“You have to let me talk to it. I think I can really get to the bottom of things…”
“Interesting choice of words,” he notes dryly.
“Please, let me talk to it. Just a little. If you think I’m losing my mind, you can always close it.”
“Fine,” he relents with a royal sigh. “You’re obviously only going to keep sneaking back here, and I can only whip you so many times before you are seriously harmed.”
We could have saved ourselves a lot of pain and sex if we had just agreed on this in the first place, but neither Rex nor I are ones to do things easy. He makes a gesture toward the chest, as if granting me access.
"This is a bad idea,” he mentions dryly as I get close.
I ignore the warning.
“Hello, exposition chest,” I say, shifting uncomfortably on my knees. My ass is still throbbing from Rex’s punishment, which even he has basically admitted was a waste of time. I can’t be stopped once I set my mind to something. He must be getting to know me.
“It’s you again. You like to talk, don’t you.”
“So who decides what chaos bringers get removed, and which psychos are left to roam the world freely? I can name at least ten other people who are way worse than me, and that’s without wikipedia. With that I could probably name thousands.”
“It’s not about your value judgement of worse. It’s about the net. And the nodes. And the ratings. And the votes.”
“Seems like bullshit to me. And nonsense. What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Speak to the chest respectfully,” Rex cautions me.
“Why? I don’t think we were bought here because we’re… what was it? Chaos bringers. I don’t think that’s true. Something else is happening.”
“What’s happening is what you deserve,” the chest says.
“Then why just the two of us? If this is a camp for the worst people ever, why is it just the two of us?”
“Why do you assume it is just the two of you? Why not consider the idea that new arrivals are put here all the time and are mostly consumed?”
“So this is some kind of prison planet where a sentient chest punishes evildoers.”
I am getting the feeling that this chest is not what it seems. It’s not alive. When I touch it, it is cool and inanimate. Of course, I know all too well that it is possible to throw your voice great distances if you want to. I know what a phone is. I’ve used the internet. This is some diabolic combination of the two.
“You are bad. And bad things are happening to you.”
“Well, joke’s on you, because I’ve never been happier,” I snap.
“Which only proves my point. A bad person does well in a bad world.”
“A pristine, unspoiled wilderness. Not exactly the lakes of fire, is it?”
I’m arguing with the chest now, which is not what I was supposed to do. I’m supposed to be wheedling information from it. But it’s pissed me off. It insulted me, and it said that we’re bad people, which can't be true because Rex is the nicest guy I’ve ever met and I was just a little pathetic whiner. I never did anything wrong.
I shut the chest and turn to Rex.
“We have to find the voice behind this chest and get it to set us free. Someone put us here. Someone chose us, and it wasn’t a piece of tacky furniture. And we’re not bad people. We’re being fucked with. Trust me, I know when I’m being fucked with.”
“Look at you, so determined,” he says admiringly. “So many plans and ideas.”
“You’re not angry?”
“I’ve been here longer than you have been. I have come to accept this world as my own.”
He’s lying. I know he’s fucking lying. Rex would never just accept something this weird without understanding it. I’m not going to call him out for it right now, though.
“You told me the exposition chest tells the truth.”
“It does. I was a king on my world, and being king means being responsible for terrible acts. I was at war when I was taken. It seemed right to me that I was what the chest called me, a monster who needed to be removed.”
“Uh huh. Fuck that chest. That chest is a dick.”
I want to burn it. I want to chop it up into tiny little pieces and then throw those into a river. I want to destroy it, but I know that ruining the chest is like attacking a television because you don’t like a toothpaste commercial.
“We need to find who is broadcasting to that thing,” I repeat.
“How can we do that? They could be anywhere. They may not even be on this planet. And even if they are, the world is large enough that we can only travel a fraction of it.”