“People. Relax, relax. Mind the equipment,” the man said. “Just find the closest chair.”
Jin exhaled and walked to the next row. Full. In the last row, he found a seat.
Another group of orderlies entered. They wore long white coats and carried tablet computers. A young-looking woman came over to him and hooked the bags to his arm valve and attached the round sensors to his body. She tapped a few times on her screen and moved to the chair beside him.
Maybe it’s just a new test, he thought.
He suddenly felt sleepy. He leaned his head back and…
Jin woke in the same chair. The bags were detached, but the sensors were still connected. He felt groggy and stiff, like he had the flu. He tried to lift his head up. It was so heavy. A white coat came over, ran a flashlight across his eyes, then unhooked the sensors and told him to go and stand with the others by the door.
When he stood, his legs almost buckled. He steadied himself on the arm of his chair, then hobbled over to the group. They all looked half asleep. There were maybe 25 of them, about half of the group that had entered. Where were the rest? Had he slept too long — again? Is this punishment? Would they tell him why? After a few minutes, another man joined them, he seemed in even worse shape than Jin and the rest.
The orderlies ushered them through another long passageway and into a enormous room he’d never seen before. The room was completely empty and the walls were very smooth. He got the impression that it was like a vault or something.
Several minutes passed. He fought the urge to sit down on the floor. He hadn’t been told he could sit. He stood there, his heavy head hanging.
The door opened, and two children were escorted in. They couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. The guards left them with the group, the door closing behind them with a loud boom.
The children weren’t drugged, or Jin didn’t think so. They looked alert. They moved quickly through the crowd of people. They were brown. Not Chinese. They both spoke rapidly, wandering from person to person, trying to find someone to respond to them. What language were they speaking? He was too tired to think about it.
At the end of the room, he heard a mechanical sound, like a winch. After a few seconds, he realized something was being lowered. His head was so heavy. He strained to lift it. He could barely see the device. It looked like a massive iron chess pawn with a flat head, or maybe a bell with smooth, straight sides. It must have been twenty feet tall and heavy because the four cables that lowered it were huge, maybe twelve inches around. When it was about ten feet off the ground, it stopped and two of the cables moved down the wall along a track Jin hadn’t noticed before. They stopped about level with the huge machine and seemed to tighten, anchoring it at each side. Jin strained to look up. There was another cable running from the top of the machine. It was even fatter than the ones at the sides. Unlike the others, it wasn’t metal, or even solid. It seemed to hold a bundle of wires or computer cables, like some sort of electronic umbilical cord.
The children had stopped in the middle of the crowd. All the adults tried to look up.
His eyes adjusted, and Jin could just make out a marking etched into the side of the machine. It looked like the Nazi symbol, the—. He couldn’t remember the name. He felt so sleepy.
The machine was dark, but Jin thought he could hear a faint throbbing sound, like someone rhythmically beating on a solid door — boom-boom-boom. Or maybe the sound of the picture machine. Was it a different picture machine? A group picture? The boom-boom-boom grew louder with each passing second, and a light emerged from the top of the giant pawn — its head apparently had short windows. The yellow-orange light flickered with each pulse of the boom, giving it almost the effect of a lighthouse.
Jin was so entranced by the machine’s sound and light pulses, he didn’t notice the people falling around him. Something was happening. And it was happening to him too. His legs felt heavier. He heard a sound like bending metal — the machine was pulling against the cables at each side; it was trying to lift.
The pull of the floor got stronger with each passing second. Jin looked around but couldn’t see the children. Jin felt someone grab his shoulder. He turned to find a man holding on to him. His face had deep wrinkles, and blood ran from his nose. Jin realized that the skin from the man’s hands was coming off on Jin’s clothes. It wasn’t just skin. The man’s blood began to spread over Jin’s shirt. The man fell forward onto him, and they both collapsed to the ground. Jin heard the boom-boom-boom of the machine blend into one constant drone of sound and solid light as he felt the blood from his nose run down his face. Then the light and sound suddenly stopped.