No matter how stubbornly Noah tried every idea he and the commenters had cooked up, not a single one produced even the faintest result. The “escape room” didn’t give an inch. The black doors stayed locked and smacked his fingers with that freezing jolt, whatever protection he tried. He soaked the pole in the glowing water—no sprouting leaves, no magic immunity, nothing.
He didn’t climb into the abyss, but he did painstakingly splash its rim—hoping a hidden message would emerge.
Nothing there, nothing anywhere. He spent two days flinging water like a madman. A few times, he doused himself and almost lost his mind to the shock. Still nothing.
Working up his courage, he even slit a corner of the mattress and peered inside through the small opening. Again—nothing. It was stuffed with re-stitched wadding, the kind you couldn’t even twist into rope.
Four days of relentless tinkering and searching later, hope felt spent. He’d already uploaded a fifth video, and comments arrived faster than ever—but even his three “helpers” had run out of ideas, unless you counted gems like: “Dance in front of the doors while singing ‘Let me pass by.’”
Noah lay sprawled on the bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying everything he’d done. Earlier, this kind of meditation would cough up a tiny notion or two—usually a variation on something he’d already tried. He’d happily run even the dumbest experiments; it wasn’t like he had better things to do.
Now he had nothing, short of praying to God. The trouble was, he had no idea which god owned this escape room. He’d heard that Christians had three destinations—hell, heaven, and purgatory. This place looked like none of the above. It didn’t resemble Valhalla, the Well of Souls, Tartarus, Dante’s nine circles, or any afterlife he’d ever heard of. Praying to a nameless owner felt like a dangerous gamble. Besides, he wasn’t very religious. If someone pressed him on belief, he’d dither and admit that reincarnation surely sounds nice.
The rest? He just didn’t care.
* * *
Beep-beep!
“Warning! Only 10% charge remaining!”
Noah glanced indifferently at the tablet and got up. The usual routine—ten buckets up the stairs. Along the way, he kept testing another theory: dipping a fingertip into the glowing water now and then, hoping to build tolerance to those unearthly, mind-ripping screams. Fifty trials later, no improvement. The water hit just as hard, and if he wasn’t careful, it knocked him flat in seconds.
Still, he stuck to the program. Fill two buckets, tap the water, ride out the cacophony, climb to the top, haul the buckets to the abyss... Five cycles a day.
He was about to do the fingertip dip when he suddenly remembered: the eleventh bucket. He’d once planned to pour an eleventh into the abyss to see what happened. Then Potato, Drunkard, and Nude Guy had thrown out other ideas, and this one got bumped down the queue—and eventually forgotten.
Fine. With the trio fresh out of help, now was the time. He suspected the admin would REALLY hate this—those safeguards probably existed precisely to keep the eleventh bucket from reaching the edge. But Noah no longer cared. He’d imagined years of such existence before boredom crushed him. If YouTube’s timestamps were to be believed, he spent almost a month here and was already done with it.
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After ferrying up buckets nine and ten, Noah went back for eleven and twelve. He knew they’d be monstrously heavy this time, whether he moved one or both—so he committed to hauling both. If the eleventh didn’t blow the grotto, maybe the twelfth would finish the job.
Threading the pole through the handles, he could barely budge the load. It took every bit of strength and several clever shuffles before he leveraged the weight onto his shoulders. It felt like the buckets and pole would snap his spine—except he didn’t have one. Nothing to snap.
Hissing like a steam engine and snickering at the thought of his non-existent backbone, Noah shuffled toward the stairs. Easiest phase done. Now came the steps—and, he hoped, fireworks. Maybe the blinding light from the ceiling would surge into a laser and carve him a tunnel to freedom?..
He lifted one foot onto the first step and almost toppled backward. Regaining balance by a thread, he ditched the daydreams and focused on climbing. If anything went wrong halfway, he’d be drenched, probably unconscious, and with no tablet to wake him up. Terrifying.
So, think only about legs, steps, and nothing else.
After a couple of dozen steps, he noticed something interesting: the climb wasn’t getting progressively harder the way it should. The work was equally heavy, painful, and slow start to finish—but its intensity didn’t creep upward like it would for a living person losing strength. Here, fatigue felt like a mathematical constant.
Noah liked that discovery. If the constant held, his suffering would always remain the same.
Unless the admin decides to tweak the value.
The thought nearly cost him his balance again. He drove it out and kept moving, watching steps slowly drifting past his eyes, feeling demonic ache in his shoulders and back...
If this worked, maybe today would be the last.
Noah didn’t register the halfway point and never looked back to see how high he’d climbed. He functioned like a machine, pushed by code: same motions, same weight, same pain—again and again—until there were no more steps.
He lifted his foot mechanically and almost collapsed face-first onto the platform at the edge of the abyss.
“Finally,” Noah breathed, sinking to one knee and crawling out from under the pole.
The abyss answered with reproachful echoes. Noah imagined a keen eye watching him from the dark, but he wasn’t afraid. He’d seen that darkness too many times to care.
“Moment of truth,” he muttered, grabbing a handle. He braced himself, raised the bucket to the very edge, and poured the glowing water into the void.
He watched, pulse quickening, as the luminous mass fell, faintly lighting the walls as it went. Down and down it dropped, until it shrank to a pinprick and was swallowed by darkness.
Nothing happened. The cave stood as before. The ceiling light didn’t turn into a laser and cut him an exit.
Seconds ticked by; no hint of change.
Out of patience, he dumped the twelfth bucket. He almost flung the bucket itself, but then held back.
Still nothing. No quakes, no laser show.
Despair crept in.
The only consolation: at least he had fresh material for another video. Maybe enough to jolt his online friends out of their torpor. Perhaps they’d offer something new.
Disappointed, Noah gathered the buckets and went down. He set the tools neatly by the pump and returned to the little room. Sitting at the desk, he woke the tablet. Everything looked the same... except for a tiny badge in the top-left, where important notices appeared. Noah tapped it impatiently.
A brand-new window popped up:
Congratulations! You have just earned your first two points!
Current balance: 2 points. (Click here to learn about the points system.)
Beneath the message were two big, ornamented buttons. The first read:
Increase power (1 pt).
The second made his eyes widen.
Unlock the black doors (1 pt).