20 years or suicide?

What if, one day you were to wake up and find yourself in a room? As you come to your senses, you realise that you are not familiar with your surroundings. There isn’t much in the room other than the bed you are laying on, a grandfather clock and two doors.

All of a sudden, a voice speaks to you through speakers located at the top of the room.

“I’m here to inform you that you have been chosen as a subject for human research. You have two options and you have to make your decision within two hours.

Walk through door A and you will be locked away with no communications from the outside world for 20years. The room is roughly three times the size of your average room. However, you will be able to request for video games, books and other accessories. Any food you wish will also be served to you. You will also be able to request for one clone of anyone from the real world or from fiction. The clone will not age nor will it be able to reply you. It is essentially a mindless zombie that will do anything you ask it to. You are allowed to do anything to the clone even if it means torturing and killing it. You will also be able to request a new clone every month but with a limit of only one clone at any point of the time. If at any point of time you try to end your life, your benefits will be stripped for an unspecified amount of time. You will be released at the place of your using after the 20 years are over.

Walk through door B and you have a gun with one bullet. Walking through one room will lock the door behind you and you will not be able to change your decision.”

As the voice fades away, the grandfather clock starts to countdown the two hours.


Let’s just say for the sake of the argument that you will not be able to end your life should you choose room A (Through mind reading etc what have you...) You will also not be able to ask for a terminator/gundam clone to bust you out of the room. You are basically cut off from the rest of the world for 20years. Your death has been fabricated to your love ones so there won’t be anyone looking for you.

Some guy from the WoW off-topic forums posted a similar scenario and it received some interesting replies. Please post your reasons for choosing which ever option in the thread as well.

Wow, a clone of any person real or fiction. And anything served to me at my request. I'll do the 20 years. :D

I saw this posted on 4chan's /x/ a couple of months back. Except you could have no electronics, so that means no video games.

I'd choose Room A, of course. I don't care too much for human relationships, and though I do like talking to people sometimes, not being able to do so would be better than being dead.

In this scenario, I could still watch anime, listen to music, play games, and read. Why not do it?

Man, the thread on /x/ got so many lame responses. People kept trying to figure out ways in which they could kill themselves in Room A, and people would reply with weird shit that would make suicide impossible.

"I could tear apart the clone and beat myself to death with it."
"Nuh-uh. They could gas you and keep you from killing yourself."

But that's 4chan for you.

Yea I'm guessing thats where the previous poster got it from, yea I changed the rules abit to what I thought would be better.

I keep thinking of Tom Hank's movie Castaway. I'd probably be go bonkers by a couple of months if I chose door A, but at least I wouldn't die. (I'd probably have to come up with a way to keep sane... which will be hard.) And there's also the issue of a lack of space.

All in all, I'd still choose door A, because at least I'll still live. So the question is, (after dealing with no communications or interaction with people) can you come out and live normally? As in, how do you live when your legal status proclaims that you're dead? Could you return to the former life you once had? That would be something to consider. (Though that might prompt someone to choose choice B and get it over with.)

I believe the clone plays the role of Wilson in this scenario. You can talk to it and look at it in order to stave off insanity. And fuck it.

The first month, I'd probably ask for a clone of an ex-girlfriend that really pissed me off. I'd do horrible things to it. Tear off its limbs, choke it, beat it up, etc. I'd do it the first month because after the initial thirty days, I'll probably want some sort of interaction with something that at least looks human, and not just a way to get some revenge.

I think I'd pick Taiga from ToraDora first.

Real mindfuck...had me thinking for a while but being in there for 20 years with any thing you wish for is awesome but depending on what kind of personality a person has the experience variets to being of heaven you creat to yor self.



20 years.....can´t rule out the risk of being "institutionalized" makin the leavin the hardest part

I'd choose Room A just based on my moral principal that suicide is wrong. So even if I were to be chained down unable to do anything, the choice would still be Room A.

I'll go with the twenty years of isolation from the outside world. Though not having information from the outside world you can't get updated on new video games, anime or books. Though I guess they will let you slide with requesting stuff that has been released since your isolation.

While I'm not against suicide I'll still take the isolation over killing myself. Either way I'm getting away form you people.

Then again this would ruin my chances of having a romance before I become an old man. Eh, whatever people suck anyways.

20 years in solidation but with exchange of any fictional characters bought to life. Hmmmmm you sure got me there.

Anyway it goes with our natural intinct to stay alive so room A definitely

Of course my first choice will be Room A, i will think of a way to get out in 20 years time frame b4 i turn insane there. After all staying alive and there might still be a chance no matter how slim that chance is while death equals no chance at all.

Pardon my engrish.

Fuck, if I was a monk, I'd be able to live in 20 years of isolation on meditating alone. All other materialistic things in the room would be unecessary except food, water, and temperature control, and the occasional sutra and books on Buddhism. This to me seems like the most viable method of actually surviving Door A without condemning yourself to a living torture of no societal interaction.

[size=10]Wow. Room A sounds perfect. I wonder though, if I would eventually want to die (due to a lack of communication with others). Sometimes it's fine to be alone but for twenty years?

That's 7,300 days.

Sometimes I really do like to be alone, yet I don't know if I can handle it. Imagine missing/not being able to have something precious to you for.. so long? And the clone can't do much.

Hmmm.... I can't decide for sure.


Moments Later: Room B.[/h]

Y'know what? I choose room A. Then when the clone comes, i'll ask her to disobey her first rules and show emotions. I know she'll do it since she'll do anything I ask. There, that solves my problem. Now how about interaction? Since she broke the rules, I have someone to interact, although asking her about her past will be pointless:

"Where were you born?"
"In a tube"
"..."

Now after 20 years, I had to reconsider what g-money said. And it is hard to start over without knowing anything or anyone.... But i'll still start over. Find your family and friends again, start with that.

It'll be hard to convince them that you're still alive, but I think they'll accept you since thay ARE your Family and they are the only ones who know you better than anyone else.


...well, if they have a better life now than when they had you, sucks balls for you. You should've just took that bullet to your head.

Also, I'll wager that everyone who stays in that room for 20 years, cut off from the world, will lose their sanity before the 12th year.

I'd have chosen room A before the clock finished talking.

Man i would probably choose Door A even if Door B lead back to "reality".

This sortof made me think of Oldboy. Only he wasn't given a choice and only had a TV.

I would probably choose A, but I think it would get boring after a while. I mean, you could try to come up with more and more things to do with these various clones, but without any real/interesting people around, it would still get boring. But if there is no afterlife, death is the most boring thing of all. So door A.

I'm curious about the underlying meaning behind the clone. You say something that wont talk to you, but does that mean in all senses? Can it not make any form of communication from hand signals to emotions?

Also, when you can request any form of writing, does that include things like after being in there for a year I could say "I'd like to request todays newspaper" or "A list with this months games released" or can it only be things you knew existed at the moment you went in the room.

If both of those previous answers are negative, emotionless and can't have present day news, then I choose B. If either one of them is positive though I would choose A.

When I saw this question asked on 4chan, the person who started the thread explained specifically that the clone couldn't express any emotions. It could do physical things, so if you told it to do sign language, it would, but it wouldn't participate in a conversation. You could just tell it what to sign, and then it'd sign it.

Of course, in the thread, nobody really thought of the clone as anything more than a tool for sex.

And this is why 4chan fails, and fails hard. It's possible that the clone might be the only salvation one can get in a situation as described. Unless you consider talking to your captors, which I doubt you can do, then the clone is only other person besides yourself to interact with.