Chapter I – The Isolation Experiment

The Isolation Experiment was a famous scientific test in which 5 humans were placed in large, white boxes with a chair, a bed, and a slot in which they would receive food. The goal was to test what happened if a person didn’t see anyone or anything but the room they were in for a month. To make sure that the subjects could stay active(ish), they would get to walk down the hall and back again.

Out of coincidence, or so they thought, they all met in the same place, at the same time.

Eliza and Maxwell were a mere wall away, yet never saw each other. Both began to lose their minds after a week (“People need people,” Eliza would mutter constantly).

Ally was in the next room from Maxwell, who took an approach to imagine that there were people in the room with her. She would have conversations with air that she was imagining was a person that she created. It was found that she stayed more mentally stable than the rest. Her room was next to Arianna’s, who was just surprisingly good at being alone. She would find a new way to entertain herself in a different way each day. She was the youngest of the group, being 19 at the time.

Anthony was in the first room to the right (next to Arianna), and from the first day, he tried to find a way that he could find a loophole in the experiment so that he could get some new scenery, see another person, or something else like that to maintain his sanity. Thinking about how to do one of these things was actually what kept him from going crazy, until he found out how to do it.

Chapter II – Into the Unknown

Eliza was in the farthest room on the left. Her sister, Lilian, had signed her up without consulting her first, therefore, she didn’t know until three days before the experiment had begun. Without being prepared and by being a “people person,” she fell victim to being alone immediately and began begging through the camera that she forfeit the experiment. After nobody came for a week, she lost hope and sat on her bed all day, every day, except for when she got her meals through the slot in the door and walked down the hall and back every day. She felt as if this would be her life forever, and that she would never see a face again.

That changed when the subjects met.

Maxwell signed himself up, thinking he’d be fine while being isolated from all of humanity, and, like Eliza, let loneliness get the best of him. His room was to the right of Eliza’s. He decided that it was best to just wait for the experiment to end.

Ally decided that she would sign up. She thought that if being put alone in a room would mess with her mind, she would just imagine that she wasn’t alone or that she was somewhere else. The experiment found that she was almost as mentally stable as before the experiment.

Arianna was just bored, and decided that the experiment would help her pass the time. She knew that the experiment would limit what she had to do, so she decided to keep herself busy every day with something else to do in the room.

Anthony was tricked into the experiment as a prank and just accepted to enter it, but he knew that he would do anything he could to escape or find a loophole. That’s exactly what he did. How it went down was that he used his hallway walk to change the experiment’s participants’ walk schedule so that they would all meet in the hallway at the same time. He took an alternate (and half improvised) route to the dry-erase calendar that depicted the subjects’ time in and out of the room, meal times, notes about each participant, etc. He had to find a way to not be seen by any of the lab’s cameras or anyone in the building. He erased the calendar so that everyone would be out of their rooms at the same time. He hurried back to his room and waited for the next day to come when his plan would be put into action.

Anthony’s plan would succeed and all of the experiment participants would meet at the same time, in the same place, and the experiment would be ruined.

Chapter III – Meetup in Hallway 9

The day had started like any other, and every experiment subject woke up at the same moment from a loud alarm through a speaker connected to the camera in each room. At 1:00 p.m. sharp, all of the participants began their walk. Anthony, being closest to the end of the hallway, arrived first to where all of the subjects would meet. He was quickly followed by Arianna, who gasped upon seeing him. “Another human!” she said, delighted.

Ally turned up next and froze before Anthony and Arianna, before slowly approaching them and saying, “… am I hallucinating?… !”

Maxwell was coming next, but Eliza came running from behind them, stopping abruptly when she saw other people. “The hallways are long and I’m the farthest from here… might as well run,” she said when she saw Arianna’s face.

When Maxwell made it to the end of the hall and lifted his head, his eyes widened and he said, “Hello there… ” slowly.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, loud alarms sounded from every direction. A voice echoed through the hallway. “MEETUP IN HALLWAY 9!” it screamed continuously.

“Run. My room’s the closest,” said Anthony. Everyone ran to Anthony’s room, went in, and locked the door.

“I guess we’re waiting here, then,” said Ally calmly.

“Guess so,” said Maxwell.

“We have to escape next,” said Anthony.

Chapter IV – The Tile

There were now 5 people in 1 small room with laboratory guards pounding on its locked door. The room didn’t have any openings other than the door, and for obvious reasons, it wouldn’t be the brightest idea to unlock it. There wasn’t anything to break a wall with in the room, so breaking a wall wasn’t possible. Eliza’s description fit perfectly. “Dead end,” she said.

“There must be something that people use to get out of these rooms… other than the door… ” said Eliza before her voice trailed off.

For thirty minutes, the five test subjects searched the room relentlessly for an exit. Maxwell pushed on the walls, Arianna kicked them.

“The floor… ” said Anthony slowly. “There’s a tile in the floor that’s loose. There could be something under it.”

Anthony headed to the corner of the room in which one of the floor tiles was significantly looser than the rest, being easy to pick up. Anthony did so, revealing a gaping hole. The tiles around the one that had been removed fell instantly. The hole seemed bottomless from where Anthony, Ally, Arianna, Eliza, and Maxwell were standing.

“Maybe we should drop something down fir — ” Ally began, but Arianna had already hopped down the hole.

“Is it safe?” bellowed Anthony, but by then, everyone else had stepped off the edge of the hole and was descending into the floor except for him and Eliza.

“Well then, see you at the bottom,” said Eliza before going after the others.

Anthony decided that if everyone else had gone and the guards were nearly through the door, he might as well take the only way out. “Here goes nothing.”

Chapter V – Welcome to Michigan

Anthony fell with a bang in a dark, sewage-like black tunnel. The other four were walking down the hallway it led into (well, Eliza was pretty much running again). Once everyone had made their way to the end of the hall, there was a large door. It took all five of them to open it. There was a large staircase that led to a busy highway. “What now?” asked Arianna.

“We find out where we are,” said Ally steadily. There was a sign about 200 feet away from where Ally was standing so she started walking towards it. The sign read, ‘Welcome to Michigan!’ and that there was a welcome center close by.

“Then let’s head to that welcome center,” said Anthony when he had caught up.

Arianna, Maxwell, Eliza, and Anthony trailed behind Ally to the welcome center in the distance. When they arrived, the people in the welcome center didn’t move. Probably because they were in disheveled, dirty laboratory clothing.

“Welcome to Michigan… ” squeaked a small man behind a large oak desk. Ally stepped forward.

“Look. We need a hotel. Where can we find one?” Ally said.

“The next exit on the highway,” said the man behind the desk nervously.

“Well then, farewell,” said Ally before walking out the door.

Everyone arrived at the hotel an hour later. To the five’s shock, there were a group of reporters eagerly waiting. There was a wave of  shouting from the reporters saying things like, ‘Why did you decide to escape?’ and, ‘How did you get past the laboratory’s guards?’ and, ‘Do you regret your escape?’ and with that, Ally said, “Now we face the media.”

Chapter VI – The Media

When Eliza, Maxwell, Ally, Arianna, and Anthony had been brought to the Michigan Today news tower and offered clean clothing, the questioning began. There were sleek, grey cameras everywhere, and a woman with blonde hair sitting across from the five of them.

“This is Michigan Today News and I’m Olivia Murphy with the five escaped subjects of The Isolation Experiment,” the woman said. “First question,” she said, turning to Anthony. “The Worldwide Laboratory’s cameras saw that the way you escaped was through a hole in your room’s floor. How did you think of checking under a loose tile?”

“Uh — what else were we gonna do?” Anthony responded.

“Next question is for you, Arianna,” said the newscaster carelessly.

Arianna jerked her head upwards upon hearing her name.

“You jumped into the hole first. Why did you do that before even testing it?”

“I guess if there’s a giant hole that seems to have purposely been put there, it must be safe to go down it… ” responded Arianna.

“Next question is for Eliza. Why did you decide to escape with the others?”

“If there are angry guards pounding at my door and an opportunity to get out of an experiment that is torturing me, I’m going to take it, of course,” responded Eliza angrily.

“We have to take a quick commercial break, but we’ll be back with the Isolation Experiment escapees afterwards,” said the newscaster.

Chapter VII – The Isolation Experiment (?)

The Isolation Experiment was a famous scientific test in which 5 humans were placed  in large white boxes with a chair, a bed, and a slot in which they would receive food. The goal was to put the experiment’s subjects into a psychopathic state of mind by isolating them from all other people. Either the scientists would watch them lose their minds… or they’d be a small percentage of the population that would find a way out of the experiment… through a tunnel, a welcome center, a hotel, and a news tower.

But surely, they wouldn’t figure that out.

And even if they did, how could they know it had all been planned? How would they guess that it wasn’t just good luck?

The Lab also had an extraordinary reputation. Nobody would believe that they would set up a fake experiment and have five participants agree to that while actually just mentally torturing them, it was scientists from around the world’s word versus the word of five people with no proof. This “Isolation Experiment” was going to go just as planned. They couldn’t escape.

But could they?

Chapter VIII – About the Lab…

Everything went wrong for the scientists at The Worldwide Laboratory. Their 5 test subjects were informed about the criminal plan and that there were phone calls, secret letters, and camera records proving it. They were told by an investigator that had become involved in the case. It had been in the airport that they were all set to depart back to their homes from.

“About the Lab… ” the investigator started. “… it was all a plan. They wanted to watch you all lose your minds.”

Arianna gasped slightly, but in a way, that suggested that she knew that what was said was true all along.

“They made the hole purposely… but tried to make it look like it just so happened to be there… ” Eliza said softly, apparently deep in thought, eyes staring blankly ahead.

“I could tell that it was all fake a bit… ” Maxwell began. “… but I told myself that it couldn’t be… at least it couldn’t be happening to me.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, with no sounds but the bustling of the airport in the background.

“When we all found each other at the end of that hallway, they must’ve known that we might have the wit to escape,” said Ally blankly.

“Or perhaps they made the hole for themselves to escape in case they were found out and if the lab was raided,” added Maxwell. “Anyone’s guess, honestly.”

The people in charge of The Isolation Experiment were all arrested on the spot. It was one of the most shocking scandals the world had seen at that time.

Chapter IX – The Farewell

All five of them rushed to their planes to return home, but not one of them thought that it would be the last time, because who knew what would happen next to The Isolation Experiment Escapees. They were now considered as celebrities all around the world. Their story would be told over and over, the wondrous story of The Isolation Experiment.