Shigeru walked into the building. It was in a pretty seedy part of town, and he wasn't sure he was in the right place. The room looked like a doctor's waiting room out of the seventies, with shag carpet. A bum was sleeping in the corner of the room.
He walked up to the receptionist window and looked in. A bored-looking woman sat there reading a magazine.
"H-Hello," Shigeru said, "is this the right place for the medical tests?" He waved the ad in front of her.
The receptionist looked at him blankly. "How old are ya, kid?"
Shigeru stammered "Fourteen. I know I look small for my age, but my family are all late bloomers. Am I too young?"
The receptionist shook her head as she looked down at a sheet. "Dr. Murray can see you now. Third door on the left."
She pressed a button and a door next to the window swung open automatically. Weird, thought Shigeru.
He walked down the deserted hallway and entered the door on the left, which also swung open automatically when he got to it.
The ceilings in this room were higher than in the rest of the office -- almost ten feet tall. In the center of the room was a small machine with three nozzles on it. Shigeru approached the machine and examined it, but could find no way to turn it on.
Behind him, the door suddenly swung open and in walked a man with a thick grey beard and thick-rimmed glassed. "I'm Dr. Murray," the man said. "What's your name, young man?"
"Shigeru", he replied.
"Uh huh," Dr. Murray jotted the name down on his clipboard. "And you're fourteen, right? How tall would you say you are?"
"About 5 foot 1."
"Got it," Murray made another note. "We're performing an experiment here. Take this cup." He handed Shigeru a small plastic cup, like one he'd taken liquid medicine with. "Put it under one of the three nozzles and it will fill with a drink. Then drink it. Wait five minutes, and then pick either the same nozzle or a different one, and drink again. You can do this as many times as you like, but always wait five minutes between drinks. We'll be watching you from over there." He pointed to what seemed like a mirror, but what Shigeru guessed was an observation room. "We can hear you too, so feel free to say what you feel. We'll let you know when you're done."
"What do the drinks do?" Shigeru asked, but Dr. Murray was already out of the room and the door slammed shut.
Shigeru shrugged and turned back towards the machine. As he approached it, the machine suddenly lit up, and three squares appeared above the nozzles: one red, one blue, and one green.
Shigeru looked at the machine, and then back at the cup.