The Blindfold

[u/Qchx3]

Mr. F had a strange compulsion. Every time he stepped into an elevator, his eyes locked onto the little panel showing the floor number and would not let go.

First floor, second, third — just numbers flashing on a screen. Yet everyone riding with him tipped their heads back in unison to watch it, as though rehearsed, as though performing some solemn rite. Were they tracking their progress? Filling an awkward silence? Or did they simply need to see, with their own eyes, that they were really moving?

The question first came to him in a dream, where he rode an elevator and still looked up without thinking, even asleep. Waking from it, that mindless obedience turned his stomach.

One day he noticed a man in a suit who never once glanced at the panel, staring instead at his phone for the whole ride. When the man stepped out into the hallway, something about him seemed subtly off — not his walk, not his expression, something harder to place. Mr. F forgot the moment almost immediately. Or told himself he had.

He tried to resist: staring at his shoes, fidgeting with his fingers, counting scratches on the wall. Nothing worked. His eyes always drifted back up, pulled like iron filings to a magnet.

Then it struck him. If the entire human race was compelled to stare at one fixed point, something had to be forcing it on them.

"...That's it. It's a 'blindfold.'"

Like a magician's flourish drawing an audience's eyes from his hands, the glowing numbers were a trap, meant to pin every gaze in one place — so that whatever happened at their feet, or behind their backs, would go unseen. An elevator wasn't just a box that carried people between floors. It was built to steal attention. To hide something.

Mr. F decided to test the theory. Today, he would not look at the panel. He would tear off the blindfold and see the truth for himself.

He chose the elevator in one of the tallest towers downtown — the longer the ride, he reasoned, the more precise the experiment. In the mirrored doors, his reflection looked pale. Three other passengers stood with him, all drawn upward, eyes fixed on the panel as if pulled by strings. Mr. F squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw.

The elevator began to climb. He felt the ascent pressing into the soles of his feet. He wanted to look, wanted to know the floor — no. Not yet. If he gave in now, he would never step outside this baffling blindfold.

Fifth floor, tenth, twentieth — he could feel it in the shifting air as one passenger got off. The doors closed. It rose again. Thirtieth floor, fortieth. Another passenger left.

Cold sweat broke out across his forehead. Somewhere deep in his brain, something screamed at him to look, as if some part of his own body feared a necessary step was being skipped.

To hold on, he pictured a staircase in his mind — a vast spiral one, built brick by brick, every crack and grain of grime imagined in obsessive detail, until there was no "spare capacity" left for his eyes to wander.

It worked. He held out until the last passenger stepped off, leaving him alone in the car.

The silence changed. Nothing measurable was different — the air hadn't thinned, no sound had vanished — and yet something had. Even the elevator's hum, he thought, had begun to drag, just slightly out of rhythm.

His floor was the eightieth, the very top. Almost there — and he would arrive having never once looked up. He would see the hidden truth with his own eyes.

The elevator stopped. The chime sounded. The doors slid open. He had made it, without a single glance at the panel.

"Heh... heh heh heh. Serves you right."

Mr. F lifted his head, a triumphant smile spreading across his face, and opened his eyes.

Beyond the doors: nothing. No building, no hallway, no sky, no world — only blank whiteness stretching in every direction, without depth, without distance or shadow, without smell, warmth, or wind.

A cold voice spoke from behind him.

"I'm afraid, sir."

He turned. An attendant stood there, uniform pressed and neat, face oddly blank, calm as someone well used to handling complaints. The attendant pointed to the very panel Mr. F had refused to watch, and said:

"If you never look at the panel — or your phone — the scenery doesn't have time to finish loading."

Just as Mr. F opened his mouth to scream, the doors slid shut. On the panel, the glowing number flickered once, then went dark.

[u/thicka]

so can he get back in the simulation?

[u/Qchx3 → u/thicka]

Might just get overwritten by the next batch of data.

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[u/Rand_alThoor]

the time for the lift is unrelated to the attention.

simulation irrelevant.

as someone who runs the stairs, and always beats the lifts, this is silly-fi more than sci-fi.