Who's at the door?

He slowly opened his eyes to the scattering rays of sunlight that peered through the broken blinds that hung above the hotel window. He rubbed his hand across the stale sweat of his forehead, finding a resting point near his temple, which now shielded the assault of light. His head was whispering to him broken stories as if this melancholy morning was somehow sewn together from the fleeting memories of a lost night. A dark forest of dreams and histories through which he wonders, trying to find the truth.

Perspiration. Perhaps if I hydrate I can begin to lubricate my mind, bring something of use to the surface, anything.

Picking his legs off the disheveled bed he could feel the weight of each movement as if this body was new, different, wrong. Perhaps it's just the remnants of a night well had, the last dues owed being paid now in full.

Suddenly, a knock on the door.

Who could that be?

His heart began to race, as strange anxiety began to stir the hairs on the back of his neck.

Then without much hesitation, the second set of hasty knocks came banging on his door.

He could taste the liquor in his mouth, triggering a strange feeling of paranoia. Upon standing, searing pain shot through his leg, ending just above his tailbone. It was all he could do to remain upright through the storm of vertigo and pain. As the room came back into focus, his eyes traced from the floor to the red carpet, to his unfamiliar shoes before being thrust back into the storm by what came next. His left pant leg was caked in dry blood, with a tear near his upper thigh and blood-soaked bandaging the color of rust. The room fell into blackness.

Regaining his senses sometime later, his mind began to race. A bullet? How, where, why, but without much time to think the knock began to repeat rapidly as if pulsing with the beat of his heart. Just as he reached his hand to unlock the door, a small piece of paper stuck to the peephole came into focus. “DO NOT OPEN”

Taken back now, he examines the piece of paper on the door, the loud repetitive knocks, and now the frantic jerking of the doorknob. He took a step back, trying to clear his head of the hurricane, and overcome the chaos around him. He was trapped on a merry-go-round spinning out of control, unable to get off, no idea how he came to be there. A realization suddenly came into focus and a decision was made. The decision to speak out, one that he prayed would not end in his demise, but would instead be his salvation, an end to this suffering.

“Hello? Who’s out there?” He said with a shaky voice.

And as if his words were the gavel, the commotion within and without came to silent order. A calmness fell over the room, and for the moment that the stillness hung in the air he was without pain, and his mind focused fully on the door, awaiting a response from the stranger.

He closed his eyes and tried for a moment to escape deeper into stillness, anything to avoid this purgatory he was trapped in. But as his awareness of the moment faded so did the light around him, and once again he was swallowed by the darkness.

“Wait! No! No! Not again! I don’t know why this keeps happening here. Here! Every time we get here. Well, shut it down. Shut it all down now. Anything beyond this point is just draining the neural capacitors.” said a woman dressed in a business casual suit staring at a holo-screen in front of her.

“What is so different about this scenario that the AI can’t compute?” she questioned the woman sitting in front of her.

“Perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way. By making the program question who it is, it tends to rely too heavily on past experiences and memories and has no way of processing what to do next.  After we removed any sense of connection to the past, the program began behaving this way. What if these drops into blackness are deeper than just errors. What if something is, in fact, happening in those moments where the readout seems to be dead.

“Hmm, similar to when humans pray or meditate? Because in those situations we tend to see large amounts of neural activity.”

“Yes, but just because our instruments do not read any activity, doesn't mean that nothing is happening. I can’t say with certainty either way, but we must look further into this possibility. I’ve tried several patches and workarounds with no success, just a blank readout."

“Maybe we should try something different this time.” said the woman as she gets up from her chair. “Run them both with the same blank slate protocol, this time simultaneously.”

He almost tripped over the deep red carpet that ran under his feet and continued down the endless hallway.  He could no longer catch his breath and gave way to punishing fatigue that flowed through his body.

“I give up.” he thought to himself.

He raised his hands and allowed the final blow of the floor to hit his left shoulder. He laid down for more time than he should, allowing his eyes to close and his mind to drift to another place.

Faint footsteps begin to creep into the corners of his mind and then get louder and faster.

“Go. Now!” he thought to himself as he jumped to his feet and began to pick up speed. He could hear the echo of footsteps everywhere, as his mind raced and his ears searched for more information, he feels as if he is being chased, that primal sense of fear and flight pushing him forward. But is he being chased? Is there anyone else? How did this all begin? The more he searched his brain for the answers and found nothing, the stronger the fear came on.

A door, large and black to his left. Had he not seen the light through the cracks in the door, he would have missed it. He stops hard and faces the door. It tells him not to enter with a sign and lock, but it is the only door in a hallway that never ends. He knocks loudly and tries the handle he knows will not turn. As fear grips him, he frantically jostles the doorknob and pounds louder, but nothing. Pleading and pounding on the door but nothing seems to be happening. Just a building pounding beat, growing from his core, somewhere inside himself. His toes began to curl and dig into the carpet. Pushing his left knee up in a strong quick motion he began to shake and move the door. Surely his leg would snap before the door but he kept trying to push through this boundary.

Until a breakthrough.