"Premise"

After my last comment, I keyed in the answer I had derived into the box: "SOS". If one looks at the sentence structure that emerges from adding the punctuation into the question, the first letter of each bracketed sequence of letters is just that; it seemed to fit the question, too. The box gave out a loud beep as I put the last character into it; there was the sound of a tumbler moving within it, as the door of the box opened.


Or, should I say, the door of the safe. And within the safe was one thing: a single key. I removed the key, and looked around the room; I noted the keyhole on the door closest to the safe, and inserted the key. A single turn, and I heard the lock open. I opened the door and saw a room similar to the one I was in; another safe, another door. On the table was a slab of pork, with the steam rising from it; newly cooked, apparently. The smell instantly pulled me towards it; I was struck by a sudden thought, and turned back into the room I had left, and gathered up my few belongings, before entering the new room and closing the door behind me.


With that, I looked around the room; practically identical to the previous one, apart from the food and a bed. Ah, how good it is to see a proper bed...


I laid my few things upon it, before devouring the food with the ravenous hunger I find myself filled with. And with that done, I turned to the sheet of paper. This time, instead of a sheet of paper as blank as the walls, there were words written upon it in the same scrawl as the first note I had; the note I found upon arriving here.


I am whole. Remove one thing from me, and I am less; another, and another. And yet, no matter how much you remove from me, I remain what I am. What am I? - #002


So this is the second puzzle, is it? I think I can solve this on my own; there's no fancy codes or anything of that sort. But I think that I will sleep now, so that I can approach it free of the ills of tiredness. This bed is so... comfortable. Ah...

"Puzzles"

After my last post, I continued to do what I had done; wander. The ground is too hard to allow me to rest comfortably, regardless of what I do to attempt to cushion myself. I kept walking; kept waiting for salvation.


And I found it; no, I found something. A door, slightly ajar. I staggered over to it; but before I could do so, my leg gave way, and I found myself sprawled on the floor. The laptop is damaged, but not broken. My digestive system did not take quite so kindly to the sudden jolt, and I soon found myself... forcefully evacuating my stomach, you could say. It seems that my time in this place has largely been a conga line of injuries and traumas. Ugh.


After dragging myself (and the laptop) to the door, I climbed inside; the sweet aroma of food danced through my nostrils. I didn't even know what it was, but I was ravenous all the same. The room I was in contained a plate of food (which I wolfed down without even comprehending what it was), and some support to bind to my leg to allow it to heal. After doing so (quite inexpertly), I turned my attention to the last item on the desk before me, and the rest of the room around me.


On the desk was a single sheet of A4 paper, along with a single, black biro pen. The room is mostly bare, apart from the table, the chair I was sitting on and a safe next to a door on the far side of the room. The door is looked, with it's keyhole exposed. The safe is not too large; the door of it is largely composed of an alphabet and numberpad. I'd call it a "keyboard", but it's not arranged in a QWERTY fashion. It's laid out in alphabetical order, and arranged like so.


A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z 1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0


That looks about right, I think. As I examined it, I heard a noise coming from... somewhere. I think, in hindsight, that it may have come from the safe itself.


"Greetings, Paragon," the voice said; A. "You are suffering, my child; so I shall help you, as I have helped you." A dry chuckle. "But giving everything to those who do nothing is the way of despair, even for beings as patient and caring as I. If you succeed, you shall live. If you fail..." Another chuckle, this one far more sinister. "Well, let us not dwell on that."


There was a brief pause. "The aim of the game is quite simple; the consequences, too, are simple, as earlier outlined. You will have-" and there was a sudden burst of static here - "to solve this little puzzle of mine; you may seek outside assistance through the blog. The puzzle is as follows. You may wish to write this down."


There was another pause as I grabbed the pen and placed it over the paper, writing down what they said. "Riddle me this. (6-2-26-18-2-1-18 6-18-1-17-6 14 16-5-12 19-2-5 21-18-25-3) (2-9-18-5-25-12 10-2-5-5-22-18-17 19-2-5 7-21-18-22-5 6-14-19-18-7-12 2-19 16-2-8-5-6-18) (6-2 10-21-14-7 6-2-5-7 2-19 26-18-6-6-14-20-18 10-2-8-25-17 7-21-18-12 6-18-1-17)? The challenge begins now."


 Naturally, they read the numbers/hyphens/brackets out; but blow me if I'm going to actually type them all out. And, first things first, I am totally stumped. Hm... they said that I could access outside help via the blog, which is this... could I get some help through the comments, I wonder?

"Personal"

Sometimes, I forget who I am.


I mean, who I really am. I'm Paragon, yes; but there is a person behind the name, a real, living, breathing person who was fired from her job and fell hard on her luck. That's me.


But... I'm beginning to lose myself. There is a reason why I did not share my name initially, but that has been lost to yesterday, just as my name itself has. I could not share it now, even if I wanted to. The question of "who am I" suddenly has graver impact on me then it would have before.


I am who I am, though. If I am Paragon, then it matters not who I was before. Right?


No, no, no... that isn't right. I want to be the person I was. I want to be happy. I don't want to be here, in Paragon's shoes. Paragon is starving, Paragon is parched, Paragon is going to die. If time existed for Paragon, Paragon would be counting the seconds. For Paragon, the sun has not moved an inch in the sky since she first saw it. It rests steadily overhead, as if staring at Paragon's desperate attempts to struggle against what is coming to her; how foolish of her, haha. Poor Paragon.


Such a shame that I am in Paragon's shoes, isn't it? I was happy, at least in hindsight. I did not feel emptiness clawing at my innards after every step; I did not have a pain that erupted (as a volcano would) after each step.


But that's what I am now. I'm Paragon. I can't run away from who I am; I've lost who I was, so I must merely focus on who I am now. The question is: what can I do to escape the situation? I don't know, so I'm posting here. Maybe that'll do something.


I feel... confined. I can walk as far as my lame leg will take me, to the furthest horizon; I feel that I've walked more now then I ever have before. But I'm still caught in this cage. There may be no bars on this cage's walls, but it is a cage all the same. Whether it is a cage of my own weakness, or a wilderness of such large proportions that I am caught in the ravine of a canyon, and have yet to scale it's cliffs: I do not know, and perhaps shall never know.


My body feels the rhythmic pain of fatigue; unrelenting and constant. The ground here is as soft and comforting as the roughest gravel, so I cannot rest. And even if I could rest, that would merely eat at what time my body has remaining. And that time is, if nothing else, growing shorter by the second, and I can do naught to lengthen it.


My breath is coming in gasps and pants; my nose occasionally spits a little blood, and my leg does nothing but ache, with the occasional jolt of pain, like lightning breaking the roughness of the sea. The rest of my body grumbles and growls, demanding sustenance. And yet, there is nothing to eat here, unless my digestion system has acquired a taste for concrete recently. But no matter how much it hurts to do this, I cannot stop. Not here, and not now.


Because there is a little something called hope.


Futile, unjustified, beyond reach. But there is hope all the same. Hope for an escape. Hope that I must reach; hope that, around this corner, I will find what I'm looking for. It is because of hope that I must not stop. If my hope flickers and fades, I am dead. I must endure, then. I will keep going. For if this is a cage without bars, I will keep going until I fall out. Why?


Because I remember something. Something before Paragon. Someone told me that they loved me, and I told them this thing back. I want them to hear it again.


And they will. By God, they will.

"Punishment"

There is nothing under these bleak skies; there are bricks, and there is tarmac, and there is glass, but that is nothing.

I have wandered since I awoke in the room; I found nothing. No support for my leg (which is growing ever-harder to walk on), no food to eat, nothing to drink. My throat is as dry as the Arctic, and my stomach growls as if a feral beast.

But I can't stop; I can't give in. I just have to keep walking and looking; I have to find something.

Speaking of finding, I believe that there may be something following me. When I turn around, I always see something out of my eye's corner. Nothing solid, nothing tangible; just a shape, dancing and weaving away from me.

Much like sanity, as of late.