S.A.M.L.A.R.B Spectral Aquisitons of Material Lands And Resources Bureau

>Damn it, your act of rebellion didn't work. Try rebelling again by throwing the magazines around the room. Have a good tantrum.

You glance at the table in front of you, brooding on your failure. You'd intended to die, but instead you've been transported to a room designed by mad scientists to implant the enjoyment of filing your own taxes, doing data entry work, and building model rail-way sets into the minds of anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped within it. Even the magazines are dull. They all appear to be absurdly specific niche magazines, or Sunday editions of newspapers that went out of bring a decade ago. Headlight Waxing monthly. Duck Fondling weekly. The Bi-anual caketin-stravaganza. Each of them of no use in passing the time. You reach out to them, intending on throwing them off into the room in an anarchic pile, a refusal on your part to be content and contained in this beige nightmare!

Squeak.

Your hand brushes against the top of a plastic laminated table. The magazines have been laminated INTO the table. You look down to the floor, a sense of failure rising up from your toes and sticking in your gut.

> Scream out if anybody is here. Hey it's worth a try.

You take a few deep breaths. Samual Larbawitz isn't going to be defeated that easily! If you could survive five years of mind-numbing monotiny before trying to kill yourself, then damn it you can survive a bit more of this! You cup your hands over your mouth in an effort to increase your voice's volume (despite having known since childhood that this doesn't really work.) You call out, asking if anyone can hear you. As if in response, a beeping comes from an unseen PA system, and a voice as dull and drab as the room you are in speaks in an almost painful monotone.

“We can hear you. Your Spec Oreitnation Representative will be with you in a few moments. In the mean time-” He sighs audibly over the PA. “-please enjoy this song.” He then begins repeating “I'm beige, dabadee daba DEAD” over and over again...and it's clearly not a recording. Now not only is the room boring, it's also grown actively irritating. You must try something else or risk losing your mind entirely.

>Look in the mirror

>Ponder your strange situation

>Mess with the TV, see if there's anything good on

You get to your feet and move over to the mirror just below the television set. There should be SOME evidence of the game of chicken you played (and apparently won on a technicality) with the bus mere moments ago, surely? You look, and sure enough there you are. You take stock of your state. Arms and legs? All there. Genitals? Still present and mostly unused. Fingers? Every one of them in place. Indeed you look entirely fine, until you look at your face. You're sure you used to have an eyebrow there before...and an eye, come to think of it. And that large shard of glass protruding from your forehead MUST be a new addition. You wandered through your day mostly on auto-pilot but you think you would have noticed this particular passenger boarding along the way.

You're suffering from what is clearly a fatal wound in your (un)educated opinion, and should at the very least be half blind given that one of your eyes appears to be outright gone, but your vision is fine and you don't FEEL dead...or at least you think you don't. No one ever told you what the physical sensation of death would be. That would hardly be a fitting subject for a school assembly. “Yes children, today we're going to talk about how it feels when we die. It's cold, children, so very cold. Your parents lied to you. There is no heaven, only a howling black void in which you fall forever. Or a beige room. Or maybe that. Or maybe nothing, or maybe sweets. I don't know, children, I'm still alive. But I won't be forever. And neither will you. RIGHT that's it for today's assembly children, feel free to take your coupons for one free psychiatric evaluation on your way out!”

Better not think about what your state implies about your current situation. You decide to distract yourself from philosophical musings by fiddling with some out-dated tech. You step back from the mirror and begin pushing buttons and twiddling knobs and more than once performing a bout of percussive maintenance on the TV. It doesn't seem willing to respond to anything you do. You check the back of the machine as best you can and notice that not only is it not plugged into anything...there isn't even a wire coming out of the set. Pondering this, you notice a button you have yet to play with. You press it, and out from an as of yet unseen panel in the side of the machine, falls a VHS tape. Suddenly, with you behind the machine, you hear the telltale 'ping, fwiiiip, fizz' of a CRT starting up, and shortly after that, it speaks in a cheesy American game-show host's voice...with what sounds to be occasional glitches or hiccups in the recording.

“Hell-l-lo? Mr Lar-la-larbawitz? Where a-are you?”

You stand behind the TV...which appears to be talking to you. There is a VHS tape on the floor just in front of you, and the off-beige door stands till unopened at the far side of the room.

What do you do?