Chapter Text
Stanley had been back in the real world for a little over a year, and he'd gotten used to it, for the most part. He no longer woke up in the morning wondering where he was; he'd stopped getting lost at his new job because the office was laid out so differently from that office; he didn't feel surprised anymore when he felt hunger or sleepiness or any other biological need because time now moved inexorably forward rather than looping back on itself.
Stanley had also mostly adjusted to being alone, but that had taken longer. For a long time, he'd catch himself listening in vain for a voice he could no longer hear, and he felt lonely even when he was around other people. Eventually, the loneliness receded, though it didn't dissipate entirely. Sometimes he'd hear something that brought it back—an intercom announcement at a department store or the voice-over in a nature documentary. Yet more often, what hurt was the silence.
It was worst on the nights when Stanley couldn't sleep and lay awake for hours, alone in bed in his dark apartment. After a particularly bad night, he bought an analog clock with an unnecessarily loud tick just to break the silence, but it didn't help. He felt just as lonely lying awake listening to the ticking, and when he did finally fall asleep, he could still hear the clock in his dreams. The next morning he moved the clock to his spare room and went back to lying awake in the silence instead.
Until a month ago, when everything had changed.
–
On Stanley's bus ride home from work one afternoon, two stops after he'd boarded, a lanky blond guy in a tracksuit had jogged up the steps onto the bus and folded himself into the seat next to Stanley's even though several others were empty.
When Stanley looked up in surprise, the younger man grinned and declared, “Found you! Finally.” His voice was a little rough but bright enough that the “finally” came out sounding cheerful rather than exasperated.
Stanley blinked, assuming the man had mistaken him for someone else. The guy was ridiculously good-looking: tall and athletic with a face that could almost be called beautiful. Why would someone like that be looking for Stanley?
And why does he look so pleased with himself for finding me? Stanley wondered. As he stared at the stranger, Stanley noticed that his eyes were an unusual shade of amber, nearly the same color as his hair. So was his jacket, and even his skin had a golden tone to it. Stanley had never before seen another person who was so yellow.
Then he remembered that he had. The other person just hadn't been human at the time.
Oh, Stanley thought. The Adventure Line. Of course.
Stanley smiled at the Line and lifted a hand in greeting. He wasn't even very surprised. Since he himself had passed from the world of “the story” into the real world, it only stood to reason that The Stanley Parable Adventure Line™ had been able to do so as well. The Line was Itself a route, an entity Whose entire purpose was to find a path from one place to another. Even Its—now his, Stanley supposed—current manifestation made sense: sentient yellow stripes didn't exist in the real world, so the Line had emerged there as a human being.
That still left the question of why the Line had turned up looking for Stanley, and the Line himself did not seem inclined to explain. His grin had shrunk to a self-satisfied smirk, and he leaned back in his seat, tapping his fingers against his thighs as he stretched his long legs out into the aisle. After another few seconds of looking at him, Stanley sat back in his own seat and waited for the bus to reach his stop.
It never got there, at least not with Stanley on board, because the Line disembarked at the very next stop with Stanley in tow. The bus had barely begun to slow down when the Line hopped to his sneaker-clad feet, grabbed Stanley's hand, and hauled him out of his seat as well. For an instant, Stanley tried to tug his hand free in protest, but then he changed his mind and let the Line pull him off the bus and steer him down the sidewalk in a seemingly arbitrary direction.
The Narrator would call me an idiot for following It—him, Stanley thought as they practically jogged down the street hand-in-hand, garnering odd looks from some of the people they passed. In fact, although he at times could no longer recall the exact tone and cadence of the Narrator's voice, now Stanley could remember precisely what he'd said while passing judgment on the Line:
You know what, Stanley? I say forget The Adventure Line! What has It ever done for us?
Just don't acknowledge It, and we should be fine.
Yet encountering the Adventure Line was the most exciting thing that had happened to Stanley since his return to reality, and what's more, the Line must have some reason for tracking Stanley down. . . somewhere he wanted Stanley to go. Unlike the Narrator, who had viewed the Line as irresponsible and incompetent because It rarely went where he thought It should, Stanley had always believed It knew what It was doing. On more than one of those sleepless nights, he'd wondered if things might have turned out differently had they kept following It like It wanted them to.
That last ending. . . it was the Confusion Ending, and it didn't stop after the fourth restart, Stanley would think as he lay awake listening to the silence. It kept going, and after the fifth one, the Narrator forgot everything and I couldn't do anything, just like the schedule said. Then after the sixth restart, the Line came back, and It took us through that duplicate of the office where everything was falling apart—and the Narrator told me to stop there, because the Line obviously didn't know what It was doing, and following It further would only get us into more trouble.
So I stopped, and he tried to tell the story there and couldn't, and when he restarted it all again, the office was gone. Then after the next restart, he was gone too, and I was back here in the real world, alone. And I guess the schedule is right. After a long time, I'll grow old and die because in this world, there aren't any restarts.
But maybe the Line did know what It was doing, and It was trying to help us. All those times It tried to take us somewhere—going down that weird hallway with all the papers about Employee 432, and bringing us to the monitor room, and coming out of the ceiling, and running through the warehouse, and leading us to that duplicate office—if I'd just kept following It instead of stopping when he told me to. . . maybe things would have been different. Maybe we could have found an ending where we both got to be happy.
Maybe I wouldn't have lost him.
And so this time, Stanley decided he would trust the Line and follow where he led, never mind what the Narrator would have said about the matter. He tightened his hold of the Line's hand. The taller man glanced down at him, surprised, but then the Line's grin returned.
“This way!” he declared, making a sudden turn down a street Stanley had never noticed before even though they were close to the neighborhood of his own apartment. Another turn led into what logically should have been a dead-end alley but wasn't. Instead, it opened upon another alley lying perpendicular to it. Soon Stanley doubted whether he could find his way back home on his own, but he told himself that wasn't important.
What matters is that the Line found me for a reason, he thought. He's taking me to—well, somewhere. He tried not to let himself hope, but his heart beat faster the further they went.
Then, abruptly, the Line stopped and let go of Stanley's hand. They'd been moving along another alley, and as in all the rest, the buildings to either side had doors in them here and there, all of them perfectly ordinary-looking. However, the Line now stood still—a state that seemed unnatural to him—frowning as he glanced back and forth between two of the doors.
Stanley looked at them as well. They were both set into the same building and painted the same color, a drab sort of gray. Neither door seemed more correct than the other.
The red door was on the left, thought Stanley, and so was the door that went to the boss's office. The places he wanted me to go were always to the left.
He pointed at the door on the left.
“Hunh,” said the Line. “You sure?”
Stanley nodded.
“Hmn.” The Line closed his eyes briefly, as if in concentration, before throwing back his head and laughing, tossing his messy hair into further disarray.
“Heeeey, you're right. It's left.” He turned to face Stanley again with another laugh. “See what I did there? You're right that it's left. Directional pun!” Again seeming quite pleased with his own cleverness, the Line made finger guns at Stanley then apparently got distracted by his own hands and held them up in front of his face with a delighted expression.
Stanley gestured again towards the door on the left.
The Line dropped his hands and apologized, “Sorry, I've just never had fingers before. Or used words. Still getting used to it.” He took a few steps closer to the door, then looked back over his shoulder at Stanley. “C'mon, open it!”
Stanley came forward and did so. The door was a heavy one made of metal, and by all rights, an outer door opening upon the street like that should have been locked. It wasn't. The knob turned easily in Stanley's hand, the door swung open outwards, and Stanley found himself peering in at beige walls and yellow carpeting.
The office. The room was small and empty—no furnishings or scattered papers or abandoned coffee mugs. Another door faced Stanley from across it, a white interior door exactly like those he'd passed through thousands of times. His heart began beating faster again although the room was silent.
Stanley stepped up to the threshold but stopped short of walking through as he wondered, What if I go in and I can't get out again? He thought about his little apartment, his new job and coworkers, sunlight and rain, even the loud and self-important clock—all the ordinary, real-world things that had become part of his life over the past year. All the things he could never find in any of the office's yellow rooms.
I don't want to go back forever, thought Stanley, because I don't want to be a character in The Stanley Parable again. I just want to be Stanley.
He drew back from the door and looked at the Line, who frowned again.
“This is what you wanted. . . right?” he asked with a motion towards the door. “A way back to him?”
Stanley's face warmed. The last two words confirmed what he'd tried not to hope, but hearing the Adventure Line say it out loud was embarrassing. Although he wasn't sure that the Line could read, Stanley pulled out the smartphone he'd had to buy soon after his return to the real world, typed in a few words, and held the phone out to the Line.
I don't want to be part of his story.
The Line could read, and he observed with a faint chuckle, “Understandable. Me either.” His smile faded again, and he looked at Stanley over the top of the phone with his amber eyes so intent and serious that they startled Stanley.
“You don't have to go back to him if you don't want to,” said the Line. “I won't be pissed off if you just close the door and walk away, 'cause like. . . that stuff he always said every time you guys found the schedule? About life being about the journey, not the destination? Well, I'm all journey, so if you don't like the destination, I'm cool with that. There's always somewhere else to go.”
Stanley turned the phone back around, bit his lip for a second in thought, then typed more before showing it to the Line again.
I don't want to be part of his story.
I want him to be part of my life.
If I go back in, will I be able to come out again?
The Line retorted indignantly, “Oh! Is that all you're worried about? Of course you will! I never forget a route once I've found it.” He smirked again and quoted in a pompous imitation of the Narrator, “'Just follow the Line. How simple is that?' I can even make the music if you want.”
Stanley shook his head quickly as he stuck the phone back in his pocket.
“Sure about that?” Still smirking, the Line cleared his throat and began, “Da da da dum, da dum daaa—” until Stanley, despairing of any other way to shut him up, reached up and clapped a hand over his mouth. The music had been annoying enough coming from the Line in geometrical form, when It somehow generated the sounds of instruments and a professional chorus. Now, sung off key in the Line's slightly nasal voice, it was worse.
“Mmph!” When Stanley dropped his hand, the Line sighed with a shrug, “Okay, okay. Point taken. But anyway yeah. If you go back in, you can come out again, no problem.”
Stanley nodded and walked through the door, with the Line following him this time instead of the other way around. When Stanley opened the white interior door, he found a proper office hallway on the other side with a couple filing cabinets along one wall and a few papers lying on top of them. The room had the same brown crown molding and overhead fluorescent lights Stanley remembered. The only difference was the absolute silence.
Stanley went down the hallway slowly, towards another white door at the opposite end. When Stanley glanced back to make sure the Line was still there, the blond man was trailing after him with his arms outstretched, dragging the fingers of one hand along the wall while those of the other ran across the tops of the filing cabinets. The Line was smiling like he was experiencing something absolutely delightful.
Then, when Stanley reached the door, he realized the silence wasn't absolute after all: he could hear something faint coming from the other side. It sounded like music.
As the sound grew gradually more distinct, like it was coming closer, Stanley could hear that it was music. It was the same song the Line had been singing moments ago, except now the tune was how Stanley remembered it, complete with instruments and vocals. On key vocals.
With his hand resting on the door handle, Stanley looked back at the Line again with his eyebrows raised. The Line shrugged a second time.
“It's a trade-off,” he said. “When I'm like that, the music sounds better. When I'm like this, I've got fingers.”
Stanley's real question was how the Line was making music in another room while simultaneously standing there behind him. However, the question was answered, more or less, when the music grew louder and a bright yellow stripe abruptly shot into the room from beneath the door. It zoomed past Stanley to stop at the Line's sneakers.
“There we go! Route complete,” he announced.
Stanley still wondered how he was able to exist as both a stripe and a human, inside and outside the office at the same time, but another sound made him forget everything else: a frustrated voice speaking over the raucous music.
“I do hope there is an actual purpose to this, Line,” the Narrator grumbled from the room on the other side of the door. “Here I am, following You in good faith despite all the times You've betrayed me, and not only have You led me on a circuitous tour of this entire blasted office, You insist on playing that silly music while You—”
The voice broke off when the handle of the door rattled under Stanley's hand. He jerked it back and held it against his chest, where he could feel his heart pounding.
“Oh for the love of—a door I can't unlock? That's where You've been leading me all this time?” ranted the Narrator. “If this is Your idea of a joke, I'll have You know it isn't funny, You—You yellow menace!”
Stanley reached for the door handle again and tried it. It turned as easily as the gray door's knob had, and Stanley pushed the door open.
–
to be continued