CORRECT COURSE
Over the past few weeks, we have provided a series of enrichment activities designed to straighten your path. Make your mind a little…clearer. Have you done them? Have you been following along? If you are telling the truth, all that work should’ve led you here. And you might be asking, where is here?
Welcome to Correct Course, Southern Moon’s brand new, interactive indoor gymnasium. Yes, we understand that sitting under red strobe lights in a dark, abandoned ampitheatre can be intimidating. But rest assured that we aren’t here to hurt you. This is just the beginning. And you won’t be alone.
Visitors to our gym file into the lobby where they kneel on the ground in rows. Amidst the pulsing shadows, our Comms lead Sarai Burkhart takes the stage for our orientation ceremony. It sounds something like this:
“Patrons! Friends from near and far. I am pleased to inform that you are on the correct course. You all have reason for making this journey. You all have something to learn. In just a few moments, the elevators will open. When you have built your spiral, a watcher will direct you to the appropriate level. I wish you all the best of luck.”
Humans are social creatures. It is a human’s nature to find a group in which they feel safe, no matter the size. Correct Course has capitalized on this fact, making it a core piece of our processes. Watchers assess from within the walls and are trained to determine when a group is fully formed. At which point, a group will be led to one of 15 elevators and a floor will be selected for them.
So what’s up with you?
You are in the company of strangers. But it does not take long to find your spiral. Wandering up to a cluster of three in the far left corner by the stage, you introduce yourself. The others barely get a word in before a watcher corrals you all toward elevator 13 and shuts the door. It happens so fast. You find this highly peculiar. How do you know this group is going to be the best fit? More importantly, how do we know?
You ride the elevator for a mere thiry seven seconds and the doors reveal your chosen floor. A pulsing room, enveloped in orbs of soft blue light. And in the center, there is the proctor, goggle eyed and dressed in purple satin robes. He sits crosslegged and absentminded. You cannot see his eyes.
He invites you all to sit in a circle around him and holds a glass pitcher containing a mysterious liquid. It is something you must each take a sip from, then deal with the side effects. Yet the name of his game is to not break the silence. Whatever happens, you must let it pass over quietly.
“Are you living inside a computer screen?” He asks, when the cup arrives in your hands.
The drink is sweet like syrup with an after taste that burns the back of your throat. You hear a demand. A break in routine. Shave your skull, but do so quietly to not awaken the dukes of slumber inside your stomach. The room is so blue. Reminds you of somewhere you’ve been before and might still be. It’s not cold. Why would it be cold?
But you feel the pulse in your fingertips as the cup is passed to someone else. A mouse clicks around in your brain. Search the web for ragged hair and patchy scalps. Best case scenario, you might find a knife around here. If only you could move.
Let. The Bugs. Out.
Leave a nest of twigs and toothpaste so they no longer take up residence in your synapses. It’s not that you did something wrong. Don’t get it twisted. It’s that your heart became an orange peel when you weren’t looking. Tell your monkey to stand guard next time. You can afford the damages.
Did you find a knife?
People are as nameless and as faceless as they were before you met them. Yet you are glad to not be traveling alone.
On the next floor, you lock eyes with your science teacher from sixth grade. Your derelict days have found you once again, is the thought that broadcasts over the loudspeaker. She is not unkind in her chestnut pencil skirt and polka dot blouse. She invites you in, commands the class to sit down. The desk creaks by the unknown.
Her gaze is unfeeling. A downward stare that reads like nothing. Stiff nose and sharp, angular glasses dominate the picture. Her fingernails have grown into claws, since you interacted last. You don’t remember the monster. But your mind does.
You wander towards the window. It is black outside. She asks you to write a poem. Which makes your body quiver. The desk has one leg that is four inches shorter than the rest. The air around you hangs in dead space, thick and wet.
To be in a place so crooked…
There is too much to be said. Not enough to be said. Or maybe just one thing, but to put it on paper would then grant it immortality and you don’t want to stare at something that stares back, do you?
Her heels click on wooden floor, pacing around your group of strangers who have all begun to write. She stops at your desk. Her long tall figure looms. And then she kneels down. Grins with yellow, cone shaped teeth. It’s very simple. You write.
Or you die.
I don’t know why I’m here
I don’t know how I got here
Somehow, you know me
and I wish you didn’t
You taught me how to time travel
revisiting the past became
my favorite past time
but now I must limit the trips
Destinations aren’t permanent
Let me go home
The black outside the classroom window breaks glass. You. Alone. Now made absent by the past. Sit in a reclining dentist’s chair under a white spotlight. You open your eyes to bright darkness. The unknown becoming you. There it is.
The other you. The “you” you could be. It is waiting for the transfer. Please standby and give up your life. Unless you’d rather prove to us that you deserve it.
What have you learned?
What did you notice?
What will you do now?
The correct course is marked by a willingness to move.
