I really needed the money

I didn't know how I would survive without the paycheck, but I knew I couldn't survive with it.<br><br>The place I worked was quietly creating murders, psychopaths, and serial killers, and I was determined to get out while I still could.<br><br>I had been working there for years, when it first started as a small LLC, it was just a start-up, but it grew rapidly. We went from about ten people to well over a hundred in about six months. The job was easy and the pay was good, and honestly, I was excited to see the final product when I first started. It was some sort of gaming system, but I never really paid attention to the details. I just knew it was going to be big.<br><br>I didn't know much about what was going on in other departments, but it seemed like they were working hard. Sometimes the things people said really stuck in my mind, and I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Mostly it was weird things about the "characters" and "situations" they were testing. There was one person that really stuck out in my mind, she was talking about a "rape scene" that they were testing, and I just couldn't understand why that was necessary. Maybe things are different for men, but for some reason, I don't like to put myself in scenes with rape. It just doesn't seem fun. But it was a job and everyone seemed nice, so I thought I could handle it.<br><br>After about a year, I started to listen closer to what people were saying when they talked about their work. I realized that some of the "reactions" were not normal, and I really didn't think it was healthy to test some of the things they were testing. I started to listen more, to see if I could get more of an idea of what was happening. Sometimes people would say things like "How do we make her more sad?" or "How do we make him angry?" and those reactions made me very uncomfortable.<br><br>I decided to do some research and I found that my job was in the gaming department for a new VR company. The game was non-stop, from what I read online, you could "sleep" in the game, but you could not truly "log out" of the game. It was supposed to be some kind of alternate reality game where you could live a virtual life. The more I learned about the game, the more I didn't want to be involved. But I still didn't really get the true nature of the project until I talked to someone who played it.<br><br>I was at a bar with some new co-workers I had met, and I was getting really drunk - I drank more than I usually did. One of the guys from my department asked what I did, and I told him I was just a general data analyst. He seemed confused and said that he was too. Then I asked if we were in the gaming department, he said no, we were in behavior and development, and I realized that he was in the medical department, on the floor above mine.<br><br>I tried to change the subject when he asked me what I meant, but he said he couldn't get the feeling out of his head that something was off when he was doing his testing. Usually I would have played dumb, but I was drunk and tired of carrying the responsibility and guilt of working with that company, and I needed someone to talk to. So I told him about the game and what I had heard. I asked him if he knew anything about the game, and he said he didn't think there was a game - at least not for the public.<br><br>Then I asked what he meant, and he said that some of the people who had tested the VR were acting strangely. A few had become violent and aggressive, and some were depressed. Some were even psychotic - he said that one girl thought she was still in the VR, even when she was in the real world. I asked him if he thought the VR could be causing that, but he said that he thought it was much more than that. He said he had seen things that he couldn't explain, things that just didn't seem right.<br><br>He looked around the room and asked if I had ever seen or heard anything weird at work, and I told him what I saw happen to one of the people who was testing it. She was one of the first full-time testers, and she was testing for months. When she left, she was totally different. She started out as this very outgoing and energetic girl, then over time she became very quiet. She would sometimes scream out in the middle of the night while she was sleeping, and other times she would just cry for no reason. I only saw her once after she left, and she was like a totally different person. She was angry and distant, and just seemed like she hated everything about life.<br><br>He told me that he had seen the same thing with some of the long-term testers, and it freaked him out. He said he really needed the paycheck too, but he was going to find a new job and get out as soon as possible. I agreed with him, and we talked about how much it sucked that a paycheck could hold someone hostage like that. It was so hard to leave a good job, even if you knew that what you were doing was wrong.<br><br>He asked if I had heard about the "completed" testers, and I said that I had heard rumors but didn't know if they were true. He told me that he had seen some of the "completed" testers, and they didn't seem like "testers" at all. He said that they just did whatever they were told, and they rarely said a word. They just did whatever they were told to do, and that was it. He said that sometimes he would talk to them, and they would respond, but they didn't seem like real people, they just seemed like robots.<br><br>I knew I had to leave the company, I just didn't know how. I had bills to pay, and with the economy the way it was, it was difficult to find a job that paid as well as that one did. I decided to just put my head down, collect my paycheck, and look for a new job.<br><br>I applied to several jobs, but I didn't get any calls back. Then I got a call from someone who wanted to meet with me. He said that he had been a tester for the company I worked for, and he wanted to talk to me about my job. I agreed to meet with him, and he said he would meet me at a coffee shop in an hour.<br><br>I arrived early at the coffee shop, and that's when I saw him. He was a young guy, probably in his mid-twenties, tall and slender with red hair. I waved him over and he came and sat down across from me. He was holding a small notebook and he set it on the table.<br><br>"Thanks for meeting with me," he said. "I feel like you may be the only hope left, and I'm not sure how much time I have."<br><br>"Time for what?" I asked.<br><br>"For what?" he repeated. "I'm not even sure anymore. I feel like my time is running out, and I have to let people know what's going on before it's too late. I'm not sure if I'm strong enough to fight it, and if not, I need someone else to tell people."<br><br>"What's going on?" I asked. "Why do you think you need to fight it?"<br><br>"I'll start at the beginning," he said. "I was also a tester for the company, but it wasn't by choice. My name is Josh, and I was the first 'completed' tester, whatever that means. I don't know what that means, other than my life is gone. I am not the same person."<br><br>"What do you mean?" I asked.<br><br>"I was picked for the long-term testing," he said. "I don't know why, but they picked several of us to test longer. Some were there for a few days, some for a few weeks. I was there for about six months. They said it was a gaming system, but I knew that wasn't true after only a few days."<br><br>"What was it?" I asked.<br><br>"It was some sort of mind control system," he said. "They were testing to see how they could manipulate people's minds. They were testing how to react to different situations, and how to control people's thoughts and reactions."<br><br>"You mean like some sort of Pavlov's dogs thing?" I asked.<br><br>"Exactly," he said. "The same thing, but with people. And it worked. They were able to condition us to do things that we would never normally do. They could control how we reacted to situations by creating different scenarios and seeing how we responded. Over time, they conditioned us to react how they wanted us to react, and when we didn't, they punished us."<br><br>"Punished you?" I asked. "How?"<br><br>"They punished us by locking us in these small, dark rooms," he said. "You couldn't see your hand in front of your face, it was so dark. They would leave us in there for what felt like hours, and then they would bring us out and test us again. If we failed again, we would go back in the room. After a few times, you just did what you were told."<br><br>"That's horrible," I said. "Did you tell anyone?"<br><br>"No," he said. "I didn't know who to tell