Chapter 1

Tom was nervous. He had been caught red-handed as he tore pages from a book in the library of his university, the Southern Methodist University of Dallas. Being too cheap to pay for photocopies, he had torn pages out of the books about a dozen times. But now, he had been caught by a librarian and sat in the office of the deacon. Was he to be expelled? No, that would be too severe a punishment. Maybe a warning. Or a fine. Yes, he certainly had to pay for the book. And a fine on top of that.
The door opened and the deacon, a middle-aged man, came in. Tom could see from the look on his face that he was not in a good mood. The deacon sat down, put the book in question on his desk and looked at Tom with an icy stare.

"Well, Mr. Liceburg. You have been spotted as you damaged university property. Have you got anything to say about that?"

"Err, I didn't do it out of malice, sir," Tom said. "I am broke. Otherwise, I would have made copies. It won't happen again."

"So, are you broke often?" the deacon asked.

"No sir, it is the first time...".

"So you have never torn pages out of our books before then?" the man inquired.

"No," Tom lied. "It was the first time, sir. And the last, I promise."

The deacon looked at Tom for a couple of seconds. Then he turned the monitor of his desk computer towards Tom and clicked on a video file.

Seeing the video, Tom's heart sank. He saw himself in the library, tearing pages out of books. After that, a video from another date showing him doing the same thing. Two more followed. The deacon stopped the playback and turned the monitor back to him again.
The security cameras, Tom realized. He hadn't thought of that. No wonder the librarian was eyeing him and on him the moment he tore the pages out of the last book.

The deacon looked angrily at Tom. After a moment's silence, which seemed an eternity, he spoke again.

"I don't like liars here, Mr. Liceburg. Nor vandals. Those people are not fit to study at a university, let alone graduate here, in my opinion."
He looked sternly at Tom, who was even more nervous now. It didn‘t seem he was getting away with a mere fine here. Did he have to quit his study?

"However," the deacon continued, "there is a way that you can still be welcome here... the Faculty of Psychology needs subjects for an experiment, one that might be just the right punishment for people like you. I don't know all details of it, but the direction told me to offer this opportunity to everyone who misbehaves in a grave manner."

"An experiment?" Tom asked.

"Yes. If you reject, or don't participate seriously, you'll be expelled. If it was up to me, you could go right now and never return here, but I am bound by the rules. And I keep to them, contrary to some people." The deacon wrote down a telephone number and an address on a piece of paper and handed it to Tom.

"Go there tomorrow. I'll contact the supervisor of the experiment next week. Then I'll decide if you can stay or not. Unless you refuse?" he asked, with his eyebrows raised.

"No! No, I'll go there, sir," Tom hastily said. Everything was better than being expelled. He left the office quickly and phoned the supervisor, whose number it was, immediately. Tom could come tomorrow, he was told, and would be informed about the experiment then. Not knowing what to expect, he decided to take his chances. Maybe the experiment wasn't so bad.

If only he had known what fate had in store for him that day, he would have left the university voluntarily.