Ransom Note
“So read it again, please,” said Caroline.
Elena shook the flimsy piece of paper. “That’s it. There’s nothing more to read.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Elena handed the note across the plain wooden table.
Caroline took it and examined it. The paper seemed old, and thin, and a bit
fragile, but nothing too extraordinary; the sort one might find in a child’s
notebook.
Caroline and Elena had woken up, or regained consciousness,
or simply begun to exist, in this room at about the same time, forty minutes
ago. Neither one had any memory of a
life before, or of each other, or of themselves.
Caroline was shaping up to be the more inquisitive of the
two. She looked at the note. Printed in the center of the page, in block
capital letters, were the words:
WE HAVE YOUR REALITY.
IF YOU WISH TO SEE IT AGAIN, FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE CONVENIENCE.
“I don’t understand,” murmured Caroline.
The only furniture in the room was the table and two
chairs. There was a door, about which
nothing much could be said, and that was it.
Indirect light filled the room, from no ascertainable source.
Actually, there was
one thing you could say about the door: there was nothing on the other side of
it. Absolutely and literally nothing. Caroline had opened the door to exit, and
there was nothing there.
“Nothing,” she muttered.
Elena paced nervously.
“I’m confused,” she said. “What’s
the deal with this note? Why are we
here? The only thing I remember about
myself is my name. And who apologizes
for the convenience?”
“The person who wrote this note, apparently,” answered
Caroline. “You don’t remember anything
before you woke up?”
“Not a thing. My name
might not even be Elena. That’s just
what popped into my head when you asked me.”
“Same here.” Caroline
glared at the door. “What do you know
about us?”
“I just told you.
Nothing.”
“Yeah, but think. We’re talking, right? We have a language; we’re using it to
communicate.”
Elena considered this.
“So we have a common vocabulary.
This means that our thought processes have some similarities.”
“Right.” Caroline
looked down at her body, dressed in the same simple white singlet and loose
trousers that Elena wore. “I also know
that I’m a female, and that you are, too.”
“Which implies the presence somewhere of males.
Which further posits that we are not alone.”
“Or not meant to be.
Correct.”
“The note is written in our common language, which indicates
that we have a society.”
“One based on rational thought. At least based on our conversation.”
Elena smiled. “You
never know. We might be the only two
smart ones.”
Caroline grinned in return.
“So, we’re on the right track.
Whatever that means.”
“It’s a shared idiom.
I understood the intent, although not the literal meaning.”
“That would mean-“
“-That we had an existence prior to this, yes. I suspect our memories have been blanked out
by whatever entity brought us here.”
“Hmm.” Caroline’s
brow furrowed. “Have we been ‘brought’ here?”
“Good point,” Elena conceded. “Everything else might have been taken away.”
“Ooof,” Caroline said.
“I do remember one thing. I’m
hungry.”
Elena rubbed her stomach.
“I think I am, too. I wonder what
we eat?”
Both of them thought about this in silence for a moment,
right up until a plate with some cubes in various colors and textures appeared
on the table.
Elena picked up a red cube, about an inch across, and
sniffed it, then nibbled a corner experimentally. “I think we eat this,” she said.
Caroline broke a piece off of a larger cube and took a
bite. “I suppose we do.”
The two ate for a moment in thoughtful silence.
“So,” said Elena.
“So,” said Caroline.
“We thought about food, and some showed up.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“What if we thought about something else?”
“Like what?”
“Like something to drink,” said Caroline.
They stared at the table.
A decanter of fluid appeared, with two glasses.
Caroline considered this for a moment. “So someone has taken away our reality,” she
said finally.
Elena picked up the idea quickly. Caroline was starting to really like her.
“But they didn’t take away the source of the reality, just the design,”
she said. “Like taking away the clothes,
but leaving the fabric.”
“Which is why we can think up this food and drink,” Caroline
agreed. A slow grin spread across her
face.
A knock on the door startled both of them. A piece of paper slid under the door.
Elena collected it.
“What does it say?” Caroline asked.
“It says, ‘WE STILL HAVE YOUR REALITY,’” she said. “’FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS IF YOU WISH TO SEE IT
AGAIN.’”
Caroline and Elena looked evenly at each other.
Caroline turned and looked at the opposite wall of the
room. A moment’s concentration, and-
“Ooh, that is
nice,” offered Elena. “You’ve doubled
the size of the room. It looks much more comfortable, too. Let me try something.” She waved a hand.
“Very pretty,”
said Caroline, as another wall became covered in lush, green plants. “I think we can expand the house further,
don’t you?”
“I don’t see why not,” agreed Elena, as the plants flowered
and began to bear fruit.
“I seem to remember something called a sea,” said Caroline.
They were well into creating their third continent and had
deduced the existence of cheese and quantum foam before another note was
slipped under the door, which, despite all other expansion, was still
there. This time it was Caroline who
picked it up.
“Well?” questioned Elena. “What are their instructions?”
Caroline rolled the note up into a ball and tossed it over
her shoulder.
“Who cares?” she said.
