Decisions

Those moments when you make a decision, and immediately second-guess yourself.

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    She had answered an ad on campus looking for students for an experiment. It paid $250, and she needed the money. What could go wrong, Carolyn asked herself.

    “Everything,” she answered to herself, as she stood in a room with a dark cloth covering her eyes.

    “Don’t touch the blindfold,” said the instructor.

    There were some nervous laughs.

    Carolyn saw the ad two days ago on a corkboard in the corridor of the building where the psychology courses were taught. It didn’t look threatening. It had dollar signs and hearts around it. This could be something interesting she thought.

    She heard what sounded like something being moved.

    It was followed by the feel of a breeze coming through the room. Was that the noise she heard; the sound of the windows being opened?

    “Keep your eyes covered,” she heard a voice say.

    This time it sounded more like an order.

    She was in her second year of college, taking both psychology and sociology courses. She hadn’t decided yet which would be her major, to the dismay of her parents.

    “You have to make a decision,” her mother told her. “You’re going into your third year; you really need a specialty.”

    “Pick the one you like best,” her father suggested. “You’re getting good grades in both, so go with the one you find the most interesting.”

    “It’s not an easy decision,” she had told them. “I like them both.”

    There was a flash of light that seemed to come through the blindfold. It happened again. She was starting to get a little concerned and began thinking about how she got here.  

    The ad said the experiment would take place in a building near frat row. She thought it was on campus. It wasn’t. It was across the street from the campus.

    When she arrived, she showed the woman at the desk her school ID and filled out a questionnaire. It had the basics: name, address, age, phone number. But then there was one other question that caught her attention: Name and phone number of an emergency contact.  

    After she filled out the form, the woman at the front desk took out a blindfold and put it on her. Then she was guided into a room.

    Carolyn was remembering the woman didn’t say much to her when suddenly she heard what sounded like the short burst of a smoke alarm. There were sounds of gasps.

    “Don’t even think of touching your blindfold,” said a voice that was different from the earlier instructions. It was deeper, it was more authoritarian and it was gruff.

    Carolyn was good at distinguishing voices, especially those of males. She had plenty of experience; she went through guys fast. Just when she thought she could seriously like one, she’d decide he wasn’t the one. She reached the point where she could drop guys so gracefully, they didn’t realize they had been dumped until the following week when she didn’t return their calls.

    There was the sound of a boom, and the floor rattled. It was almost like a desk had tipped over. Then there was the sound of whimpering. It was followed by the sounds of shoes shuffling, like they were walking away.  

    Now Carolyn was getting anxious. Should she pull her blindfold off? She figured if she did, she would be thrown out of the experiment and she wouldn’t get her $250. But now it was more than money. She wanted to know what the experiment was testing. Was this even an experiment? She was trying to balance her fear of the danger with her curiosity over what was going on.

    There was silence. She thought it was quiet for about five minutes, but she knew the mind can play games with time and it might be just two minutes. Her thoughts wandered to her family. She was the middle child of three, with an older brother and younger sister. Carolyn was the most popular, the funniest, the most talkative and the most likely to get in trouble.

    An odor started filtering into the room. It wasn’t smoke, but it wasn’t pleasant either. It reminded Carolyn of the smell in her dorm on a Saturday morning from beers spilled during Friday night partying.

    She wondered how the conversation would go when she told her family what had happened.

    “So let’s see,” her brother would say. “You’re blindfolded in a room, there’s the smell of stale beer, there are loud noises, someone is telling you not to touch your blindfold, lights are flashing and you’re not scared?”

    “I was nervous,” she would tell them.

    “Why didn’t you take the blindfold off and run,” her sister would ask.

    Her father would shake his head and her mother would roll her eyes.

    Maybe I shouldn’t tell my family about this, Carolyn said to herself.

    It was then that she felt as if something brushed her hand. She pulled her arm back quickly. Now her heart was racing.

    “Keep your hands away from the blindfold,” said an angry voice, but this time it had a hollow tone. Carolyn thought it was coming through a speaker.

    She held her hands beside each other so she could grab whatever it was if it brushed by her again.

    She admitted to herself that she was worried. Now was the time to make a decision. Stay to the end to find out what was going on, or pull off the blindfold and probably never get an explanation for the experiment.

    Then she heard a loud bang, sounding like it was just a few feet away.

    “Okay, now I’m seriously scared,” she said to herself.

    I should leave now she thought, but before she could pull off the blindfold she changed her mind and decided to stay.

    “This has to be close to finishing,” she said to herself.

    Then she heard a shriek.

    “It’s over,” she said out loud.

    She pulled off the blindfold.  

    There was nothing there. She turned around. She did a complete circle. There was nothing. There were no people, no desks, no windows, nothing on the walls, no beer on the floor.

    There was one door. She walked over wondering if it would be locked. She turned the knob. It opened easily.

    She walked out into a corridor. She began walking down the hallway when she saw the woman who had given her the questionnaire and the blindfold.  

    “What are you doing in that room,” Carolyn asked in a tone that was more angry than questioning.

    “You shouldn’t have left,” answered the woman. “If you had stayed just a few more minutes they would have explained what we’re doing and you would have been given the money.”

    The woman nodded toward the front door, indicating to Carolyn it was time for her to leave.

    As Carolyn approached the door, the woman said, “Not too many get as far as you did.”

    Carolyn walked out of the building and crossed the street to get back on campus.

    “What was I thinking,” she said to herself. “I made the wrong decision.”

    Three weeks later she saw a story in the newspaper about an FBI raid at a building just off campus, near frat row. The FBI spokesman said a group had been doing some type of secret, social experiment, but they didn’t know the purpose of the test. They had talked to some students who answered the ad, but had not been able to find the people associated with the experiment. It went on to say the college’s psychology department was doing its own investigation, and quoted the department chairwoman as saying the college had nothing to do with it.

    “I’m glad I left,” Carolyn said to herself.  

    But before she could compliment herself on her decision, she thought, “Now I’ll always be asking myself, ‘What the heck were they doing?’”  

By Tom Kastanotis

From: United States

Twitter: TKastanotis