Remember This by Ren Willi (best book club books for discussion txt) 📕

I woke up with the sour taste of lemon in my mouth. As my eyes adjusted to the bright light I realized something: I don’t where I am. And then I realized something else: I don’t who I am. I sat up to see I was in an unrecognizable, unfurnished room that was completely white. I looked down to see that I was either a woman or a boy with major hormonal issues. There was not a mirror but my hair was long enough that I could see it was brown. Yet, none of this helped me figure out who I was, not even the earpiece I took out my ear or the number 57 that was stitched onto my shirt.
Eventually I got up and started looking for a way out, but it seemed as if I was trapped in a white box. There was no door or vents, the wall, floor and ceiling were completely smooth, sealed off without a crack. It was as if someone built a room around me. I began to pace, panicked and afraid. I was about to yell for help when the voice of a man said, from out of nowhere:
“Subject 57; please put your Bluetooth back into your ear. I repeat Subject 57; please put your Bluetooth back into your ear. Thank you.”
I picked up the earpiece I had carelessly tossed aside and popped it back in my ear.
“Hello?” I warily said.
“Hello!” An enthusiastic, male voice said back. “Now that’s better isn’t it? I can hear you, you can hear me, I can see you, you…well, and you can’t see me actually. It’s great.” I noted a British accent which seemed unusual because from what I could tell about myself, which wasn’t much, I was American.
“Where am I? And who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Doctor Watts and this is The Facility,” he answered, mocking a mysterious voice.
“Facility? What kind of facility?”
“It’s not exactly a type of facility, it’s just…The Facility,” he said again.
“Well, where is The Facility located? In Great Britain?”
“No no no…no. I’m from Great Britain but The Facility is somewhere in the United States Of America.”
“Where?” I asked
“I’m not at liberty to say, but what I can tell you is that there are a lot of bees that I am allergic to.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “Well, I can’t really remember anything, not even my name. Are you at liberty to tell me that?”
“Nope.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, they say memory affect the test. You’ll get it back when you finish the test.” He explained.
“What test?”
“Test #32: Escaping the Facility.”
“Did you just say escaping the facility?” I asked, befuddled. “As in leaving?”
“Yeah, except leaving is a bit more easier and simple than escaping.”
“Why did you bring me here if you just want me to escape?”
“It’s just something we do to test our security.”
“Well what if you have terrific security and I can’t escape? Will you let me go then?”
“Uh, no actually, you just keep trying to escape until you eventually escape.” He awkwardly murmured.
“So if I never escape I just die here?” I exclaimed.
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.” He said.
“That’s because it is a bad thing!” I shouted as loud as I could, hoping he was wearing a headset so it could hurt his ears.
“Just relax. Your profile says you have a high IQ and we only erase personal memories, not intelligence.”
“Fine.” I sighed. “When does the test start?”
“It started when you woke up.”
“You’re kidding,” I looked around at the empty room. “But there’s no way out.”
“Of course there is. How do think we got you in there, teleportation?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“We’re actually still working on that one. For some reason people’s skeletons don’t go with them, it’s just a pile of skin, muscle and fat.”
I ignored him and began searching for a way out, but like I thought before, there was no way in or out. So I began pacing again, my mind so focused on figuring out how to escape that I was unconsciously aware of the floor underneath me as I walked. The entire floor made the same deep thump sound when my white slipper covered feet stepped on them, except for one part that made a lighter thump sound than the other. I didn’t even realize this until a few laps around the room, and then I was pressing the side of my face against the floor, knocking my fist against it and looking for a crack so that maybe I could pry open the floor with.
Eventually I did find that crack that formed a square near one of the walls, but it was so thin that I couldn’t even fit a fingernail in it. So I tried a different tactic: jumping. After about ten minutes of jumping up and down the floor began to crack. With one final, hard jump the floor collapsed under me and I fell… 7 inches.
“Make floors a lot thicker,” Doctor Watts said slowly.
“It’s the vents,” I said, mostly to myself, when I saw what was under the floor. “I can probably crawl to the exit or near it at least.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“I’m escaping a place called The Facility. That sentence itself sounds dangerous,” I said as I crawled into the vent. It wasn’t too tight of a fit, so I was able to crawl on my hands and knees. “You should also make these vents smaller; you could fit a German Shepard in here.” I crawled straight for a while, listening to Dr. Watts talk about apples before I came to a part of the vent where I could see into a room, a large white room that had four people surrounding a table where only the legs of a human being were visible. It looked like some sort of surgery. And then someone said,
“Removing the human brain.” One of the people moved back, holding a pinkish, slimy brain in his gloved hands and placing it in a container. “Beginning reconstruction of skull for squid’s brain.”
I involuntarily gasped when I heard this, which the doctors heard because one said. “What was that?” I quietly and quickly crawled forward and waited until I was far enough that they didn’t hear me.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered.
“Hear what?”
“Those doctors. They’re putting a squid’s brain in a human’s body.”
“Oh yeah, brain transfusion is a common practice here. They’re always putting something’s organs in someone else’s body,” Dr. Watts said, nonchalant.
“Where do you find these people?” I asked astonished.
“On the streets. Usually homeless people or orphans. You know the ones that aren’t missed.”
“That’s awful!” I said a bit too loudly, and winced in fear that someone might have heard.
“That’s not awful, it’s science. People don’t want us to use animals so we use humans.”
“But these people have families; they have people who need them.”
“Well they never come looking them,” He said curtly.
“Did anyone ever come looking for me?” I asked. He didn’t answer.
I crawled the rest of the way in silence, seeing things I never thought could exist, and should never exist. There was a man whose eyes were replaced with fly eyes, a girl with shark teeth, and a woman who could only drink pig’s blood. It was like the Nazi Germany science experiments modernized.
After about two hours of crawling I found the key to my escape. There was a room with two doors that both had a red EXIT sign over them. A woman came in the room and went through the right door. Sunlight poured into the room and painted it light yellow, but as soon as it was there it was gone as the woman left and the door closed. And then the lights turned off and back on, with no change to the room. I decided to unscrew the vent opening, having to use my teeth since my hands weren't strong enoguh. I had gotten the first two off when a man in handcuffs barged in the room and walked up to the two doors. He looked at each one, trying to decide which one was the exit, and picked the one the woman went through. He opened the door and was immediately shot with a needle which made him pass out. He was then dragged by a man with in black suit into a room. When the door closed the lights went off, then back on, like the last time.
“What just happened?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“It’s our new security system,” Dr. Watts said proudly. “isn’t it cool?”
“How…what? How did the door change?”
“They’re not doors; they’re portals to different places. One leads to the outside of The Facility and the other is to a room full of security guards.”
“But how did the woman know which door was which?”
“All personal gets special glasses that tell which is the right portal. In case someone sees which door they picked the lights go out and the portals change. The one that leads to the outside has a green EXIT sign, not a red one.”
“So how am I supposed to know which one is which?”
“You’re not,” He said simply.
“Fine,” I muttered. I took the earpiece out of my ear and tossed it farther into the vent and then took out the last two screws. I squeezed through the vent opening, stood next to the door where the hinges were and planned to wait until someone came in with the glasses, when Dr. Watts’ said:
“Attention: Subject 57 is in the exit room. Subject 57 is in the exit room.” Red lights started blinking on and off. And then came the guns. I don’t know who I am, but I know I hate guns.
Two men in suits and glasses stood in front of me with guns pointed at my face, yelling words I couldn’t comprehend. Then everything went black.
Next thing I knew I was standing with a gun in my hands and the two men were on the floor, unconscious…or dead. I didn’t stop to wonder what just happened, because time was running out and I knew now was my chance. I grabbed a pair of glasses from one of the men, looked up at the two signs to see the green one above the left portal, and ran out the door. I winced when the sunlight touched my eyes, and then I saw the gate.
I ran as fast as I could, the gun clutched in my hand and the crisp air hitting my face. Even when the sharp pricks of the needles were being shot into my back hit me I did not stop. I reached the gate, climbed, jumped over the top and then…
I was surrounded by white. I was lying face down on the ground. When I looked I saw two standing figures; a tall blonde haired man, and a short, brunette woman. Both were dressed in white, the man in a white lab coat and the woman in a white dress.
I began to stand but failed, falling on the floor felling nauseous. They room was fading from black to white. Then I felt a prick and I was wide awake again, sitting up in a chair with the man and woman in front of me.
“There, that’s better,” The man said, and I knew who it was immediately. Dr. Watts was standing in front of me with a huge, white tooth smile. “That was a bit intense, eh? Guns, hitting people, running and jumping and-“
“We