The Facility

I was in a country that seemed to be about 10 years in the future, and we were going to war. The government started rounding up 14 to 21-year-olds and sent them to an underground training facility. The first thing I noticed was how dark and wet the facility was, the only thing lighting the place up were these blue crystals that shone through glass walls. Every surface of the facility was the same material, a jet-black stone that had traces like on computer chips running throughout it that pulsed with a blue light similar to the crystals in the walls.

When I arrived with about 20 others my age, we immediately began our training. The drill sergeant introduced himself and briefed us on the situation (which I didn’t pay attention to), then we got to work. For the first test, we had to put four obscure items into a test tube in about five seconds. All the items were laid out on a large table, and around ten of us participated at a time. Each item was wrapped in plastic, making it difficult to get them all into the test tube on the first try. After a few attempts, everyone was able to complete the challenge, but there was no check to see if we actually put all four items in the tube correctly.

Next, we had another training session in a massive room set up like a concert, with flashing lights and people screaming—all of us competing against one another. We were each given phones for this contest. The phones had a camera app that allowed us to shoot virtual beans the size of couches at a giant stage about 500 feet away. If a bean landed on a big pipe, we would score a point. As I opened the app, I heard voices from the ceiling counting down: “3! 2! 1! Go!” Through the app, I could see thousands of beans flying through the air. Unfortunately, my phone didn’t work, so I managed to get one point from a secret challenge as we were leaving. However, no winners were announced, so we proceeded to the shower room.

The first part of the room was a hallway with three individual showers, each enclosed by curtains along the walls. At the end of the hallway was a large curtain leading into a bowl-shaped room with a drain at the center. In each quadrant of the bowl, there were two showers without curtains, only glass sliding doors that were about 15 feet tall. As we entered the hallway, the drill sergeant announced, “Good job, now it’s time to shower. Once you're done, we will meet in the weightlifting room.” He assigned six people to the nice showers and directed the rest of us to the bowl room.

When we walked into the bowl room, I noticed that about a third of the area to the left contained men in their 20s who were chained to the ground, water cascading down from the ceiling to clean them. They stared at us as we entered, but none of us reacted. We each went to a shower, and that’s when I realized I was wearing two layers of clothes, including a robe. As soon as I noticed, the water began soaking me fully clothed. I scrambled to strip down, but everything was already wet. I sighed and turned to look in the bowl, where I saw black children singing soul music, and a grand piano positioned near the chained men.

I stepped out of the shower and started conducting the singers. After they finished, I ran over to the piano and noticed it had no keys—just soggy pieces of paper with drawings indicating where the keys should be. Despite this, I touched the spots where the keys would have been, and to my surprise, the piano began producing sounds. For some reason, I wasn’t shocked. After that, I ran around the bowl for a while until I woke up.