The Platform

[sockheart]

The Platform
a Netflix inspired horror meme


There are three types of people:
Those above
Those below
Those who fall

Welcome to the Pit. You may be receiving punishment for your crimes, you may be the victim of a random kidnapping, or perhaps someone simply didn't like you. It's possible you were approached with the promise of a prize if you volunteered to participate in the experiment for a long enough duration. Whatever the case, you wake up in a cell with no doors, unbreakable windows, and a singular massive hole in the center of the floor. It stretches on seemingly endlessly, with floors above and beneath you visible if you twist to the right angle.

Once per day, a platform will be lowered. You and your cellmate will have exactly ten minutes to devour the food upon the platform, and then it will begin to descend again to the floor beneath you. What you have to eat depends entirely on the people above you - there is no fresh meal here unless you're on floor #1. As the platform descends, more and more fingers devastate the limited resources and leave gradually less for the people beneath them. Before the platform is even a third of the way down, all resources are depleted and the lower floors spend their 30 days without sustenance. Most lose their minds, or resort to darker means to survive.

Around nearly midnight, the platform will shoot back up at high speed to begin the cycle again.

➤ Attempting to steal and store food for later will result in the temperature in the room being cranked up to boiling, or dropped down to freezing.
➤ You are given 1 personal object of your choosing, excluding communications devices and firearms.
➤ Every 30 days, you will be assigned a new floor number either higher or lower than your previous floor. This decision is made by someone far above you, and no information is given as to the reason why you may be moving up or down.
➤ There seems to be a mutual agreement among the entire population: those who are above you are considered better than you, they're selfish and greedy. Those beneath you are socially lower than you, and they don't deserve your pity.
➤ Aside from that, there are no rules.

Enjoy your stay.

INSPIRATION OPTIONS

Time Duration

1. Rookie - The first day, week, or month in your cell.
2. Seasoned - The second month, after being shuffled to a drastically different floor.
3. Not my first rodeo - Moved multiple times over several months.
4. Veteran - Six months or greater, maybe even years. You've had many cellmates and watched many come and go.

Situation

1. Feeding Time - the platform is lowered with the scraps of those above you, or maybe nothing edible at all.
2. New Cell Mate - day number 30 rolls around, and you wake up to find yourself in a new place with a new face.
3. Reunited - after separating from your cellmate for 30 days or more, you are paired back up again. Were you above or below each other?
4. Those Who Fall - a plummeting body from someone above, or perhaps you're the one who chose to drop?
5. Loneliness - Maybe you have no roommate, and your only human interaction is to try and speak to the floor above or beneath you.
6. Starvation - thirty days on a lower floor, with nothing but your roommate or an unfortunate falling body.
7. Pulling the Strings - perhaps you're the one in charge, will your guilty conscience make you intervene?

Comments

[jedied]

It took a moment to parse what he was saying, before her suspicions confirmed themselves in a single name. Skywalker. No wonder he'd seemed familiar; though it had been more of a feeling than any physical resemblance. She'd probably spent just enough time in the presence of his parents and uncle to pick up on it.

There couldn't be any other reason, could there?

"You're him -- you. You're Ben Solo."

She mentally cursed herself for stumbling over her words and revealing her hand; she still didn't know if he was likely to be ally or enemy. But perhaps it would help to know he hadn't been forgotten.

"I met your parents. They sent me to Skywalker, and he... sent me here."

With apologies and sad eyes, but here she was all the same as if he'd thrown her in himself.

[forcefullyunstable]

His head shot up at the mention of that name, his entire body jerking in shock. His mouth flopped wordlessly several times before he finally hissed, “I am Kylo Ren.”

But the space between his words told a harsh truth, as did the recognition in his eyes. The Force seemed to answer for him. They were indeed one in the same. But it was a name he hadn’t used since fleeing from Skywalker’s fledgling academy, and certainly not since being imprisoned here.

“How do...” he started, but Rey had already answered him.

“They sent you... to him...” The name was spat with such vitriol. He didn’t know he still had a heart when it came to his family, but he could feel it breaking. “They still... After what happened to me, they still trusted him. They still thought he... they still sent you?!”

Another question begged itself to be asked, though Kylo wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

“...Did he... did they... tell you what happened to me?”

[jedied]

"They were reluctant, your father especially, but... there's no one left. I needed training to control myself. I could have run, I suppose..."

But she'd been naive. She'd had hope. Leia had taken one look at her and had seemed to recognize something; there'd been a deep sadness beneath her steel that Luke Skywalker had explained later, though not in nearly enough detail to justify himself.

"He said you'd turned to the Dark. There was an incident... he wouldn't talk about much, but he said he'd failed you."

She felt a - compulsion, almost, a pull within the Force itself to reach out to him. Her empathy would destroy her in a place like this. She stayed where she was, but kept her gaze locked on him, clear and open.

[forcefullyunstable]

“No one left?” He couldn’t help himself from scoffing.

On the one hand, he wasn’t exactly surprised - with the threat of a place like this, who would even want to risk being seen as Force sensitive. On the other, there were apparently enough spread across the galaxy to sustain this place - even if they were as harmless as a Dathomirian witch.

Granted, none of that really mattered now.

“An incident.” His eyes narrowed. He felt the sting of betrayal all over again. “Is that what he calls attempted murder?”

[jedied]

Rey hadn't known this place existed. She hadn't known anything at all about the Force on a place like Jakku, but there were whispers all the same. That it was bad luck. That it was dangerous. And the Jedi order? It had never rebuilt.

Luke Skywalker may have been a cranky, embittered old man, but he was one of a few still willing to try, even if he'd been reluctant.

"He told me that he confronted you and you lashed out at him, nearly killing him. Is that not true?"

She'd known there had to be more to it from the way Master Skywalker had seemed sad and tired more than angry. I failed him, he'd said, and refused to speak more about it.

[forcefullyunstable]

“Confronted me.” Kylo scoffed, growling under his breath. His uncle always did have a way of expressing things from ‘a certain point of view.’

“Did he describe that ‘confrontation’? Did he bother to say it was with his lightsaber ignited, over my head, while I was sleeping?” If looks alone could kill, Rey would be dead by now. These were painful memories, and to hear how his family told the story now just tore the wound in his heart open again. “Lashed out? Oh yes... I lashed out. I panicked and brought the entire hut down onto us both!”

That night, he relayed to Rey, he was angry, angrier than he’d ever been before or since. His parents hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in years. His uncle had decided it wasn’t worth trying to hide him, that he was better off dead. And nature itself seemed to agree with him. Not long after he’d heaved himself out of the debris, a bolt of lightning struck the temple, obliterating it and lighting most of the compound on fire.

“I did the only thing I could think to do after that. I ran. I fled the planet, the system... right into the clutches of the New Republic... I think the rest speaks for itself.”

Did he cause the lightning? Maybe? Probably not. But he was strong enough in the Force that it wasn’t worth the risk, and any argument he tried to make was only seen as proof of his guilt.

[jedied]

She listened with a growing sense of empathy and anger of her own at the Jedi Master she'd trusted for the too-short time he'd even tried to teach her. A part of her had believed him in the moment he'd said he was sorry, that she was dangerous, that he couldn't risk for her what he didn't manage for his own blood.

She supposed she was only lucky he hadn't tried to kill her, too.

She was quiet for a few moments after he finished his explanation, swallowing back her own hurt which seemed insignificant in the face of what she'd just been told.

"I'm sorry. You don't deserve this; no one does."

She certainly didn't think she'd done enough to warrant it, though they'd made her feel like simply having the potential was enough. She was strong enough that they wouldn't even give her the chance to prove she wanted to be good, to help. Though perhaps if she had convinced them of that, they would have eventually put her to work guarding this place. The thought sends an involuntary shudder through her. Surely this is the greater evil than anything either of them had done by accident.

[forcefullyunstable]

He could feel her anger, that sense of righteous indignation. It almost made him laugh. Having the mere potential to be the next Darth Vader was reason enough. Skywalker was still untouchable, while people like them were left to starve and rot.

“He gave me years.” Kylo scoffed. “At least there’s that. How long did it take for him to give up on you?”

[jedied]

"A few weeks."

Barely long enough for him to get to know anything at all about her, but enough to pass judgment. Enough to decide he didn't dare let her in any further after they'd reached a certain point of mutual trust. Enough that she could see the moment in which he started to develop an honest degree of caring for her -- and then she'd somehow destroyed it in one misstep. Seeing Ben Solo here, so long after his disappearance -- she could almost understand why. If he could condemn his own nephew to this place, of course Skywalker wouldn't risk caring for another under his guidance.

"He said he couldn't do it again. He couldn't hope for another outcome for me. He didn't even warn me; I thought he was sending me back to Jakku."

[forcefullyunstable]

“That junkyard?” He looked down, breaking eye contact. “You know... for your sake, I wish he had.”

It would have been a place worth running off to himself, had he gotten more of a chance when he fled. Starving to death on some backwater desert planet still beat starving to death in captivity.

There was a long stretch of silence before he looked up again.

“My parents... you said you met them. Do they...” he gulped. There was a part of him that wanted to rekindle the hope in them that he lost over the years. But Skywalker’s ease at locking up a girl he’d barely trained, sentencing her to a fate worth than death when she barely understood the crime... it didn’t bode well. “Do they still think Skywalker was right? That I’m a monster? Can Mom feel me? Do they even know I’m still alive?”

[jedied]

She shook her head; his parents had been unwilling to speak of him except in vague, veiled terms. She hadn't known they'd had a son until Luke Skywalker had told her.

"I wish I could tell you. They were... guarded. Sad. Angry at one another. I didn't understand it until I met Skywalker and he explained."

He hadn't explained nearly enough, it seemed. She'd never expected to find Ben Solo alive, though that was her own conclusion rather than anything anyone had said to her explicitly.

[forcefullyunstable]

Kylo looked away again. “They sent you to him, knowing what would happen. I don’t know what else I could have expected.”

Fortunately, before bringing up the past could get too heartbreaking, the uncomfortable silence was interrupted by the grinding of gears. Kylo immediately sat up and took notice. The platform had stopped on the floor above them.

He looked over at Rey. It didn’t behoove him to explain anything. They were in competition for the same scarce resources. The more she took, the less he could take, if there was even anything left to take at this point. (Which there very well may not be, given how far down he estimated they were.) It was as simple as that. But Skywalker had taken something even more precious from both of them - their freedom. He felt a strange kinship with the newcomer that he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.

“You only get ten minutes. Grab whatever you can and eat. But don’t try to save anything. You do, and we both get punished for it. Believe me, it isn’t pleasant.”

[jedied]

Rey listened intently to the sounds from the floor above; it was surprisingly quiet for what ought to have been a fight for resources. Unsurprising if they only get ten minutes, though Rey had been used to having so little to eat that she had to stretch out her meals deliberately to make them last even that long. She'd only gotten a few weeks of being even remotely properly fed before getting sent here, though they'd been limited on Ahch-To to what they could catch and gather. She tried not to consider the empty gnawing feeling that had returned to her stomach in the past few days when they'd only offered her enough to keep her alive, not proper food at all but some sort of fairly tasteless beverage that theoretically contained enough vitamins and minerals that she wouldn't die in her first few weeks here.

They wanted her to suffer. They'd wanted to give her enough of a chance to hope, only to see it slip away. This cruelty reeked of the Dark Side more than anything either of them could have possibly done.

She listened for another moment and got to her feet, ready to pounce upon whatever makes it down here if she has to. But she's not going to see her cellmate deprived if she can help it. Perhaps they could work something out.

"I'm smaller than you; I don't need as much. We don't have to fight one another."

Not yet, anyway. She didn't want to hurt him to save herself, but she would if he forced her hand.

[forcefullyunstable]

“Martyrs don’t live very long.” He spoke from experience. That kind of talk was just that - talk. When it was a matter of survival, it was every man for themselves. She’d be no exception.

The silence was disheartening. It was possible the floor directly above them was empty. That did happen sometimes, and the platform stopped for ten minutes at each floor, regardless of whether anyone was alive there.

When the mechanism clicked again, he stood as well. Height gave him an unfair advantage in feeling devastated. He cursed under his breath. This cycle was going to be especially brutal. They were near the bottom and the platform had been so thoroughly picked through that there was next to nothing left.

Well-versed at spotting even tiny morsels of food by now, he lunged for a couple of fruit pits that still had pulp left on them, that somehow hadn’t been sucked dry. There may have been a few crumbs, some meat left on discarded bones that got pushed underneath the metal plates. Even those had clearly been licked clean.

[jedied]

"I know how to survive; I just don't want us to kill one another over barely enough to keep one of us alive."

They'd have to figure something out, but today wasn't going to be the day. As soon as the platform drops Rey scrambles onto it and grabs some discarded bones first; they can be cracked open for marrow that will still yield some actual sustenance. She shoves aside a few plates that have been piled atop each other and finds some small edible scraps that she doesn't take the time to identify before stuffing them into her mouth. There's no time for any particular dignity; ten minutes are too long and not long enough to find and actually consume everything remotely edible.

And through it all, she can't help but think of those few floors below them; those who will get even less. Would they survive? Could she keep herself alive at their expense as well as her cellmate's if it came to it?

It's not worth considering in any sort of depth. She's too hungry already, and she doesn't get the sense that Ben Solo is going to spare any compassion for them, which means hers will be misplaced.

The platform's moving again while she's still looking for anything else she can quickly consume, and she tries to hide her growing despair as she jumps back off it just before it starts to drop. This is worse than her worst day on Jakku, because at least there she had the sense that the next day would bring a better take or her family, and when it came down to it Unkar Plutt wasn't inclined to let her actually die. She'd been too good at her job.

Here, no one cared.

It's going to be a long month.

[forcefullyunstable]

A few sideways glances while digging through the scraps proved that his new cellmate was anything but naive when it came to survival. He had been a few months into his sentence when he first learned the bone marrow trick. Rey was as green as they came, and yet, she knew how to scavenge among the scraps like a seasoned veteran.

But even with ten minutes, there wasn’t much to find. When the platform descended, his stomach growled in protest. Angrily, he slammed his fist into it repeatedly - a painful distraction from the obvious.

His chart would have a new dot, nestled closer to the bottom than most. It wasn’t the lowest he’d been, but it was just outside the bottom five. This was going to be a very, very long month indeed.

A long stretch of silence fell over the cell as reality sunk in for both of them. Eventually, Kylo offered a coarse, “welcome to the Pit.” before getting a drink of water from the spout (couldn’t have people dying of dehydration before starving to death - that would be truly dark and barbaric) and trying to make himself comfortable on the cot on his side. Energy conservation was part of survival too.

[jedied]

Rey winced a little when he resorted to pain as a distraction, but she didn't tell him to stop, though for a moment she thought she could feel an echo of it herself. It was definitely too early in her confinement to start caring this much. There hadn't been much of a concept of friendship on Jakku; not after a betrayal had left her too stung to try again. Not when a touch was as likely to be a knife in the back as a handshake.

She hadn't had friends for long enough to expect any of those she'd gotten to know in the Resistance to come for her, if there were any way for them to even know where she was. She wondered what General Organa would tell them, if anything. If this was what she could consign her own son to... it didn't bear thinking about.

She followed his lead, greedily drinking some water in an attempt to feel a bit less empty, but soon going to sit on her own cot.

"Does anything seem to affect where you end up from month to month?"

If they could survive this month with reasonably good behavior... did that earn them a higher floor next time? Or was it truly random? Did people get cycled for maximum suffering while keeping them alive the longest? That would be brutal, but it meant they'd live. He'd lived here for years; she'd survived Jakku. It was likely they'd have time, though perhaps not together -- there was a reason, she assumed, his last roommate wasn't here. Had he killed them? A question for another time, perhaps.

[forcefullyunstable]

If a mother could sit by while her own son was left to rot away in this place, it did not bode well for a Jedi pupil she’d just met. Clearly, the old heroes had less patience now than they did then. Or perhaps it was simply too risky to pass on the things that they’d learned. They were still invincible in the eyes of the Republic government, but did invincibility have an expiration date?

So many questions that Ben had pondered over the years. So many answers he never received.

“...there’s no rhyme or reason. Not that I’ve figured out.” He sighed. “Every time I think I’ve found a pattern, they prove me wrong.”

This month, it felt like he’d been proven wrong. He thought for certain he’d be closer to the top this time. This was one of the longest stretches he’d had past the halfway point, and he had to wonder if they’d finally just tired of him managing to skirt by.

“New month, new cell, new cellmate. Unless you happen to be an odd one out, I guess.”

He’d seen a couple people more than once. Never more than twice.