Chapter 3 : A strange inner self
Quota 70/130 - Last Day
"Where am I? In Lyon?" Victor whispered, surveying his surroundings.
Unless he unknowingly possessed an hologram in Lyon, he was far more in the countryside than in a city. He had no idea how he got there, and even if he knew, it wouldn't necessarily help him.
'I guess I should be glad to still be alive,' he thought.
That is if being unconscious, in a coma, or even dead was still considered being alive.
At least the surroundings would make for an exceptional paradise. A paradise exceptionally boring, perhaps, but a paradise nonetheless. A paradise with trees reaching the heavens, birds with angelic feathers, and a starry sky that would excite any astronomy enthusiast.
Yet, it was devoid of people.
Well, there was a figure sitting on a bench, but aside from that detail, the scene wasn't exactly bustling with life.
Victor approached the figure.
With a white sheet covering its entire body, Victor couldn't even tell what it was.
Maybe it was his inner self.
'But why choose the countryside as a setting? Couldn't it have picked a 400 square meter duplex right in the center of Paris?' he muttered.
He didn't know if the figure was his inner self, but it sure had made a mistake with the dream setting.
'And why hide your face under a sheet?'
Victor couldn't find any rational explanation, so he asked the figure sitting on the bench, "Why hide behind a sheet?"
The figure didn't even turn around.
Victor was sure that it had heard him, but it had simply chosen to ignore him, calmly sipping from its cup while staring at the stars.
'Damn this inner self,' Victor grumbled, feeling his patience tested.
'If that's how it is, let's see who's more patient!' he thought to himself.
So, he sat on the bench after picking a nearby flower.
He began plucking the petals, thinking of Experimentation.
"She loves me.
A little.
A lot.
Passionately.
Madly."
He tossed the flower away.
He stopped because mathematically, he would land on 'not at all.'
The figure didn't react at all.
He started over with a new flower, thinking of his supervisor:
"She's crazy.
A little.
A lot.
Completely.
Madly."
This time, the flower didn't have enough petals to continue further.
Victor glanced at the figure to his right.
Still no movement.
Victor picked another flower.
"My inner self is ugly.
A little.
A lot.
Extremely.
Madly..."
And as Victor was about to pluck the last petal, it fell to the ground on its own.
The figure turned toward Victor.
He still couldn't see its face, shrouded in endless shadow, but he could now hear its voice.
It was a melodious male voice that Victor guessed was tinged with mockery:
"Shouldn't you be thinking about your quota?
- Why do you care?
- The right question is, why don't you care?"
Victor furrowed his brows.
'This guy is way too arrogant! Well, maybe he's not entirely wrong,' he thought, while asking the question at the forefront of his mind:
"Who are you?"
And the man answered with the same words that Victor had used:
"Why do you care?"
Victor could feel the man's smile facing him.
He then asked the second question on his mind:
"Why am I here?"
To which the man replied:
"To give you an opportunity in exchange for becoming one of my test subjects."
Victor thought the man would give further explanations, but he did not.
The world shook.
It seemed it was time for Victor to leave, as the surroundings began to collapse.
He could only hear one more sentence from the man before being swallowed by the void: "Follow the rules if you wish to survive."
His consciousness wavered, and he was back in Lille.
The cold, the empty alleys, and the feeling of always being cornered.
It wasn't just a feeling for Victor, who was literally leaning against a wall.
The shock of the accident must have thrown him several meters, so much so that his head should have hit the sidewalk across the street.
There was no one around.
The driver had probably thought that Victor had died from the impact.
Instead of calling the police, he chose to flee.
'Well, at least that's one less problem,' Victor thought, checking his condition.
The driver had at least had the courtesy to leave him his wallet, phone, and backpack. Victor checked the time.
1:00 AM
'Guess I won't be getting back by 10:30 PM,' he muttered as he got up. His clothes were in bad shape, but honestly, one more tear wouldn't make much difference to the sorry state they were already in.
'Let's head back,' he thought, before setting off.
He had to cross the road again.
Victor looked right, left, then right again before darting forward and falling head first onto the road.
This time, fortunately, there were no cars, but Victor had fallen due to a severe migraine.
Hello host, I am the system
And now, Victor was beginning to hear voices.
'Better get home and go to bed,' he thought as he got up for the second time in a short span. He felt that the fall had cut open his face as blood was dripping down onto the pavement, but he could only see the expanse of the damage once he got home. In front of the half-shattered mirror of his apartment, he could see the wound on his forehead: a small cut that he would have little trouble bandaging up.
But as he was carefully examining his wound, the same voice echoed inside his head.
It was a robotic voice devoid of any emotion.
Human body: x1 - value 5
Victor didn't know why, but he felt relieved, annoyed, worried, and curious all at once.
First, relieved: "At least I'm not worth 0."
Then annoyed: "And the whip earlier was worth 8 times more than me."
Worried: "Why do I keep hearing this same voice in my head? Why am I even starting to believe it?"
And finally, curious: "How am I supposed to sell myself to the company?"
But all these questions would have to wait until tomorrow.
Victor fell headfirst onto his bed before falling asleep.
Tomorrow, he had to pack figurines in the morning, smile at the grandmas in the afternoon, find his car, fix it, then drive for 30 minutes to try to meet his quota and finally be on time for his job as a waiter. In short, Victor was only thinking one single thing:
'Can't wait for tomorrow.'
And the next day lived up to his expectations.
The day started wonderfully with the packing of Barbie dolls.
Then, the grandmas flocked to the checkout just after lunchtime and just before mass.
Now, the problem was the car.
Victor found a solution: hitchhiking.
Of course, this solution was far from ideal, but he hadn't really had any other ideas.
All he had left to do was to stand by the roadside armed with a sign that had the full address of where he wanted to go written on it.
He waited like this for about 30 minutes before a white minivan pulled up alongside him. Before getting in, he asked the voice in his head for reassurance:
'You have a self-defense mechanism, I hope.'
Of course, I can sell you shovels
'Better than nothing, I guess,' thought Victor before sitting in the passenger seat.
The driver was a man in his fifties, very nice if he hadn't spent the entire trip giving him ambiguous looks accompanied by creepy smiles.
"Damn this company," grumbled Victor, holding himself back from buying a shovel from the system.
But even though the journey was unsettling, Victor arrived in front of the same house as yesterday in one piece. He waved at the man with a fake smile before running to take refuge inside the house. Once inside, he let out a deep sigh of relief.
He still hadn't solved the problem of getting back, but he would figure that out when leaving the house.
Victor knew very little about the voice in his head.
It called itself "system," seemed to know the value of objects, and could sell him shovels. As odd as it might seem, Victor was skeptical about all these points but was still reassured by the idea of being able to buy shovels for himself.
'I think I'm going mad, well, at least I'm not at the level of the hotel's head waiter or Experimentation, but it's starting to get worrying,' he thought as he headed straight for the stairs.
He had only one question since he had seen his value in the mirror last night: how much was the statue from yesterday worth.
However, he immediately noticed a problem once he reached the upstairs. At the end of the hallway, the door he had closed before leaving the previous day was open.
It was just a detail, but it was crucial: someone had been here.
It couldn't have been someone from the company because Experimentation had assured him that each house was assigned to only one team.
He rushed into the room.
The over two-meter tall cabinet at the back of the room that contained the statue he had closed yesterday seemed to have been forcefully opened, and the statue had vanished, probably taken by the mysterious visitor.
The discovery saddened Victor before he remembered that the company had valued the whip more than the perfectly preserved bronze vase.
So, he went down to the kitchen before grabbing a teapot that was passing by. He stared at it intensely for several seconds before a voice echoed in his head.
No value.
He then grabbed a wooden spoon and stared at it for nearly five seconds.
No value.
Victor didn't know if he could trust the judgment of the voice in his head, but he didn't really have any other choice. He then put the wooden spoon down and picked up a porcelain plate.
No value.
He glanced at the stack of about twenty plates in front of him.
"Why have so many plates?" he sighed inwardly.
No Value
No Value
No Value
No Value
No Value
After scanning just 5 plates out of the hundred in the kitchen, the enormity of the task hit Victor like a ton of bricks.
He couldn't help but swear out loud:
"Damn these rich people."
He checked the time on his phone.
5:00 PM
His plates would have to wait until he had finished with the appliances in the kitchen.
He started with the toaster, then moved on to the microwave and any other appliance he could lay his hands on.
No Value
No Value
No Value
No Value
…
5:30 PM
He hadn't found a single valuable item in the last half hour and was starting to doubt the voice in his head.
"Are you sure there are valuable items in this house?" he asked the system.
Of course, Host, there are exactly 1107 spread across 16 valuable items inside this house
'I guess the porcelain plates don't count as valuable items,' Victor thought as he left the kitchen.
He only had a few rooms left to search: the various bedrooms, the living room, and the two bathrooms.
He found no valuable items in the bedrooms.
5:45 PM
He found no valuable items in the living room but discovered a small music box he hadn't noticed the night before.
It was playing a soothing melody, which Victor needed since he hadn't found a single valuable item in almost an hour.
He entered the first bathroom. Used to hearing "No Value" in his head, he didn't even react when picking up a valuable item.
No Value
Hairdryer: x1 - value 77
No Value
He was holding a pink plastic hair dryer in his hand.
'So, this pink hair dryer is worth more than the whisk and vase from yesterday combined. Someone will have to explain to me one day how the company assigns value to items,' he thought to himself.
He then picked up a small perfume bottle with no discernible brand on it and…
Perfume: x1 - value 104
He had almost doubled his quota with just these last two items.
He searched the second bathroom a few steps away, but without success.
6:00 PM
He would have liked to search the chests, but he didn't have time. It would already be a miracle if he managed to find a kind soul to take him on time for his first shift.
So, he went back downstairs.
The soft melody from the music box in the living room had taken on an ominous tone, probably due to a malfunction.
In any case, Victor left the house, this time closing the front door behind him, and came face to face with the restaurant manager in a white BMW who seemed to be waiting for him.