Characters

Ben Backus

“I think, therefore I am” – René Descartes

Three people already occupied the sanitized waiting room. There was a large empty fish  tank in the middle of the room, surrounded by chairs with cheap blue cushions. The grey carpet had this boring linear pattern to it that could drive a man to madness. Four white walls encapsulated the room, with a door for each wall. Two of the doors were brown and were on opposite sides of the room. The other two were white, opposite to each other as well.

Of the three people present, two sat together hand in hand. The woman was clearly pregnant. The man looked uninterested, while the woman was visibly anxious. He had his arm around her. On the other side of the tank sat an older man who was nearly asleep. He had a magazine in his lap and a cane standing next to his chair. 

One of the white doors opened as a young woman raced in and took her seat. She sat in view of both the couple and the man. Her overflowing workbag took up the seat next to her. She frantically swiped back and forth on her phone, then stopped, then reclined with relief while putting her phone in her pocket. After breathing for a moment, she looked over in delight at the couple. Feeling social, she walked over to talk to them.

“Hi, I’m Agatha. Nice to meet you.” She reached for a handshake. The pregnant woman shook Agatha’s hand, comforted by her hospitality. 

“I’m Christine, and this is my husband, Arnold. Nice to meet you too,” replied Christine.

“I just wanted to say that you two are an adorable couple,” Agatha said. Christine smiled and looked down shyly. 

“Thank you,” replied Arnold.

“I just think Doctor Beckett is the best don’t you?” Agatha said, pulling out a stick of gum.

“Who?” asked Arnold with a forced smile. 

“Oh, or are you here for Doctor Samuels? Gum?” Arnold took a piece of gum but Christine did not.

“Actually,” Arnold began with a skeptical expression, “we’re here to talk about real estate options with Dany Taggart… do you think this is this a doctor’s office?”

Agatha paused for a moment and curiously looked around the room. 

“I could’ve sworn the number on the door was right,” she said. She scratched her head and stood up. She looked around the fish tank and received the old man’s attention. 

“Excuse me, this is a doctor’s office, right?”

“Huh?” the man responded while slowly lifting himself up in his chair. 

“No. It’s a real estate office isn’t it,” exclaimed Arnold. Christine looked more anxious than before. The old man rubbed his eyes and coughed. He paused and then slowly said, 

“I believe this is Mr. Emerson’s office…” 

“Okay well I must be in the wrong place,” Agatha said with frustration. She picked up her bag and exited the white door that she came in from.

As she exited, Agatha walked back in from the white door on the opposite side. The couple stared at her in utter bewilderment. The old man put on his glasses and stared at her with his mouth wide open. Agatha dropped her bag and ran back through the door, only to reenter from the opposing white door. Her eyes widened. Then she tried leaving through one of the brown doors but came out the opposite brown door as well. She stood in front of the door for a moment, then opened it without walking through. When she opened it, she could see the entire room, as if there were a direct copy behind the door. 

“How are you doing that?” cried Christine. Arnold comforted her tightly.

“I… I swear have no idea what’s going on…” Agatha responded. 

“Where are we!” she shouted at them. Meanwhile, the old man peered around the room curiously, and then noticed the fish tank. Agatha started to hyperventilate. The old man stood up, with difficulty, to point at the fish tank.

“There’s a bottle in there,” he interjected. He couldn’t quite leave his chair so he sat back down. “And it looks like there’s something in it.”

Arnold stood up cautiously and reached in to the tank. He pulled out the bottle and retrieved a note from within it. Arnold read it once in his head. Then he spoke out loud. 

“It says: Dear characters, ignore the doors for now. Resume your conversations.” 

Everyone stared at him with intensity. “Well I know what’s going on now,” he declared.

“What?” yelled Agatha again.

“Clearly we’re in a psychological experiment,” Arnold said as he returned to his wife to hold her. 

“That’s absurd! Experiments don’t defy the laws of physics!” Agatha’s tone grew more and more impatient.

“Well I call bullshit. You’re probably in on it. How else could you have done that trick?”

“It wasn’t a trick! Try walking through the door yourself!” 

“No way, I bet you’re trying to separate my wife and I.” Agatha rushed over to the door and opened it.

“Look! It’s the same room we’re in!”

“Mirrors. Cameras. There’s a reasonable explanation I’m sure,” Arnold said confidently.

“These aren’t goddamn mirrors!” Agatha slammed the door and ran back to Arnold with her pointer finger guiding her.

“Characters,” said the old man, interrupting again. He’d been stroking his chin in thought during their spat. 

“What about them?” Agatha responded while staring down Arnold. 

“The card referred to us as characters.” The old man looked away in contemplation. 

Agatha looked at the old man, then stood silently for a moment in thought. After a moment she grabbed the card from Arnold. She read it and then fearfully looked back at Arnold.

“Dear characters, please ignore this card. I probably shouldn’t have broken the fourth wall. Resume your conversations.” Agatha looked up and around the room. An overwhelming feeling of existential dread consumed her as she fell back to her chair. 

Arnold walked over to her and stole the note to read it too. He read it again.

“How did you change it?” he barked. Agatha looked up resentfully. 

“Don’t you get it? We’re characters in a story! This,” she said as she gestured around the room, “this isn’t real.” Arnold stared at her for a moment, then turned around quickly. 

“I can’t listen to this lying bitch for another second! Christine, we’re leaving!” She stood up cautiously as Arnold briskly walked out through the white door. Two versions of him reentered from the brown doors. Christine fainted and fell back to her chair. Agatha nearly threw up. However, the old man just stared at the two new versions of Arnold.

“Well, you have two copies of the card now,” the old man said to the Arnolds.

The two Arnolds, completely identical physically and mentally, stared at each other in frustrated bewilderment. 

“Read the cards,” said the old man. One of the Arnolds look at the other distrustfully then looked down at his card to read.

“Dear characters, sit down. Breathe. It’ll be okay.” Then the other Arnold read.

“Dear characters, resume your conversations. I have little time for you.”

The two Arnolds looked at each other, then sat on opposite sides of a passed out Christine. The room became silent for a significant period of time.

“We’re not real,” stated the old man.

“Excuse me?” asked one of the Arnolds.

“Every experience we’ve ever had, every emotion, thought, memory… we’re characters.”

“We have no reason to believe that you old bastard,” the other Arnold said, standing up.

“We have no reason to believe anything. Our understanding of the universe and existence itself was just destroyed before our eyes. We can only believe our observations, and thus I have every reason to believe that I am not as real as I once thought I was.”

“Except if I’m not real, does that mean all of humanity isn’t real? What about the rest of the world, huh? Are you telling me the renaissance, the enlightenment, the world wars and all that stuff didn’t happen if it’s all in my head?” Pondered one of the Arnolds, pacing back and forth, while the other Arnold focused on Christine. 

The old man thought for a moment. “I don’t know with certainty that we are mere characters. But it’s as possible as walking through one door and coming out of two.”

Agatha consumed and contemplated the man’s words, then stood up. 

“What do we do?” she asked. He grabbed his cane, elevated, and walked steadily to the nearest door. 

“It doesn’t matter.” The old man walked through one of the white doors, and left the room.

Agatha ran over to the white door and walked through. She reentered the room from the other white door again. She sighed and looked at the Arnolds.

“Give me the cards.” The men complied and she held the two papers next to each other. 

The cards were the same. The message said, “Dear characters, I’m out of time. This seems like a good place to wrap up.”