Five Days Left

I lead a very boring life.

Every day, I would take the bus from my home to my work location.

Five of my co-workers take the same bus with me, the same time every day, and the same bus at  the same time home after work.

This routine had been going on for a while, but I really didn’t remember for how long.

The only odd thing was that every day, we had a different work location. Often far from each other, but sometimes near.

Today I was in 837B, and Shelly, one of the people I take the bus with, was in 837C.

My other bus-partners were quite far. One was in 223A, another in 607E, another in 446F, and the other in 999D.    

We all spent most of the day basically doing nothing. Our job was to just sit at our assigned location.

Any time one of us had the urge to do something else, something different, a tremendous feeling of dread would come over us. As if we were about to do something very wrong.

Shelly, was adventurous, and it really bothered her that we were not allowed outside of our assigned locations.

She looked around, and pointed, “I want to take that bus. I am tired of taking the same bus every day. I want to know where that bus goes.”

I advised her that it was probably not a good idea to leave her post, but she ignored me.

She started walking toward the location of the bus, but was suddenly stopped by a large, ripped man, muscles for days. He was wearing a yellow uniform, with “Office Security” printed in large letters across the front.

“Where the hell do you think you are going?”, he asked in an authoritative voice.

“I want to take that bus!”, Shelly said loudly.

“You will go back to your work location.”, the man grumbled..

Shelly looked disappointed, but did as she was told.

What seemed like a few hours had passed, when I looked up and saw that Shelly was not at her work location.

At that time, I became conered, but not for long.    

Shelly burst in, excited, “Come! You have to see this!”

I did not like what was going on, as I began to get a strong feeling of dread.

“Hurry”, she said, “Before those O.S. guys see us.”

She had us follow her down a very long corridor.

The end of the corridor opened into a large room, with many doors. A lot of doors. Thousands of doors.

“Try them!”, she yelled.

“All of them?”, I questioned.

“Yes! Try! Hurry!”, Shelly urged.

At that point we began tugging on the doors, but every one we tried was locked.

Until, I pulled on one that suddenly opened.

“Hey!, Over here!”, I yelled to the group.

They all began to run toward my open door, but it was very hard to keep it open. It was as if something was trying to keep it closed.

We all made it through, but in fear of it locking on us, I propped it open.

I heard the group all gasp, and I looked up.

What I saw in front of us was amazing.

It was a city. Huge. It looked like it want on forever.

I found it odd that for all the time I had been working in this area, I had never noticed this huge city.  It makes sense though, since my mundane job does not allow me to explore anything.

The city was busy, with so much to do.

There were businesses like Walmart and General Motors, and lots and lots of places to eat and drink.

One building had what appeared to be an auction.

There were thousands of items, and a giant bid board showing the current bid for each item. Once an item was sold, it was immediately replaced with another.

Across the street from the auction was a large arcade, with too many games to count.

Next to the arcade was a movie theatre.

There was also a building with a couple of radio and TV stations.

Nothing about this city was the least bit unusual, except for one place.

One large building, about the size of a supermarket, but no sign indicating what it was.

Inside were just a lot of chairs. There were people in the chairs, talking to each other. They were talking about everything, and yet nothing.

It was the oddest place I had ever seen.

I had decided that we should be getting back to work. 

I figured I could explore this amazing place another time, when Shelly shrieked, “Look! The O.S. guys are coming!”

I noticed quite a few of the yellow-uniformed body-builders emerging through several of the doors from which were locked earlier.

I saw one of the O.S. guys running toward me with his fist raised.

I wanted to run, but couldn’t. I was frozen in that spot. I could not move at all.

I then felt something hard hit me in the jaw, and...

I awoke in a room that looked like it was some kind of a laboratory.

I sat up, groggy from what seemed to be a rather long sleep.

I was laying in a hospital bed, with probes connected to my head that went to some kind of a connector box, which connected to a computer terminal via some kind of super-high-speed data cable.

I had an IV and catheters in me.

I looked around, and noticed five other people, also connected to the box.

Upon closer look, I noticed that these were the people I worked with.

They also all awoke at the same time.

I then noticed a countdown clock on the wall above the door. I was counting from “5 DAYS, 2 HOURS, 23 MINUTES”.

Right then, six nurses walked in, and each removed the sets of probes and IV from each of us.

A man came into the room, and he looked very annoyed. 

He addressed the group, “ Just five days left. Five! ... and you ruined it. You broke the rules. Violated the contact. Now you won’t get paid. Go home. All of you!”

Still a bit groggy, and baffled, I said, “What...what...rules?”

The man said sternly, “One of you left a port open, and we got a virus." 

"Thank you for that”, he said sarcastically.

“You were all told when the experiment began, to never, ever go into the internet.”