“What are your feelings about wearing a single, extra thin layer of clothing?” Dr Fidelis asked, out of the blue.

 

For context, Troy had been enjoying himself, having the whole walk over to the testing room to himself. He still travelled with Dr Hale, but she wasn't in the mood for any talking between them, leaving him to use it wisely on self-improvement.

 

As if. Troy had really been stressing about the moment, where Dr Hale would try to pressure Troy into not handing his earpiece over to Dr Fidelis. Mentally, he had been trying to systemize a whole set of excuses for, why he wouldn't do so, as if loading a rifle for automatic fire. He was extra careful, and it stressed him out more than a bit.

 

Yet, all that stress mysteriously vanished, radically replaced with great dread, as his mind comprehended, what had just come out of Dr Fidelis´ mouth.

 

“What?” Troy blurted out, not even realizing the control he had over his own tongue. The words he had heard came from… Dr Fidelis? How sure was he, that he wasn't already inside the puzzle room, and Charlie was messing with him.  That was, of course, forgoing the point, that Charlie did not even know of the room´s existence. Yet, it just made so much more sense, than Dr Fidelis asking Troy this specific question.

 

“Not the answer I was looking for”, Dr Fidelis said as casually as ever. 

 

Was Charlie really the curious one? Had Troy been looking at this whole thing the wrong way since the start?

 

“Sorry”, Troy started, yet unable to speak fully. “Are you… Why did… Can you rephrase your question? I… I am not sure that I understand it.”

 

“What is there to misunderstand?” Dr Fidelis questioned right back. “It is a simple question.”

 

Troy wasn't sure, what he was supposed to be thinking. But, he knew it was in the wrong direction, from the get-go. It had to be, or he would cry.

 

“Dr Fidelis, please stop your jesting”, Dr Hale said, more serious than what she usually used against him. Though, Troy was completely fine with it, seeing as she was coming to his defence. “He is clearly not capable of understanding such simple types of jokes.”

 

Even his defender made fun of him. How vivid!

 

It was at this time, where Dr Fidelis simply couldn't hold it down anymore. Troy should have noticed, that something was amiss, with his near-constant twitches on his face. But, they had been obscured by the facial hair, making him unsure, if they were real, or if they were just a byproduct of him talking. Apparently, it was the latter.

 

“Okay, okay, miss ruins-my-fun,” Dr Fidelis wheezed, clearly not having had his fun ruined. He was going way too hard in on the laughing, and, after a few more seconds of ear-blasting wheezes, began coughing. He still laughed, while doing so, of course.

 

“Could I get some refresher on what he was talking about?” Troy asked Dr Hale, seeing as his primary source for information, had now incapacitated himself.

 

Dr Hale looked at her direct superior, who had fallen to the ground, in both sadistic pleasure and pain. Her reaction to this was uncertain, seeing as her face let none of her thoughts leaks out into the world. Troy didn't see anything, at the very least, which, for some, wouldn't amount to much, but still.

 

“Fine”, Dr Hale finally answered, sounded strangely like she had given up on a certain somebody. “While I am sure Dr Fidelis found his personal wording of the question all too hilarious, the original still stands. Seeing as you are not able to understand this question fully, due to both your lacking understanding of simple concepts and the question missing a few key points of information, the task of rephrasing has seemingly fallen to me.

 

As you may have guessed, our current methods to record your behaviour inside the puzzle room have been… adequate, but not up to our high standards. This is due to the sudden need for a recording system, something which we didn't expect to work on for another six months. But, chance occurred, and testing needed to start at once, forcing us to use subpar equipment, so we would even have a method to record with.

 

Luckily, this obstacle does not need to exist any more. Hours before your initial arrival to this facility, we had put in a haste order for an advanced skinsuit, which would be able to give us fully three hundred and sixty-degree viewing of all your activities. While also providing us with nearly everything about the state of your vital organs, including simplistic things like heartbeat, blood pressure, stress levels, and how much you are flexing your upper thighs.

 

Unfortunately, the consequences of putting haste on an already complicated order have caused us some downsides. When giving the designers your sizes, we gave them your raw versions. These sizes have not taken into account or need for wearing clothes. While getting into the skinsuit will be easy in nearly all types of clothing, it will not be able to close fully, while you are wearing anything other than an especially thin pair of boxers.

 

Now, the problem is, that this situation was not fully realized as a possibility, when writing up your work contract, making it so, that we can't force you to accept this change, due to the… immature harassment it can potentially cause. I assure you, that I will gain no pleasure from seeing you in a skin-tight suit. As for Dr Fidelis… he might be more inclined to stare at the skinsuit, instead of you.

 

So, with this load of information received, can you accept wearing a single, extra thin layer of clothes, for the sake of better data sets?”

 

What a long, and explanatory description of, why Dr FIdelis had asked such a horrible thing. It would have been even better if Troy had fully listened to over half of it. He did comprehend the last bit, though, so all was well in the end.

 

But, the question still stood. Would Troy be comfortable wearing- oh, who was he kidding? That last shred of dignity was only in his imagination. It had been lost this morning when he cried over stubbing his little toe twice in a row.

 

The worst thing which could happen from wearing the suit would be that Dr Fidelis would try to strap on even more unnecessarily complicated things on him. No, wait, scratch that. Troy should not be making any assumption about his own willingness to perform out in the view of others, wearing something, which would make others cry.

 

“Can I see the suit, before I make my decision?” Troy asked Dr Fidelis, who had stopped laughing halfway through Dr Hale's explanation.

His question further fueled the fire, though, and off he was rolling around on the floor. If Troy didn't know any better, he would have likened it to a six-year-old boy being tickled.

 

Not having the question answered by Dr Fidelis, Troy looked over to the second-best source of information, who he knew of. Now that he thought about it, wasn't she also the most reliable? The one, who Troy had thought to be so, was rolling around nearly strangling himself. Putting any trust into that personality was just asking to be tricked.

 

Dr Hale sighed, seeing his gaze, before walking over to the computer, where she began rapidly typing away. Troy walked with her, glancing over her shoulder as she mashed the buttons faster than his eyes could process the simple movement of the fingers.

 

In the background, Troy could hear Dr Fidelis hitting a wall with a dull thud. It didn't stop him from his loud howls of pleasure. God, that sounded wronger than it should have.

 

To be franked with the current situation, though, Troy wasn't too sure, why Dr Hale was even using the electronic screen right now.

 

“Are you gonna be showing me a picture of it, or…”, Troy began but was distracting by a loud hissing noise coming from the ceiling. Looking up, he could see a square painted the same colour as the ceiling heading towards him.

 

“You might want to take a step in any preferred direction, or you will suffer less-than-lethal head trauma,” Dr Hale stated, having already moved aside.

 

Troy didn't listen, staring upwards at the still size-increasing, two-dimensional square. Why he didn't move out of the way, he wasn't too sure about. PTSD was a great reason, in his own, humble opinion. Staring at so many two-dimensional things lately, and getting flack for taking his time in blinking, made one not waver in the face of other distractions, no matter how reasonable they were.

 

Getting pulled harshly to the side did, though. Troy wasn't sure anyone awake could ignore that.

 

“Do you really want to get your sick days so much?” Dr Fidelis asked, holding Troy shoulders tight, and releasing them slowly, as the narrow platform descended. “Because I'm not letting you cash out just yet.”

 

Troy came to his senses not even a second after the last word had been uttered. His focus was on the closely escaped head trauma. That particular concept wasn't on his mind right now.

 

How, in the twelve circles of hell, was Dr Fidelis able to pull Troy away? From what he had last observed, Dr Fidelis should have been laying nearly ten meters away, laughing himself half to death. Troy should have heard him getting close, at least. Dr FIdelis looked old enough, to not be able to walk soundlessly, much less run while doing so. Why hadn't he heard anything?

 

That's when the idiotic design of that ceiling cabinet came into his mind, and the impossibilities of Dr Fidelis´ action was flushed away, filed into the never opened storage space, which Troy called his ´long-term´ memory.

 

“What idiot made a thing come down so close to the desk?” Troy stated, not being in the right mindset to realize, who he was asking. “It is a safety hazard!”

 

“The right question would be; Who would do, what I did?” Dr Fidelis sent right back to Troy. “It's a free safety mechanism. People cannot steal your data if they are suffering from semi-serious head trauma!”

 

What a dystopian way of looking at the world. Troy was slightly uneasy about having to perform more tests created by this man.

 

“Don't worry about the safety features”, Dr Hale said from the side. “Focus on the thing atop it.”

 

Oh, how could Troy forget? That whole thing was only set down, so he could get a better look… at… the…

 

What the frickity fracking tic tac was this supposed to be? And, in those colours? Troy was not an acclaimed clothing critic, but even he could see that this thing was not designed to be fashionable.

 

“Were the colouring choices… intentional?” was all Troy could bear to ask. His eyes were fixed on the thing before him. That codpiece must have rivalled King Henry the Eights.

 

“I certainly hope not”, Dr Fidelis answered, looking at the air, as if he was having traumatising flashbacks. “The people I sent the diagrams to requested a colour palette. I didn't have anything in mind, other than it needing to be mainly white, but they didn't take it as a valid answer!

 

So, I had to do what we all must do in times of need, and reused… an older palette, which I had lying around on the desk. To be more specific, it was the colours used in a joke, gag gift, which depicted a vomiting unicorn. Not the best thing to base things of, I realize now, but it was all I had at the time.”

 

What a terrible reason. Troy couldn't bear the information, which he was being told. The colouring choices, once explained, just made too much sense. But, and this was a large but, why had they made the orange in a wavy pattern? And, down the stomach, at that!

 

“So, now that you have seen the… unique design of the skinsuit, can we get an acceptance or a rejection from your part?” Dr Hale asked, clearly not wanting to wait for Troy's mental breakdown to restart itself.

 

Troy wasn't sure what to say. Not two minutes earlier, he had wholeheartedly stated that his dignity was non-existent and that wearing a full out skin suit would be of no hassle. Yet, now, seeing that such a grotesque thing could exist, phantom pains were beginning to appear. His dead dignity was haunting him from the grave, pleading him to reject the design before him.

 

“I'm… I am honestly not sure, what I can say about it”, Troy said, unsure if his honest opinion about that abhorrent manifestation would be appreciated. “The design is something, which I have never observed with these eyes of mine.” And, he had hoped to never really see it ever.

 

Dr Fidelis did not take him up on his hints, taking it all with a grin.

 

“I completely understand”, Dr Fidelis began. Did he too, understand the skin suit horribleness? “At first, I was awed by the magnificence of it, as well. But, after some time, I finally understood.” Seems that he didn't, completely misunderstanding Troy's very obvious intents.

 

At this point, he had made his decision, yet again turning tables a full hundred and eighty degrees. While his dignity may have left this plane, Troy could always be in denial about it. Therefore, he had made the choice to refuse, no matter how saddened it would make Dr Fidelis.

 

“Listen. I know, that you may have some expectations about my opinions when it comes to doing this thing. But, I need to make sure, that you-”

 

“You´ll get a ten per cent raise in your wage to accompany wearing it.”

 

“Deal.”