Archive of Our Own

     This was Stanley’s sixtieth consecutive run in the Mind Control Room, and he was determined to make progress.

     His first time through, he’d played right into The Narrator’s hands. It was also the first ending he’d experienced, and as such, Stanley hadn’t yet developed a grasp on the logic of the place. He’d plodded along The Narrator’s story, a small smile on his face, full of curiosity and good will. There was something likable in The Narrator’s tone, an earnestness to his showmanship, and Stanley was nothing if not an interested audience. It was a touch rude of The Narrator to simplify Stanley’s life’s work to “pushing buttons when told,” but Stanley was willing to wait to see the end of the story before he made up his own mind about what the message was. And when Stanley tarried too long in any one place, he could hear impatience creep into The Narrator’s tone. The fellow seemed to have genuine investment in this simple tale. And as the audience, Stanley had the power to gratify him. Breaking something was much easier to do than to build, so Stanley played along, imagining each step forward as another brick, building up the story.

     The mind-control twist was more than a little silly, and it stuck like a splinter. Stanley had a manipulative streak of his own, and hated how simply the whole thing was portrayed. As though a simple set of flashing lights could make a person do anything they didn’t want to. Having control over someone was complex, it required navigating a system. Seeking out the boundaries and mechanics, and then repurposing them for one’s own benefit. It was all very well and good to call him a drone for pressing buttons, but Stanley had his own reasons for doing his job. Obedience with watchful eyes left him in a position to learn, all while giving nothing away. Not a glimpse at his own systems or mechanics.

     And so, when faced with the decision to shut the whole thing down or take control of it, it was with a casual smugness that Stanley swatted the ON button. He expected the button not to work, and that the story would soon resume afterward. Stanley was already smirking. He anticipated the hitch in The Narrator’s tone, a scrambling and shuffling of notes or keyboard clicks, some kind of adjustment as The Narrator set things back on the proper path. A minor detour on the way to whatever ending The Narrator had written, with just a small flex of Stanley’s own agency, to keep the fellow on his proverbial toes.

     What Stanley had not expected, however, was an elegant parry. A challenge. A deadly countdown and a room full of controls, Stanley’s own life on the line. He rolled up his sleeves, and dove in with gusto. A gusto which The Narrator himself seemed to share. There was a touch more to this game than trite metaphor, Stanley would have to give him that. Now, if only he could stop, take a breath, and find the boundaries and mechanics behind these controls.

     Stanley’s carefully measured logic devolved into sheer terror as no solution presented itself, and the timer marched toward zero. There was always a logic to these sorts of things. And not just to the puzzle, but to the narrative arc. Stanley had abandoned the trite, simple tale, and now he had a final challenge to overcome. He just needed to make it through, right? But The Narrator’s monologuing took a darker turn, claiming to have run the story before, to have the ability to destroy the rest of the building, to have erased his coworkers from existence. Stanley tried to block out the words and simply focus on his work, but it was like The Narrator was reaching into his head and snatching out his thoughts, reading them aloud. Mocking him. Openly, lasciviously gloating. Getting the same kicks out of subverting Stanley’s expectations as Stanley had anticipated when he’d pushed the ON button. Stanley took another shuddering breath and focused on the controls. There had to be a reason for all of this. If he was meant to be the hero, then he had to have a purpose, which included overcoming this challenge. It couldn’t all be an exercise in futility.

     Which was when The Narrator started laughing.

     “This isn’t a challenge, this is a tragedy.”

     When the explosion went off, it hurt just for a moment, the searing hot-cold of the flames rendering him down to nothing.

     Everything went fuzzy, and Stanley had an innate sensation of loss. Like the opposite of eating when hungry, or of the moment when, having a word on the tip of one’s tongue, they give up, and succumb to the frustration of never quite knowing what they’d wanted to say.

     And then he awoke again, at his desk.

     His body had been perfectly calm, but his pulse exploded into a rapid flurry. He combed a hand through his hair, and noticed that his sleeves were rolled back down.

     And outside his cubicle, the hallway was staring back at him. Desolate.

     He closed the door to his office. He needed time to regroup, to think and-

     The Narrator adopted a disaffected, mock-maudlin tone. “But Stanley couldn’t handle the pressure.”

     Stanley rushed back to the door, but now it was locked tight. He was subjected to another swath of indignity from The Narrator, before that strange feeling overtook him once more. He’d been pounding on the locked door, but found himself once more seated, staring at his computer.

     Stanley ground his teeth together.

     What followed was nothing less than all-out war. Comfortable places to rest were few and far between. His office was an absolute non-starter. Or rather, it was an “only start”-er. Any attempts to even pretend he had the agency to not play were punished with an instant restart.

     There was of course the break room, but resting there would inevitably spark impatient comments. Jumping out the window could get the otherwise antsy voice to shut up for a while, but if he played his cards wrong, it would earn Stanley The Narrator’s most earnest attempts to annoy him. Also, the out-of-bounds were a migraine-inducing field of white.

     Heading downstairs, Stanley could sometimes manage to pry open the car in the parking garage. But he had to play it just right: too early, and The Narrator’s monologue had left him too lucid for sleep. Too late, and he’d have reached the panic attack portion of the monologue. That was one of the worse endings, a direct punishment for even attempting to make any kind of sense of what was going on. This world existed in gesture and metaphor. Try to be too literal, try to game the system too much? It could all misfire horribly. There was a right and wrong sort of logic for interacting. Be a little clever, but not too clever. 

     Never too clever.

     Stanley had attempted to be much too clever of late. This was his sixtieth run in a row trying to gather any information whatsoever from the base of operations in the mind control room. He knew that the puzzle wasn’t something that The Narrator intended on him being able to solve. But The Narrator had not crafted this world quite as diligently as he liked to believe, and it was quite possible that there was a glitch somewhere in here. And even if there wasn’t, perhaps there was something to the layout of the buttons, some clue to The Narrator’s ethos that Stanley hadn’t seen.

     But Stanley’s energy was starting to flag. With a minute and a half left, he sat down on the floor, and tried to cover his ears. Maybe he could just rest his eyes for a short while-

     “Stanley was quite possibly unaware that he’d miscounted, and had in fact done this well over a hundred times in a row. Repeated behavior is often categorized as insanity, but it could also be that Stanley simply missed his buttons. Here, how about…” 

     The floor began to rumble, and several more stations emerged from the ground and the walls, adding to the cacophony of lights. Around the room, the displays on all the monitors blinked out, and new displays shone. Screens which had begged for access codes now had batteries to fill. Screens bearing gibberish now requested the simple input of clearly marked buttons next to them. With the clock still ticking down, Stanley rushed to complete a required input. The console sparked, and died before his eyes.

     “There. Press away, Stanley! I can’t have you running out of permutations, now can I? And who knows! Maybe you’ve unlocked the remarkably specific requirements for a new ending. Or perhaps a new area?” An unflattering, venomous giggle, then, “It is of critical importance that you don’t, under any circumstances, assume that this is unwinnable, and give up. It would rob this lesson of its bite, Stanley. And every time you make a poor choice, you’ve done nothing but demonstrate that you need a good, firm lesson.”

     Stanley’s fingers slipped off another useless button, and he covered his mouth. He couldn’t give this creature the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

     “Creature?! Now that’s just rude-”

     The countdown hit zero. As everything burned away, the roar of the explosives was more than loud enough to cover Stanley’s howls of rage and futility.

     A sensation of loss overtook him, as though he’d just realized he’d been off by a row while filling in all the answers on a form.

     He gave a snort of derision, and got out of his chair.

     All of his coworkers were gone.

     He made his way to the two doors, but couldn’t bring himself to head back toward the control room. Maybe what he needed was a rest on the couch.

     But even passing through the lounge, he felt the lights flickering at him, the scattered papers everywhere. If he tried to sit down here, it would be a fitful, uncomfortable sleep at best.

     He kept walking. He’d taken the wrong route to jimmy open the car. As he approached the cargo lift, he stared down the long drop to the ground. He could just hard reset. Get there a lot faster.

     “Stanley, you aren’t still upset about the control room, are you? I’ve learned that it isn’t productive to hold grudges.”

     Stanley hopped onto the lift. He’d settled on the false apartment. There was a bed in there, if he could just get the movement right, perhaps he could glitch back there for some shuteye. Perhaps even pretend that the mannequin in there was someone meaningful, living her own life alongside Stanley in their home-

     “Ooooof, Stanley.” The Narrator sucked in a breath. “That’s rather depressing, don’t you think? If you needed company, I could always round up another rousing lecture on the narrative weight of collision mechanics.”

     Something kicked behind his rib cage, and Stanley took an early leap from the lift. The Narrator couldn’t hold back a gasp, but Stanley landed on a catwalk instead.

     “You know that you’re not supposed to be over there, Stanley. You’re not even supposed to be able to get over there. Isn’t it enough to ruin the choices I give you? Do you need to find new options to ruin?”

     Stanley flashed a smile in no direction in particular, leaving The Narrator to grumble. He made his way down to the second set of doors, and waited for The Narrator to open them.

     “All right now, Stanley. I’m going to make this nice and easy for you. Choose the red door.”

     Stanley raised his eyebrows, a malicious grin widening.

     He stepped through the red door.

     “Good, good…” The Narrator stretched out the syllables, savoring the moment. “We’ll have you back on track soon enough. Now, where were we, again?”

     Stanley gestured to the nearest door, then down the hallway. In all the permutations he’d ran, this was the purest choice he’d found. He waited for The Narrator to realize where they were.

     If The Narrator had a human throat, then the bile was surely rising in it now. “Oh, no.”

     The Narrator began to sputter, and the heady sensation of control pumped in Stanley’s veins.

     With a prim turn on his heel, Stanley spun to the right and continued down the hallway.

     “Stanley-” the word came out hoarse- “let’s slow down, and think about this! You came down here for a break, didn’t you?”

     The Narrator was an absolute control freak, and out of any way Stanley could play the game, he’d had learned that The Narrator would only accept two specific scenarios. Either Stanley followed the story to the letter, or he took this near door. The one he’d just passed. 

     “And this is not the sort of break you had in mind, it couldn’t have been!”

     Stanley reached the end of the hallway, greeted with several flights of stairs. He cracked his knuckles, then his neck.

     “Stanley, I’ll make the soda machine in the break room operational! Wouldn’t you like that? Nothing that breaks copyright, of course, but think of the delicious choice you would have every time you passed the machine! I’ve never met anyone who could refuse the crisp, refreshing taste of-”

     Stanley took the stairs two at a time. There was no way back to the office from here. This ending was tricky, but Stanley was riding high on the power he currently held. The Narrator always cracked here. Stanley was still trying to figure out exactly what it was that broke the fellow. His own deaths were cheap, and The Narrator was more than happy to blow him up or to make a snide quip when Stanley took other falls.

     His best guess was that it was what this location represented. So close to that other door. At the threshold of something like victory. In other scenarios, The Narrator could fool himself into misreading Stanley’s motivations. But right here, this act couldn’t be interpreted as anything but a rejection of the entire setting. Of The Narrator himself. An act of violent hatred that would wash the taste of those repeated failures right out of Stanley’s mouth.

     These stairs didn’t reach as high as the lift did, so when he dropped, death wouldn’t be instantaneous. It usually took three or four falls-

     The Narrator’s voice jumped an octave. “Truce, Stanley, I want to call a truce!”

     At the top stair, Stanley’s foot faltered. He stood like that, nothing but air below the sole of his shoe.

     This was new. Could he mean it?

     “Yes,” The Narrator gasped, “please just step down.”

     Stanley sneered. Bad phrasing.

     The Narrator would never do anything as classless as swear, but the series of sounds he let out as Stanley fell communicated his sentiment in a sort of universal language.

     Stanley couldn’t tell what portion of his body hit the ground first. He figured it was another bit of specificity that didn’t matter around here. No blood, either, never any gore. All that mattered was that he heard something snap, and afterward, making it to his feet was hard. 

     “Truce…” The Narrator murmured. His throat creaked, as if he had failed to hold back tears. 

     Stanley limped toward the stairs.

     “Stanley? I…I give. Is that what you want to hear?”

     Stanley leaned on the railing, and gave The Narrator a minute to sweat.

     Ever full of surprises, the next sound from him was a quiet, bitter laugh. “Trust me, the context was not lost on me. Once you’re done here, are you planning to repeat this sixty more times? Will that balance the scales in your head, Stanley?”

     One hundred times, actually. That was what The Narrator had claimed, anyway. Stanley huffed and took a step. The pain wasn’t in his legs, which meant he wouldn’t have to slow down. He didn’t want to drag it out too much early on, that would just make it harder to take those final leaps.

     “Stanley, I said that I give! No more tricks, no more commentary. If you want to be left alone to rest, then please, I have run the white flag up the pole! Envision me, shaking it with vigour. If you want to continue, I cannot stop you-” his voice broke again, “but I implore you to rest first. For your own sake!”

     Stanley stumbled on the second step, leaning his weight on the railing again. He’d been tired when he came in, and that fall had robbed him of much more energy than he’d expected. He wasn’t sure that his body would be able to handle the third crawl back up.

     The Narrator drew in a quick, hopeful breath, but just as promptly, quieted himself.

     Stanley groaned, and shuffled back down both steps, heading toward the other room.

     “Oh thank you, Stanley,” The Narrator gushed, “you won’t regret this! Here, allow me to set it up for you!”

     The other room was a platform engulfed in darkness. The Narrator was good on his word, and began a program of swirling, colored balls of light. They glowed softly about Stanley, with all the charm of an old screensaver. It was another sign of the limit of The Narrator’s creative abilities, that he thought this would be worth more than a passing glance in Stanley’s eyes. But the lights were dim, and an ambient chord did indeed give it a comforting sort of vibe. It was hard to think of a better place to sleep, be it in here, or anywhere else in the world. He sat down on the platform. It would be unlike The Narrator to spawn in any unnecessary cushions or comforts, but the ground was much softer than expected. Stanley could rest his bones. And the minute he was done, the staircase was waiting.

     The Narrator sighed. “Always so dramatic, Stanley. And if you wanted to kill yourself, you should have just done it off the lift. Much faster, that way.”

     This was typical. The second things were looking up for The Narrator, any glimpses of weakness were covered up with more terse humor. 

     Still, his argument didn’t have a leg to stand on. Dying there wouldn’t have resulted in anything more than an eye roll from The Narrator. Stanley’s face was self-satisfied, venomous. Flinging himself off the staircase over here always got the desired effect. It was one of The Narrator’s own lessons: Accomplishment meant nothing without effort.

     “There’s something deeply wrong with you,” The Narrator growled, “when I simply have your best interests at heart. Have you decided that that’s all this room represents now? Is it just one long tease before your ultimate act of agency?”

     Stanley wondered which, exactly, The Narrator meant. The self-destruction, or the disregard of The Narrator’s feelings.

     “Ohhhh, guess.”

     Stanley chuckled and leaned back, hands folded behind his head. If it got such a rise out of the fellow, Stanley would have fed himself limb by limb to a crocodile. And since he always came back, self-destruction had deflated harshly in value. Nothing broke the cycle, least of all death. If escape had been Stanley’s goal, he’d likely have snapped into a gibbering mess hundreds of runs ago. But there was more than enough satisfaction in what he had here. Staunchly continuing to eke out slivers of agency, defining his selfhood in opposition to The Narrator.

     It wasn’t a bad way to live.

     The Narrator sighed, like steam escaping a tank. “You know, Stanley, that would really be a terrible reflection on you, but I admit that I like how central to your existence you’ve made me.” His dour tone took a lighter turn. “If you’re defining yourself by being what I don’t want you to be, that gives me…quite a lot of control over you, don’t you think?”

     Stanley’s eyes shot open. He stood up. He’d had enough time in this room, things always tended to go a little funny when he was in here for too long.

     The Narrator cried out…in joy? There was something at play there, not very deep under his words. “Oh, yes, Stanley! Rush off and mangle yourself just to spite me! You see, I’ve really been looking at it all wrong. If you’re willing to put yourself through all that on my account, then your fixation with my opinion is well past obsessive.”

     That gave Stanley pause. Was this reverse psychology? He found it hard to believe that The Narrator’s mind had changed so quickly.

     “Only one way to find out, isn’t there? And you quite like to test and see what’s changed, don’t you? Yes, up and at ‘em, Stanley! Will this put another win in your column, or will you have lost your most surefire means of rebellion? Oooh, I can barely wait to see!”

     Stanley gave a long, exhausted sigh, and flopped back down on the ground. He didn’t have the energy for this.

     “Oh no,” The Narrator continued, his tone of mock-pity now fooling absolutely nobody, “has our valiant hero given up so soon? The choice to give up is itself a choice, Stanley.”

     Stanley closed his eyes, and refused to let The Narrator spin this as a defeat. After all, there was only one way that this could continue. He’d be back up those stairs at some point.

     The Narrator exhaled, sounding satisfied, as though he were also settling in, getting comfortable. Stanley could never tell if it was a human body leaning back into a chair, or some other entity, spreading out and relaxing in dimensions Stanley might not be capable of understanding. But sussing out the reality of The Narrator’s form was another thing that didn’t suit the internal logic of this place, so he was more than happy to leave it alone.

     “Good call, Stanley. And I can’t say that I blame you, needing a break from it all. You’ve been putting in the legwork, I’ll give you that. But beyond that, I’m less than impressed. I try to make things nice and simple for you, but you put so much effort into making it as complicated as can be. Even your thoughts are a twisted Gordian knot at this point. Living with such high stress levels is terrible for your health, Stanley.”

     Stanley gave a small shrug. He’d stop when The Narrator did. And how was that looking? Was The Narrator going to relent any time soon?

     “Ohhhhh, no, you’ll see that my patience will vastly outweigh yours, Stanley. In the end, you’ll see reason.” The Narrator yawned, which was new. Stanley hadn’t thought that The Narrator ever did sleep.

     Stanley didn’t need to sleep, either. Or eat, or, much of anything, really. But his mind felt haggard. Occasional bouts of zoning out might not have left him fully refreshed, but he supposed he could make a healthy choice every so often.

     “I’m happy to hear that, Stanley.” Stanley could hear a fond smile in The Narrator’s tone. “This whole thing isn’t intended to be a dungeon. I’m not looking to torture you, Stanley, that would made for very poor entertainment if I did. If…” The Narrator paused for a moment, swallowed back his dread, and pushed forward, “If I may be absolutely honest? I was simply hoping that you would listen to me for a while.”

     Stanley lifted up his head just enough to give a tiny wave with his hand. He wasn’t going anywhere. If The Narrator wanted to monologue for a little bit, there was no harm in that. So long as he kept it civil. 

     “Excellent!” And when Stanley flinched at the loud interjection, The Narrator hushed. “Whoops, sorry. I meant,” and he continued much more quietly: “excellent?”

     There was a craving for approval in that question mark, and it was better than a pillow or a blanket. Stanley smiled his approval, and let the tension ebb out of his shoulders.

     Monologue away, disembodied nemesis.

     When The Narrator continued, his tone remained quiet. “You’re really starting to get it now, Stanley. We’ve had our squabbles, but I do always take it as a sign that you’re on the right path when you come to this room. I know that you’re trying to figure me out, but at the same time, I’ve been just as focused on you. There’s a reason you’re the only character I kept, in the entire office. One might’ve expected me to select your boss, or one of your managers. But I could tell that you were up for a challenge, Stanley. And I admit: I don’t know if any of this would have felt quite as satisfying without your enthusiastic brand of debugging.”

     The words tugged at the corner of Stanley’s mouth.

     “Hmmmm?” It was a tone of utter delight. “You do agree with me, don’t you? That there’s something satisfying in all of this?”

     There was no sense in trying to hide it. Even Sysiphus could be happy, if the boulder had the right heft. And if the hill was juuuuust frustrating enough to remain interesting.

     The next time The Narrator spoke, Stanley could hear genuine affection.

     “Well, you do keep things interesting for me. I like to think that I’m self-motivated enough to design my games forever, if need be. But it doesn’t ever truly feel real until I have an audience. And I knew from the very start that you, specifically, were the man for the job.”

     The Narrator continued. “I am tempted to just let you sleep- and I don’t have any caveats there, I mean genuine, REM sleep. But it’s an awful feeling, Stanley. For me, that is. The longer I’m alone, the less I seem to feel like myself. And when you dream, Stanley, you go to a place where I can’t follow. But I don’t mind it when you rest like this. So peaceful. Not trying to cover your ears, or to find the seams of my story. Simply listening, calm, and willing.”

     Stanley tried to nod in response, but he was much too relaxed. And The Narrator’s voice was easy on the ears, even when he wasn’t talking about anything in particular. He could just lay here for hours, taking it all in.

     “Yes.” The richness of that tone made Stanley’s fingers and toes tingle. “That’s the sort of critique we need more of in this day and age. That you could listen for hours, and hours. Very sensible. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll try to make some improvements, based on that idea. That’s how seriously I take you, Stanley. How much I hang on your every morsel of feedback. 

     “You see, I may have been going about this all wrong. Video games are such a young medium, aren’t they? Everyone wants them to be art. And while I’m certain that the whole ‘are they art or not’ argument is best left for back in the days before we met, I will say that making an entire game is much harder than composing one picture, or writing one story.”

     Stanley could kind of follow, and while he was sure he could nitpick that to death, the general statement was valid enough.

     “Good, good. You see, I’d been under the delusion that the logic of a video game would be the right medium for a narrative about choice. But the problem that we can’t seem to get past is that this medium allows you to make all kinds of incorrect choices. We can’t get anywhere with you making the wrong choices all over. But if we were to turn the dial back to the nacency of storytelling, then perhaps an older medium could impart the gravitas that my tale deserves.”

     Yes. That made sense.

     “So here’s what we’re going to do, Stanley. I’ll tell you my magnum opus in the way in which I now realize it was always meant to be delivered: oral tradition. And you can relax and take every ounce of my wisdom into you, accepting it with a respectful and deferential ear. You won’t need to bother with hurrying to and fro, or those obnoxious resets. Neither of us like those, we can agree on that. You’ll just listen while I work out the kinks in this tale, and once I’ve got it absolutely perfect, then you can relax even more, while you hear it over, and over and over. Yes, that sounds impeccable. Our future is very bright, Stanley. I’m certain that I can educate you on the importance of free will. All we need is to clear out all the bickering and distractions, so you won’t be tempted to do something off-script. If we can stay right here, nice and comfortable, there will be nothing between my words and your ear.”

     When The Narrator spoke, it was hard to tell where the sound was coming from. Now, more than usual, it sounded like it was inside Stanley’s head. And when his tone deepened, it felt like it was rumbling inside his bones.

     “Then you see my point, Stanley. It feels…” The Narrator settled into a rich, husky tone, reverberations flooding Stanley’s body- “ …good right now, doesn’t it? That’s due to the optimal conditions. If you were running about right now, you wouldn’t really be able to feel my words properly, would you? You needed the right circumstances before you could be receptive to me. I take full responsibility for that. Thank you for sharing your efforts with me. Now everything’s set. I’m so grateful that you accepted my truce.”

     Truce. Why did something sound wrong about that?

     “Shhhhhhhhh. Stanley, I’m upholding my part of the bargain just so that you can rest. You rest, and I get to talk. We keep things pleasant. Here, I’ll go first.”

     The Narrator’s tone grew still lower, more intimate. “There was a man named Stanley. And every day, he sat at his desk…”

     The room was vast and empty, just like the inside of Stanley’s head. And The Narrator’s words continued to fill him up. He sounded so happy, with the simple feat of reaching the end of his story.

     “…and Stanley was happy.”

     He was. He really, really was.

     The Narrator began again. “There was a man named Stanley. And every day…”

     Stanley didn’t worry about where The Narrator was, not anymore. He was inside Stanley, and everything was warm and soothing and

     “Stanley was happy.”

     The satisfaction that The Narrator felt, every time he reached those words, it was infectious. Who wouldn’t feel happy to hear words like that, delivered so well and so warm?

     He began again. And again. And Stanley was constantly on the edge of sleep but not quite, and he felt just the slightest anticipation build whenever those big doors opened and Stanley stepped out into the fresh air and Stanley

     “…was happy.”

     And it would have made him shiver with delight, but he was just too relaxed, and too warm.

     “Oh please, Stanley, don’t be shy.” There was a break in the delicious rhythm of the story, but The Narrator seemed so interested in whatever it was that Stanley had to offer, that Stanley nearly blinked in response.

     “I hate to break for anything at all, and I’ll get right back to the story, soon. And I promise that I won’t stop, I won’t ever get tired of this wonderful feeling.” Stanley wanted to sink into that happiness, and heard The Narrator smile in response. “Oh, yes. I promise . All I wanted was a willing, pliable audience. And underneath all the willfulness and rage, you have such a soft, obedient soul. It’s gotten you into trouble in the past, but now that you’re here with me, I’ll be happy to continue sharing my story with you.” A low chuckle. “It took some time to figure you out, as you see, Stanley, it’s not an easy thing to do. Your mind is a complex system, not unlike a game. It’s full of boundaries and mechanics all its own. But after playing with you long enough, I was able to learn your mechanics and break down your boundaries in search of my own goal.”

     That sounded familiar. In the midst of the hazy ambience of the room, the gentle lighting, the words filling him up and surrounding him, that last bit was something concrete. Clear.

     “Oh, we can’t have that, now can we? Stanley, relax and I’ll begin again.”

     The Narrator gave the wheel of his story a lazy pull, and it began to spin again. Stanley could lie here and listen, content, with no end in sight. His emotional investment was a gift, and he offered it to The Narrator freely and joyfully-

     Stanley stood up.

     The feeling returned to his body, a reminder that he had recently hurled himself two and a half stories down to the floor. He winced, but the pain was good. It would help him keep his head on straight.

     “What on earth are you thinking?” Fear crept into The Narrator’s tone. He’d tasted a new kind of victory, something deeply rooted and intimate, and it was slipping through his proverbial fingers. “Pain isn’t a good thing, Stanley. Its whole job is to let you know that, you know, something bad has happened to you?!”

     Stanley gave his head a shake, and flexed his hands. Both actions made him ache, but they were his. So long as he could choose to move a single pinky, Stanley could think.

     With renewed vigor, Stanley made for the exit. He felt shockingly well-rested, a thought that made his blood run cold. How long had he been in here?

     “Why does that matter, Stanley? It’s not as though you’re on a schedule! We have forever, you were barely in there a month! You could spare a measly trillion years or so off your feet! Come on, we had a truce, remember?”

     Stanley broke into a sprint, rounding the corner, and rushing up the stairs. The Narrator resumed his blubbering pleas, but Stanley tuned them out, deriving neither pity nor pleasure from them.

     Some truce. Had The Narrator planned it from the beginning, or had he merely seized upon the opportunity when it presented itself? Were these sobs real or fake? Shame coiled in Stanley’s gut like a snake, shame that he’d felt a kinship, shared any ounce of softness with a voice that didn’t care a whit about who Stanley really was. All it wanted was to reduce him to a slack-jawed, eternal member of its audience.

     The Narrator’s voice turned ugly. “That’s right! I’ll tell you right now why I chose you, Stanley! It’s because you’re a mindless drone!”

     Stanley’s hand gripped the railing as he dragged himself up another flight of stairs.

     “You’re not special! And if it weren’t for me, you’d never have a chance to be special! Wasting your life away pushing buttons? At least if you’re pushing the ones I tell you to, then there’s a narrative to what you do! I decide your narrative, Stanley, not you! I’m the one who decides when your choices have meaning! And you know what I think? You’ve never made a bold choice in your life, and without me, you never will!”

     Stanley bounded off the top of the stair, and kept his eyes open as he fell.

     He was done messing about with his eyes closed.

     The Narrator gave a strangled cry as Stanley hit the concrete. He staggered to his feet, adrenaline fueling what base motor skills no longer could. However long enough he’d been in the other room, it wasn’t long enough to heal whatever had been broken.

     Good.

     He held his hands over his ears as he climbed the stairs, and hummed whatever song came into his head, as loudly as could be. The soothing sensation of The Narrator’s words was still tingling in his core, and Stanley wanted it out. Any lessons, any comfort, any trace of that voice squirming around inside him, hollowing him out and setting up shop- it all had to go, now. There was only room for Stanley inside Stanley.

     Woozy from the ascent, Stanley tripped at the top of the stairs, and when he fell, he was certain that his head must have hit first.

     He moaned from pain, and could barely roll over. Everything was spinning around him, and he wasn’t sure what was still working. Hands fumbled into place, and arms shook, unable to bear his own weight. He slipped, and his fourth fall was mere inches, not nearly enough to damage anything of consequence.

     “Good. Now, Stanley, I want you to stay down. This is far from optimal, but you’ve no one but yourself to blame.”

     There was a sickening purr to those words, and it promised to alleviate the thudding pain in his skull. 

     “The cold concrete can’t be half as comfortable as the platform was, but I can still work with this. There once was a man named Stan-”

     Stanley raised his fist as high as he could, and slammed it into the concrete. It stopped The Narrator mid-syllable, and Stanley used the pause to lean his face into the ground. Slowly, he pulled one leg under his torso, then another, and pulled himself up to a kneel.

     “No. No you can’t. You aren’t capable of this, Stanley. And you don’t really want to be. You want to be happy.”

     Stanley reached out for a wall, and leaned his weight on it. Tried to stand.

     Fell over again.

     “I know what’s good for you.” The Narrator began again, and Stanley’s head swum. He was having trouble picking out individual words. It was such a warm, pleasant hum, and it offered to soak out all his injuries. The words were like lips on his ear, and arms wrapped around him. The anxious edge to The Narrator’s tone reminded Stanley of the earnest, needy heart behind all the bluster.

     Someone who needed him. Desperately needed Stanley to lie back and heal. To stay here. All he wanted was someone to listen. Someone to make happy.

     Stanley threw his arms forward, and dragged himself forward, inch by inch. With his ears uncovered, and his head injured, he found himself losing swathes of time, either to unconsciousness, or to the sickening repetition. He couldn’t imagine, as he dragged himself up another step, that he made for a very good audience right now.

     “That’s where you’re wrong, Stanley. You’re focused too much on whether or not you’re a suitable audience. But the real key phrase in that sentence is ‘right now.’ I have forever to wear you down, Stanley. Your mind will relent before my story does.”

     Stanley made it to the third landing before he was engulfed once more. He had a begrudging respect for the timing. A secure, flat area, where he’d be less likely to slip back down. Every inch higher Stanley got, the more likely that his wounds would be fatal. Though it would possibly be worth the risk to have him take a short tumble back to ground level, The Narrator didn’t seem to agree. 

     He was quick to rush back in. A pinning embrace. Sentences like fingers, lovingly stroking up the back of Stanley’s neck, cushioning his head. And then he was under again, and a man with his name and his face was making tentative steps around an empty office. He was a meek little thing right now, but by the end of the tale he was triumphant and strong and the catharsis of his freedom was tinted with verdant greens and a blue sky, and that man was happy and Stanley was so happy for him, and the story spun again and again, with someone just out of sight but not out of earshot, holding Stanley tightly, keeping him safe and he would be good and surrender his choices to-

     A broken hand slapped against metal, and Stanley resumed his climb.

     “What is wrong with you? I mean it! Give me one good reason why you’re still going! This is patently ridiculous, Stanley! Do you know how many people throw themselves into entertainment hoping for an ounce of the escapism I’m offering? Not to mention that I know for a fact that it’s working on you, Stanley! You like my story!” The Narrator snarled, clawing the truth from out of Stanley’s brain, “It’s what you crave most of all: for your choices to have meaning! I give you that! You liked it from the moment I started telling it!”

     Not true, Stanley’s brain mused, two stray synapses managing to connect. Stanley had merely said that he was withholding judgment until he’d heard the whole thing. It had been thousands of repetitions since he’d formed an opinion:

     The Narrator’s Tale: Two thumbs down for short length and ludonarrative dissonance.

     Stanley had been alert and lucid, fully convinced that his own obstinate drive would be enough to see him through to the end. But he’d miscalculated the effect that his words could have. In a storm of barely coherent rage, The Narrator attacked again. Stanley was in the hallways again, feet taking steps he hadn’t chosen, and this time “Stanley went through the right door, isn’t that what you want? Yes, let’s see where this one takes us,” angry words shoving him forward in fits and starts, past the lounge and off the lift and to his early demise before Stanley awoke to find that all his coworkers were gone and off he went to the right again, just a shadow of disobedience where he couldn’t tell if he’d chosen to disobey, or if it was The Narrator’s own spite pushing him into the arms of a mannequin, or watching the countdown to his own demise, and did it really matter which door Stanley took because within a constrained set of boundaries all options were permissible and thus technically no choices were meaningful-

     His bruised cheek was pressed against the grating of the step, and though he could barely move at a crawl, Stanley’s ascent was relentless. Time would continue forever and ever, and a laugh sputtered past his lips. The Narrator would never grow tired of his story. That was how it should be. Stanley would never tire of ruining it. Never tire of how the simple act of moving his hand five inches to the left or the right could change The Narrator’s entire demeanor. Stanley might’ve been stuck as observer to The Narrator’s story. But The Narrator was stuck as observer to Stanley’s choices.

     Beautiful.

     Stanley hit his forehead on the final landing, and The Narrator’s words swept forward once more.

     Stanley grinned into the onslaught. Better make this one count, my good fellow. Better take me for good. Because the next time he surfaced, Stanley wasn’t going to be submerged again.

     The words clung to Stanley, and the story broke down around him. Riddled with confusion, The Narrator couldn’t quite tell where it was supposed to go next. Stanley’s mind pushed back, calling out directions, naming impossible colors for an endless array of doors, all of them his own, all of them leading anywhere, but never to his boss’ office, never to a mind control facility, never even to the outside. Hallways upon hallways into cubicles and storage areas and endless corridors that twisted and turned. When the words tried to pull away, Stanley’s mind screamed out, dragging The Narrator back to him, shoving choice after choice after choice down his proverbial throat-

     Stanley pulled himself across the final landing. There was no hesitation, and barely any force. The Narrator gave one last, pitiful whine, and Stanley limped over the finish line, plummeting to oblivion.

     There was a sense of loss, as though looking at the phone number of someone you used to date, but have not spoken to since high school.

     And then Stanley awoke at his desk. All his coworkers were gone.

     He got to his feet by force of habit, and stepped into the office. His injuries were healed, and his mind, too, had been affected by the reset. He gave himself a quick pinch to make sure, and it stung. He wasn’t dreaming that he was trapped within a desolate office building. He really was trapped within a desolate office building. He took a deep breath of the stale-carpet air, and wandered over to a coworker’s computer. Fiddled with a few buttons just to hear them click.

     The Narrator gave the same bland opening dialogue Stanley had heard thousands of times. And if he hadn’t heard it precisely that often, he never would have been able to hear the resentment in The Narrator’s tone. The Narrator masked it well; he was, after all, a consummate professional. But Stanley realized that, no matter how many times this cycle repeated, The Narrator’s unceasing hope that Stanley would complete the right path would fill every moment with meaning. And Stanley’s insatiable itch to subvert would find new ways to interpret any choice, new methods for mining freedom from nothing at all.

     “Tch. you’re still not getting it.” It was hard to mutter under one’s own breath when one’s voice was omnipresent. “How can you be so close to what I’m trying to tell you, but so far away from it? It’s maddening, that’s what it is.”

     Stanley wondered how many times in a row he could press one key. Perhaps it could be a collection he could keep, just for himself. Seeking out new keyboards and collecting the keypresses from them, too. A self-made goal. He looked about the office, and there were six keyboards. He’d start with ten million from each, he decided.

     “You’re out of your mind. That’s my new read on the situation. I broke you just now, and that’s why you’re taking comfort in finding new buttons to press. Even though they don’t do anything. How many times do I have to tell you that this is the illusion of choi-”

     Stanley pressed the A key. Then he did it for a second time. Then he did it for a third time. Then, he did it for a fourth time. With immense loathing, and much complaining, The Narrator read out every single keystroke. Stanley grinned.

     And Stanley, if not happy, was immensely satisfied.