The Atmospherians

by Alex McElroy

  “What would you like to do, Blair? What do you love?”

  “My father,” he said. “My father was a reporter.”

  Sasha’s voice addressed the crowd: “Can anyone tell me what Blair is doing?”

  Hands waved anemone-like. A Gray stood. “Deflection,” he said.

  “Perfect,” said Sasha. “Blair is deflecting the question. It’s quite normal. Nothing to be ashamed of. You’re not used to being honest. Blair: Do you live alone?”

  “I don’t see why that—”

  “That’s a yes.”

  Everyone laughed.

  She said, “What happens when we live alone?”

  A Yellow stood: “When we live alone we lie to ourselves.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “When we live alone. We lie to ourselves. There’s no one to keep us honest. Keep. Us. Honest. Makes it sound like a burden—like honesty is some kind of punishment. When the truth is, we punish ourselves when we’re dishonest. Remember: how we act in the night infects how we live in the light.”

  Together, everyone said, “How we act in the night infects how we live in the light.”

  “How we act in the night infects how we live in the light.”

  “How we act in the night infects how we live in the light.”

  “How we act in the night infects how we live in the light.”

  As they chanted, Blair watched the screen for another picture of Dyson. The slideshow started over: Sasha in the middle of a row of men; men building sheds; man feeding baby. But the photo of Dyson did not reappear. The slideshow cut from Sasha over the kneeling man to Sasha cutting a ribbon, as if Dyson had never existed.

  “Blair,” Sasha said. “You have so much to learn about yourself. But you’re in good hands—the best hands. You are in ours.”

  Randy dipped over to the microphone. “What are you thinking, Sasha?”

  “He might benefit from a chamber,” she said.

  “You think he’s ready for that?” Randy asked.

  “No one’s ready until they’re ready,” she said.

  Blair tried to laugh off her words. Was she sentencing him to something?

  She said, “I need volunteers. Men who aren’t afraid to fail.”

  The chosen ascended the escalator. Two Yellows, two Grays, two Pinks, and a Blue.

  “Thank her,” Randy whispered.

  “For putting me in a chamber?” Blair muttered.

  “He says thank you,” Randy said into the microphone.

  “And thank you, Blair, for trusting us with your growth.”

  The volunteers waited behind them, holding hands.

  * * *

  They entered a store called CHAMBERS. Sasha’s voice echoed through the mall—interrupted by applause—but the walls of the store silenced her. Blair’s heartbeat ticked in his neck.

  “Just tell me what we’re doing,” said Blair.

  “This environment is totally safe,” Randy said.

  “It’s a challenge,” said one of the Pinks.

  “To test your competency,” said the Blue.

  “It brings people together,” Randy added. “It’s fun.”

  “Nothing about this sounds fun,” Blair said.

  “We challenge each other,” said Randy. “Learn through team-building exercises. Remember our conversation? About saying yes?”

  “Just because it worked for you doesn’t mean—”

  “Sherlock’s Library fine with everyone?” Randy asked. The men nodded.

  Blair’s legs were rubbery. The other men showed no signs of fear. Only anticipation bordering on joy. Blair tried to comfort himself by envisioning his future audience. He’d be the first to write about the Atmospherian chambers. It would bring him the attention he deserved—No, he thought, it would bring Dyson the attention he deserved.

  Steel doors studded the walls of the hallway. Above the doors, placards read Jobs’ Garage or Chaplin’s Factory Line or Zuckerberg’s Dorm or The Locker Room. At Sherlock’s Library, Randy gripped the handle with both hands and pedaled backwards, urged them inside. The room had been transformed into an elaborate library: a fireplace featuring fake crackling logs, a wide mahogany desk, and a bookshelf stretching the length of one wall. A Yellow lounged on a psychiatrist’s couch. A Blue sat stiffly in a tall-backed chair, puffing a pipe.

  “Who’s done this one before?”

  Two men raised their hands. Randy asked them to leave. They claimed they’d forgotten the answers, but Randy couldn’t risk any shortcuts. He locked the rest of them inside.

  Blair’s father used to punish him by locking him in a bathroom. Although his mother normally let him out after ten or so minutes, there was one weekend when she went to her sister’s house and Blair was trapped in the bathroom overnight. He said nothing all night, worried he’d receive a worse punishment if he cried for help. In the morning, his father found him huddled in the tub. He laughed at Blair—What the hell are you doing in here?—as if he hadn’t been the one to lock him inside. This room returned Blair to that room. He sat on a desk chair, now, one leg tucked to his chest, tapping his fingers on the armrest, inhaling and exhaling deliberately to fend off a panic attack.

  Randy’s eyes showed through a thin hatch on the door. He said, “You six men have infiltrated the personal library of the world’s greatest detective: Sherlock Holmes. His vigilante detective work has undermined the authority of Scotland Yard. You have been sent here by Scotland Yard to gather dirt on Holmes in the hopes of sullying his reputation. But he anticipated your arrival. A slow-acting poison gas is drifting into the room. You will be knocked unconscious if you inhale it for more than an hour.”

  Steam wafted out of a vent in the corner.

  “Mr. Holmes’s design is imperfect. The library is riddled with clues that will facilitate your escape. You must learn to see what the great detective cannot—and you must hurry.” Randy shut the hatch. Above the door, a digital timer lit up at 60:00, started counting down.

  “What the fuck is this?” Blair asked.

  “It’s Sherlock’s Library,” said the man on the couch.

  “Elementary, my dear Watson,” said the Blue. His attempted British came out Southern.

  Blair pounded the door, begging Randy to let them out.

  A Yellow said, “Jesus, buddy, it’s a game.”

  “They’re piping in poison!” Blair shouted.

  “It’s steam,” said the Blue. He put his mouth to the vent. “Cherry flavored.”

  “I need to get out of here,” Blair said.

  “Then you better help solve the puzzle.”

  “You gonna help us or pout?”

  Blair puffed his inhaler.

  “These chambers used to be huge. Every mall had one—couples would go to test their relationships. Companies sent their employees for bonding exercises. Have you seen Saw?”

  “It’s like safe Saw.”

  “It’s fun, too,” said the Blue. “My dear Watson.”

  Blair scrunched on the desk chair. He covered his face to deter the steam. The other men’s confidence quieted his nerves, but he hated interacting with them. They were sheep following orders. His terror mutated into anger. When he got out, he would demand a meeting with Sasha. He would tell her what he knew about Dyson.

  The Pinks clawed every book off the shelf. “I found something!” said a Yellow. He unrolled a scroll from around a candle. “Sherlock Holmes is considered one of the greatest detectives to ever live. But his egotistical search for truth distracts him from discovering personal truths. What path does Sherlock follow? And how does his hunt for answers lead him astray?”

  “Masculinity,” said the Blue. “Sherlock thinks he needs to constantly prove he’s the greatest detective. He’s already great. He solves impossible crimes. But what does crime solving prevent him from solving? Himself. Just like being a man.” He nodded at the Yellow. “Sasha talks about the pressure we put on ourselves to be right. We think we need all the answers, like we need to know things
to matter. Sherlock doesn’t feel worthy unless he solves crimes.”

  A loud click sounded on the other side of the door. The men cheered.

  “One dead bolt down—three more to go!” shouted a Gray.

  A Pink spoke: “This reminds me of Chaplin’s Factory Line. How Chaplin didn’t need to always be funny. Like, there were all those other men doing their work as Chaplin cut corners, playing the clown for laughs. But he felt immense pressure to perform—and it wrecked him.”

  The men used what they’d learned in other chambers to psychoanalyze Holmes: he used cocaine out of concern he couldn’t solve the crimes on his own; he feared intelligent women and ridiculed Mrs. Hudson to preserve his sense of self-worth; his refusal to join Scotland Yard expressed a classically masculine impulse to privilege the individual over the collective.

  With one bolt remaining, the clock at eight minutes, and the room clouded by steam, the men decided that, of all Holmes’s problems, his greatest was how he treated other men: specifically Dr. Watson, his assistant and sole confidant, whom Holmes disparaged for failing to meet his own intellectual standards. Holmes maintained his status by placing people below him.

  The men presented this answer to the door. The bolt didn’t unlock. Fewer than five minutes remained. They repeated their answer. The countdown screen went blank. Words scrolled across: How are you, Holmes? The numbers returned: 4:41–4:40–4:39.

  The men scrambled. How are you, Holmes? How are we, Holmes?

  4:01–4:00–3:59–3:58.

  Blair couldn’t handle watching them struggle. “Who have you treated like Watson?” he explained. “Who’d you exploit to make yourself feel better?”

  “Of course!” said the Blue. “It’s just like Jobs and Wozniak.”

  One by one, the men confessed to the door: school friends they’d bullied, coworkers with lisps, their own children, their siblings. Blair stayed on his chair, arms crossed, feet plunked on the desk. “I’ve never done anything like that,” he said.

  Cherry fog thickened the room. Blair tasted it everywhere in his face: on his tongue, in his throat, clogging his ears, up his nostrils. The timer dipped under one minute. “I don’t see the point of it,” he said between yawns. “If we lose we lose.”

  “Losing will hurt our statistics.”

  “It will hurt yours, down the line.”

  “Just do it for us.”

  A bell clanged: thirty seconds remained.

  Blair held his inhaler to his mouth, coughing, which soon gave way to yawns. His face sagged; his fingers felt as feeble as ribbons. His inhaler slipped from his grasp. The timer beeped through the last ten seconds. The men slid to the floor. At zero, the final dead bolt clicked open.

  * * *

  Blair woke in a low, soft bed, tucked beneath three layers of blankets. He rubbed the fuzz from his eyes. His lips were coated in stickiness. A dull ache pounded his skull. Sitting up exhausted him, so he rested against the headboard. A grid of floor-model beds stretched in every direction—the same cloud-colored comforters, the frilly pillows. The men from the chamber slept in nearby beds.

  A figure evolved into Randy as it approached. “You’re awake!” he said.

  “You tried to kill me,” Blair mumbled.

  “Oh god—kill you! You’re not even—everyone thinks they’re the president. Soooo important.”

  “You’re running some kind of death cult.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” Randy held up his hands. “We’ve never had anyone fail. Three years running those rooms and your group is the first to ever stay trapped. I don’t know if you heard those answers, but Sasha never imagined they’d stump anyone. You, though—it’s impressive.”

  “You piped in poison gas.”

  “It’s not mustard gas.” Randy sat on the foot of the bed. “Nitrous oxide. Same as the dentist. Too diluted to cause any real harm. Even for people with your… condition.”

  “You said nothing bad would happen.”

  “That’s the thing about percentages, Blair. They only work with the data you’re given. They claim to predict, but they only tell you what’s already happened—and what happened to you and those men, I assure you, it’s never happened before.”

  “I want an apology.”

  “And you’re gonna get one: okay? You deserve it. But first, we need to talk. We need to have a conversation.”

  “About you trying to kill me?”

  “About the James Bond Double-Oh-Seven gear in your bag. Because that, Blair, that’s a breach of contract, a breach of trust—which is much worse, for someone like me. All of us here, including Sasha, we feel so hurt by what you’ve done—and we have a lot of questions for you.”

  * * *

  Randy left Blair in bed to rest. He promised to return soon with orders from Sasha. Blair felt reckless for coming here, thinking he could expose Dyson’s murder the way he’d exposed that socialist chapter. The socialists were nobodies. They had no money. They didn’t pose any threat—not to the community, if he was honest with himself, and definitely not to him. The Atmosphere, though, had power. He’d been an idiot for thinking he had the skills to take on a project like this. Soon he’d end up like Dyson—dead at the base of a pond—forgotten.

  No one would come looking for him. His parents were dead. His closest friend hadn’t texted in months. He’d only had two major girlfriends. Both married shortly after leaving him. His followers might write him angry messages demanding fresh content. But they would never search for him. There was the letter sender. If weeks passed without Blair posting his findings, the sender might alert the police—but by then, it would be too late.

  Two Blues stood guard at the foot of his bed. If he could slip past them, he figured, he could escape. He tried connecting with them: “This music must make you nuts.”

  “It’s on a loop,” a Blue said. “I always know what’s coming, never surprised.”

  “The Inception soundtrack’s almost on,” said the other Blue. “Best time of the day.”

  “That soundtrack is so moving,” said the first.

  Blair peeled off his covers. “I’d go mad listening to it all day.”

  “You can get used to anything if you do it often enough.”

  “That’s what Sasha tells us.”

  “That doesn’t frighten you?” Blair asked.

  “What’s to be scared of?”

  Blair set his feet on the ground. The men ran over and bent to help him stand.

  “You can’t jump into walking,” said the first Blue.

  “I’m just stretching,” Blair said. A sandy sensation ascended his legs.

  “You haven’t eaten in hours.”

  “Easy does it,” said one.

  Blair shoved them away. He ran, wearing only socks, an undershirt, and boxers. His legs gave out and he fell face-first to the floor. He dragged himself onto a nearby bed. A pair of yellow track pants lay folded on the pillow. Blair slipped them on over his boxers.

  “Are you okay?” shouted the Blues.

  He continued running but was unsure where to go. Beds spread out in every direction, and the walls were mirrored, multiplying the beds into the thousands. But he chose a direction and, eventually, came to where the department store fed into the mall. The mall’s lighting frizzed his brain. Halved black orbs bubbled out from the ceilings, recording his every step. Clusters of men jogged past. The cologne men sprayed their cologne.

  At the center stage, the mall split into three different paths. Blair took the one at his right, thinking it would lead back to the receptionists where he’d entered. The path was packed with black cushioned chairs where men were mending tracksuits or applying novelty patches. Some read from a hardbound The Atmospherian Doctrine. Blair picked a copy off an ottoman and slumped in a chair like the others. He flipped through looking for something incriminating, for some reason why outsiders weren’t allowed to read it, but on every page was a photo from Sasha’s former Instagram feed. Inspirational quotes were inscribed beneath each
one, all attributed to her.

  A Pink sitting beside Blair lowered his copy. “Aren’t you the guest?”

  Blair sprinted ahead, in the direction of a thickening scent of grease. A mysterious choking sound intensified. He followed a sign on the ceiling pointing toward the food court, hoping there might be an exit nearby.

  There was an exit. But Blair didn’t see it. The scene inside the food court shocked him in place. On the left side of the cafeteria, men lined up across a counter loading plastic trays with prepared plates. Others crowded around small square tables in the center. They chewed sedately. No one spoke. On the right side of the room, a single porcelain trough ran the length of the tables. A cushioned pad, like those in Catholic churches, extended in front of the trough. Men knelt on the pads and dug their fingers into their mouths, backs curved, heaving, their necks stretched over the lip of the trough as vomit fell through their lips.

  Men finished their meals. They loaded their trays onto carts. They waited patiently behind men at the trough. Some men beat their chests before kneeling. Others jumped. One man crossed himself. Another slapped both cheeks. There were farts, burps, the occasional scream.

  Randy knelt at the end of the trough, close to where Blair stood. The man beside Randy pointed Blair out to him. Randy stood. He dragged his forearm across his face to clear off the mucus. He burped into his elbow. “Blair!” he said. “Glad you woke up.”

  Blair ran in the direction from which he had come, his socked feet slipping on the floor.

  Randy’s voice echoed through the loudspeaker: “Atmospherians, you may remember our guest, Blair Hastings, from this afternoon’s PIEs session. Well, Blair is not responding to our generosity. He needs help. He is tired and confused, but he is in no way dangerous.”

  I am dangerous, Blair thought, When I get out of here I’ll show you how dangerous I am.

  “If you see him, please sit him down. Tend to him. Talk to him. Keep him in one place as long as you can, and either I or Sasha will be there shortly to assist you.”