You are inside a classroom of Pridmore Way School, a middle school. Wooden panels have been fitted into window frames, made to block interior light and movement. Mattresses, cushions, blankets, and dirty fabrics function as sleeping arrangements, sometimes hidden beneath covered tables.
Names have been written across the whiteboard, resembling a guestbook. Somebody has spraypainted it's loud onto a wall, near the ceiling.
- You read the notepad. The cover says "Aider's." On the first page it reads, "3987 days ago." That is over a decade ago; it is hard for you to imagine how things would be similar and in other ways different. You feel a longing interest for this older period, to be there as others were.
The size of the notepad forced the author, Aider, to fit only about ten words a page; thus you flip the pages constantly.
- For the very first time, happening during a winter, I came to Pridmore. I had followed the footprints in the snow. I decided the spacing was regular enough to be the mark of humans. The footprints disappeared before they exited snow, so I assumed they were erased. I looked for a reason, looked at Pridmore. It had two unequal halves, a small space between for a parking lot. The two buildings could be staring at each other. It looked intentionally disused. I supposed someone was inside.
- I approached one of the front doors and pulled, then pushed. It was locked. I peaked through the door's window to see a barricade. I knocked, thinking of nothing better to do, and no one answered. I went to a window nearby, tapped on it, waited, looked at another window, tapped on it as well––waited, went back to the front door, stood in front of it, pulled and pushed the handle, found it still locked. I repeated in any order. After minutes, I had approached one of the windows to spot a paper flattened against the glass, and a hand behind it. On the paper it read, "Remove your hood and goggles." I was wearing those things, so I removed them––waited, blinked. The person inside tapped on the glass, flipped the paper, which now read, "Proceed to the door and put your hand through the slot." I did that.
- I thought they would cut my hand off. (Now-after, it seems a ridiculous anxiety.) I felt hands take mine and I wanted to pull back. I couldn't see who it was. Someone was feeling my hand, the fingers, pressing down on those little bones, pushing on nail, jabbing and manipulating palm. I kept my hand loose. Then they released my hand, some things were moved, and they opened the door for me.
- They were really fond of touching my shoulders, though it wasn't affection, as they let me in. I can't quite remember who did the touching, nor who stood in front of me (there was someone important greeting me there). After that they lead me into a hall where a great number of people moved about. Only those already facing the right way looked up to notice me. A woman approached me and said she would follow me around for the next few days.
- She followed me at her stable, far distance, which was about twelve meters. If the room was smaller than that and I was in it, she would stand behind a wall. If I needed to go somewhere or know a thing, be it the right door, the right bed, she would point. For the times she could not point and had to speak, she sometimes spoke at a volume hard to hear, or left a daily letter, or had someone else say the thing. I assumed a time would come when an accident would happen, or I'd surprise her, and I would find myself alongside her––behind her in the line for food, or going opposite ways through the same door at the same moment. She seemed deliberate to avoid chance, to avoid specifically me. Always being physically afar from someone brings up to the mind's conception a misapprehension of the face. When moved close the face becomes the real person. I could not really see what she looked like. She looked at me as if something was unhealthy about me, and at her far distance, she knew how I really appeared.
- You pause reading. You wonder, if Pridmore now was the Pridmore to Aider then, whether or not you would have made it in. What was the purpose of touching? And the woman's distanced following?
There is a second part. Beginning it are the words, "Just yesterday."
Possible actions:
- Read part two Read the whiteboard Leave the classroom
Inventory:
- You carry a knife; a journal and a notebook; a bloodied radio and a flare gun. You have a shotgun (2), a pistol (12) and three spare magazines inside your vest pouches. You are wearing a tactical vest, blue jeans, a white T-shirt and a pair of shoes.
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