8XHUNDRED

"Each day for nine hundred and ninety-eight days, they would have me follow the same routine. For three hours a day, they would have me stand before a wall with a large projection, which followed the same sequence with slight variations: the first slide would be a number one, followed by a slide of something happy and positive, followed by a number two, followed by a slide of something unsettling and negative. For example, day eight hundred went as follows: 1, two cats playing, 2, two cats drowning, 1, a child opening a present, 2, a man vomiting to death, and so on and so forth. After six hours of sequence viewing on day nine hundred and ninety-nine, the wall opened before me, exposing a small arena in which two men were fighting. One with a number 1 painted on his chest, the other with the number 2. A firearm was then placed in my hand as they instructed me to kill the man who I thought to be in the wrong. I immediately killed man number 2. When asked how I had come to this decision, I replied,'2 is bad.' Not because it actually was bad. And not because I had an intrinsic knowledge of bad versus good. Rather, because this was what they had taught me. This was all I knew."