The man in the campervan spent most of his time driving through all manner of hazardous terrain. He'd been through the badlands many times now, in search of any big game he could find, and though it was somewhat lonely spending so many months driving alone, he'd never lost his mind or his nerve. The hunter wasn't that type of person. And yet, he found himself now seeing what had to be an illusion, way in the distance.
"What the hell is that?" he muttered to himself, eying what looked like a bright-red blob on the side of the road. Bright red- not the kind of color you saw out in the badlands unless you were looking at a dead animal, but that'd have to be a heck of an animal to be filled with that much blood.
He decided to stop, though. It'd be a pity to let a carcass go to waste.
As he got closer, the hunter realized that the heat was playing tricks on him. At the side of the road sat a red-suited person wearing a gas-mask. A large white canister sat next to the odd man. The hunter had just changed his mind about stopping when the figure suddenly jumped in front of the van.
Even though he was fairly sure it was a mirage, the hunter instinctively slammed on the brakes. The figure in the street jumped back quicker than you'd think someone in a firesuit could, though it remained in the road. When the hunter rolled down the window, he heard the most unearthly mumblings coming from behind that mask.
"What're you doing, crazy?" asked the hunter, sticking part of his head out of the window. "Get out of the road!"
The figure shook its head, pointed to the car, and then to the canister. The hunter frowned, not in the mood for charades. "You want... to destroy my van... with your gas tank?"
It picked up the canister with both hands and approached the car. Then it dropped the canister and tugged at the locked passenger door.
"You want a ride, is that right? I'm driving a van, not a bus," he pointed out. The figure shrugged, but it pointed at the canister again, and then tried to open the door yet again. "Are you offering to trade? A ride in exchange for some gas? That's not even enough to make it to the nearest town, mate."
The person made a deep, sighing sound. It brought out a wallet and pulled out a handful of colorful bills, waving them in the air. The hunter couldn't understand all the mumbling it- probably "he", based on the pitch of the noises-was making, but the intent was clear. He held his hand out, and the man handed him the notes.
He debated, but not for long. He counted the bills again, examined them in the light, folded them up, and put them in his pocket. "Get in," he said, leaning over to unlock the passenger-side door. "You can put that tank in the back."
The hunter asked his new companion several times where he wanted to be dropped off, but each time the man just shrugged. Sometimes he even hummed a little tune. The hunter was beginning to wish he'd just taken the money and left the crazy to stew in the badlands.
"What, are you just gonna nod when we pass by where you want to get off?" he asked. Surprisingly, the man seemed content with this plan. "... okay, then. But you'd better say something if I'm not looking in your direction."
They drove for a few straight days before they reached civilization. Civilization was perhaps the wrong word, as there wasn't a single person living out in the area, although that was the word the hunter used to describe it. But it was territory that the hunter had driven through before, and that was enough to make it familiar. True civilization was just a few more hours away.
"See this wheat we're driving through?" said the hunter, awkwardly breaking the silence. "I recognize it; we're pretty close to a little town they call Harvest. Probably be best if you get off there." He waited for any sign that the man was listening, but there came none. He sighed and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
Up ahead, he noticed that in the middle of the wheat field was a small wooden structure. There was nothing particularly interesting about the shed except for its positioning and that the hunter had never noticed it before. Oh, and the fact that it was glowing an unearthly green color. That was also interesting.
"Another mirage?" he muttered before he remembered that the first "mirage" he'd seen was in fact sitting next to him right now. "There's gotta be something wrong with my head... What do you see?"
The suited figure nodded; the hunter had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Having to rephrase all of his questions into yes-no format was enough to drive him mad on its own. "No, that wheat's always there. I'm talking about that thing." The hunter jabbed one finger against the glass of the window.
The man continued to nod, more and more frantically.
"That glowing shed, that's what I'm talking about... what are you doing?"
His passenger was now opening the door to the van and jumping out. The hunter came out as well and followed his companion to the small shed- thinking back on it later, he had no idea why he'd followed. As they looked around they saw that the shed was strangely empty. They barely got a look before the door closed of its own accord; even though the glowing had suggested the inside of the shed would be lit, the second the door closed everything went completely dark.
"There's nothing here, mate. Let's leave."
Sadly, the door wouldn't open. Not necessarily because it was locked. Actually, it was more like they couldn't open the door because neither of them had bothered to remember the position of the door handle.
The hunter threw up his hands, even though it was wasted since it was too dark to see anything. "Well, this is just amazing. Stop moving around, I'm trying to find it." As he ran his hands over the wall, though, he discovered that there seemed to be no handle at all.
"What kind of door is this? Doors shouldn't have handles only on one side," he fumed. The man with the gas-mask tapped him on the shoulder and said something almost understandable.
"Prison doors do, you said? Yeah, I guess that makes sense, except this is a shed, not a prison." He pushed hard against where he thought the door was, but it didn't give.
"Actually, you're both wrong," said a smooth, female voice. Even though he still couldn't see anything, the hunter looked upwards, towards the place where the voice was coming from. "And please don't push against the elevator doors."
"This is… nice," he admitted, as the pair of them stepped out of the elevator.
It'd been a long time since the hunter had seen the inside of a hotel, so he couldn't be sure, but he thought the room looked remarkably like the lobby of some swanky establishment. There were armchairs plopped all around, plush carpeting, and all manner of decorative house plants. There was even some kind of smooth elevator music coming through the vents in the ceiling. The only things that didn't match were the white, high-gloss walls.
Of course, he didn't really care that it was nice. Leaving would be the best. The door, however, had no handles, and trying to pry the two sliding sides apart was impossible. "Any ideas?" he asked, but his companion merely shrugged and sat down in one of the armchairs.
Some time later, a panel on one of the walls lifted, and two robots trotted in. The taller of the two robots, which was orange, raised a hand and waved. The smaller robot jumped a few times and said something unintelligible in robot-speak. A few years ago, robots had been the stuff of science fiction, but nowadays they were as commonplace as teleportation, cloaking, and the moustache sciences. Nothing to get worked up about.
The hunter shook his head at his suited companion, who was watching the two robots with seemingly unwavering attention anyway. Perhaps there weren't any robots on whatever planet he came from. "We find some others out here, and they're just like you. Mute little buggers."
He was the one with the superior powers of speech, and yet nobody had the decency to listen; apparently the jumping-around of the fat, blue robot was far more interesting. "Can you understand them?" he asked the other man. A shake of the head. "Shoddy work. Someone should've programmed them with some hand signals."
"Believe me," cut that cool, female voice across the small group's one-sided conversation, "when it comes to irritating human gestures, our robots are unfortunately the leading model. Ugh, no. Stop that!" At the sound of the voice, the pair of robots jumped up with enthusiasm and high-fived.
"Blue, how could you allow Orange to embarrass itself like that? Disgusting," remarked the voice, dripping with condescension. The robots, perhaps ashamed, started to jabber animatedly, waving their hands in the air like small children.
The hunter had had enough of this mindless banter. "Oi, you're that lady on the intercom, that we heard in the lift."
"Why, yes, that would be me."
"If you can hear us, why don't you tell us what we're doing here?" he suggested impatiently.
"You and your friend walked into an elevator you had no right to walk into," the voice remarked. "Don't ask me to explain why you two did that. That would simply be impossible."
"Well, then, why did you put a damn glowing shed in the middle of a wheat field, and all that in the middle of the badlands? Anybody would've stopped. Of course we had to drop in."
"It's not like you aren't welcome. Not at all. Isn't that right?" The orange robot waved happily, while the blue one gave a double thumbs up. "That's right. We've had a surplus of moronic test subjects lately. Barely understand the meaning of cooperation. And then you two 'drop in', as you put it, ready-made friends, perfect cooperative testing partners."
"Cooperative testing... partners?"
"If you don't like the word 'partner', we can go with 'testing subjects' instead. Partners, subjects, doesn't make a difference to me."