Who We Are (Chapter One)

The first thing Tyler felt upon waking up was confusion.
He sat up in...bed? Was this a bed? As he looked around, he realized he was lying on a plain white mattress in a small, undecorated room. The walls were entirely white except for one, which had a pinkish-red grid across it.
Tyler looked down at himself to find that he was only thing in the room that wasn't white. Well, his skin was its normal tone, but he was dressed in the most distasteful skintight clothing--dark gray-blue, thick spandex with, again, a grid across it, but in black.
It was at this point that Tyler panicked.
While he realized immediately that this outfit was something he'd never normally wear, what really got to him was that he had no idea what he would prefer.
He couldn't remember anything about himself.
Tyler pulled his knees up toward his chest and rested his elbows on them, running his hands through his hair. He frowned. What did his hair look like, again?
Another wave of panic came at him and he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.
Calm down, Tyler. What do you know?
He knew his name was Tyler, though his middle and last names escaped him. He remembered what his hair looked like now--it was light blond, shorter on the sides than the top, and he always styled it to stick up and slightly to the left. He knew he'd never been to this place. He knew he was homosexual and that he was somewhere in his twenties. He usually wore thick-rimmed black glasses, though currently he didn't have them on and he could see just fine.
Tyler stood and looked around the room again. With a pang of shock and fear, he realized there was no door. But as he approached the wall that had been painted with a red grid, he saw it wasn't what he had thought. It wasn't paint at all. The wall was made entirely of barely-reflective glass, and beyond was what seemed to be a hallway. The reason he'd mistaken it to be a normal wall was because, again, behind it was entirely white. The red grid--which was merely colored glass--seemed to get infinitely small, each division of nine squares being separated by smaller and smaller lines.
Tyler shook his head. I must be dreaming.
He tapped the glass with a finger to see if it would do something cool like shatter instantly, but it didn't.
If I'm thinking about dreaming, I can't be dreaming. Right?
If I were dreaming, I would remember who I am.
That dreadful panic came rushing back and Tyler spun around, putting a hand to either side of his head and starting to hyperventilate.
"What--what the fuck am I doing here?" he asked aloud, almost surprising himself with the sound of his own voice. "Am I...going insane?"


"Anthony, wake up," Ian demanded.
Anthony blinked awake and looked up at Ian with a frown. He stared for a few seconds before shaking his head and saying groggily, "What the hell are you doing in my room--" He stopped himself and sat up, looking around at the bare white room.
"Yeah," Ian said. "We're not in your room."
Anthony's gaze snapped back to Ian. He looked uncomfortable--scared, even--and Ian knew exactly what had just dawned on him.
"Ian, who are you? Wh--who am I? Why the fuck can't I remember anything?"
Ian sighed and sat down on his own mattress. He closed his eyes and put a hand around his forehead, trying to keep his own fear from getting stronger.
"I don't know who I am," he told Anthony, "and I don't know who you are, either. I think we're friends, though, so I guess that's good."
"What are we doing, though?" Anthony asked, looking around himself, lost.
Ian shrugged. "I don't know, but panicking isn't the best way to go. I already tried that."
Anthony frowned again. "How long have you been awake?"
"I have no idea. Not very long, I don't think, but there's no way to tell time in this place. And no," he said, watching Anthony peer at all the walls, "there's no way out, either."


How long have I been here? Connor asked himself, staring at his vague reflection in the glass wall.
There was no way to tell. He'd woken up what felt like hours and hours ago, but had it really been that long? He was starting to get hungry, if that was any indication. So maybe it was an hour or so?
He continued to stare at his faint reflection and convince himself that he wasn't crazy. This was a real place. He wasn't dreaming. He couldn't remember who he was.
But there was a reason for it, surely. It seemed like something out of a sci-fi movie...except so much more real.
Not, however, any more believable, which was perhaps why Connor was questioning his sanity.
He turned away from the reflected man's frightened eyes and studied the room again. There was something in the corner of the room that he hadn't noticed--a bucket about the size of a very small trash can, full of water.
Of course, it was white, so it nearly blended in to the rest of the room, but Connor still felt that it hadn't been there before.
He approached the water almost suspiciously, slightly disturbed by the fact that he hadn't seen it before. On the bright side, maybe it would mean some food would appear before long.
He scooped some water out with his hands and drank it--it could've been poisoned, he supposed, but what choice did he have?--but paused before taking a second gulp.
Dropping the water back into its container, Connor picked up the bucket to feel that it was relatively heavy--though undoubtedly the water helped with that--and solid, possibly made of glossy ceramic.
He glanced at it, then at the glass wall.
Yes, there was something to this.


Jack awoke with a start. He didn't know what caused it--he hadn't been dreaming--and he couldn't remember ever having decided to sleep. He couldn't remember....
All hints of sleepiness left him with a jolt as he realized. He sat up and looked around, panicked. Where was he? Who was he?
Jack...Sean....Dammit, one of those was his name. Why could he not decide which? Maybe they both were his name, somehow. He'd made a legal change?
All thoughts of his name cut off when he saw the hole in the wall opposite him. It was a glass wall, divided into sections by a red grid, and low on the right side, there was a triangular hole, surrounded by spiderweb cracks. It looked so...wrong against the perfect geometry of the grid.
Jack stood to find that he was wearing odd, skintight clothing that was dark bluish-gray with a faint black grid across the fabric. It almost reminded him of a wetsuit of sorts, just made from spandex.
Definitely not his choice of clothing, but whatever.
He stood up and walked over to the cracked glass. The hole wasn't big enough for him to fit through, but if he tried to break the glass, he probably could.
A loud grinding noise behind him made him jump and spin around. At the corner of the otherwise empty room, a panel had opened in the floor and a bucket of sorts was rising out of it.
Jack walked over cautiously to see that the container was filled with a thick, black liquid that looked like motor oil. It had no odor that he could smell, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't potable.
The platform it was rising on clicked into place and the grinding stopped.
Jack shook his head vigorously and backed away. This was wrong. All of this was so wrong, including the fact that he didn't even know what was right.
He took in the room again, but it was completely empty. A mattress, the bucket of nasty. That was it.
He glanced up to all the corners, thinking that maybe there were cameras and he was in some sort of facility. No. He almost would have preferred that, because that way, at least, there would be some reason he was locked up here.
And a guarantee that somewhere not too far away, someone knew he was here.