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The pain was still shooting through his skull when Stanley awoke in his office. His breath was ragged. He touched the side of his head and felt no blood, no fracture, no sign that anything had happened at all. Without getting out of his chair, he slowly lifted one leg, then the other, testing for the sharpness of bone scraping under skin. Everything was normal, all bones unbroken. As expected, the reset restored his body in full, even as it left his mind swimming.
This was not the first time he had died, but the last ending had been…. “rough” was the only word that came to his mind, as inadequate as it was. Four jumps it had taken him to end it. Four times limping up that godforsaken staircase, four times the sickening crunch of hitting concrete. He had stayed in that little planetarium room as long as he possibly could, really he had. It could have been hours or days, he had no way of knowing. But there was nothing in there, nothing to do or see, just mind-numbing silence, and there was only one exit… Stanley decided to stay sitting in his office for several minutes, collecting his thoughts as well as waiting for the phantom pains to subside. A few minutes to himself before the game properly began.
When he was ready to face the Narrator again, Stanley rose from his chair, only to stumble as he experienced a strong feeling of vertigo. Unable to stop himself, he went careening into the next room. He grabbed onto the top of the partition wall to steady himself. Perhaps he wasn’t ready after all; surely it was the memory of falling that was leaving him feeling so dizzy. He took a few deep breaths as the Narrator recited the opening lines. Then he noticed that the partition wall seemed a little bit shorter than usual. Normally it went up to eye level, but here he was reaching down to grab the top. Come to think of it, were the desks lower to the ground as well? The whole office looked subtly distorted in a way Stanley couldn’t quite put a finger on.
He looked down at the floor and saw the problem. It wasn’t that the wall was shorter. It was that his feet weren’t touching the ground.
He would have to take his hands off the wall to sign his confusion. He did so with the utmost caution, one finger at a time. He did not fall. He did not move in any direction. He was simply free-floating like an astronaut in orbit. “What the hell have you done?” he signed with a scowl.
“Ah, I see you’ve noticed the little modification I made to the physics engine,” said the Narrator with an audible smile. “A cheat code, if you will. Yes, I know, I normally don’t abide by cheating, but your safety is more important than any notions of integrity in game design. You see, Stanley, I’ve come to realize you have an unfortunate tendency for taking a tumble from high places. And that’s getting in the way of your ability to finish my story. So I thought the simplest solution would be to turn off your capacity to fall altogether. Nothing else is affected—this story isn’t set in space, after all! But you’ve lost your gravity privileges until you can prove to me that you won’t fall off anything else, accidentally or otherwise.” That last word was dripping with venom.
Ah, that’s what this was about, Stanley thought. He should have seen something like this coming. A naked display of petulant power to remind him who was in control, that was exactly the Narrator’s style. Well, if he didn’t want to talk things out like an adult, then Stanley wouldn’t either. He would simply pretend like nothing was different. He tried to take a step forward as if the air in front of him was solid ground. This accomplished nothing except flailing around on the spot. He made motions as if he was swimming in the air. Then he tried flapping his arms like they were wings. Neither of these methods were fruitful. This could actually be a problem.
Stanley’s hands flashed frantically. “Great job, genius. How am I going to follow the story if I can’t walk?”
The Narrator laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You are always so inventive at finding ways to do things I never even thought were possible within the engine limitations. In the meantime, I am finding it quite entertaining to watch you struggle like a silly little bird. Maybe I’ll put together a highlight reel and throw it on Youtube. ‘Can You Beat The Stanley Parable Without Touching The Ground?’ Yes, the gamesters these days love that sort of challenge run. Make sure you give me a nice surprised face for the thumbnail.”
Stanley rolled his eyes. He kicked at the partition wall as hard as he could, which sent him crashing into the opposite wall. Ungraceful, but it was a start. As long as there were walls, he could hug them and push himself along. He tried pushing down to the floor, but bounced right back up. Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy. Fine, he could deal with this. He maneuvered around the corner and past the next set of desks. “You see, Stanley? I knew you could do it! You’re so very clever and determined. Why, not even I can stop you if you really put your mind to something!” Stanley ignored the condescension and continued to the two door room.
Part of him wanted to go right again, and head straight back towards the red door, just to see how his tormentor would react. But he had an idea for how to make this easier, and it required going left. In the meeting room, his feet were just at the height of the table, so he tried walking across it. It was like walking on a trampoline, taking all of his mental energy to keep himself from tripping. It made Stanley’s head spin, so he kicked off of it and drifted through the far door.
He came to the broom closet and wrenched it open with one hand, keeping the other touching the wall. “Oh, come on,” cried the Narrator. “This again? Really? What, are you just going to float there and stew in your own guilt? Because I can wait. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it a thousand times if I have to.” But Stanley had no intention of staying in the broom closet. He grabbed the longest broom he could see and held it by the brush end. Touching the other end to the floor, he used it to propel himself forward like an oar through water. “Ohhh. I see. My little bird has turned into a little witch.”
You’re the one who put a spell on me, Stanley thought, but it was too awkward to sign while holding the broom, so he just rolled his eyes and moved on.
“Coming to a staircase, Stanley walked upstairs to his boss’s office.” The Narrator put a sardonic emphasis on the word “walked”, letting it hang in the air. Stanley raised his middle finger to the sky. Then he stopped to consider his options; he hadn’t put much thought into where he was going after getting the broom. The thought of going downstairs made him shudder. If it was possible to make it through that ending alive, he hadn’t found a way yet. And with the memory of pain still fresh in his mind, dying again was the last thing he wanted to do. No, Stanley thought, if he was going to get back to normal, he needed to snap the Narrator out of his ego trip. And the best way to do that was to give him what he wants. Follow his lead and turn the mind controls off.
He used the railings to boost himself awkwardly up the stairs. The broom made crossing the boss’s office a breeze, much faster than creeping along the walls would have been. The Narrator didn’t even berate him for entering the code too quickly. Instead he said, “Wow, it looks like you’ve really started to get the hang of this, bravo! I was starting to worry that my Youtube video would end up being a cringe compilation. Perhaps I’ll keep the gravity off for a while longer and we can see how many endings you can get to. Now that would make for quality content for my subscribers. What do you say, hmm? Does that sound fun?” Stanley aggressively shook his head. “No? Well I shouldn’t be surprised. When do you ever think my ideas are fun?”
Stanley sighed, broomed his way over to the elevator, and kicked the down button. A second later, he was bonked on the head as he failed to descend with the elevator. “Oops, sorry, I didn’t exactly have time to playtest this mod before deploying it,” came the omnipresent voice. “Some unintended object interactions are to be expected. Why don’t we just skip this part?” Stanley felt a sensation like a static shock as he was suddenly loaded straight into the monitor room. The Narrator began reading out his ordinary script for this room.
It seemed to Stanley that he was placed a little higher into the air than before. Even his feet were above the railings, and he needed to bend down to get the broom to touch the ground. At this point, he couldn’t tell if this was an oversight on the Narrator’s part or a deliberate means of messing with his head. He slammed the broom along the catwalk, hoping to get to the ending as soon as possible. But when it came to the last push, he misjudged the distance remaining, and sailed right past the button and into the vast space of the room. Scrambling to try to reach backward and grab a railing, he let the broom slip from his hands. It fell into the darkness and he did not hear it reach bottom.
His heart leapt into his throat. His momentum carried him away from the catwalk, but not so far as to reach the wall. He stopped moving near the centre of the room, much too far away from anything to grab onto.
“Oh dear. Stanley, you haven’t gotten yourself softlocked, have you? And after you put in such a valiant effort to get here. But it seems you still can’t stop yourself from taking unnecessary risks. Ah well, you’ll just have to take it nice and slow on your next attempt. And the one after that, and the one after that. Hmm, shall I reset the game now, or shall I drop you into the pit first?”
Stanley looked down. It was a very long fall, and there was nothing down there, but it wouldn’t kill him at least. The Narrator continued, “Oh no no no, Stanley. I can see the look in your eyes and I’m afraid you’re mistaken. You see, I’ve taken the liberty of adding a damage field at the bottom of the pit. I figured since you seem to like taking fall damage so much, this should be a thrill for you. Much more fun than my stupid old story, right?” Stanley’s stomach lurched as gravity reasserted itself for just a few seconds, then went away again. “Or maybe I’m bluffing. Want to find out?”
Stanley rolled up his sleeves. No, there was no way he was going to be pushed around and humiliated for god knows how long. This had to end here. He signed into the void, “Dude. What is your problem?”
“My problem? Hmm, I don’t know, could it possibly have anything to do with watching you slowly and painfully die instead of staying in the nice place I made especially for you to be happy in? An act for which you have yet to apologize? No, that can’t be it, I must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“But you never cared whether I died before. Half the time you’re the one killing me! What’s so different this time?”
The Narrator raised his voice. “You really don’t get it? It’s not because of the death, it’s because you were doing it specifically to spite me! I don’t understand why you hate me so much, but you don’t have to go so far to show it. I may not be human but I do have feelings, you know. I’m not a heartless machine. I think I deserve to be treated with a little more respect.”
Stanley’s hands jabbed at the air as if he was trying to stab the Narrator with his words. “You, you, you. Everything is about you, isn’t it? What about me? What if my decision had nothing to do with you?”
“You can’t possibly be saying you enjoyed that experience.”
“No, I hated it. It was agonizing and terrifying and I’m sorry I did it and I’ll never do it again. But it was better than sitting around forever. There was nothing in there, I was going insane from boredom. I told you that, I asked you to reset, but you didn’t listen! So I reset the only way I know how.”
“I—but I was having such a good time in there, I just didn’t want it to end. I was scared that if I reset I wouldn’t remember any of it. I don’t like knowing that I just forget things sometimes. Surely you can understand that, Stanley.”
Stanley pinched the bridge of his nose. He tried to think of the most delicate way to communicate without setting the Narrator off on another tantrum. “Yes, I understand, but you’re still making it all about you. I don’t hate you but I kind of hate knowing you can just do things like this to me.” He gestured vaguely to indicate the open air all around him. He rolled his sleeves back down before signing the question that had been nagging at him. “Why did you put the staircase there at all?”
“I… to be honest, I didn’t. Hell, I hate revealing this, but sometimes things just appear in the code and I have no idea why. And I don’t know how to get rid of them either. I truly wish that staircase did not exist, but it did, and I couldn’t block it off. I’m such a failure at game design, I can’t even control my own game.”
This was something that Stanley had suspected for a while, and he had a hunch as to the reason why, too. He just never wanted to bring it up and offend the Narrator’s delicate ego, but now was as good a time as any. “I think maybe you did want it there. Subconsciously. Some part of you deep down that you want to repress. You can’t help but give me a choice, even if it’s an awful one.”
The Narrator scoffed and sputtered. “W-what? Me? You think I… no, never! Impossible. I don’t have any skeletons in my closet, I am the picture of mental health and—hold on a minute, how are you doing that?”
Stanley tilted his head. He didn’t think he was doing anything.
“You’re rising upward, Stanley. That shouldn’t be possible. You’re not supposed to have control over the Z-axis, there’s not even a keybind for it. Is this a bug?”
Stanley looked at the ceiling. It was definitely getting closer, even though there was nothing he could have propelled off of. In fact, it was getting closer at an alarming rate. He was falling in the wrong direction. An instinct of panic overtook him; he curled up and closed his eyes to brace for impact.
Impact never came. “And now you’ve stopped again. Stanley, you really need to tell me what you’re doing. If I don’t fix this bug, it could have unforeseen effects on the entire game.”
Stanley relaxed his body and shrugged. “It’s just happening.”
“It just happens without your control? How interesting, given our previous conversation topic. Perhaps you can sympathize with my perspective a little more now.”
Stanley’s eyes narrowed. “Is this a bit? Are you just flinging me around as a joke, to make your point?” he signed.
“While I’m flattered that you think so highly of my comedic ability, I’m afraid not. However, I’ve just had a flash of insight. If your hypothesis is correct and my subconscious desires can affect the structure of the game, well…maybe I’m not the only one. Can you bear with me and do a little experiment for me, Stanley? Try concentrating on where you want to be. And I won’t tell you where to go, I don’t want to influence your decision.”
Being anywhere other than stuck in empty space was pretty appealing to Stanley at the moment. From his position near the ceiling, he could see a very high catwalk, one that he normally couldn’t access on this route. He decided he wanted to see if he could reach it, and focused all his determination on it.
He shot through the air in a giddy rush and was hovering over the catwalk in mere seconds. He had to stop and catch his breath. He hadn’t expected it to work at all, let alone that fast.
The Narrator shouted, “Yes, that’s it! My impeccable deductions are right as usual. Do it again, do it again!” From his tone of voice, it seemed he was completely over his self-pitying mood to focus on this new mystery. Stanley tried the door, but it had no knob on this side, so he turned away. From here there was really only one way to go. He flew to the spot where the lift was supposed to spawn, and up into the next room. It was dizzying and thrilling, like being on a roller coaster, and he needed a second to gather his bearings. Did I really just do that? he thought.
“That’s truly remarkable. You’re really controlling where you go just by wanting it?” Stanley nodded and grinned in response. “And you don’t want to fall?” Stanley remembered the feeling of thudding against concrete. He shook his head violently. “Alright then, I suppose you’ve learned your lesson. No need to keep this nonsense going any longer, we can finally get back to the story.”
There was a sound like a giant mouse button clicking, and Stanley plonked onto the floor. He made an exaggerated pout and signed, “But I was just starting to have fun!”
“Yes, precisely. I can’t have you flying about willy-nilly and getting into inaccessible areas. You’ve already broken the monitor room sequence and now the whole story is out of whack. I’d hate to imagine how many other logic steps you can break.” Stanley crossed his arms and refused to take a single step forward, making his best sad puppy dog face. “Don’t you take that tone with me, Stanley, you can’t sway me.” Several minutes of nothing passed. “Are you really that stubborn? Oh who am I kidding, of course you are. Alright, fine, you can have one more run of cheating and then can we please get back to what the story is actually about?”
Another static shock, and Stanley was back in his office. He stepped out of his chair, lifted off the floor once again, and flashed a smile and a thumbs up. The Narrator responded, “I don’t suppose I should even bother with my opening lines. Where are you going to go with your newfound power?”
Stanley shrugged. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He tapped an index finger to his chin. “If I go back to that light room, will you give me a normal exit? It really was relaxing in there.”
The Narrator paused for a moment. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t guarantee that staircase won’t be there again.”
“But I won’t fall. Just look at me.”
“True… well, if I can’t change the map then I could always reset the room. I’ll do it if you ask, I promise. Deal?”
“Deal. But don’t put this on Youtube.”
“That I cannot promise. The algorithm demands content. I need to feed the algorithm, Stanley.” Stanley made a face. “Kidding, kidding, go do whatever you want, you’ve earned it.”