11
What a horrible thought.”
Blake raised an eyebrow inquisitively and turned his head to the side to look at her. They had been sitting in silence.
They must be watching us now . . . and listening too. Every word of every conversation, each movement and expression of our faces, all of it has been caught and kept by something or someone we can't even see.”
He nodded his accession and looked around the room from floor to ceiling. The walls of their cell were pristinely clean and soft—free of any remarkable feature excepting a ventilation module that systematically opened from overhead and blew fresh air in from between the open vents to eventually slide back into place. Beside that, only the door gave him pause but there was no visible apparatus with eyes or ears directed toward them.
Probably,” he agreed. “Just cause you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there . . .” It was a depressing thought.
She leaned back on her bed and blew a thick lock of brunette hair from her face. She kicked at the air in front of her like a dreaming animal and made a frustrated noise that was not quite a whimper. Blake took notice of the girlish outburst with a puzzled gratitude; after only three days since they'd been put together, each others' idiosyncrasies were already becoming more familiar. Rosie's playfulness despite their situation was something that demanded his admiration—and something he just couldn’t quite understand.
She sat back up.
Funny to think, isn't it? That we're talking about these cameras like they're little god's or something? Messengers from the gods maybe. Difficult to see, even more difficult to understand.”
I don't know if I think it's funny,” he said, “these gods are fickle ones.”
Rosie laughed a warm, real laugh that made him forget his surroundings for only a second. It reminded him of the Kingstons. He could almost smell the inviting must of the library, the smell of stir fried vegetables and the laughter of his brothers. Lovely as they were, their lack led him back to a pensive meditation. Would he ever experience such belonging again? Nothing so sweet as the past made idyllic by a forgetful mind. Had he ever really felt community before it was taken from him?
He closed his eyes a moment and tried to hold the memory in his mind. Eventually, his mind wandered in other directions and the thought slipped away like a leaf on the surface of a river.
Another day. And still nothing real had happened to the two inmates. No more questioning for either of them, no calls, no discussion of their cases. Nothing. Except when their captors brought them food, there was no human contact except what they could offer each other
Rosie had asked Blake of his parents. Where were they? What did they do? He told her briefly of two separated people whose time was precious as gold. Of his father, who held no time for him or his brothers. His mother held time in that she would sometimes send him money thinking they were all living together in a house not far from their father. If time is money, she had a little time for them at the start of every month. Rosie told him with a little resentment that she never knew her biological parents; they had died a long time ago, murdered; she was too young to remember. Blake could see it was a point of sensitivity, though Rosie's mood softened considerably when she told him of her foster grandmother. Who, she said, was living in Reading and, as a matter of fact, probably worried to death because Rosie wasn't returning her calls. God forbid she's heard what's happened.
The two had talked a great deal over the previous four days. Less at first, the tension and mistrust between them had been almost tangible in the beginning. Neither wanted to look at the other – though because of fear or awkwardness neither was really certain. When they had talked, Rosie criticized Blake's attempts to politicize their situation. Only after much protestation had she agreed that while their race, creed, and background weren't important, their human rights were being violated.
It wasn't long though before they began to realize just how much they had in common. Perhaps not in their daily lives on the outside, in civilization. No, they were very different. But sharing the commonality of the present was something neither could ignore. They couldn't because, at that moment, neither of them had anything in the world apart from bedsheets to lay on and a plethora of time. They had started by asking each other superficial questions and eventually gotten to know each other just enough to relinquish their fear. So they became tentative friends. Eventually they stopped asking about each other and ventured into the nature of their present situation because both had found all their thoughts, no matter their beginning, only led to the ubiquitous uncertainty over their future.
The day before Rosie had suggested they shout until someone came to speak with them, but they had only ended up with hoarse throats and aching ears. The guards came periodically, three times a day to bring them food but wouldn't even make eye contact, much less speak with them.
And so they had stayed static. Though Rosie's presence aided the passage of time, Blake still feared he was losing his grip but found their conversations to be a much needed metronome.
How long's it been, Rosie, since you saw the sky?” he had asked her earlier the same day, just after they had shared their stories of before their incarcerations.
Well let's see. Four days in this cell, and two before that makes six days. Not exactly a life sentence yet. But without any end in sight . . .” She looked visibly worried.
. . . who knows if it won't turn into one.”
Exactly.”
It's been seven for me. At least, I think. Seven days, and for all I know I've . . . we've been kidnapped. No legal counsel, no questions regarding a crime. If not for seeing the police firsthand I'd say we really were.”
Rosie didn't say anything, just covered her face with her hair.
I'm scared.” Blake said to himself. He said it under his breath, not intending for her to hear.
Me too,” she said from under a blanket of long hair.
Does living life in a cage change the way people think?” she asked a few hours later.
Blake didn't look up and, really, didn't know how to answer.
Well, it definitely makes you feel like a criminal.”
She laughed.
That isn't what I mean! We've only been here less than a week. I just want to know how it would affect us after say . . . a year . . . or,” she said begrudgingly, “a decade.”
It might turn us into animals . . . or into saints. Hard to say.”
Well? Which is it? You should know. I'd say animals,” she said. She twisted her neck up to peer at the ceiling as if she could see through it.
Maybe,” he said, “I'm already finding it hard to focus. Why do you ask?”
Because conversation is free. Even if we aren't. But they might try to take that away from us, too.”
They do a lot of shit.”
What?”
They. They're behind it all. Your capture, global crisis, war, religious intolerance, racism, greed, apathy toward the poor, keeping the people down.”
True but they also say they are going to ruin the world with their anti-us agenda. Religious freedom/tolerance, conservationism, charity even. They sometimes fight them.”
The trouble with them is they're so many people and they never include me in anything.”
Oh. But they might include you just not me.”
Yes, perhaps you.”
Perhaps you and not me, yes. Since I'm a spy.”
God knows what they're thinking. They're a shadowy cabal.”
The real reason I asked isn't because I feel like I'm going crazy. I just wanted to know what you thought.”
Blake sighed, “I think we'll be fine. I just don't know why.”
Why? How do you know?”
I don't know. Just hope for hope's own sake, I guess.”
The reason as it turned out came the next day around suppertime. Rosie and Blake were speaking in hushed tones about the gritty details of their alleged crime. Naturally, neither felt they had done anything wrong. But still each withheld something from the other. Rosie didn't favor Blake with the tale of the man in black and for his part he omitted what he'd been doing before his decision to go to parliament; his vision of the angel, his time with his surrogate family, he left out. They had been deep in conversation for some time when the usual clatter of their meals interrupted them.
Two brown serving trays slid through the bottom of the door but despite feeling especially hungry Blake didn't move a muscle. Rosie eventually fetched her own and returned to the cot.
Don't you want to eat?” She asked, trying to catch his eye as his gaze grew like a creeper vine toward the ceiling.
He didn't answer for a moment. Instead, he wrapped himself in a pleasant daydream. His hands dwelt unerringly at his side but his mind's eye painted the cramped little room and filled it with unobstructed landscapes; mountaintops immersed in vibrant greens, without buildings, without people. Free for the mind to explore its own wanderlust without fear of any invasion of privacy. Away from everything but the illusory shrine of natural beauty. Away from the stagnation of the present.
Rosie took little notice of his internal solitude. A dreamer, she thought, dreaming away, uncontrollably. She started to eat. Sitting crosslegged on the top of the bed sheets.
Blake, not for the first time wondered why they had been thrust together. The myriad questions he had swirled through his head. Was she truthful, trustworthy, or was she really a criminal or perhaps even a spy of some sort? There seemed to be no reason why he might even be worthy of being spied upon. The two had spoken so much since she arrived, spoken so much that Blake knew with all certainty that he liked her. Craning his head upward, away from the imaginary kingdom of sylvan green and precariously beautiful mountains, he snuck a covert peek at her; she was eating slowly, looking down in humility at the tray on her lap, her tresses slung around her shoulders, hanging like the branches of a weeping willow. He found himself desperately wanting her to be real, genuine.
Perhaps she felt his gaze brushing against her because she raised her head and met his eyes with her own. She appeared verily surprised.
What? Something wrong?”
No,” he answered trying not to look abashed. “Nothing.” He sat up. “I was just thinking it's time to eat.”
We've got to keep our strength up,” she said as he went to fetch his portion. “I don't know why. Perhaps so we can sit about with more than our usual gusto.”
It's no use laying down to die now.” He laughed.
His food was uncommonly appetizing. Rather than the usual portion of grizzled meat and cold deep fried chips their captors had given them a full sized plate of Fettuccine pasta, a white sauce dish with broccoli and bacon, and for dessert a small round chocolate cake.
While evaluating the food Blake had inadvertently left his mouth open. He was not far from drooling like a starving animal. He quickly returned to his space but a divisive thought struck him before he took his first bite.
Aren't you going to eat it? It really is great. Much better than the normal gruel!”
Should we?” Blake asked.
Rosie stopped eating to listen to him.
I mean . . . I want to. My stomach is growling, but why is it so much better than before? I don't trust anything they do. It just seems suspicious, is all.”
You think they might poison us?”
"I really don't know. Maybe. This experience has me paranoid. I suppose if they wanted to do that they easily could have already. We don't have any choice but to eat the food they prepare for us.”
So, Blake banished his doubts to the back of his mind, hoping they wouldn't return again, and began to eat as well. But it wasn't even five minutes when his meal ended very suddenly.
Blake . . .”
Yeah?”
Look at this.”
Rosie pointed toward her piece of chocolate cake. Blake scarcely believed what he saw. The cake was vibrating. In short bursts, much like a cell phone, the cake undulated as if it were trying to escape from the tray.
What's going on?”
I don't know, but” he stopped and looked at her and pressed a finger to his lips. After he motioned for her to see if something was inside, she used her plastic fork to make an incision in the cake and eventually pulled out a small black device, wrapped in plastic.
The thing's body was very thin and smooth. Except for a small dark screen placed on one side, it looked very much like finely cut obsidian rather than a piece of electronics. Rosie folded it over in her hands, dividing her attention between returning Blake's equally perplexed stare and examining the thing.
. . . in a cake . . .” she said in amazement.
She unwrapped it from its plastic covering. The second her hand touched it, the device's vibration stopped and the narrow screen lit up. Waving her hand, heart beating wildly, big eyes wide, Rosie frantically beckoned for Blake to come sit next to her. Her hands shook with an unexplainable anticipation as Blake joined her. Their faces etched with nervous curiosity. For a moment they could only look at the thing. It had no buttons, no ports, no means at all of input and although it seemed sensitive to the touch, it didn't respond to Rosie's prompting. Neither of them spoke as they waited and each cast their eyes about in suspicion of invisible voyeurs. Fortunately, only seconds later their patience rewarded them. Text appeared on the screen.
<<We've found you.
Rosie cradled the messenger with the diligence of one entrusted to a holy artifact. She wondered silently how to respond, then incredibly the question – the one she thought but never said aloud – appeared on the screen.
>>Who are you?
It was an unexplainable phenomenon. Blake turned to her questioningly, his mouth formed the word: “how?” Her eyes were widened in shock and horror. Already her body shook with the type of terror that few ever experience. Inevitably, her next thought appeared, snatched out of her helpless brain.
>>Get out of my head! Who are you? How is it possible? Get out of my head! You can't invade my mind!
Text responded rapidly.
<<My name is not yet important. I'm sorry for stealing your thoughts but it is the best way for me to contact you. I am a friend. I am your friend and also a friend of your cellmate. I wish to see you free and out of captivity. Already I know much of your story. Already I know much of his as well. Your freedom is imminent, if you desire it. You need only think it.
Rosie read the words but couldn't fight the sense of abject revulsion that spawned. Trespassing in her most private place. The horror was there, mingling with desire to escape.
>>How do you know me? Us? Who are you? F*ck you!
And then, free of volition:
>>We want to escape.
<<Regrettably, I cannot go into further detail about my identity until we meet in person. Answers will not elude you for much longer. Your passage from this place will be simple. In less than a minute the door to your cell will unlock and you will pass out of it. You will enter the hall turn left and follow it until the end, change into the clothes you see before you and then follow the compass built into this device. It will guide you outside and to a safe place.
Once again, her thoughts, unbidden, appeared on the screen.
>>Is it even possible? Why should we trust you?
<<Because you have no choice.
The screen went blank. A conspicuous thud signaled to them. The door was open.
Blake looked at Rosie. She saw a mask of determination on his face. He had already made his choice. He stood up from beside her and extended his arm.
I don't understand,” she said. Her voice sounded far away.
Neither do I,” he said. “No more than I understand why I'm here, why you're here. But, I think now that this place cannot hold us anymore, and we should leave it.”
Rosie uncertainly grabbed his hand and he helped her up.
Please,” she said, “don't leave me once we're out.” It sounded odd to her, as if she still had no power to control which thoughts she made public.
I won't.”
Hand in hand, with a gullible intimacy, they started for the door.
The moment, when recalled later would take on a fluidity, like how one remembers plunging headlong over the first depression into the teeth of raging rapids. Blake and Rosie pushed into the hall. The door that once confined them hung loosely open behind, without power. They turned left and followed the pristine white and ugly sterility of the hall until reaching yet another door. Beside it was a table around three feet long and made of stainless steel, and on it lay the promised set of clothes. Blake retrieved his own and looked back at Rosie who still looked in shock from the violation of having her mind read. He reached for her change of clothes and brought them to her. Without saying much she took them, and then after noticed him still appraising her and donned a forced smile.
It's not befitting a lady to be watched as she changes,” she said strangely.
What?” said Blake, taken aback.
No peeking!” she laughed that same laugh and turned her back to him.
Blake exclaimed roughly that he was very sorry indeed and followed suit. He quickly pulled off his orange uniform shirt and bottoms and began to slip into his underwear and a pair of blue jeans noting with amazement how they fit him perfectly. Something, made him stop and peek mischievously over his shoulder and to his surprise he saw Rosie, in a similarly half-clothed state looking over her pale petite shoulder back to him. Her eyes widened and then narrowed playfully but she did not look away or stop changing but met his gaze with a small laugh and Blake could only do the very same. It didn’t last long. Neither could forget they were, in fact, escaping from prison, and were soon dressed. Blake was desperately trying to hold the image of Rosie's naked back in his mind as she grabbed the little black device off the table, the half-smile of flirtatious excitement disappeared as she touched it and became a masquerade of controlled revulsion. She steeled herself against everything she was feeling; she forced it all into a region of her mind she had not known existed and with stolid determination started through the door and up a short stair.
Very becoming,” Blake whispered quietly to himself.
What?” asked Rosie the same faint glimmer of a smile reappeared on her lips.
But before he could answer they had reached another door that swung open freely as Rosie tried it and they entered yet another room. It appeared to them as if they were really entering a closet; the room was dark and small and a sliding door separated them from a sliver of light below its base. Rosie slid it open.
Blake consciously kept himself from gasping as he entered the next room. The room surely did not fit in a police station. It looked exactly like a hotel room, a rather plush and expensive one at that. A golden mirror adorned one wall, along with several tall elegant lamps in the corner of the room, and an impressively large computer screen on a hardwood desk opposite a bed. The bed caught his eye. It was not made. To one side the covers were cast off and the sheets wrinkled as if someone had spent the night.
They walked cautiously into the room. It was free of people.
Good morning, sir! What would you like for breakfast?” the computer opposite the bed asked, perhaps sensing their motion. The escapees jumped. Both felt doomed, undone by a service computer, but the room remained still and no one entered.
Nothing,” Blake whispered as quietly as he could.
Very well, sir! Please just tell me if you require anything.” Rosie and Blake both winced.
Rosie looked back at him questioningly. Blake only shrugged and motioned for them to continue. They stepped lightly over the soft carpet to the exit. Rosie inverted her gaze to heaven, and prayed a silent prayer and opened the door.
It creaked with yet another hideous alarm but again it seemed they were really alone. Blake could only marvel and shut the door behind him.
As the door closed, they both hurried down the corridor. Rosie tried to figure out just where they were. It looked too much like a hotel not to be one. But how? They both remembered being taken directly to a police station—they had spoken about the experience more than once—but there they were in a long hall with floral carpet and all the doors with golden numbers on them. She shook her head. Judging from the numbers they were on the ground floor. At least her impression of being held captive underground was true. The compass in the device led them forward until they passed through a narrow entryway that immediately widened into a lobby.
A hotel it was, and full of a hustling frenetic pace that unconsciously put Rosie at ease because it made her feel as if, finally, they were no longer the center of attention. Several customers stood in front of the service desk talking to the staff, while others simply rushed to the long row of elevators at the back of the foyer.
Blake drew even with her and she made a quick glance at the compass and put it in her hip pocket. She put off all of her questions about the device and the person, or intelligence, behind it – otherwise she knew it would make her sick – and took them both to the immense glass windows that composed the front of the lobby. They made themselves slow down their paces lest they seem even more suspicious, but no one in the room seemed even remotely interested or aware of their presence and so they walked with the agonizingly slow air of a happy couple soon finding themselves passing through the automatic doors and onto the street.
All the way across the street, past the dense and towering brick arches that fortified the front windows, a digital clock tocked silently inside a retail store. The time was eight thirteen in the morning. Blake pointed across the street in alarm but decidedly said nothing. Hadn't they just had dinner? Rosie could only shake her head; it was only another of a long list of unanswered and unanswerable questions.
The scene was familiar to her, although she had never lived in London; the numbed morning gait of many of the professionals reminded her of herself on the way to work – when she had had a job, of course. All that was behind her now, at any rate. Part of her envied the security of it; part of her rejoiced in her new-found alienation. Multitudes of people crossed each others' paths in a choreographed syncopation without resistance and almost without volition.
The sun this morning shone brightly and only a few clouds were in the sky. They stood in place. The beauty of the outside world mesmerized them, rooted them in place to the ground, hid their urgency from them. Rosie could see four of the six of London Proper's megastructures. Forbidding behemoths, so tall and bright, advanced and state of the art, they awed and threatened the onlooker all at once and trapped them in the ever marching footstep of time.
Rosie tore herself away from their bewitching vision and took another peek at the compass. The black of the device itself merged with the black of the screen and revealed nothing to her of their present course. For a moment she felt a tremulous vibration enter her like an invading spirit. She detested the thing, surely, for it could read her thoughts. But right now it was their lifeline.
Her fears were very quickly allayed, however, as she felt a gentle pulse against her palm and looking down she saw the red arrow directing her to the east and she led Blake to the left past numerous pedestrians and through many crosstreets before she felt yet another nudge and changed course for the north.
They dutifully followed the device’s path. Rosie thought more than once about dashing the infernal thing to bits on the ground but somehow couldn't marshal the courage; it had set them free, and promised them safety. Whoever was behind this little black rock was obviously someone with almost godlike power but, she thought, perhaps better to not think about them. After all, whoever it was knew what she was thinking.
Eventually, after walking for around three-quarters of an hour the compass signaled yet again, but this time it was clear that they had arrived at their destination because instead of displaying an arrow only an address appeared onscreen.
<<<No. 68 – 515. You have 48 hours to stay, then you may go where you wish.
She inclined her head to the top of the six floor building and then spoke uncertainly to Blake:
I think we're here.”
Sometimes understanding the choices we make is as impossible as divining them from the subtle shifting of the stars. Impossible to understand why our minds are not books open and ready to be studied but rather always works in progress. Walking the streets one cannot know why they push past a thousand others and see no one. As twenty sink step by step incrementally into the distance of the underground and one sits crosslegged, longhaired in an artificial grimy cascade, obscuring a billion possible faces underneath, fingers soft, free of a day's labor but calloused in tremendous skill and cradling an old violin that should you choose to listen would enrapture you in a glorious musical rush, a man seeing more than you notice he sees because you aren't always thinking. The details missed by a consciousness slip through a sieve and are lost. This man is looking, and seeing through a shroud of wheat hair; a white eye catches the faces of all who pass and would have caught yours, too, even if he hadn't been expecting you. A sly whisper slips from his lips and dissipates, vaporous, but not unheard, and he raises the violin to play because he knows you won't notice. There is too much, he knows, for one to see for anything to be heard, not if he is good enough, not if he is subtle enough. He winds notes through his fingers like the loose strands of a lover's hair and listens to your thoughts and feels thankful that you are ignorant of his watchfulness. Calm like a bomb, he plays on, without care, patient as the sun, cold as the moon.
Perhaps, this was the reason they felt relief when they entered apartment 515 and not, as might have been more appropriate, trepidation.
The inside of apartment 515 surprised Rosie. Not that she'd known what to expect at all, but it was so clean and well-lit. Brand new appliances and furniture, spotless white-painted walls, and a tall ceiling – who would think to flee into such luxury? Already she was dreading the day of their, or perhaps, her departure. It was a line of thought worth taking: in two days time, when their stay here had run out, would they part ways? Certainly, if either of them wanted to, then that was it. But did she want to?
It took them no prompting to make themselves comfortable. Blake went for a shower almost immediately. He said something to Rosie before he did so – perhaps asking if she was alright – but her mind was so preoccupied that she hadn't noticed until he had already left. Too many questions, too many uncertainties. What would they do? Would she, could she go back to her old life? Did she even want that? Was she still a suspected criminal? Almost definitely, she thought. So how could she save herself? How could she save Blake? And what of her grandmother?
Then there was the sleek piece of evil. It was resting in front of her on the table. Sinister, that was how it appeared to her. In this world violations of privacy seemed routine, almost unnoticeable, negligible to those peeping eyes and ears who pried into the lives of masses of people. But this, this felt terrible, like her mind was not her own and might never be again. Who was to say that she would ever truly be her own again?
Her thoughts started to get the better of her and she began to cry as Blake reentered the room. He walked over to her and noticed tears rolling in a steady stream down her face. She looked up to him, stared him full in the face, but only cried harder. He sat next to her, somber faced, and put an arm around her.
Don't worry,” he said, “We'll be alright. Though I don't know how.”
And with so few words at least one of Rosie's questions was answered. They remained there for a long time, in a very deep silence until Rosie mustered the strength to take a shower. After twenty minutes she rejoined Blake on the sofa in the main room where they stayed until late afternoon when they both fell asleep.
They stayed in the apartment for the remainder of the two days. They did not leave it, but rather ate in, talked, communed with each other. Finally they broached the until then taboo subject of their experiences before their capture—their quote unquote wrongdoings that had so altered their lives. They were honest with each other. From there the decisions to be made were difficult ones, but eventually they weighed their options and decided to try to make it to the library where Blake's brothers and the Kingstons, hopefully, still lived. Rosie had to settle on writing her grandmother a letter, which they would post somewhere on the way to the library. Both were very frightened and unsure of themselves. Ultimately they hoped to flee the country, perhaps for mainland Europe or even Africa, but neither knew how to find a transport. Blake truly regretted involving the Kingstons but also wanted desperately to reunite with his brothers and this seemed the only way. So after 48 hours they left their comfortable waystation, leaving the black device Rosie and even Blake so despised behind and at midday on the second day made their way to Brixton to the unheard soundtrack of violin music.