by Phil Edwards
You die ninety years later with Beatram at your side. The lab mortician observes that you’re incredibly old, but he also notes that Beatram disintegrated at the exact same time.
“I’d say they were soulmates,” he tells a reporter for the lab newsletter, “if I weren’t talking about an utterly moronic human and a beaker sponge.”
THE END
Dodging sparks of electricity, you make your way across the room. You know that Nicholas Tassle would have saved Devin and Emma if he’d had the chance—it was his gentle way, when he wasn’t inventing electric death machines.
You hear the sizzle of an electric jolt and look left. The hacky sack is almost completely destroyed, and it takes everything in you not to stop and consider funeral arrangements. But you push on. Finally, with a bold and completely unnecessary dive, you launch yourself toward the switch and deactivate the coil.
Silence. You did it.
Devin is the first to get up, but Emma follows. They’re both OK, except for the fact that Devin’s left arm has been completely removed and cauterized. Devin is still breathing deeply when he speaks.
“You saved me. And except for the terrible pain I feel in my now-phantom arm, we’re both OK!”
Emma hugs you and old one-armed Devin does the best he can.
“We were wrong to test on you,” Emma says, her voice cracking just like the coil. “You’re braver than we thought. And smarter, too.”
“I like beakers!” you shout.
“OK, you’re braver,” Devin says. “And that means you deserve a chance to be part of our team. You know, it’s remarkable how quickly I’m moving past the electrocution and complete removal of my arm.”
“It’s not all about you, Devin,” you tell him and pat his armless shoulder. “Now, I feel like normally people would call this spot a stump, but it’s not really a stump, is it? It’s pretty flat. Just a flat, armless plane.”
“Call it what you want.” He gently removes your hand from his armless plane. “Let’s move on to physics, the one thing I still care about.”
“So you don’t have a name for it? I feel like your armless plane doesn’t have much of a ring to it.”
“How about his demilitarized zone?” Emma says, a smile playing across her singed face. “Because he’s been disarmed!”
You all have a good laugh, except for Devin, who is annoyingly still obsessed with his arm.
“Darn it!” you shout. “Devin, you need to get over your DMZ and get to work.”
“You’re shortening it now?”
“Yes. Now what physics am I going to be brave at?”
He sighs.
“We have two projects. One could change energy for the entire world. The other could revolutionize how we think about time. Which do you want to do?”
It’s never been harder to decide, especially since it’s so hard to look away from his DMZ.
To take on the mysterious energy project, tap here.
To take on the time project, tap here.
You cackle wildly.
“You think I care what happens to you? You were going to kill me! So now I’m cackling wildly and doing nothing to help you!”
Emma and Devin scream at the same time.
“Please, stop cackling wildly and help us!”
You find a safe spot out of the coil’s reach and watch as it claims its victims, cackling wildly all the while.
The coil hisses and snaps, striking Emma down and leaving only a pile of Emma-looking ash in her wake. You stop cackling wildly a bit to get a sip of water, but then you go straight back to cackling wildly.
Oh no! Look what’s in the coil’s range! You have to save the beaker sponge!
The coil takes no prisoners, since it is a coil and doesn’t have any penal authorization or state funding, so it quickly electrocutes Devin as well. But just as you’re about to cackle wildly again, you see a sponge fly from his pocket and land on a lab table. It can’t be Beatram...but what if? You sprint toward the table.
A second later, you realize it wasn’t Beatram at all—it was his cousin, Mortimer (you’d recognize that birthmark anywhere). But it’s too late—you’re exposed and the coil has its aim on you. You don’t escape quickly enough.
When the lab mortician discovers your ashes a few days later, he calls the janitor to sweep you away.
THE END
You decide it might be an interesting experiment to have the poison kill you, so you lick it up just like a cat would.
As expected, it kills you.
Coincidentally, they use Beatram to clean the box. The lab mortician says that you added nothing to our understanding of science and quantum mechanics, but at least you didn’t leave a mess.
THE END
All of a sudden, you realize that you don’t have to drink the poison that the hammer spilled onto the floor. Apparently, they haven’t thought this through very much.
Deciding to be alive was a great idea, you can tell already—it seems to have allowed you to continue to both think and exist. You take a quick nap but start to get bored very quickly. How exactly are you supposed to kill time stuck inside the world’s most boring experiment?
Soon, however, something happens—you hear Devin’s voice through the speaker.
“Remember, we need you to personally observe if you’re alive and dead. If we do it, it will screw things up and break the timeline. So just keep at it.”
“Got it!” you shout.
“You can hear us? Does that mean you’re alive and dead?”
You have a decision to make—do you tell Devin and Emma the truth, even though they’ve shown no concern for your well-being or any interest in being honest themselves? Or do you lie and risk hurting their feelings?
To tell them you’re alive, tap here.
To tell them you’re alive and dead, tap here.
You drink the poison, but only a little. You’re shocked to watch your body fall to the ground, with an especially dead look on its face.
“I’ve done it!” you whisper. “I’ve proven that branching realities can coexist. Schrödinger’s Cat isn’t a snarky paradox! It’s a reality of our physical world.”
You sit down because you’ve made yourself dizzy. It’s hard to imagine a world in which there could be more than one possible outcome to a story. Maybe in a novelty book or eBook, but not in real life! There’s something disquieting about knowing that dead you is having a whole bunch of amazing experiences without you.
“This is scary and confusing and I don’t like it!” you shout to the room, but neither dead you nor alive you seem very interested. This is no way to live/be dead!
You decide you can’t tolerate it any longer. The bottle of poison is still there, so you can take action and have a possibly more deadly, but less confusing, hour. Or you can try to vomit the poison you drank and live again, even though you don’t know when you’ll have another opportunity to say you were like a cat. But one thing is clear: you must decide.
To be dead, tap here.
To be alive, tap here.
You’re going to fight him. You kiss your knuckles again and hope for the best.
“Are you French kissing your knuckles?” Masterson asks. But you aren’t polite enough to answer. You clock him right in the face.
“This is disgusting,” he says. “Your knuckles are covered in saliva.”
But his disgust doesn’t last long. He engages you in physical combat, and you realize why you’ve avoided physical combat for most of your life. It turns out that it’s painful and requires coordination. If it involved counting, you’d really be in trouble.
Masterson also turns out to be quicker than he looks. His lab coat swoops and swishes around his agile body, and you wish that you could stop the fight to ask a couple of questions about his lab coat tailor. But Masterson is not so merciful.
With a jump in the air, he roundhouse kicks you off the roof. At first, you think you could survive, since you’re only about 50 floors up. But it tu
rns out that 50 is a lot of floors.
You die on impact. The lab mortician says that your face looked like a particularly dumb slice of pizza.
THE END
You kiss your knuckles once more. Today is not the day to fight. Masterson stares at you skeptically.
“Why did you just put your fist in your mouth?”
“Mmmph aoisdjf aosiej mmmph.”
“Take your fist out.”
“I’ll work with you this time,” you say, holding your dripping hand out for a handshake. “But I want my sponge.”
Masterson turns away and pulls out some blueprints.
“This is the Mars landing set. I hate to say it, but I was complicit with the whole ordeal.”
“What? You mean you knew somebody was making blue paper? And you did nothing to stop it?”
“No, with the faked Mars landing, moron.”
“There’s no reason to call the Mars landing a moron.”
“I was calling you...never mind.” He points to a drawing on the blue paper. “You see, the film set was built here. They modeled it on the set for the moon landing.”
“The moon landing was faked?”
“No, but they had a set just in case it didn’t work. So they reused the plans to fake the Mars landing.”
“Moaisdjfoi oijma?”
“Take your fist out of your mouth.”
“But why did they fake it?” you repeat.
He smiles at you, chocolate smeared across his teeth.
“The baking soda, you fool. They went over budget with the baking soda contract, so they got a grant to build a lander. The easiest way to save money on a Mars landing is to fake it, and they used the surplus to buy more baking soda.”
“But why do they need so much baking soda?”
“Where do you think volcanoes come from? Our lab is the leading manufacturer. It cost billions in baking soda and vinegar to create the world’s volcanic activity. Our lab makes them and reaps the profits, but sometimes, the lab under-budgets.”
“We make the volcanoes here?”
“Exactly.” He sighs. “I’m exhausted. Do you want some candy?”
You watch as he eats a couple of chocolate bars simultaneously. He’s provided a lot of exposition, but all you care about is your sponge. The best way to get it is to follow him.
The rest of his motives may be unclear—you don’t understand why he cares that some massive scientific achievement was a complete and total fraud, since it doesn’t have anything to do with candy. But you can’t deal with such trivial questions—you have to act, and maybe even lead.
Looking at the blueprints, you decide to either suggest a spy-like assault on the studio or a big explosion. Masterson is waiting.
To recommend a covert operation, tap here.
To recommend an explosion, tap here.
You have to find this black hole, because it sounds more interesting than sitting around!
You leave the room and enter the long and sprawling hallway. Too late, you realize this will test the counting skills you don’t really have, but you press on regardless. Though you aren’t familiar with the science of black holes, you and Beatram have watched a lot of movies about them, and you know that they’re exciting.
Finally, you reach room 202. The door is open. You consider turning back—but it’s not an option anymore. Without notice, you find yourself tugged into the hole and you’re pulled in. You grab the doorknob and your body is pulled completely horizontally, flying through the air. You aren’t strong enough to resist the black hole’s tug.
Beakers are sucked inside the black hole, beautiful beakers that you could clean in any galaxy. What wonders lie inside!
It pulls you from the door and into a void. You are sucked inside instantly, and you feel as if you’re moving slowly and quickly at the same time, like you’re ascending a roller coaster’s first hill. What will happen next? Do you have time for a nap?
Inside the black hole, you can make out two clear paths. One is a dull grey blob, while the other is a fantastically dull off-white blob. You realize it’s not a black hole alone, it’s a wormhole, too (you saw that in another movie). And only you can decide which neutral color to reach for.
To reach to the grey, tap here.
To reach to the off-white, tap here.
Right away, you decide it’s a good idea to climb in the air ducts. You’ve seen a lot of movies about air ducts and the people who climb in them, and one thing is clear: nothing could go wrong.
Air ducts: fun to look at and great for transportation too!
You try to hoist yourself up using a combination of pulleys, levers, and wedges, but when none of those work, you grab the ladder next to the duct. It smells like asbestos inside, and it reminds you of your childhood spent sniffing ventilation.
Your legs and knees clang on the metal ducts. It’s scary up here, but strangely exciting, too. You aren’t sure how you’ll find room 202, but it seems logical that the ducts will be labeled for your convenience.
It turns out they aren’t. But that doesn’t matter, because you fall through one of the ducts (just like in the movies). Fortunately, a pack of poodles cushion your fall.
They bark and whimper, but you stay for a while because they’re so soft. You’re in some sort of genetic engineering lab, apparently, so you try to improvise a poodle ladder to get back into the ducts. Sadly, they don’t make poodles like they used to.
You have to form a new plan, and you don’t have much time, because you hear footsteps from down the hall. You’ll have to say something when the scientist comes in.
To throw a poodle at the scientist, tap here.
To tell a carefully concocted lie, tap here.
You embrace the opportunity to teach Cacao about Facebook, since you think it’s important she experience life with other gorillas that she vaguely knows and who have moronic political opinions. She takes your hand willingly as you go to the laptop.
“See this?” you ask in your gentlest voice. “This is where you’ll talk about yourself and pretend that other people care.”
Cacao is quick to type in response.
“Cacao prefers to blog about big ideas, like trade agreements and the nature of the soul. Cacao blogs. Cacao tackles the intersection of commerce and our changing view of animals.”
“Wow,” you say. “That’s great, but we’re really looking for something more fun. Like, you could take a quiz and maybe share what kind of animal you’d be.”
She types.
“Cacao would be gorilla. You see, Cacao believes the internet is a place for Cacao to transcend identity in favor of a world of ideas, where rather than be judged by the particulars of one’s life, one can be judged on the validity of one’s thoughts.”
You start to laugh—this gorilla really is stuck in the past!
You guide Cacao through making a Facebook account and establish her as friends with yourself and many of the scientists in the lab. Quickly, you get her looking at pictures of a physicist’s niece’s boyfriend. Cacao types in response.
“Why would Cacao care about these people’s recent trip to Vancouver?”
“Just look.”
As your science takes hold over the intellectually stunted gorilla, you realize what a good teacher you are. Cacao finds herself intrigued by the relationship statuses of friends of friends, and what political opinions she shares are more strident and have more exclamation points.
“You’re flourishing!” you shout to the great ape. “Now we just have to get you enough likes.”
“Cacao need likes,” she writes, her teeth bared. “Cacao will take revenge if Cacao doesn’t get the likes she needs.”
Suddenly, you realize the dynamic has changed. If you don’t suggest the right topic, Cacao may take it out on you. It has to be perfect.
To have Cacao post a picture of herself petting a cute dog, tap here.
To have Cacao post a funny joke, tap here.
YouTube is the perfect plac
e for Cacao to shine, so you take her to a nearby film studio! It’s set up with some sort of alien planet backdrop, but you push all that aside and find a green screen.
“Here you go, Cacao. Now we just need you to be a big hit instantly, or otherwise you’ll disappoint us all.”
The mighty ape doesn’t understand, so you give her a laptop so she can type her questions.
“Will Cacao be discussing issues of religious or secular import? Should my videos address political conditions, or is it better to focus on the arts?”
Cacao is a bit annoying, you decide, so you try to speak very clearly in terms the beast can understand.
“All that stuff you’re talking about is boring. So don’t do that. Here’s what you can do that will make it big—be funny and do something stupid, or do a cool video blog.”
Cacao types quite quickly, you must admit.
“So Cacao should try to have more populist message in hopes of attracting large audience that can enact change?”
“Uh, I’ve seen a lot of videos where people ask for subscribers at the end. So do that.”
With this attitude, it’s hard to imagine Cacao becoming spokes-ape for a major brand.
You set up the camera and start filming, but Cacao doesn’t do anything except type some long philosophical essay. You have to be strict with her because she’s just an animal and doesn’t understand how to be cool and interesting like you.
“It’s simple, Cacao, you need to fall and slip on something or do a cool snarky speech about how annoying parents are.”
She thinks about it and types.
“Cacao trusts your viewpoint in this case. Cacao will develop as you choose.”
It’s great—but now you have to direct her to viral video stardom.
