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Thanks to Minotaur’s directions, Jolanda is able to negotiate them to the
finish line. She presses the garage door opener just as Elise did before,
but nothing happens.
“The second button, probably,” Elise suggests. She has been so helpful on
this adventure. They never could have figured out where to find a key, how
to open a door, or buckle their seatbelts on their own. She’s really pulling
her weight.
The door opens to reveal only a hallway, so they all step out to cross the
threshold on foot. It’s eerie; dimly lit with some of the overhead lights
flickering, and uncomfortably narrow. Just like the main entrance to the
warehouse, the door behind them slams shut on its own, locking them in. The
wall to their left rises up, and disappears into the ceiling. On the other
side is a torture room, for lack of a better term. They see a table full of
scary and sharp instruments, oddly shaped beds, and even what appears to be
an electric chair. Rage is here, inside a glass cage. She’s sitting in a
toddler chair, her wrists tied behind her back, and she’s gagged. Her
mascara is running down her face and she looks scared. She’s screaming
unintelligibly at them.
“Nobody move!” Zelda orders. “That usually means there’s a tripwire or
trap.”
They freeze and look around, but don’t see anything. They continue
cautiously.
Elise goes over to Rage’s cage, looking out for booby traps. “Can you hear
me?”
Rage screams again and nods her head.
“I appreciate your dedication to authenticity,” Elise goes on, “but at this
juncture, the easiest way to get you out might be to kill myself where I
stand, and seek help from the outside world. We’ll continue to play along,
but if you’re genuinely being held against your will, we’ll treat it more
seriously, and go meta. So if this is real, I want you to blink both eyes.
If it’s still part of the team-building game, give me a wink instead.”
Rage winks.
“Okay.” Elise turns around and claps her hands. “Let’s find a way to escape
this room. I don’t know of any pertinent quotes from historical figures.”
Five minutes later, Rage is out of her cage, and is able to spend the next
twenty minutes helping them solve the rest of the clues to escape the room
itself. She says that she asked an AI to design the puzzle on her behalf, so
she wouldn’t know how to solve it either. She asks them kindly not to talk
about anything but the room until that door reopens, and everyone respects
that because this was the deal. She does assure them that this is the last
exercise for now. There is no level beyond it until after the debrief.
“I was watching on the monitors,” Rage says after the game is over, and
they’re walking into what she calls the lounge. “I only had a bot lock me up
once you were at the end of the track. I want to thank you all for playing
it straight, instead of finding some workaround. You could have asked to
exit the trial at any time, and I would have obliged, but it didn’t seem to
cross your minds. I hope you don’t feel tricked or disrespected. Zelda was
right, I needed to see how well you five worked together so I would know how
to plan the curriculum. It seemed more useful to throw you in the deep end
rather than laying out what you would be up against. I’ve not yet
synthesized the data, but just from watching you, I think it’s safe to say
that we will not need much training. Despite not knowing each other, you
breezed through the challenges, and didn’t argue with each other even once.
I’m sincerely impressed and grateful.”
“I had a lot of fun!” Zelda announces. “There could have been a few more
airplanes to fall out of, but I can’t complain. It’s only the first day.”
“Yeah, there’s almost always one skydiving or basejumping challenge on a
treasure hunt,” Rage agrees. “I didn’t get approved for a plane here, but
we’re not stuck. We can always go to Adrenadome to do other training. We can
go to any of your prime domes, or anywhere for that matter. There’s no time
limit. If y’all wanna take a break for a couple years to relax in Polar
Tropica, I won’t argue. Based on what I just saw, though, this is the team I
want. If I could brag, I think I knocked it out of the park, assembling you.
I’ve worked with a lot of teams under Escape Dome, and I’ve never been
happier. As I already said to each of you individually, you can leave
whenever you want, but I really hope you stay. I want this to be the six,
and I will wait until everyone agrees that we’re ready.” She pauses for a
moment. “Minotaur, Elise...out of the bunch, you were the most hesitant to
come out. How are you feeling now?”
Elise and Minotaur exchange a glance, not having known that about each
other. Elise is very curious now, what it was like when Rage tried to
recruit the others. Were they as confused, or did they understand the
reasoning instantly? Colley can solve clues, and the other girls are used to
living fast. Their skills are more obvious. Elise still doubts her value
here, and she’s afraid that everyone else sees it too. She’s going to
respectfully bow out. She has to. She will only bring them down. There’s no
way that a treasure hunt benefits from someone like her. Rage will
understand; Elise believes that much about her. This is the right decision,
for herself, and for them. “I wanna keep going.” What?
“Great!” Rage says. She’s ecstatic. She could probably sense Elise’s
continued reluctance, and is just as surprised by the answer.
Elise is surprised too. Did her subconsciousness respond before she could?
She had no idea she was going to agree. What did she just get herself into?
Jolanda, Zelda, and Colley all volunteer to stay as well, to less fanfare
“Minotaur?” Rage presses. “Remember, there’s no wrong answer.”
Minotaur sports a poker face before finally saying, “you son of a bitch, I’m
in.”
This does feel like a heist, doesn’t it? Elise doesn’t know all that much
about Treasure Hunting Dome, but you don’t play thieves. It’s more of a race
where if you find the prize, you’re entitled to it. Still, Rage claimed that
there was some deeper level to the whole thing, so maybe they really will be
doing something that no one has ever done before. Maybe they’ll have to
break some rules. Maybe they’ll have to break them all.
Whatever ends up happening, Elise is out of her comfort zone now. That’s
probably a good thing. She has spent so much time on her own, only
occasionally working with others when the skill she was learning demanded
it. She doesn’t have any surviving family or lasting friendships. It’s not
that she dislikes people, but you don’t need them to survive in a
post-scarcity society, like the ancestors did. Socialization is a skill
which she never thought to develop. Skilldome doesn’t offer it. Perhaps they
should. It’s a lost art for some. She’ll suggest that to them, but first,
it’s time to party.
They don’t run any exercises for the rest of the day. They eat, they drink,
and they interact merrily. They don’t do any training the next day
either...or for the rest of the week. Only after that do they get to work,
running drills and teaching each other various things. A week after that,
they go on their first field trip to a dome that none of them has been to
before.
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