The ring finger on Isaac's left hand twitched for the third time in a day which concerned him greatly. He stared down at his hand and watched the finger for a short period. No spasm ran through his hand while he was watching, but he was sure that the tiny hairs right above his second knuckle were brimming with excitement. He  squeezed his eyes shut, wrote the movements off as his imagination, and returned to his work.

His ring finger twitched again as he resumed typing.

He stopped and looked down at his hand again. His finger twitched this  time while he stared at it. He reached over with his other hand and pressed down on his finger. He felt the muscle in his finger fight back against him. His finger pulled up against his hand and he felt something in his knuckle pull tight, as if the tendons were being worked from outside of his skin, rather than the inside. Something inside his finger pulled tight, the muscles in his ring finger grew taunt, and then his finger twitched again. 

Isaac pulled against his finger with his right hand and felt the muscle relax. He took a deep breath and rubbed his ring finger. The sensation in his finger was enough to worry him more than usual, unusual enough to have him consider leaving work for the day. He stood up from his desk, and as he did, his knee jerked and banged into his office chair. He reached down and gripped his knee with his left hand. His movements felt jerky, spastic, as if each muscle lagged a half second behind his command. 

He straightened up and walked to his boss's office.

"Sir?" he asked, sticking his head through the door.

Isaac's boss, a fat man with no hair, stared out blankly from behind his desk. "Yes, Isaac?"

"I need to leave for the day."

Isaac's boss shook his head and pointed at the chair across from him. "No. You left early yesterday. Sit down and tell me what's going on."

Isaac walked to the chair and took a seat. As he sat, his finger twitched again.

"Well?" his boss said.

"I don't know what to say," Isaac said. "For the past few days I've been feeling weird. Like I'm going through the motions. I've got no drive, been down." He didn't mention his spasms. He took a breath. "Have you ever felt like a robot?"

His boss laughed. "Isaac, you're a working stiff. You are a robot."

Isaac frowned and looked past his boss. There were curtains behind his boss, something he'd never noticed before. He tilted his head and turned back to his boss. His boss was saying something, but Isaac couldn't hear it past his own thoughts. His ring finger twitched again and his knee jerked. He narrowed his eyes and looked down at his boss's fat hand. From the fat knuckles, a tiny red streak seemed to cut through the air. It was there for a moment, but then it was gone.

Isaac followed the path cut through the air by the red streak, right up to the office's ceiling. For a few seconds, there was nothing there but a typical, boring drop ceiling, dotted with inset florescent lights that bathed the room in a pale, cold white glow. Then, the ceiling flickered in Isaac's eyesight and revealed nothing but a black abyss and a tiny silver wheel hanging from the darkness above.

He turned away from it and narrowed his eyes at his fat boss. The man was still talking, but Isaac's mind focused on other things. He searched his fat boss and happened to see the man's finger twitch.

The left ring finger.

Wavering like the beating sun reflecting off of a desert highway, the room shimmered. Isaac could see thousands of tiny red streaks, strings, running from his boss, up to the black void where the ceiling used to be. He sucked a shocked breath into his lungs and shook his head to clear his thoughts. He blinked twice but the strange sight didn't fade. He followed the red strings from his boss, up to the tiny wheel, a pulley, where the strings converged and ran along the black void to the dark curtains he'd spotted moments before.

Isaac stood up and ignored the twitch in his finger, and the sudden jerk of his knee, and rushed over to the black curtains.

"What do you think you're doing?" his boss bellowed.

Isaac didn't answer. He grabbed the curtains, and struggled to force his muscles to obey him as he tried to fling the curtains back. He pulled against the curtains, even as he felt his muscles spasm and struggle to disobey him. The curtains opened to reveal a window.

A naked man, save for black gloves, sat upon a throne behind the window, with millions of red strings running from every direction, each one attached to a muscle group on his body. He deftly worked the fingers of his black gloved hands, plucking and tugging and pulling and stretching hundreds and thousands of tiny red strings.

Isaac swallowed and nearly choked. As he did, he looked down at his twitching finger. Red strings ran from his hands, and his arms, and as he searched, he realized they ran from every portion of his body. The string on his left ring finger was tangled slightly, causing a spasm. He took a sudden breath and stared through the window at the man pulling the strings.

The man upon the throne looked up and locked cold white eyes with Isaac. No emotion was betrayed by his expressionless face, nor did his eyes convey anything. Without a sound or a pause in pulling the strings, the man reached over to a tiny silver tray and lifted a pair of scissors. He isolated a single set of red strings.

He snipped the strings, and Isaac fell to the ground like a rag doll.

The black curtains closed and the man upon the throne continued pulling the strings.