Please Exit in a Calm and Orderly Fashion (short story)
Please Exit in a Calm and Orderly Fashion was the third story in The Boulevard: Volume Two.
Summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
Avory Magnus finds himself following Yuri around an office building, a prison he's found himself sent to. He was placed here after discovering that the company he worked for was a front for Faction Paradox, an offense that leads to his banishment, imprisoned here with other grunts of varying types. Other grunts and a monotone voice that booms over and over, "Please exit in a calm and orderly fashion". This repeated announcement is driving all the other prisoners mad, and Avory suggests that the best course of action is to, perhaps, pantomime an evacuation, see if that stops the broadcast. As everyone shuffles together and begins the trip, the message pauses, then changes, giving new instructions. However, when the group ventures off track, down an incorrect path, the message returns, and will only cease when they start the entire evacuation from the beginning.
Through trial and error the group comes to find the right path, eventually coming to an emergency staircase down - a staircase that more so resembles a series of platforms in sequence than a staircase, per se. Glancing at the staircase, rickety and unsure, the group hesitates, before one of their number volunteers, David Coleman, a man who'd been experimented on by the Faction, his limbs replaced with long tendrils. The only worry being that using them caused pain. They made their way down the jumbled flight of staircases, David holding back screams each time he's used. In the end, David suffering torture so that the others may live, they made it to the ground floor.
Wading through bodies, the group walks through the lobby, shutters closed in front of them. The voice booms, telling them to watch a video to disengage the shutters. Searching through the corpses they find a disc it begins to play, at first the basics of the security system. But it changes a few seconds in; it's been recorded over. It's become a testament to the people of the company, who had invented a bioweapon and locked themselves inside rather than let it get out. And as the group removes the disc in frustration, the voice returns. "Please exit in a calm and orderly fashion".
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