At 6 o'clock a bell rang followed by an announcement:" Good morning participants! I hope you all had a great night! Get yourself ready and come to the fourth floor by 7 o'clock."
I jumped out of bed and put on some clothes. I met up with George, and we went to the fourth floor together.
When we arrived, they gave us a weird rectangle-like thing. We entered a room and immediately noticed the huge rectangle on the wall with our supervisor.
"Let's wait for the rest of the participants to arrive, and then I shall start today's plans".
As always, some people arrived late, so we waited until 7:11.
"Okay now that everyone's here, let me start with a change in the rules"
George and I looked at each other surprised.
"A rule change already?", someone shouted.
"Well my dear, we wanted that all the participants to enjoy their first day in the tower so that you guys stay motivated for the rest of the days" she answered calmly. "Don't worry, there will only be one new rule. We will add a credit system. You can collect credits by performing well in the challenges. Before you ask, the credits are the tower's currency. As of now, everything will cost credits!".
It was too good to be true, of course, there was a catch. They would never make our stay here so easy.
"Everyone here gets a total of 100 starting credits and participants who got here after 7 o'clock have to pay a fine of 10 credits for being late"
Lucky me, I don't like being late.
"Only 10 credits for being late? That's nothing!" a guy behind me provocatively yelled at the rectangle thing and high-fived a boy next to him.
"You didn't let me finish…
...10 credits per minute. Which in your case should be 110 credits, since you were the last to arrive. May I add that if you reach negative credits, you are automatically disqualified. It was nice having you here."
A door opened and like 20 security guards came out. The guy and 23 others were taken away, and people who tried to defend themselves were knocked out with a nasty punch in the face.
"That is not fair, I …" he tried to justify himself, but he got knocked out before he could finish his sentence.
"Well now that that's over, I shall continue with today's plan. You should all have a phone, the rectangle thing, we handed them out earlier when you arrived. This device shows you the amount of credits you have and your next appointment, but that's not all, you can also pay with it. Now, please return to your designated group area and, if you want, introduce yourself to your group. During this period, we will come and pick one after another for a short interview.
You may return now and be nice to each other. By the way, this thing where you are seeing me right now is called a screen"
And just like that, there were only 736 people left.
"Dude I am so lucky to be with you, without you, I would have lost credits there, thank you bud"
"Don't worry, George, we are in this together! But because of my excitement yesterday I forgot to talk with our other group members, I kinda feel stupid now".
Before going to our area, they suggested passing the canteen and getting a little something to eat and drink before starting the group meeting, so that's what we did.
It was the first "real" day and there were already people begging. These were the people who lost 80 to 90 credits. A bottle of water costs 10 and a sandwich costs 15, which is a total of 25 credits.
After getting us breakfast, we went to our group area. The meeting was supposed to start at 8:00. Removing those participants who were late helped, because now everyone was there 5 minutes early.
At 8:00 an announcement was made starting the meeting. However, not only the meeting was announced, but the elimination of a bunch of other people was too. This could only mean that in other groups, the participants didn't learn.
No one talked for the first few minutes, so I started the conversation.
"My name is John, I'm 20 years old. I'm here with a friend who is sitting right next to me."
"Yeah, name's George, same age, and yeah." After this, some group members started to introduce themselves, and we all explained the reasons we were challenging the tower.
There is this small blonde girl with a ponytail and wearing glasses called Sofia, she is 19 years old, and she is participating in the tower because of her boyfriend. Her boyfriend Tim is, like me, 20 years old. He is tall, muscular, and has short black hair. He was ordered by his father to enter the tower.
Then there was Tobias, he was taller than Tim but very lean and has long brown hair. He was there with a group of friends which consisted of 5 people: Tobias, Helena, Sara, Sebastian, and Leo. The others didn't feel like sharing anything, the only thing they said was something like:
"We are competing with each other, we don't have a reason to become friends."
As explained earlier, every 5 to 10 minutes a guard came to pick one of us for the interview, and the former person came back to us.
When it was my turn, they asked me my plans, why I decided to become a participant, and if I was willing to do anything to make it through.
Before I left, they also asked me who I trusted the most in my group.
Obviously George.
They also asked who in my opinion is the most likely to betray the group, to which I answered "I don't know". I wasn't allowed to share anything that just happened, weeeelll this diary is only for me, so this doesn't count, I hope.
I was the second to last to be interviewed, the next one was a girl who hadn't said a word, and it was the first time I genuinely noticed her. She is shorter than me, but not too short, she has beautifully curled long brown hair, and she has magical brown eyes. I could go on forever, to put it simply she is the girl of my dreams and I think it was love at first sight.
When she rejoined the group, I tried to talk to her and ask her her name, but she only gave me the cold shoulder. I could never really understand how to talk to girls, and this is just another of my failed attempts to get a girl's attention. At least I tried, and this isn't the last time I will see her, well maybe it is when I think about it now.
"Your first challenge has now concluded, credits will now be awarded. The amount depends on the performance. You may now use your time as you want, the only condition you have to follow is that you are only allowed to communicate with people from your group for the rest of the day"
"Yeah! Look at that, John, they gave me 100! How much did you get?"
"Well, I only got 75."
"That's weird, why didn't you get 100 like me?"
"I don't know George…"
It truly was weird, they only asked us simple questions, and possibly they deducted credits for not providing a good answer to the betrayal question.
However, this raises the question, who did George choose?
After this meet and greet, I spent most of my time with George, but I also tried to bond with the other people. Only the couple and Tobias's group talked to me, the others preferred to be alone. The second floor now has an entry fee of 5 credits too, so George and I tried to avoid useless expenses.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, that our group only consists of 18 participants. The one guy and his friend who got thrown out earlier today coincidentally were part of our group.
This day was, to be honest not that hard, and I learned a valuable lesson, follow the rules!
We will see if this diary counts as sharing information, until then, see ya tomorrow!