12 May 2026
Tuesday. Four assistants came in this evening who had never been in an escape room in their lives. They told me so at the door, proudly, as though it were a qualification.
My experiment is not easy. Nothing in my laboratory is hard to find; I leave everything lying about, as geniuses do. The difficulty is understanding it. My journals assume a certain education. My machinery assumes a certain courage. The company calls it seven out of ten and recommends it to assistants who have done this sort of thing before. I call it ten out of ten and recommend it to nobody, but I was outvoted.
The first-timers asked for a hint whenever they were stuck, without any shame whatever, and the gamesmaster sent one through. They woke the Subject with the clock still ticking. I sat down on a crate.
And then I found this, in the margin of my own notebook, in my own pencil:
I HAVE CHOSEN A NAME. PERCY. IT IS A NAME FOR SOMEBODY WHO IS GOOD AT WAITING.
I will not be calling him Percy.
— V. Frankenstein
