Origin

Several years prior, Roman began keeping a journal. In it, he recorded his thoughts, his memories, and his feelings, because he knew that every time he returned from the Association's escape rooms, some of them might not come back with him.

He made it a habit—or perhaps a ritual—to document what happened in each room afterward. Writing about the things he wagered, the people he met, the puzzles he solved, and the terrible things that sometimes happened in those rooms was therapeutic, in a sense. A great number of names had been recorded in that journal over the years, many of them belonging to people who lost their minds or their lives. These names served as a reminder to Roman of the path he walked.

He flipped through the older entries. One of the most prominent names in these pages belonged to the old preacher, Gunther. Roman grew up in a small, rural town with one church and one pastor. The other children were either afraid of Gunther or outright hated him and his hawkish eyes, wisps of white hair, and leathery skin. But Roman always thought of him like an ancient sage or wizard who dispensed nearly incomprehensible wisdom that was always exactly what you needed to hear, even if you didn't want to hear it at the time.

He found the pages he was searching for. Roman was able to recall most of his conversations with Gunther with such clarity that it was like reading a transcription. One year, a family of foreigners moved into the town. They were welcomed with open arms, with one notable, very vocal exception: Gunther. Most dismissed his opinion as the outdated prejudice of a senile old man, but Gunther was adamant that the family be expelled immediately. That summer, a fourteen-year-old girl was murdered—only one year older than Roman was at the time. The town was broken in a way it never really recovered from, but the old preacher seemed completely unsurprised from the day the news broke to the day the sheriff arrested the teenage son of the foreigner.

What confused young Roman the most, however, was the way it all was swept under the rug. No one ever apologized to Gunther or admitted that he was right. If anything, they grew more suspicious of him. One Sunday afternoon, Roman worked up the nerve to ask about it.

Gunther was sitting alone in the front pew, gazing up at the cross as he often did. Roman always figured he was praying, meditating, thinking, or perhaps all three at once. He turned to look at Roman as he approached.

"A question eats at your soul, boy. I see it on your face."

Even at thirteen, Roman understood that he was broaching a delicate topic. "It's about the thing that happened in the summer, sir."

A shadow passed over Gunther's wrinkled face. "Ask your question."

"Why didn't anyone listen to you?"

Gunther considered how to answer. "Do you remember the parable of the good Samaritan?"

"Of course."

"Do you remember what Christ was responding to?"

"'Who is my neighbor?'"

Gunther nodded slowly. "That story is misunderstood a lot these days. They all conveniently forget the important part at the end."

Roman frowned.

"'Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?' There is a right answer and two wrong answers. That is, there is no obligation to love the man who turned his back on you as though he were your neighbor."

"Aren't we supposed to love our enemies?"

Gunther turned on him with fire in his eyes. "Above your own blood? At great cost to those who care for you and depend on you? I will pray for my enemy and hope that he repents of his evil, but I will not invite him into my home. That is not love."

Though he did not feel like his question had been answered, Roman asked another: "How did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That they were... bad people."

"Do I need to see a lion kill to know it is a killer?" Gunther, with some difficulty, pushed himself to his feet. "One of the most damaging lies told in the modern age is that all people are created equal. Some are born to be era-defining artists or genius mathematicians or magnanimous saints. The opposite is also true. Some turn to evil, often because of circumstances forced upon them by others. But make no mistake, some men are born evil. It's in their eyes, their names, the way they dress, how they treat others—it's written in their souls."

The young Roman thought on this for a few moments, then asked, "Can an evil man be saved?"

"By the grace of God alone." The old preacher bent down to look at the boy. "However, a truly evil man, by nature, will reject salvation. He would rather spend eternity in hell than repent of the darkness within him."

Roman turned back further in his journal.

It took years for Roman to fully grasp Gunther's words. During that time, he would leave his hometown to attend a college in the city. It was there that he met Alister.

Alister was a curious young man in both senses of the word. He believed that information was power and that no knowledge was useless or detrimental. He asked a great many questions, sometimes to the point of annoying both his classmates and instructors. "What are they even here for?" he complained to Roman one day. "Why bother coming to the seat of learning if you have no hunger for knowledge? Have our universities become nothing more than daycare for twenty-somethings?"

Roman felt a kind of respect for Alister, but he would always hold him at arm's length—he never once discussed personal matters. Roman felt that doing so would be crossing a line that shouldn't be crossed, though he would not have been able to articulate the reason for it at the time. Graduation marked a natural end to their relationship. However, not long after, they would meet again under much stranger circumstances.

Roman continued leafing through the pages until his eyes landed on the account of his most recent conversation with Alister.

Neither Roman nor Alister was the kind of man to stand on ceremony or bother with small talk. Before the bartender had even finished with their drinks, the man with slicked-back raven hair started with, "You've been costing the Association a lot of money."

This was the kind of conversation worthy of a cigarette, but smoking wasn't permitted inside the bar, so Roman would have to make do with the bourbon that was placed in front of him.

"Thirty rooms," Alister continued, "and a damn good success rate, too. I just don't understand why you keep coming back. The others, I do. But you? You're squandering your potential."

"If you don't want me to keep playing, you should stop sending me invites." Roman sipped his drink.

Alister shook his head. "You're missing my point."

Roman leaned back on his barstool. Behind him, a woman laughed. It was a good thing to be able to laugh like that, he thought. Sometimes he wished he could laugh and drink with friends and live a normal life, but he never let these thoughts linger, because he knew they would never be more than fantasies.

"I assume you've heard of Laplace's demon."

Alister blinked. "The thought experiment? If one knows the position and momentum of every particle in existence, he can calculate their position at any point in the past or future, et cetera?"

"That's the one. Do you think such a demon could exist?"

"You're asking me if I believe in determinism."

"Well?"

"I've seen a lot of strange things, Roman. I think you'd be delusional to look at the chaos of this world and claim there's an order or an end to any of it."

"Then maybe I'm delusional, but I've come to believe I was always going to walk this path."

"What are you talking about?"

"From the moment the Association sent me that first invitation—no, perhaps much earlier than that—it was always going to play out this way."

Alister snorted. "That's absurd. You can choose to stop at any time."

"But I won't."

"Then you're just like the rest of them. A moth to the flame," Alister spat. "Eventually you'll make a mistake, and it'll be over for you."

"How many rooms? Fifty?"

Alister drained his drink in three gulps.

"100? Say a number."

"I don't know if you see yourself as some sort of tragic hero or if you've honestly lost your mind," he said, standing up.

"1000 rooms," Roman said.

"You'll break long before that."

"Do you think that will stop me?"

Alister looked at him with disgust and perhaps a hint of fear, then turned and left the bar. Roman nursed his bourbon.

The earliest entries of his journal were written by a younger hand without regard for chronology or presentation. At the forefront of these was the story of Roman's first encounter with the Association...