"My Name Is"
"What is your name?"
The voice is calm, methodical, and so neutral that I can't tell if it's a man or a woman. I can't tell where it's coming from; the room is a perfectly featureless white cube. I can't even tell where the light is coming from--it seems directionless and omnipresent, obliterating all the shadows in the room. It's a little disorienting.
"My name is Louise Ross," I reply hesitantly. I look around for a loudspeaker, but my fingers are busy trying to find the door I came in through. Even by touch, though, I can't locate the edges--it's as though the opening never even existed. "I came in for a job interview, I have an appointment for three o'clock..."
"Your name is not Louise Ross," the voice responds. I turn around, straining to get clues as to its gender, its tone, its location, but it seems as omnipresent as the light. I turn back around, suddenly worried that I'll lose track of which wall the door was on. "What is your name?"
"My name is Louise Ross," I respond irritably, hoping my irritation covers my fear. "I don't know what this is all about, but if you think there's some kind of mistake, I can show you my driver's license once you let me out." I run my fingernails along the wall, hoping to catch at a hidden seam, but the surface is perfectly smooth.
"Your name is not Louise Ross," the voice says again. The inflection hasn't changed even a little from the last time it spoke; it might as well have been a recording. "What is your name?"
"My name is--" I kick the door, or at least the spot where I think the door should be, hard. It doesn't leave a mark. "My name is Louise Ross, damnit!" I shout loudly, but something about the walls seems to deaden the sound, depriving it of an echo. I don't even get the satisfaction of scuffing the walls with my shoe. In fact, I almost lose my balance--the weird lighting makes it hard to judge distance. It's hard to tell where the wall meets the floor. I fight a slight wave of vertigo as I look down and can't quite figure out where the floor is. "Listen, you can't keep me here! I've got friends who know where I am, and--"
"Your name is not Louise Ross," the voice says. It sounds like the speaker is absolutely certain of that fact. She (but it could be a he) could just as easily be saying that two plus two is four, or that the sky is blue. I feel a tiny chill of panic run down my spine at the certainty in that voice. "You do not have any friends. What is your name?"
I try to pretend I don't hear the question this time. "What do you mean, I don't have any friends? How do you know if I have any friends?" How does he (but it might be a she) know that? Have they been watching me? How long did they know I was planning to come here? How long have they been planning for my visit? I take a deep breath and try to stay calm. Too many questions, not enough answers. The most important thing right now is getting out of this room. I lower my shoulder and charge where I think the door was.
There's no give at all. I wince in pain at the solid, jarring sensation that goes all the way up my shoulder and leaves a dull ache behind. The voice doesn't help. "You have no friends. Your name is not Louise Ross." It's not actually mocking me; it hasn't changed tone even a little. But somehow, it feels mocking in the wake of my humiliating failure. It's sort of like adding a lack of insult to injury. "What is your name?"
"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," I say flippantly. I don't actually expect a response, but maybe it'll shut up whoever's speaking for a moment while I try to figure out a way out of here. I reach for the wall again, feeling that wave of dizziness stronger this time--I realize it's not just my imagination, the effect is getting stronger. The light is getting brighter, not enough to be painful but enough to make it virtually impossible to tell where the white light ends and the white wall begins. The effect is an illusion of a featureless void, and I close my eyes for a moment to center myself, then open them again. It doesn't help much.
"My name is Slavegirl 95," the voice says, surprising me. It surprises me on a lot of levels, actually. It surprises me that she responded at all; I expected her to ignore me and repeat the question again. Endless repetition can be a very effective interrogation technique, and I didn't think she'd stop using it just because I was getting snarky with her. It surprises me that it's a woman's voice; I'd just started to convince myself that it must be a man on the other end of the connection. And it shocks the hell out of me that she only thinks of herself as 'Slavegirl 95'. The chill running down my spine becomes a torrent of ice water. "What is your name?" she asks again.
"Oh, so we're back to that, are we?" I mutter. I start feeling for the wall, but a flash of motion out of the corner of my eye causes me to spin around. But when I do, I don't see anything there. Was it my imagination? Perhaps it was just my brain trying to fill in the blankness with something tangible, or...no. I spot it again. It moves just a little bit faster than I do, but I'm good at tracking fast-moving things. I turn to where I know it's going to be, just in time to see it fade away. Just an image projected onto the wall somehow. Why would they...
I look around. I realize that in my haste to follow the spot on the wall, I lost track of where the door was. "What is your name?" the girl asks. (I'm not going to call her that name, I promise myself. I'll find out her real name someday, give it back to her. Until then, she's just "the girl".)
"Alright!" I shout, my voice petulant. "I don't know how you found out, but my real name is Toby. Toby Blair. My friend had a job interview here a few months ago and never came back. I wanted to find out what happened to her, but I couldn't afford a detective. Happy now?"
"Your name is not Toby Blair," the girl responds. "You have no friends. What is your name?" She doesn't just suspect it. I can hear it in her voice. She knows it. I don't understand why they're playing these games. If they already know who I really am, why are they asking? They're not going to get anything out of me anyway.