It began, as these things often do, with two utterly unremarkable individuals finding themselves in an utterly unremarkable room. The room was square, nondescript, and, crucially, devoid of anything remotely worth describing in exhaustive detail. There were no windows, no doors, and no indication as to why, precisely, they were there. This, of course, presented a minor inconvenience for the two of them, though one that hardly merited the degree of existential dread they would undoubtedly attempt to manufacture.

Our two protagonists, if such a grand term can be applied to these individuals, were named Henry and Lillian, though even these names are scarcely worth remembering. They awoke at precisely the same moment, which sounds dramatic but was likely a coincidence, given that nothing of consequence ever happens in such situations. Henry, a man of approximately average height and possessing the most standard-issue features known to humankind, glanced around with the mild confusion of a man who has just woken up in an unfamiliar hotel room and is trying to remember which city he’s in.

Lillian, for her part, was slightly shorter than Henry, with hair of an indeterminate shade that would undoubtedly appear inoffensive to all but the most easily offended hair enthusiasts. She sat up, looked around the room, and then turned her gaze to Henry with an expression that hovered somewhere between tepid curiosity and vague disinterest.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked, in a tone that suggested she didn’t particularly care what the answer might be.

“No,” Henry replied, with all the gravitas of a man who has just been asked if he knows what day it is. “I don’t suppose it matters.”

And indeed, it did not. For reasons that are, admittedly, beyond even my vast powers of deduction, Henry and Lillian appeared entirely unperturbed by the peculiar situation in which they found themselves. Rather than leaping to their feet, screaming for answers, or—heaven forbid—engaging in some sort of profound introspection, they simply sat there, side by side, in what can only be described as the most spectacular display of unremarkable calm ever witnessed by no one at all.

After a moment of what might generously be called silence, though it was more accurately the absence of anything of interest happening, Henry cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, in the tone of a man who has just realized he is out of milk, “I suppose we’re here now.”

“Suppose so,” Lillian replied, examining her fingernails with a level of interest that bordered on lackluster.

This went on for some time. They sat, exchanged the occasional banal observation about the quality of the walls (unremarkable) or the temperature of the room (moderate), and generally conducted themselves with all the energy of two houseplants left in an unused office. The silence that followed each exchange was almost pointed in its lack of significance, as if they were attempting to set a record for the most mundane conversation in the most uneventful setting imaginable.

Eventually, Henry, perhaps inspired by a fleeting whisper of curiosity, or possibly boredom, attempted a conversational gambit. “Do you suppose we’re dead?” he asked, in much the same tone one might use to inquire about the weather.

Lillian considered this. “Could be,” she replied, with a shrug that conveyed precisely zero emotion. “But I don’t feel dead.”

“Neither do I,” Henry agreed. This was, apparently, enough to satisfy them both, as they promptly returned to their mutual silence, as though they had successfully resolved the great mysteries of existence and could now rest easy in their mediocrity.

Some minutes passed in contemplative inactivity before Lillian, perhaps emboldened by Henry’s earlier foray into speculative conversation, decided to attempt a line of inquiry herself. “Do you think we’re supposed to do something?” she asked, in a voice that implied she had already given up on receiving a satisfactory answer.

“Doubt it,” said Henry, with the confidence of a man who had never been asked to accomplish anything more complex than tying his shoes. “If we were supposed to do something, I’m sure someone would have told us by now.”

Lillian nodded, evidently convinced by this flawless logic. After all, they were both well-accustomed to existing within the comfortable boundaries of strict instruction. The notion of independent action was, naturally, foreign to them, as it is to all individuals who prefer not to trouble themselves with the tiresome burden of agency.

And so, the two continued to sit there, comfortably ensconced in their own shared lack of motivation. Occasionally, one of them would open their mouth, as though about to say something profound, only to close it again, apparently satisfied that no such profundity was likely to emerge. The minutes trickled by in a stream of pure, unadulterated inaction, a testament to the endurance of the human spirit when faced with absolutely nothing of note.

It was, in short, a masterpiece of mundanity—a tour de force of apathy that would have left even the most stoic observer weeping with boredom. The very walls of the room, had they possessed the capacity for exasperation, would have sighed in exasperation at the display of sheer unremarkableness unfolding before them.

At long last, however, a new development occurred, though to call it such would be to lend it an air of significance it scarcely deserved. A small, faint hum—a noise so subtle that it could scarcely be said to exist—began to emanate from somewhere within the room. Henry and Lillian, ever alert to the faintest whiff of something uninteresting, turned their heads in the general direction of the sound with all the urgency of molasses sliding downhill.

“Do you hear that?” asked Henry, in a voice so lacking in enthusiasm it was practically horizontal.

Lillian listened, tilting her head slightly. “I suppose I do,” she replied, with the disinterest of one being informed of a distant acquaintance’s dental procedure.

The hum continued, building ever-so-slightly in volume, as if to insist upon its own importance. It was the sort of sound that seemed determined to be noticed, despite the fact that no one in the vicinity possessed the slightest inclination to acknowledge it.

“What do you think it is?” Henry asked, in a tone that suggested he would rather not have asked the question at all.

“Does it matter?” Lillian replied, not because she thought it didn’t, but because it was easier than contemplating otherwise.

And with that, they returned to their prior state of listless silence, content to ignore the hum and all the mysteries it may or may not have contained. In the end, it mattered little to Henry and Lillian, who had long since mastered the art of ignoring anything that might challenge their comfortable inaction.

And so they sat, in that empty room, blissfully unaware that they would remain there forever—because really, why should they care?