Chapter 5

In the control room the Doctor and Erik were delighted with all the recent developments, first the obvious evidence of a basic sign language that was used between Cor and Janneke and next Jean's discovery of the basement level.

Watching Karin stalk Janneke was both thrilling and frustrating too. Since they didn't have any direct influence on when or where the maze changed shape Karin kept missing out on an opportunity to capture Janneke. However, it was very interesting to see how she kept picking up Janneke's scent time and time again, no matter how faint it had to be. Then Cor also got involved and tracked Janneke down, having more luck at it than Karin and he finally caught up with her after sixteen minutes.

The Doctor had watched their first interactions with great interest and was also glad to see that Jean found the basement level. Figuring the others would soon find one of the four access points to the basement level too, he left the control room to finish his preparations on Gregor.

Erik carefully tracked the subject's progress and made notes of when special events happened so the good Doctor could review the videos later.

A few minutes after the Doctor had left the control room he saw that Karin picked a new target. Erik quickly noted down the time and then put Karin's video stream on the main screen. He was getting very excited when he noticed that she was within twenty meters of Lucia.

When there was a distance of twenty-one meters or more between subjects then the maze was allowed to shift, potentially closing off access between two subjects. There had to be at least ten meters between a subject and the change point. Between two subjects there had to be an additional meter for the concrete block to lower itself in place. Additionally, changes to the maze could only happen if no subject had passed within ten meters to a change point for thirty seconds or more.

In practice it would be unlikely that the maze changed shape when there was less than forty meters between subjects since they generally moved too quickly to give the maze a chance to change. When there was less than twenty-one meters distance, however, it would be guaranteed that the maze couldn't change shape due to its build in safety systems.

As Cor had suspected the maze was at least fifty by fifty meters, a hundred by hundred meters to be precise. It was, however, split up in four sections of fifty by fifty meters and Cor had missed a critical corridor that led from one section to another. Right now Cor and Janneke were in the south east section while Lucia and Karin were south west. Jean was north west when he found the ramp leading down to the basement level.

The basement level was split up in sixteen sections of twenty-five by twenty-five meters and though it could also change shape it would do so far less than the middle level. The idea behind that was to give the alpha males a good hunting area without being frustrated by limiting their access to their prey. To keep things unpredictable though, the maze would still change shape from time to time. This would also alter the alpha males' ability to protect a certain territory and force them to look for new grounds, or make room for another alpha male.

To give even more incentive to actively defend their area some rooms had better facilities than others and the maze was set up in such a way that when an alpha male stayed in the same territory for a long period of time, the resources in his territory would become less interesting. Instead of warm meals they would receive tepid meals and eventually cold food. If they still persisted in staying there then the food itself would dwindle in quality and come in ever decreasing quantities, until none became available for anybody who tried that food delivery point. The same thing happened with water; the longer they stayed near the same water source the more salt and lemon juice were added to the water to make it less tasty. The amount of water would also decrease in time until there was none left.

This would make a water point unattractive to use for anybody until a new alpha male took over the area at which point the resources would be reset.

Bathrooms had the same kind of deal going where bathwater would be increasingly colder and come in smaller amounts, if you wanted a warm bath you'd have to hunt for a new bathroom.

The only exception to this all were toilets, they'd always keep functioning at peak efficiency since a lack of personal hygiene could turn lethal for all subjects involved.

The collar of each subject featured a small transmitter, that way the maze could keep track who visited which restroom and how often. If they kept visiting the same restroom over and over again then they would have to deal with the diminishing quality too.

The Doctor had programmed the maze in such a way to give subjects more leeway at the start as they still had to get used to their surroundings, but in the future they would have to locate to a different restroom every time if they didn't want to deal with diminishing quality.

The transmitter also took care that alpha males would never leave the basement level, an additional restriction on top of not being allowed to talk or remove the collar was that they would get shocked when they got near any of the access points that went to the middle level. On the other hand, they received a small pleasurable jolt of energy when another subject was within twenty-five meters of their location. The gender of the subject didn't matter for that, but if the subject was another alpha male then no pleasure jolt was given.

However, if alpha males stayed too close to each for a prolonged period then they would receive increasingly more shocks to antagonize them and drive them apart. That way the Doctor hoped to prevent alpha males from working together, keeping them strictly interested in survival of the fittest rather than in survival through cooperation.

Above the middle level was also a third level which featured different forms of entertainment and comfortable sleeping places. Subjects weren't allowed to take anything from this level with them to lower levels, but they could make themselves quite at home. Currently the ramps leading up to this level were all closed off, since the Doctor wanted all subjects to find out about the lower level first. Once they were familiar with the lower level he would introduce dangerous subjects like Gregor there to give them an incentive to stay on the higher levels unless they absolutely needed to be in the basement level for their basic needs.

After that the Doctor would also open up the highest level, which had sixteen different access points that would be randomly available in the middle level of the maze, with a minimum amount of five accessible ramps and a maximum of ten at any given time.

Erik had been amazed to the depth and complexity of the maze when the Doctor had explained him all of this earlier.

Currently though he saw how Karin ripped Lucia's t-shirt apart and started toying with the breasts of the Italian beauty. For a moment he considered warning the Doctor who would probably love to see this live, but finishing his work with Gregor was more important right now for the progress of the entire project. Additionally, this gave him the privacy to masturbate to the hot images appearing on the screen as Karin violently abused Lucia.

He had remembered to bring some handkerchiefs with him when it was his turn to watch the camera's again and they were very useful now.

God, look at those women ... Maybe I can adapt one of the collars so it'll give me administrator access to enter and leave the maze. That way I can mate with one of those women myself ... They'll never know it was me as long as I don't give away my real identity... Erik thought while jacking off.

The thought made him so incredibly horny that he immediately shot his wad. While he wiped it up in a handkerchief he stayed hard, as he kept watching how Karin abused Lucia and forced her into submission.

After fifteen minutes all the fun was over and another fifteen minutes later he saw how a naked Lucia managed to escape from a sleeping and still equally nude Karin.

Lucia actually seemed to hit a lucky corner and ended up in the room with an access point to the basement level. Having no interest in seeing how she relieved her bladder he focused his attentions on Cor and Janneke instead.

Cor and Janneke had figured out an easier way to travel, Cor had tied one end of his shoe lace to his left ankle while he tied the other end to Janneke's left wrist, that way she could follow him easier around and he knew to slow down when the shoelace pulled on his leg. Erik dutifully noted down the time when this happened, since it was clearly a new set of rules that benefited survival through cooperation. The Doctor would probably want to see this for himself.

Cor finally found the access point to the basement level in the south east corner and the two of them went down, exploring their new surroundings.

On another monitor Erik saw how Karin woke up, she didn't look too happy when she found out that Lucia had escaped. Karin took the trouble to dress herself and stuffed Lucia's panties in her own pants after inhaling its scent deeply. Having no interest in Lucia's torn t-shirt she left that behind in the corner and continued her hunt for new prey. If Gregor was an alpha male than she was definitely an alpha female.

Another feature the Doctor had shown Erik earlier was the cleaning robots, the maze had several remote controlled vacuum cleaners who could drive around in near silence with a high speed to clean up the carpet from things left behind by the subjects. The maze could guide these robots itself and would regularly do so, but in this case Erik thought it might be fun if he manually controlled one instead.

Racing around the middle level he quickly picked up Janneke's high heel shoes and Lucia's torn t-shirt. With another robot he quickly went to pick up Cor's office shoes and removed those from the maze. This way the maze could keep changing without being blocked by objects and it also took more and more clothing articles out of circulation. Eventually this would force all subjects to wander around naked or perhaps even fight over the little clothing that was still left.

The Doctor was interested in learning whether or not humans would consider clothing optional when there was no real need for them in a warm environment and the inability to see each other naked. Would clothing become a sort of status symbol that people possessed? Would they use it to protect themselves against other subjects? Would it change their behavior when they realized everybody else was naked?

These and many other questions were the ones they hoped to find an answer on.

The temperature in the maze was a consistent twenty-four degrees Celsius and should be warm enough to wander around the maze nude without feeling cold. If needed the temperature could be adjusted to a higher or lower setting if they noticed the subjects being too uncomfortable.

Having disposed of the surplus clothing articles from the maze, Erik sat back in his chair again, while he made an occasional note with a time stamp when an interesting event took place.

Cor and Janneke were surprised to find a ramp leading to a lower level. It was a welcome break from the constant corridors they had been wandering through, in almost complete silence.

When Cor noticed that they had entered a bigger room he suddenly came to a complete stop. He had agreed with Janneke to click twice with his tongue to indicate when he would stop, but in his surprise he had completely forgotten to do so and as a result Janneke bumped forcefully into him, knocking both of them over.

With the shoelace tied to his ankle and her wrist they were an entangled mess for a minute until they managed to separate again.

Once they did Janneke forcefully grabbed Cor's hand and wrote, "Why stop?" hitting the dot of the question mark with a sharp nail in his hand to show that she was pissed off at his unannounced stop.

Cor rubbed his painful hand for a second and reminded himself to always click twice if he wanted to prevent this kind of pain.

Then he wrote back, "New room, big. Must explore".

Janneke clicked once with her tongue to indicate that she understood. For simple yes/ understood and no/ not understood replies they used a respectively a single click or a double click with the tongue to the roof of their mouth. It was a lot more efficient than writing out a full answer every time.

Cor untied the shoelace from his ankle and carefully moved around, exploring the walls and ceiling with his hands to see if anything had changed here. He found that the ceiling was still just ninety centimeter high, but the room itself was at least twice as wide as a normal corridor. Exploring further he found the ramp leading down and made the special clicking sound to indicate that Janneke should come to him.

Janneke had been doing her own research of the room but apart from finding it to be a lot bigger than a standard corridor she didn't find anything special. Curious to Cor's findings she quickly moved over to him.

Cor wrote in her hand, "Ramp going down, let's explore."

Janneke clicked her tongue that she understood and Cor tied the shoelace to his ankle again, so they wouldn't lose track of each other. Carefully he crawled down. Not knowing what to expect he figured crawling would allow him to keep his balance easier than ape walking.

Once the ramp leveled he found, after some exploring, that he was in a new room with multiple exits leading out of it. He asked Janneke which way she wanted to go and they decided to head north of the ramp. Exploring the rooms they entered took quite some time and Cor was happy that Janneke's mind was as inquisitive as his own, as he could understand that some people might get bored with trying to figure out every corner of a room.

Like Jean, they didn't find most rooms very interesting until they came upon a room with a toilet in the floor. Since they both had to hold up their bladder for hours already they took turns using the toilet. Cor, being a true gentleman, let Janneke go first and figured he'd find a way to circumvent her mess somehow after she was done doing her business.

He was pleasantly surprised to hear the toilet cleaning itself after being used and happily relieved his own bladder in a clean room.

Having washed their hands with the antibacterial gel they continued on, trying to find what else these rooms had in store for them. So far this seemed to be an ideal location to set up camp, but what Cor was currently more interested in was finding something to eat and drink. Actively using their nose, quickly set them on the path to a feeding room. Since Janneke was pretty hungry too he didn't get any arguments from her and they hurried there as fast as they could.

They didn't find any cutlery but splitting the portion in half they quickly dug in and ate with their fingers instead, taking turns with scooping up water from the bowl after they were done eating. Janneke wanted to stay in this room in case the maze would change again, but Cor wanted to keep exploring to see what else they could find out.