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I remembered to look both ways to cross the street when I heard the horn blaring at me. It was altogether too late, and the last thing I saw in my Earthly life was a truck carrying an unreasonably large fake cow hitting me.
The next thing that I saw was even more surprising in that I had expected there to be no next thing to see. I was flying though a space, I couldn’t tell what direction I was going or if direction even had meaning there. It was very blue, and there were lines all around me, briefly they formed a tunnel that I was pulled into. I was unceremoniously ejected from a page of a book, though how I had managed to fit though the page that is about one fourth of my size I can not say.
I had only a moment to inspect my new surroundings. It seems I was standing in a library and had just been tossed out of a book that was being held by a very large dragon-like creature. It was only a moment because I was immediately pulled by another force, this time down into a dark pit of some sort. I fell into it before I could do anything, but not before the book I had arrived from linked itself to me with some form of translucent chain.
A moment later I found myself in another room. I couldn’t help myself any longer at this point and I shouted, “ARE YOU DONE NOW!?” at no one in particular. There was a response of sorts. A great voice which filled the room said, “You have selected English.”
“Yes?” I responded hesitantly.
The voice continued, recording like, “Behold before you stands a pedestal with a golden key. Upon the wall opposite yourself there are two coverings, one red and one blue. To open these coverings, you must place the key in the keyhole below the covering and turn it. You will see a button of the same color beneath the covering. You must press one of the buttons. If you press the red button, you will be returned to the world that you were pulled from, and nothing further will be done to you. If you press the blue button then you will also be returned to the world you were pulled from, but if less than 50% of the people who are facing this test also push the blue button you will be killed after the last person makes their decision. If you refuse to choose you will eventually die and no longer be considered part of the test.”
The voice then asked, “Do you understand?”
I, still thoroughly off balance said, “yes.” Even though at that time the honest answer was no. I had no idea what was going on at all.
The voice took me at my word however and replied, “Good, if you need these instructions repeated simply ask and it will be so.”
I was then alone in the room. It looked exactly as had been described, the room was a box about the size of my first collage dorm room. In the center was the pedestal and key, and the far wall hosted two circles, one red and one blue. The book that had hitched a ride with me was at my feet. Being something of a gamer I ignored both the book and the key, not ready to advance the story yet and decided to inspect the other walls. They were flat and perfectly smooth and completely boring. But this was also an opportunity to catch my breath. A similar investigation of the room’s floor and ceiling turned up nothing interesting, boring was good for me right now though, I needed it.
There was not very much bare concrete to distract myself with, and so I gathered what composure I could and approached the book that had fallen to the ground. It had a green cover patterned into some kind of fractal. I picked it up and opened it, hoping nothing too sudden would happen to me… again.
Thankfully what happened was that the first page became a swirl of the same fractal pattern that was on the cover, moving in a way ink normally does not. It eventually resolved itself into recognizable symbols. English, somehow this magic book also knew what language I spoke.
It read as follows.
Greeting Summoned Hero, you are no doubt quite disoriented right now; we apologize for the inconvenience. Under ordinary circumstances there would be someone there to explain what has happened to you and why. These are not ordinary circumstances; you have been pulled into our world by a contingency summoning circle that was made some time ago against unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstances. We, who write this message to you, cannot know the specifics of what danger our world faces. We do know the broad details, there is a danger that risks destroying a large portion of our world or it’s population, we do not have the ability to prevent this danger on our own, you were targeted by the summoning spell because there is something about you that makes you well suited to face the danger. This book has attached itself to you on a metaphysical level that will be difficult for adversaries to sever. You will find on the next few pages a description of what has happened to cause the book to summon you. The pages 10-200 are an array of a deployable shelter, it contains all the necessities for survival, but it is very small. It also contains a very complete and self-updating library, more detailed information about the danger may be sought here if any of our librarians have had the opportunity to write the details down. Pages 200-400 are the array that summoned you.
We hope you will be able to rise to whatever challenge faces you.
Good Luck, Summoned Hero.
The description pages were not very useful, they were more specific. I was informed that approximately 40% of the population was at risk of dying. The book did not know why, but it was a safe enough guess that those were the people that had elected to press the blue button. I had some questions about this, but they could wait. My next priority was the promised shelter.
I found an image on the promised page, the included instructions for use were simple enough. Simply hold the image up and a door would be projected into the real world where it appeared to be from my perspective, unless something was in the way. The book recommended I place the door on a flat surface as that would be easiest. So managed to place the door on the nearest wall and entered.
The shelter was in fact very small. The entryway was smaller than the button room and contained a bookshelf filled with books, a chair, a more comfortable well-padded chair off to the side and a metal box I could not identify right away. There were two doors, one led to a bedroom barely large enough to contain a single bed and the other led to what was clearly the bathroom. The bathroom was really just of a shower with built in toilet, efficiency of space was clearly at a premium in here.
I closed the door behind me and sat down in the comfortable chair. I needed a moment to clear my mind and just settle. It was here that I noticed an itch at the back of my mind. An implanted compulsion that I should choose which button to press as soon as possible. It was annoying, but I set it aside.
The next thing to do would be to raid the library and figure out for sure what was going on. I took a nap instead.
When I woke up, I investigated the metal box, it was a food creator. A very good one too, I was able to get it to make a great variety of foods, if I was able to describe them well enough or had some experience with them. It was clearly hooked up to my brain somehow, but so was everything else. It bothered me a little, but I got to have corn dogs so on balance I was ok with it.
I got around to sitting down at the desk to raid the magic library for information. I was worried that the copied texts would be unreadable, but as it turns out there was a pair of glasses in a holder attached to the bookshelf that when looked through could translate text for me. I also discovered that I could pull books from my own world, blank books, and writing materials. It had no idea how any of it worked, but it was very convenient.
The story I could put together from the recent writings painted a picture I was expecting at this point, though some details were elucidated. The world I had been summoned to in order to save was called Sphaira. In a single moment and without warning everyone who could participate in the button test had been pulled into a room similar to mine, there was some size differences as in this world not all sophonts are human, but they were all boring and blank concrete cubes with only they key and the buttons. Between not having food and water and the compulsion that the room inflicted on the occupant everyone had eventually given in and made a choice. Or almost everyone, there had to be a few holdout, or I would not have been summoned in time. I expected that they would have given in shortly after I had arrived, though I could not be sure. The library could only give me texts that had been written before my summoning. I even found a memo about preparations for the upcoming mass die off that was cut off in the middle of a sentence.
That I had unlimited, or near enough, food and no one else could manage the same trick was confusing at first. But it seems that this extra-dimensional space I had been provided had required a large investment of resources. There were some who could have in theory built a similar system, if they had been given time to prepare. So, it really was down to me.
I am slightly ashamed to admit I did not see the real solution right away. I spent more time than I needed thinking about which button to press and why people would make the choices they did. Part of it might be that compulsion effect, but I can’t blame everything on it.
If I had been thrust into this situation in the same way everyone else, I would have picked red. My thinking is simple in this regard, I am faced with two buttons, and one says, ‘I won’t kill you.” Whereas the other says, ‘I might.” Well, I’m going to go ahead and push the button that doesn’t kill me. Subsequent reading has illuminated why there are those who would choose otherwise. Pressing red is surrendering some number of people to die. As intuitive as it is that getting 100% of people to choose red, getting 100% of anything is actually, really hard. The alternative strategy only needs to get 50% of agreement to work. Alas for this world they only got 40%.
So for me pressing blue would mean dying, while pressing read would mean living but failing to save anyone. But what if I didn’t press either? There was that compulsion at the back of my mind, like a looming deadline. But I had ignored deadlines before, and those for things I actually wanted to do. I had food, I had books to keep me company. I had a comfortable enough bed and a place to keep clean. It was clearly not how the test was supposed to be done, but why do I care about that.
The solitary confinement will no doubt change me in time, and I do not believe I am immune to the effects of loneliness. But I am introverted, and I have what turns out to be a skill in procrastination so I will do ok for myself.
I am reading a complete copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the room button scratches at the back of my mind, asking what I will choose. I tell it that I’ll get around to it.