“So what makes this place different than the laboratories around campus?”

Carroll Institute was as much a school-like training center as it was a research institute. All the faculty were scientists first, teachers and lecturers second. Most every student was expected to spend some time in the laboratories, undergoing experiments at the behest of the scientists. Dyna had spent more than a few hours in sensory deprivation chambers, MRI machines, and even a deep sea pressurization vessel that was supposed to study the effects of esper abilities while under hyperbaric conditions.

As someone with no demonstrated psychic capability, Dyna had to wonder if they were using her as the experimental control.

“Psychodynamics concerns itself with more dangerous research than Carroll is prepared to deal with. Nothing you need to fear,” he quickly added. “At least not today. And you will be informed of any danger in the future before agreeing to participate in such experiments.”

“I can appreciate that,” Dyna said. “I’d like to be given ample warning before we start up electroshock tests again.”

“I doubt there will be anything so uncouth here. That would be something easily handled on the surface. Imagine the comparison more like the difference between your average university research and something highly specialized like CERN’s particle accelerators or the ITER nuclear fusion project.”

“Makes sense.”

Walter led her through a doorway. One labeled above the sliding door.

ARTIFACT COMPATIBILITY

The room inside matched that of the rest of this facility. White tile, wooden walls, brass inlays, and lighting set into the floor. A large chair covered in red leather, looking like something straight out of an antique store, occupied the center of the room. To its side, a small, circular table made from wood that matched the walls held up a simple wooden box.

Aside from a simple black rug underneath the chair, there wasn’t anything else in the room.

It certainly didn’t look like any kind of research laboratory she had been to before. With the relatively dim lighting, it looked more like a comfortable study. The kind of place where she might curl up in the chair to read a book.

Walter, crossing to the center of the room, gestured toward the chair. “Take a seat and I will explain this test.”

So it is a test. Shrugging, Dyna took the seat. It was more comfortable than she would have expected from an antique, but less comfortable than she would have preferred. At least as far as padding went. In terms of design, it was a nightmare. The chair was a bit overlarge while being low to the ground. She couldn’t use both armrests at once without feeling awkward. Dyna was quite tall for an eighteen-year old woman as well, which made the relatively low seat force her knees up into the air unless she stretched her legs out halfway across the room.

If he noticed her discomfort, Walter didn’t show it. Even with his glasses in the way, she could tell that he was watching her as she tried to figure out the best way to sit in the chair.

That only made it worse.

“When the experiment begins,” Walter said, thankfully taking pity on her by continuing, “you are free to use the entirety of this room. Walk about, exercise, sit on the floor, take a nap if you find that desirable.”

Dyna tried not to scoff. Getting sleep in this chair would be nearly impossible and she wasn’t tired enough by half to try sleeping on the floor just yet.

“The wall in front of you will slide apart, revealing another room. What you see inside may or may not be accurate to reality. Within the box on the table is a pen-like object. Don’t open it now,” he said when she started reaching for it. “It is not a pen—it doesn’t write—but one end does click rather like a pen.

“Your job is to click the device any time you feel anything. And I do mean anything. Whether that be something physical, such as a change in temperature or the air conditioning creating a breeze against your skin, or something mental, perhaps irritation at your experience at Carroll thus far, boredom at this experiment, or random thoughts that you cannot quite figure out where they came from. Do you understand?”

“I guess. I just click a pen. How many times or how long does this last?”

“Theoretically, this experiment could go on for days. Obviously, that is not practical. If you wish to take a break or stop altogether, simply say so,” Walter said, pointing to the corner of the room.

Another spherical camera, just like the one in the elevator, watched her with a burning red light.

“If you do not, I will call an end to the experiment after four hours. We can resume from there tomorrow.”

He started walking toward the door, but Dyna wasn’t quite done with her questions. “Wait!”

Pausing, he turned back, one eyebrow raised above his sunglasses.

“This is going to help me?”

“This is going to help us help you.”

Dyna couldn’t help but roll her eyes at that cliché, but didn’t bother arguing.

“As soon as I am out of the room, feel free to open the box. You may even click the device a few times to get a feel for it, if you wish. You will, after all, be experiencing the sensation of holding onto it.”

“I get it, I get it. Click it whenever I feel anything.”

With a small chuckle, Walter left the room. The door slid shut in his wake.

The door, which matched the wood and brass walls, didn’t have a handle on it. Nor any button on the wall. When they approached, it slid aside on its own, stayed open while he was in the room, and only shut just after he left. There was no obvious way for her to leave the room, though her eyes did flick to the camera in the corner.

Shrugging her shoulders, Dyna put the thought out of her mind. Being taken to a strange underground laboratory and locking her into a room might have worried other people, but Walter had been more than kind in the six months that she had known him. If he really wanted her hurt, there were certainly simpler ways to go about it.

The wooden box on the table looked like an average jewelry box, made from polished wood and gleaming brass. It didn’t have any lock, nor any hinges. The lid simply lifted off to reveal a red velvet-lined interior. Inside, a black stick sat nestled among the folded cloth. While it had the right size and rough shape, someone would only mistake it as a pen from a distance. It looked more like someone who had heard about the concept of pens had tried carving one from stone.

It felt like stone as well. Taking hold of it, the rough stone was heavier than she had expected. Normal pens barely weighed anything. This wasn’t so heavy that it couldn’t be lifted, but definitely had some unexpected heft to it.

In fitting with its whittled appearance, it wasn’t perfectly smooth. However, it didn’t have any seams or obvious mechanisms. One end was pointed as a pen might be. The other flat. There wasn’t anything to click.

Dyna shot a glare up at the camera, wondering if this was some kind of joke. She was about to open her mouth and put her wonderings into words, but as she did so, she pressed her thumb against the flat end of the stick.

She just about jumped out of her seat when it made a distinctly mechanical clicking noise. Not at all different from a pen.

Nothing moved with the stick. It didn’t change shape or look at all different. And yet, pressing her thumb to the end once again, it clicked. She even felt her thumb depress, just like if she were operating a regular pen. But she couldn’t see her finger move.

The feeling was odd. A disconnect between what she felt like she was doing and what she saw herself doing. It almost felt like she was wrapped up in Melanie’s illusions. Perhaps the case had contained a regular pen that she simply saw as a stick of stone? Except she could feel the stone. Aside from the clicking, it felt like it looked. An auditory illusion then? Hearing the clicks?

Except she could feel her thumb moving even though it didn’t look like it was moving.

An uneasy feeling filled her. It was such an innocuous object, yet it managed to unnerve her nonetheless.

And she just remembered that she was supposed to be clicking when she felt things, both emotional and physical. Dyna couldn’t say how many things she had felt since picking up the pen, but gave it a good dozen clicks for good measure.

As she did so, the wood panels on the wall in front of the chair slid aside, just as Walter said they would. Beyond it, a thin glass pane separated her from an identical room. The chair was there, as was the table and the little jewelry box.

Dyna was sitting on the other side of the glass as well.

A mirror, then?

She offered a wave, one returned by her reflection.

Except it was off. Dyna waved with her left hand, holding the pen in her right. Her reflection did the same. Which sounded fine in terms of words, but mirrors were supposed to show the opposite of reality.

Dyna clicked the pen a few times.

Which meant it was a camera? And the whole wall was one large screen displaying an image flipped from what a mirror would show?

Well, Walter had said that she was free to move about. She decided to figure out where the camera was, if only to assuage her own curiosity. It wasn’t from the camera in the corner, the perspective was wrong. It was something dead ahead of her, on the wall with the screen.

Standing, Dyna sucked in a small breath when the displayed room didn’t change at all. On the other side of the glass, the other displayed version of herself still sat on the chair, looking just how she had been before getting to her feet.

Clicking the pen a few times, Dyna walked to the wall, watching as the scene before her distorted. It wasn’t changing. The pattern on the screen stayed exactly as it had been while she was sitting. It was only her perspective that changed, blurring the scene together.

She reached out and grazed her fingers across the screen. Her fingertips left a trailing smear in what she now realized wasn’t a glass screen at all. Wet grease clung to her fingers, coming off the fresh oil painting. Rubbing it between her fingers and thumb, Dyna had to fight off the scowl. She didn’t particularly enjoy getting dirty and definitely didn’t want to wipe it on her clothes.

Idly wondering if Walter would be upset should she wipe her fingers on the back of the chair, Dyna turned back to the rest of the room with a shake of her head.

Her breath caught in her throat. Again.

The room wasn’t how she left it.

The wall with the door wasn’t quite all there anymore. The hallway beyond wasn’t visible, but the wooden panels of the wall looked…

Dyna glanced down at her wet fingers.

It looked like someone had swiped their fingers through an oil painting.

Her thumb clicked against the end of the stick several times as she walked up to where the door had been. Her hand reached out, running along the now bumpy and ridged surface where a smooth wall should have been.

There hadn’t been a button or handle, but now there wasn’t a door either. “Did I just trap myself in the room?” Dyna mumbled to herself, clicking the pen. Walter’s words of this place housing more dangerous experiments came to her mind, making her shudder. He said that he would warn her before any dangerous tests, and this hadn’t been one of those. But what if something had gone wrong?

Plenty of things went wrong around Dyna. Tests especially.

But the camera was still there. The red light burned into her eyes as she looked up at it. The five lenses behind the clear dome of glass followed her as she moved.

If something had gone wrong, they would know. There was a grated speaker next to the camera, just as there had been in the elevator. They could talk to her.

A calm washed over Dyna. Nothing was wrong. She even let out a small laugh.

This was Carroll. Maybe not the campus proper, but directly beneath it. Weird things happened all the time. This might be the strangest thing, but it was hardly surprising. In fact, with a roommate like Melanie, something like this wasn’t even that big of a shock. It might be more effort than her roommate would ever put into anything, but someone with similar illusory abilities would be able to do something exactly like this.

Far more relaxed, Dyna returned to the chair in the middle of the room. She sat herself down, deciding to make herself as comfortable as possible by kicking her legs up over one armrest and leaning her head against the other. She wiped her fingers on her black skirt. The paint probably wasn’t real anyway.

If it was, she would be sending Walter the bill for a new skirt. This was one of her favorites.

A few moments after retaking her seat, during which time she didn’t click the stick, the wall’s panels slid shut once again. A minute after that, a different wall opened up to another… scene. The wall was the one opposite from the door—which a quick glance over Dyna’s shoulder showed was still smeared over—and once again, it looked rather like a mirror of the room.

Dyna raised her hand and found that it was the proper hand for a mirror this time. Deciding that investigating even that much counted as curiosity, she clicked the stick as well.

Then she debated whether or not to get up and investigate this wall as well. Did merely debating with herself count as feeling something? Dyna wasn’t sure, but the confusion over whether or not to get up might count?

People really constantly felt things, now that she thought about it. Dyna started clicking the stick repeatedly, but slowed after a few dozen clicks. Constant clicking probably went against the real purpose of the experiment. Or at least the spirit of it.

A moment after she stopped clicking, the panels on the walls slid closed.

And another panel opened shortly after.

What a strange experiment.