If this place followed different logic, then every element—no matter how absurd—had to be considered. Fall asleep with the light on: you wake somewhere new. Fall asleep in total darkness: you get eaten.
That last possibility didn’t thrill him much, but he had no choice. Can one truly die twice?
So this time, he left the lantern burning. He lay back on the uneven mattress and forced his breath into a steady rhythm, willing himself toward sleep. Of course, it didn’t come easily—no physical brain meant no real fatigue. All he could do was hope that old habits still lingered, like the reflex to breathe.
He lay for what felt like forever, counting every inhale and exhale, until eventually, somehow, sleep claimed him.
* * *
…and he woke in exactly the same place, jarred out of oblivion by the tablet’s shrill alarm.
“Attention! You have only 10% charge left!”
Without wasting a second, Noah rolled out of bed, filled both buckets at the pump, and hauled them to the abyss.
As he worked, he considered the results.
Nothing had happened.
Nothing at all.
He didn’t even remember dreaming. The whole memory was strangely framed before he fell asleep, and then he suddenly woke up. Between those two moments, there was nothing. No dreams. No sense of time. Not even the feeling of rolling to one side. Just pure emptiness.
Then a darker thought struck him: without the tablet’s alarm, how long would that “sleep” have lasted? Would he have ever woken up on his own?
And why had they left the damned bed here at all?
He wrestled with the question from every angle, but no logical answer emerged.
Still, one experiment remained—sleeping in complete darkness.
This time, he dragged a chair closer to the bed and placed the tablet right beside his head. Then, after another hour of stubborn meditation, he slipped into blackness.
* * *
Beep-beep!
“Attention! You have only 10% charge left!”
Noah opened his eyes to the glow of the tablet, frowning. Once again, there was nothing—no dreams, no sensation, just a blackout until the alarm pulled him back.
The cave hadn’t changed. The same objects sat in the same places. The black doors still burned his arm to the elbow with their merciless chill.
Sighing, Noah refilled the abyss with ten buckets of water, then sat at the table and recorded his fourth video. This one lasted barely five minutes. He described the two sleep experiments and their results.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“The conclusion? Not encouraging,” he said at the end, exhaling heavily. “The doors remain sealed. And now there’s a new mystery: why leave a bed here at all, if sleep does nothing but put me at risk?”
With that, he ended the recording, uploaded it to his channel, and resumed his only skill this place seemed built to cultivate: patience.
Maybe one day he’d perfect it—ten years sitting motionless on a chair. Who knows? By then, his channel might even be famous...
* * *
About seven hours later (according to YouTube’s timestamps), he finally got a comment. It was Frozen Drunkard, of course. And once more, it was nothing Noah actually needed:
@FrozenDrunkard (less than a minute ago)
First! :D
Two hours later, Fresh Potato appeared. This time, instead of empty compliments, he took a cue from Blissfully Naked:
@FreshPotato (less than a minute ago)
If the bed’s useless, maybe the mattress is hiding something?
Feeling a spark of energy, Noah replied that he’d already checked it. But his check had been superficial—he’d only confirmed there weren’t any hard objects inside.
@FreshPotato (less than a minute ago)
Then maybe there’s information hidden in the material itself? Like stitched on the inside?
It was a good idea—with one glaring flaw. The mattress had no zipper. It was ancient, sewn shut on every side. If he ripped it open, would the admins call that “destroying” or even “losing” it? Would that trigger the “termination of existence”?
He wondered if the rules allowed loopholes. Technically, a mattress with a hole was still a mattress… right?
Still, it was a risk Noah wasn’t ready to take—not while he was abusing the current loophole with the YouTube window. He told Potato as much, and the man didn’t reply. Perhaps he lost interest.
A few hours later, BlissfullyNaked chimed in:
@BlissfullyNaked (less than a minute ago)
If the water has some reagent in it, maybe it can reveal hidden writing? Splash it on every surface.
Not a bad idea. Dangerous, though. He had nothing to “splash” with. His only option would be to dump straight from the bucket and hope he didn’t get drenched himself. Still, he jotted the suggestion into the tablet’s notebook.
Soon, Frozen Drunkard rejoined the brainstorming with:
@FrozenDrunkard (less than a minute ago)
Dunk the stick in the glowing water. See if it turns green. If so, try growing it up into the light!
Probably a joke. But it sparked another thought: what if he tried the black doors again, this time with the stick dampened in glowing water? Perhaps it would cancel out the freezing curse?
And then Potato tossed in his own bold idea:
@FreshPotato (less than a minute ago)
Try climbing down into the abyss.
Blissfully Naked immediately shot that down, but Noah wrote it down anyway—for the darkest of days, when every other hope will be gone. Maybe at that point, termination of his existence wouldn’t be the worst outcome.
Despite the half-baked suggestions, he felt satisfied. The fourth video had been the turning point. His three companions had stopped competing for who could write the funniest comment. Now they were thinking like allies, trying to help him survive this strange escape room, before the place drove him insane.