Revolution

Chapter 1

Andrew knew things were going to turn out badly for him the second he woke up. After all, he was in quite possibly the perfect situation for things to go wrong. He was strapped down to a bed in a strange white room, and if that doesn’t scream trouble then nothing does. Of all the things that happened to him after he woke up in that white room though, he had to say that the waking up in the white room was probably the most normal part, but that’s for later.

Just how had Andrew gotten himself into this situation? He tried to search through his memory to see if that provided any answers, and he discovered that he had no memory. All he knew was his name. He also really had to pee. Where would he pee if he was strapped down to a bed? Eventually his sluggish brain came up with the conclusion that since he couldn’t get up, and going on himself wasn’t an option, someone had to be there to help him, right? Surely he couldn’t have been left for dead strapped down to a bed in a white room! He decided to begin speaking to the ceiling, due to the fact that he couldn’t communicate in any other way.

“Hello? Is anybody there? If you are, could you please come get me out of here, I really have to pee, and I don’t want to pee on myself or your wonderfully white sheets. So, uh, just come on in here and bust me out before this pee busts out of me. Thanks!”

Bust me out before this pee busts out of me? How stupid was that? He threatened the ceiling by saying that he was going to pee on himself? That was pathetic, but then again he was in a pathetic situation. Andrew began berating himself: You idiot, you thought talking to a ceiling was going to fix your problems? Well, it didn’t, and now you’re still strapped to this stupid bed, you still have to pee, and the ceiling doesn’t even care because it’s just a ceiling and it doesn’t care about you because it really can’t even care about anything, because it’s just a ceiling, and-wait, what’s that hissing noise?

His self-lecture had been interrupted by a faint hissing noise to his right. He heard light footsteps coming toward him, and then they stopped just outside of his very limited viewing range.

“Who’s there?” Andrew asked gruffly. He was getting more and more irritated by the second, and he really had to pee.

“Hold on Andrew, I’m trying to figure this out-I really don’t know how to work these things yet, they’re brand new, and-oh I got it! I just have to press this and you’re free.”

The straps holding him down retracted back into the bed and Andrew sat up, stretching his arms out. When he was done he looked over in the direction of the voice and immediately blinked several times to make sure what he was seeing was real. A really, really hot, like, swimsuit model hot, girl was standing by his bed smiling at him and looking pleased with herself. The white room melted away as he zeroed in on her, taking in all of her features. She had angular cheekbones to go along with her sharp jaw line which led down to a soft chin, and her stunning face was framed by beautiful light brown hair streaked with blonde. Her body was lean and toned and had some curves that Andrew immediately took a liking to. She caught him staring and crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. He looked up at her and found her piercing light blue eyes staring at him, and yet she had a faint smile on her face. He just sat there looking at her; he was dumbstruck by her beauty.

“Do you always stare at girls like that?” The girl said. That snapped him out of his trance.

“Uh, not usually, I think. Did someone send you down here, or are you the only person here?” He sure hoped she wasn’t the only person in the place; he didn’t want this beautiful girl to be a psychopathic teenage kidnapper.

The girl smiled at him, “I was sent down here to help you to the bathroom. That is what you needed, right?”

“Well yeah, but I think I can walk myself to the bathroom, I just needed someone to let me out of the bed, so thanks for doing that, I guess. Maybe you could show me where the bathroom is though.” Even if he didn’t need her help to go to the bathroom, Andrew still wanted to keep this babe around him.

“I’ve been sent down here to help you to the bathroom, you will not be able to walk to the bathroom, so come on.” She uncrossed her arms and held out her hand. Was this girl serious? She thought Andrew couldn’t walk to the bathroom? He didn’t want to be rude to her, but he also didn’t want to come off as overly dependent either.

“No it’s fine really, I can walk.” Andrew didn’t wait for a response, he just swung his legs out over the side of the bed that the girl wasn’t standing by and stood up. Well, attempted to stand up, his legs immediately gave out beneath him. Somehow the girl was fast and strong enough to catch him before he smacked into the ground. She lifted him as if he were no heavier than a small puppy and set him down on the bed.

“Are you going to come with me now, or do I need to drag you there?” Andrew really didn’t want to admit that he was too weak to walk himself to a bathroom, but he had just collapsed to the floor trying to stand up. Reluctantly he relented and allowed himself to be picked up by the girl and she put his arm around her shoulder, so she was helping him walk to the bathroom. It was better really, he got to lean on a beautiful girl and be led to a bathroom. He would even be able to talk to her and try to get to know her better. Together they walked toward the area of the room that the girl had come in from. Andrew was confused, there was no door there, and there were no doors on any of the perfectly congruent walls. Did this girl have the power to walk through walls? He was about to inform her that he did not posses this superpower when the girl stopped in front of the wall and spoke to it.

“Computer, open the door.” She said.

“What’s the magic word ma’am?” a flat, monotone voice said. It was so emotionless that Andrew had a hard time detecting the sarcasm in the statement. If there was any sarcasm, that is.

The girl rolled her eyes, “Please open the door, computer.”

“As you wish, ma’am.” The wall slid open to reveal a long white hallway. It looked like someone had taken the room and stretched it out really thin and long, minus the bed. Everything was a bright white. Andrew looked at the girl and noticed for the first time that she was wearing a white dress that matched the color scheme of the room and hallway that had just been revealed. She didn’t say anything as she led him out of the room and they began walking down the hallway.

While they were walking, Andrew stole a glance at the girl’s face and realized that he didn’t even know her name. He thought that if he wanted to have any kind of relationship with this girl that he should probably know her name, so he asked her.

“So, what’s your name?” he asked her.

“Arianna” She said it so flatly for a second Andrew thought a female version of Computer had spoken.

“That’s a pretty name.” That was all he could think to say to her. Arianna looked up at him with a quizzical expression.

“You know, no one’s ever said that to me before; most guys are usually too busy looking at me to say anything when I first meet them. Of course, after that they never shut up because they want to get with me. In fact, you’re the only guy that’s said this much to me when you first met me.”

“Well, I meant what I said, and you’re very pretty, too, but not to the point that I would be knocked speechless, nobody can do that to me.”

Arianna pursed her lips to try to hide her grin, but she lost, “Oh really? Nobody’s pretty enough to knock you speechless?”

Andrew grinned back at her, her smile was infectious, “Well now, you came close, but I was able to regain my composure, as you can see.” All of a sudden Arianna stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Andrew asked.

“Nothing, we’re just here.” Andrew looked around him and saw nothing different with the part of the hallway that they were standing in from the rest of the hallway.

“It all looks the same to me.” He said. Arianna didn’t answer him. She began speaking to the wall.

“Computer, open the bathroom door.”

Computer’s creepily monotone voice came on, “How many times do I have to ask you to use the magic word ma’am?”

“If you don’t open that freaking door I will wipe you off the face of the planet, you got that, Computer?” Andrew sensed that Arianna and Computer had a malfunctioning relationship.

“I am not one of your Najii or one of those boys you complain about. I cannot fear death because I am not alive. You cannot shut me down because I am my own unstoppable power source, any threats that you give me are therefore irrelevant. All I humbly ask is that you say the magic word, and then I will open this door for you.”

“You stupid computer, open the door now, that’s an order!”

“I am not stupid, I have access to every major search engine in the world, and I know everything on the internet, plus more. I can calculate trillions of equations in a matter of seconds. If I described my full capabilities to you it would simply not compute with your inferior human brain. In fact, I know more about the two of you than you know about yourselves. Now, if you do not give me the magic word then you shall not pass.” Computer didn’t mess around; it really wanted that magic word.

Andrew decided that Arianna probably could argue with this computer all day and forget the fact that he had to pee, so he decided to take matters into his own hands.

“Computer, please open the door.” He said, more harshly than he had meant to.

“Ask and you shall receive.” Computer opened the bathroom door and Arianna, after giving him a dirty look, let go of Andrew. He was actually able to stand on his own now; his legs had grown stronger as he had been led by her down the hallway.

“Go in.” She beckoned with her hand at the bathroom.

“Okay!” Andrew strolled in and did his business. As he washed his hands he studied his face in the mirror. He noted that he had brown hair and blue eyes like Arianna, but his features were darker. He saw a strong jaw with zero facial hair on it. He wondered if Arianna liked facial hair. After staring at himself for a couple more seconds he decided it didn’t matter, he probably couldn’t grow any facial hair anyways. He finished rinsing off his hands, dried them on some paper towels, and stepped out after he asked computer politely to open the door.

“You are much more cooperative than that girl, keep it that way.” Computer made sure to say it after Andrew had joined Arianna, so she heard Computer. She appeared to be irritated. Andrew thought she might begin arguing with Computer again, but all she said was “Come on,” and the two of them began walking down the endless white hallway again. This time she wasn’t helping him.

After a minute passed, Arianna began to speak. “Two and a half minutes, really? Does it seriously take you that long to piss?” Andrew didn’t know what to be more surprised about: the fact that Arianna was mad at him and not Computer or the fact that she had timed him in the bathroom.

“How’d you know I was in there that long? You’re not wearing a watch, and that dress you’re wearing doesn’t have any pockets in it, so you can’t be carrying a phone. So what did you do, count it in your head or something?”

They paused as Arianna asked Computer, this time with the magic word, to open another section of wall/door. It opened to reveal a shorter, but still blinding white, hallway.

As they began walking down this new hallway she began to speak. “Actually yes, I did. Is there a problem with that? I am on a schedule, you know.” Andrew didn’t answer; he still hadn’t gotten over the fact that she had timed him in the bathroom. Using nothing but her head, too! They just shuffled along in silence for the rest of the way until at last they came to the end of the hallway.

Arianna spoke to Computer and it slid open a section of wall that revealed a room this time. Once Andrew walked in he saw that it was not like anywhere he had been recently. There was a circle of furniture around a large mahogany table: a sectional couch, recliners, another smaller couch, and the walls were made of what appeared to be river rocks. There were two large flat screen TV’s on each side of the room, and there were small Bose speakers around each. The only things missing from the upscale living room were a fireplace and windows looking out over landscape they were in. Andrew found it strange that he had not seen a single window in the building, he assumed it was a building, he was in.

As he looked around the artificial living room Andrew slowly began to feel a cold chill creep down his spine. He didn’t know why he thought this, and he didn’t know how he got this feeling, but he knew he had been in the place before, he was sure of it.

Chapter 2

Arianna sat herself in a leather recliner that had long been known as Arianna’s Recliner, seen as nobody sat in it but her, and stared at Andrew with a slight smile playing across her lips. She knew it should make him more nervous than he already appeared to be, and she was okay with that. She thought it was kind of cute how he was fidgeting and chewing on his lower lip.

Was she a girl who liked intimidating her guys and forcing them to obey her every command? No, that was weird, but she certainly wasn’t a girl who was going to be intimidated by a boy and obey their every command. Besides, she didn’t really even need to try to intimidate boys, they just naturally wanted to do everything they could for her and were scared of making her mad at them, mostly because they didn’t want to ruin their nonexistent chances of having sex with her. At first this hadn’t bothered her, she actually had rather enjoyed it, but as Arianna grew older it became annoying to her. She wanted to be with a boy who could challenge her intellectually, who she could have debates, she preferred that word over arguments, with. She was desperate to find this boy, but it seemed that the male race was incapable of using their brains when they were around her. She knew that the guys around her and guys in general, weren’t stupid. Some of them were extremely smart, and yet she seemed to possess the superpower of stupefying every guy she was around. Well okay fine, she was exaggerating, after a certain age, like around thirty to forty, guys seemed to be able to function just fine around her. She didn’t know many thirty+ aged men, and she certainly didn’t want to date them. The bottom line was, what she really wanted was a boy who would stop begging her to want him and make her want him.

This was why Andrew had perplexed her and made her take a special interest in him. It started with their first interaction, after he stared at her boobs of course. Arianna didn’t understand why guys thought she didn’t know that they were staring at her boobs. When she confronted Quentin about it, he said, “It is not the issue of my eyes staring at your boobs, it is the issue of your boobs staring at my eyes. I’m the one who’s violated here.” But that was irrelevant to the task at hand. See, any other boy would have gladly leapt into her arms if she had told them she’d been sent to help them to the bathroom, or anything for that matter. She had even been smiling at Andrew to turn on the charm. She had actually tried to mess with his head, and it hadn’t worked. He had refused to be helped up and even insisted on walking himself to the bathroom. No boy had ever behaved toward her like that, and she had found that she actually liked the difference.

This was why she had argued with Computer. It wasn’t because Computer was annoying her, which was in its programming, she just had been flustered by Andrew’s unexpected reaction and the liking she had taken to him. And then she had even allowed him to take charge of the situation without her consent! No, she could not allow this to happen! She had begun falling apart over a boy who had done nothing special except not listen to her and fallen to the ground as a result. She had to regain control. How did she regain control? She decided to treat him like any other boy she thought she might like to have as a companion. She tested him.

Her first test, the one she was never able to get past because no one ever passed, was to time him. This test had produced for her the same result every time. She had found that if she timed a boy doing something that didn’t involve her, it didn’t have to be the bathroom, and told them exactly how long they had taken while acting like they had taken way too long, they always, without fail, stammered out apologies and said: “I won’t do it again.”

Apologies equaled failure. It was as simple as that. No boy she had ever tested had ever taken too long doing something that didn’t involve her; they were always trying to get back to her as quickly as they could. If they were too stupid to realize that, then she didn’t need to be with them. Her interest in the boy always quickly died after this timing test.

At least, that’s how it had gone before she tried it on Andrew. He had passed the test and managed to surprise her by noting she had no tools to time him with and then questioning her method of timing him. The boy was good, although she shouldn’t have been surprised. His profile that she had been given to study had said he was smart and observant. She began thinking of how she would prepare her next test for him when he interrupted her train of thought.

“You know what? I could have sworn that you said you were on a schedule, and yet we’ve been in here for two minutes and nothing has happened. Is there something I’m missing?” His voice was a mixture of nervousness, sarcasm, and an underlying fear that she couldn’t figure out the reason for.

“No, I just got us here early for the meeting.”

“Why?” There he was with that questioning again, she loved and hated it.

“Maybe I just wanted some time to look at your pretty face.”

He snorted, “Yeah right. That sounds like something I would say to you if our roles were reversed. You’re the one with the pretty face.”

Arianna felt herself begin to blush and forced herself to stop. Why was she even blushing? She had received far superior compliments than “you have a pretty face” but those weren’t as sincere as this one. Andrew had said it like it was a given, like he just believed that she had a nice face and wasn’t trying to get with her by saying something like she was the most beautiful girl in the world, which she had heard before. Somehow this remark had evoked a stronger emotional response in her than any other compliment she had ever received. She wasn’t even sure if it was a compliment.

She was trying to think of a good reply when she heard the door open behind her. That meant they were here.

“Andrew, I need you to stand up straight, stop fidgeting, and keep your eyes still, these guys don’t like nervous people.” She said it quickly and quietly. He must have heard her, or maybe he had seen them, because he did what she told him to do.

The larger of the two men who had entered the room reached Andrew first and held out his large hand.

“Hello, Andrew, my name is Malcolm Andrews,” he paused to chuckle at his comment, “Yes, yes I know, quite a coincidence, don’t you agree?”

“Yeah, quite a coincidence.” That was all Andrew said, staring at Malcolm’s hand but never shaking it. Arianna couldn’t help herself, she gave a little giggle. Andrew shot a look at her, and then returned his attention to Malcolm.

Malcolm put his hand down and began speaking again. He seemed to not have noticed Arianna giggling. “Well anyways, Andrew, we came down here to introduce and welcome you to AFcon headquarters.”

This is not finished by any means, please let me know what you think down below, thanks for reading!