It’s pretty amazing how pervasive the seed of doubt can be. Even more so, it’s fascinating how it effects everyone differently. Like a match being lit in your mind, for some the gust of newfound excitement blew it out immediately, for others it turned into a full-fledged house fire burning every thought in its wake. And I mean they had every right to. The hardest part of the whole experiment was establishing our own credibility. So we gave them a box, generally inconspicuous in character, it could have been anything, but a box is familiar. And on the box a little red button that when pushed made no sound, had no audible click. Nothing lit up, there were no internal wires or circuitry, in fact the button had no discernable connection to the box, or to anything really. But when pushed, it allowed for a consequence free year of life. You could do anything you wanted, could be whoever you wanted, and see anything. And at the very second you pushed the button one year from now, you would return to this same little white room like nothing ever happened. Well that’s what we told them at least.

Now any rational person would look at the box, look up at us. Look back down at the box, shake their head back and forth in a bewildered manner and walk out. But we had a few tricks up our sleeves. We told them all we had already done it, in fact many people had already done it, but the consequences were unseen, stuck in a version of reality lost to what could have been. But that there were certain small remnants that were only noticeable with a keen eye. Knowledge of the future brought back. Stock tips, lotto winners, sports betting. That was the real payoff, you get to live a life consequence free for one year, but what after? The reward, a certain forward looking skillset unrivaled by anyone. Well except your fellow button pushers. And to convince them further, we set up a fake lotto the next day broadcast to the exam center and we won. The same for the next day. And of course a few saw right through it an left. But a few stayed. A few were intrigued enough to stick with it. And we had our group, five in total, whittled down from a group of over 100.

[Writing more now]