, palms up. Head back, looking up. Good. Look forward again, and touch your nose with your left index finger. Now your right. Good. Bend over and touch your toes. … Well, almost. Okay. Work on your stretching before and after your cardio and weights routines during your exercise sessions, okay?” He squirted a little dab of alcohol gel into his palm and rubbed his hands together.

“Okay,” James agreed. The Doctor told him the same thing every week. This week was no exception, it seemed.

“Your pants, please,” Doctor Hanes said, indicating what he meant with his freshly sanitized hands. James obligingly dropped his pants and his boxers to the floor, and the Doctor rolled his low chair to sit directly in front of James. “You wash diligently under your foreskin?” he asked, feeling the boy’s testicles.

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Turn your head and cough.” James did. “Again. … And again.” He changed his hand position, “One more time. … Good. You can pull your pants back up.” He rolled away again, and rubbed his hands with another dab of alcohol gel.

“That’s it for today, you may return to the waiting room. We’ll see you next week.”

“Thank you, sir,” James said, and departed through the room’s second door, back into the waiting room, still not sure whether or not he’d made eye contact with the Doctor at all. He reclaimed his favorite chair, and began reading about story archetypes.

He was reading about King Henry VIII’s fifth wife when Daniel came walking out of the exam room, the last one out. Only seconds later, Facilitator Ed walked in the room.

“Good, right on schedule,” the man announced. “Off we go, then.”




I love you all! Thanks for your support. It's a shorter section, I know. But I hope you like it anyway.

Loves,
~pm

[kmacroxs]

this.is.so.awesome.please.continue.writing.this.is .one.of.the.greatest.stories.on.getDare

[Silvercola]

I love it and keep it going

[1101]

You said we would love ch. 17 and you were right! I absolutely love the detail. It makes me feel like I was there.

[pm90]

The Red Rover Project
Chapter 17: Daytime, part 3


Facilitator Jackson watched group 17M filing in to the classroom one by one. Each boy took a seat at one of the twenty-four SmartDesks, with sturdy hydro-formed seats and frames, and large touchscreen glass composite work surfaces. The Finch Industries logo was prominently embossed on the back of each aluminum seat.

Each student swiped their bracelet across the surface of the desk, activating their accounts, where they stored their notes, old lessons, reference materials, and everything else that they accumulated.

Once they were settled and ready, Jackson set down his water and stood to address the group.

“Good afternoon. We’ll be working on Physics, Anthropology, and Philosophy today. Please clear your desktops.” He queued the next section of the Theoretical Physics curriculum on his own desk, and checked that he had his students’ attention.

“We left off a couple days ago with Einstein’s proof of the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, wherein …” As he commenced the lesson, his brain tuned out. As if his mind and body were acting of their own accord, teaching the lesson, while his consciousness was sitting inside just twiddling his thumbs.

He’d gotten used to the sensation. Every day his body taught theoretical physics, detailed accounts of history, complex philosophies, advanced differential equations, and an ungodly number of other subjects.

He knew everything that he was teaching, of course. You can’t teach what you don’t know. But he didn’t understand any of it.

That was the unfortunate drawback of artificial learning. You could encode a person to know just about anything, but for them to truly learn it and fully understand it, they had to learn it naturally.

The ability to scan a person’s brain and digitize their thoughts and memories was technology that arrived right on the heels of the quantum computer. It was a while later, though, before a daft engineer figured out how to manipulate the thoughts and memories of the individual, and thus was able to “encode” the person’s brain with new information.

The problem was, the information didn’t necessarily stick right. All the information was there, it just wasn’t real.

The technology had improved. Memories could be encoded more realistically and effectively, and personalities and mannerisms could be adjusted – to an extent. It certainly had its uses. Wiping memories was easy. Hiding them from conscious thought was almost as easy. Programming a person to perform a specific task was common.

You just couldn’t learn that way. Effective learning could only be accomplished through more traditional methods.

But the traditional instructor didn’t necessarily have to learn via traditional methods in order to provide an exceptional learning experience.

And that was Jackson’s job.

He’d been encoded with entire curriculums, broken down into sets of lessons, along with volumes of peripheral information on each subject. As a teacher he was very engaging, thorough, descriptive – all the things a good teacher should be. That just wasn’t him. He let the programming take over, while he sat back in his own brain and spaced out.

While teaching/spacing out, Jackson had very little conscious concept of time. It was neither an eternity nor an instant later when he’d finished the Theoretical Physics lesson, the Evolutionary Perspectives on Anthropology mini-course, and the next section of the Historical Philosophy curriculum.

He sipped his water, giving the students time to finish and organize their notes, before thanking them and allowing Ed to sweep them away.

Once the last boy had filed out the door, Jackson collapsed into his chair and took several long gulps of water.




It's short. I know. But it fit best as a standalone section. And I love you guys so I figured you deserved an update, even if it was small.

Stay sexy,
~pm

[daremaster 1]

Great! And it is not that little as you said. Can wait for more!