Motivation Testing

About a week into life, the raptor first entered the White Room. Most of the rooms in this place were white, but it seemed more glaring than the dull grey in the room she spent most of her time in, so it became the White Room. The White Room was where she was fed, so when the hatch opened she learned to enter quickly and receive her meal. For the first few feedings it was dead mice, pink and bald and barely warm. They were filling after a few of them, but she grew rapidly in that first week and soon they no longer satisfied her. Just as hunger began to gnaw at her she was introduced to her next food source. Each time there would now be a live mouse, fully grown and covered in white fur, almost as white as the walls around them. It moved just a fraction and she seized it, shaking it roughly and feeling it twitch and go limp in her teeth. She swallowed it whole and licked the blood off of her lips, savouring how it tasted warm and fresh. This became the new routine, a live mouse every meal for her to chase down. The hatch closed behind her, so it was only a matter of time before she cornered the little rodent and claimed her prize. 

There were little ways of telling the time in this place, she counted every time the lights went out for a long time and presumed it was intended to be time for sleep. She slept a lot anyways, even when the lights buzzed above her and their sickly light tried to pry its way beneath her eyelids. There was nothing else to do really, she had explored every inch of this room during her time since birth and nothing was of interest. Smooth grey walls climbed to narrow vents where they met the ceiling, too small for even a hatchling like her to crawl through even if she could manage to climb that high. The floor was equally featureless, and it made her joints sore to sit for too long on any one side. The ceiling had a lump in the middle of it, black and shiny, sometimes when the lights were on she would move side to side under it to watch her reflection do the same. 

All to say, she didn’t know how much time had passed when the first test came.

When the hatch to the White Room opened, she hurried inside. She couldn’t know for certain but she felt it had been longer than usual between her meals and her stomach was growling. She sniffed the air as she walked in, tucking her tail to the side to avoid it getting caught in the closing hatch. There was a dead mouse in the middle of the room, surrounded by clear barriers. The barriers were too tall and slippery to climb over, but she wove her way through them easily enough, following her nose to find the gaps in the illusion. When she seized her prize she noted it was larger and tasted different to before; a rat, something deep within her brain supplied the name. It was quite the meal, filling her stomach despite lacking the novelty of the fresh, live mice she had been given previously. She tilted her head at the bloodstain on the white floor as she waited for the hatch to be opened again. So far, it seemed that the harder she worked for a meal the more rewarding it was. The live mice she hunted were warm and tasty, and after completing the invisible maze she had been able to grab the rat, a pre-killed but substantial meal. The thought lingered with her as the hatch to her room opened again, leading her back into the dark. 

The following meals were similar, short puzzles leading to a rat reward, getting more complex each time until she was pulling levers to release the prize from above. It never took too long, there was usually only her reward and the puzzle in the White Room and she would try anything that looked out of place until she got it. This time was different.

The rat was alive, locked in a clear box. There was a small gap in the box along the top side, just the width of her largest claws that the rat could certainly squeeze through. The rat was held in place by some kind of restraints, but the way its red eyes were glazed over as it looked at her hinted at something else hindering its escape, it didn’t even squirm in the restraints at all as she approached it. She tried to pick at the edges of the box to open it and surveyed the area when she couldn’t pull it open. She sniffed along each of the blank walls, and pawed at their smooth surface. She couldn’t find a button or a lever like there had been before so she circled back to the box again. The rat remained still, its body shuddering as it took rapid breaths. It seemed to instinctively know that a threat was near but it still remained motionless in its prison. She came closer and sniffed through the hole in the box.

It was only big enough for her claws to enter, and only her longest claws would reach the rat. She could kill it pretty easily, but there was no way for her to eat it afterwards. She had to be missing something, she decided, and she walked around the White Room again to assess her situation more thoroughly. Nothing changed, no new scents, no interactive elements appeared, she was left alone in the White Room with a rat she couldn’t eat. Perhaps she had to wait for the box to open on its own, it was some kind of patience game and she just had to sit tight. She did so for a while, pacing the room and leaning against the walls, just in case there was something she could trigger behind them. Time, as always, passed imperceptibly, the only thing indicating its march forward being the increasing dryness in her mouth and the rumbling in her stomach. She returned to the rat box time and time again, kicking at it and watching the material bend but never break under her assault. She ran out of steam eventually and settled to the ground, tucking her arms under her body and resting her chin on the floor. She shut her eyes against the glare of the white walls so she could try to catch a little nap, maybe her hatch would be open when she woke up and she could be hungry in peace. Her peace was shattered as for the first time she felt pain, a severe, sharp sensation that ripped through her body and made her muscles spasm. She screeched and the sound of her own voice startled her, ringing in her ears and finding strange harmonisation with the buzzing pain that still hummed across her nerves. Her chest heaved as she tried to catch her breath. She somehow pulled herself upright, lights dancing in her eyes as she tried to stop her head from spinning. No naps, no sleeping, no resting. No resting, no resting, she repeated to herself, not stopping until she felt the last of the pain dissipate. 

Her eyes caught the rat once more, her temper flared. It was the rat’s fault, she couldn’t leave, she was being hurt because of the rat. The anger overwhelmed her and she stomped over to the rat. She didn’t care anymore that she couldn’t eat it, she’d rather go hungry at this point. She couldn’t get this thing out of the box but she could kill it. She raised her claw and plunged it down through the gap in the box, feeling the soft impact as the sharp tip pierced the rat’s skin. She twisted it back and forth as much as she could, watching the white fur bloom red as blood ran freely from the wound. She leaned down to try and fit her tongue into the gap but she was startled by a loud clanking noise behind her. 

She jumped and turned, feathers raised and teeth bared as something rose from the previously unblemished floor. It opened outwards, revealing a lump of bloodied red meat that was at least as big as her wingspan. She fell upon it and tore into it, ripping chunks off and barely letting the chunks slide down her throat before seizing the next bite. Despite not being alive, it was richer and tastier than any live rat she’d hunted herself, to an intoxicating degree. She didn’t stop until the meat was gone, and even then she licked the platform clean before she snapped out of her daze. She looked back to where the rat box had been and all that was left was a puddle of rapidly drying blood, stark against the White Room’s floor. She had killed the rat, without being able to eat it, and she had been rewarded with an enormous meal that would last her for ages. The hatch opened and she hurried to get inside, feeling instant relief as she entered the dull grey of her room. Her full belly and general exhaustion lulled her to sleep before she had long to ponder the situation, and her dreams oscillated wildly between the joy of her reward and the haunting lingering sensation of the pain. 

The hatch waited longer to open this time, and in turn she entered more hesitantly, fearing being trapped inside again. The lights had gone off five times since her ordeal in the White Room and that delicious chunk of meat had finally left her system. She knew she could only feed in the White Room, and the dripping water in her room could only keep the hunger at bay for so long. This time it was a normal setup, a live rat cowered in the far corner from her and she charged towards it the moment the hatch closed. She feinted left and struck right, shaking the rat and feeling it instantly go limp in her teeth. She was about to throw her head back and devour her prize, but something made her pause. She dropped the rat to the ground and sniffed around where the platform had been last time. Like it had been waiting for her, the floor opened and presented the bloodied chunks of meat again. Simple, she thought as she gleefully claimed her reward. All she had to do was kill the rat, leave it alone and then she got something far more valuable. 

The cycle repeated, the prey got bigger, the rewards got sweeter, and there was nothing that would stand in IL-C-13’s way as she advanced through the programme.