🦜 - The Bird watches The Man Horly Allis consume patches of wheat and bubblegum with a cup of joe. Watch

-40 gems

All of his coworkers were gone. What could it mean? Stanley decided to head to the meeting room; perhaps he had simply missed a memo. When Stanley came to a set of two open doors, he took the door on the left. Yet there was not a single person here either. Feeling a wave of disbelief, Stanley decided to go up to his boss’s office hoping he might find an answer there. Coming to a staircase, Stanley walked upstairs to his boss’s office.

Stepping into his manager's office, Stanley was once again stunned to discover not an indication of any human life. Shocked, unraveled, Stanley wondered in disbelief who orchestrated this, what dark secret was being held from him! What he could not have known was that the keypad behind the boss's desk guarded the terrible truth that his boss had been keeping from him. And so the boss had assigned it an extra secret PIN number. 2845. But of course, Stanley couldn't possibly have known this. Yet incredibly, by simply pushing random buttons on the keypad, Stanley happened to input the correct code by sheer luck. Amazing. He stepped into the newly opened passageway. Descending deeper into the building, Stanley realized he felt a bit peculiar. It was a stirring of emotion in his chest, as though he felt more free to think for himself, to question the nature of his job. Why did he feel this now, when for years it had never occurred to him?

This question would not go unanswered for long. Stanley walked straight ahead through the large door that read 'Mind Control Facility'. The lights rose on an enormous room packed with television screens. What horrible secret did this place hold, Stanley thought to himself. Did he have the strength to find out? Now the monitors jumped to life, their true nature revealed. Each bore the numbers of an employee in the building, Stanley's co-workers. The lives of so many individuals reduced to images on a screen, and Stanley, one of them, eternally monitored in this place where freedom meant nothing. This mind control facility... It was too horrible to believe; it couldn't be true. Had Stanley really been in someone's control all this time? Was this the only reason he was happy with his boring job? That his emotions had been manipulated to accept it blindly? No! He refused to believe it. He couldn't accept it; his own life in someone else's control? Never! It was unthinkable, wasn't it?

Was it even possible? Had he truly spent his entire life utterly blind to the world? But here was the proof. The heart of the operation. Controls labelled with emotions: 'happy' or 'sad' or 'content'. Walking, eating, working... all of it monitored and commanded from this very place. And as the cold reality of his past began to sink in, Stanley decided that this machinery would never again exert it's terrible power over another human life. For he would dismantle the controls once and for all. And when at last he found the source of the room's power, he knew it was his duty, his obligation, to put an end to this horrible place and to everything it stood for. Blackness... and a rising chill of uncertainty... was it over?
Yes! He had won. He had defeated the machine, unshackled himself from someone else's command. Freedom was mere moments away.