The Prison

by Stefano Pastor

  “Don’t touch it!”, he told his son. “If you don’t want me to throw it away, don’t touch it anymore!”

  Spencer’s eyes shone. “I swear to you, Dad.”

  Eight roots later, at the end of a heavy day in the field, Moses and Zeb returned to the shed, exhausted.

  Pheby had brought something to eat at noon, because the work couldn’t be interrupted, and she had already warned him that she couldn’t come back until late, because without Spencer the job for her was double.

  He hoped Spencer didn’t get in trouble after being all day alone.

  He froze as soon as he stepped his foot into the hut, but he wasn’t ready enough to stop Zeb, who went in, and dropped his mouth open.

  Spencer and Miss Lily were seated at the table, and wide open in front of them there were the books and notebooks they had found in the capsule. The same capsule was laid on the floor, empty.

  Moses didn’t dare to open his mouth. Spencer gave him a desperate look. “I had to do it for good! I wasn’t able to read that!”

  Miss Lily ignored them, she didn’t even notice their presence, kept reading.

  She wasn’t a beauty, and she probably would never have been. She didn’t care about getting married and be a good wife, she had many other aspirations. She only dreamed of going away from that house, from that city, from that world.

  They stayed still for a long time, Moses and Zeb, without daring to come forward. It was the first-time Miss Lily came home and didn’t know what to do.

  “Your parents will be looking for you, Miss”, Moses dare to say.

  Miss Lily just looked up from the book. “I said I didn’t feel well and I went to bed soon.”

  Then nothing more, she read again.

  Spencer shrugged, as if to indicate that he didn’t know much more. Then Moses stepped forward, still standing.

  “What are them?” he asked.

  Miss Lily looked at him. “It’s crazy!”, she began. She pointed at the books around her. “This is a school.”

  Something he had guessed, looking at that drawing, but Moses wasn’t sure he understood it. “What school? Where is this school?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she pointed to the famous square book, which was open on the page of the accused drawing and her finger stopped on the black boy in the center. “It’s his!”

  “What?”

  “This container. The Time Capsule. It’s his. He did it. Here’s all his life. I think it was a great honor. They let him do it because he was the best student. A genius, they say.”

  Moses dropped his jaw. “He’s a nigger.”

  Miss Lily snorted. “I can see he’s a nigger! In that place it must not have been so important.”

  Moses was afraid to ask. “What place?”

  She shook her head. “They say they are from the past, but it’s impossible. There has never been anything like that. Never.”

  Moses was so confused and exhausted that he dared to sit without asking permission. Miss Lily didn’t even notice it.

  “Do you understand what’s written, Miss?”

  “Very little”, she admitted. “The language is similar to ours, yet very different. There are many words I don’t understand.”

  He pointed to the scattered papers. “What do they say?”

  “They talk to the people of the future. They tell how they were, what they did. The children wrote them all, all of them.” He pointed to the notebooks, then the letters. “They have written to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, to those who will read it one day. To their family in the future. Only that is impossible, this past has never happen.”

  “So it is…a joke?”

  She snorted. “A joke? Look here!” She placed the strange square in front of his eyes with the bright numbers. “This is a clock! And it still works! They write that it will work for a thousand years, without any charge!”

  Moses was left with his mouth open. That object didn’t look like a clock at all.

  “What about that…that nigger?”

  “I told you, he was the best in the school. It was called Alan Freeman. They gave him the task of preparing the time capsule, and when he finished they buried it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone would find it in the future and see how they lived then. Who they were, what they had done.”

  He showed him medals and cups. “These were all his, he was a genius in the school. A genius of… quantum physics, I have no idea what’s that!”

  “I never knew that some things were buried.”

  “Indeed! It never happened! Who would ever get such an absurd idea?” She returned to indicate the drawing. “And this is impossible. It doesn’t exist, it can’t exist. It never existed.”

  “So, what does that mean?”

  She pointed to the capsule. “There’s a date there, December 15, 2050.”

  Moses didn’t understand even then. “What does it mean?”

  “It means that this capsule will be buried in three hundred years.”

  Moses was shocked, because that concept overshadowed his reality.

  Miss Lily bit a lip. “The opening of the capsule was planned in 2250, exactly two centuries later. You can guess it by the letters.”

  “But when are we talking about? When did it happen?”

  “I don’t know!” she blinked.

  She stood up and started to walk around the room. “Maybe once the world has been like this. A long time ago. Perhaps the capsule has never been opened, and it just stayed there. Maybe a thousand years, or two thousand. Perhaps it comes from Atlantis, who knows, someone says it existed. Maybe…” She stopped and shook her head. “How silly am I! It comes from the future and that’s it!”

  For Moses, it was madness. “The future?”

  “Where else can whites and niggers live together? Do you see a place in this world where this is possible?”

  “The North”, Moses murmured, regretting it immediately.

  Miss Lily grimaced. “There are no slaves in the north, there are no chains, but do you really think the situation is very different?” She pointed to the drawing again. “That doesn’t belong to our time, it’s impossible.”

  Miss Lily caressed the cups and medals, just touched the strange clock, then spoke in a loud voice without turning. “Destroy everything, burn the books, bury the capsule. My father will never have to know what you found.”

  She didn’t want to meet Spencer’s eyes wide open and she ran away.

  “Dad, no!” Spencer was weeping as Moses burned the books. Then the notebooks. They were too far from home for someone to see them. Spencer wanted to come with him.

  “There is”, murmured the child. “There is a place where we are free. Where I can go to school

  Moses was getting worse. “It doesn’t exist.”

  “I’ve seen it, I will never forget it.”

  It would have been his end, Moses was certain. That damn design would mark his son’s life.

  He opened the square book and pulled out the design, crumpled it, and threw it into the fire. But there were others, and they all depicted that boy, Alan Freeman, while white men and women handed the prizes to him, while other white boys clapped their hands. Moses was weeping, he could no longer resist.

  “Dad, I want to go there.”

  Moses looked at him incredulously. “There where?”

  “Where that child is. I want to go down there.”

  Oh, how much he wanted it to be possible, that his son could have a life like that of Alan Freeman.

  “Why did it come back, dad? Why is it here now?”

  “As?”

  “They buried it because they would find it in the future. Instead we found it. But it’s the past, they have not built it yet.”

  Moses sighed. “Let it go, Spencer. There is no answer to certain things.”

  He threw the rest of the book into the fire and he stood up.

  “Come on, now, tomorrow, you have to get up ear
ly and get back to work.”

  “Dad! Dad! What day is today?”

  Moses opened his eyes more exhausted than ever. He felt destroyed and out was still dark. “Wednesday, Spencer. Now sleep.”

  “What year! What year is this?”

  He opened his eyes. He couldn’t understand Spencer’s strange excitement. “You know, the 1750s.”

  Spencer smiled. “September 5, 1750!”

  “If you already know why you ask me?”

  “It’s the date that marks the clock!”

  He showed him proudly. The unknown numbers were blinking in the dark, and this even scared Moses further. “You didn’t bury it!”

  “Look, Daddy, look! The clock marks today’s date!”

  “So?”

  “How is it possible? If it has been buried in the future, how can it show the time backwards?”

  He had to trust Spencer, he didn’t know the numbers. “It’s a mystery, okay. However…”

  “It’s not a clock! This is what makes time move! That guy built it, you know? It was Alan! They have also rewarded him for doing so! Is this! Is this!”

  “All right, Spencer, that’s it. You can keep it, if you want. Just don’t show it to anyone please. Now sleep.”

  Spencer sat down, clutching that clock to his heart.

  “I want to go there, Daddy”, he murmured. “Let me go there.”

  Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  The next day they whipped him again, and it was horrible.

  Spencer did nothing but trouble, did not obey any of the orders given to him, always lost in his dreams. In the end Mrs. Hennessy gave him the right punishment, but she was too violent to the point that Pheby faced her and she got whipped too.

  When Moses came back out the field, he found Spencer on the bed in tears. His back was bloody, Pheby had not even had time to treat him.

  As he tried to wash it without hurting him, Spencer kept sobbing. “Let me go, Daddy. Let me go down there.”

  Oh, Moses would do it, if only he knew how to do it. Yes, at that moment he would do anything.

  “I don’t want to”, Spencer said. “I don’t want it. I don’t want it.”

  He didn’t want that life, and he was right.

  “Do it, please, do it.”

  Moses looked unbelievably Zeb, without realizing it.

  Zeb was strange that morning as they worked in the fields. “I didn’t understand much about what you said, but do it anyway. If Spencer wants to leave, let him free. Don’t force him to continue this life.”

  “But…”

  Zeb didn’t really understand anything, otherwise he wouldn’t have said those things, Moses was certain. For sure he had heard of the North as well, and he imagined that Spencer would want to go there.

  “Anything is better than this life”, Zeb continued. “Anything.”

  “Miss Lily, can I talk to you?”, Moses asked.

  The girl looked worried, she looked around. “Should you not be at work? What are you doing here?”

  “Your dad went to town, Miss Lily.”

  “He will punish you the same if he finds out that you are not working.”

  Moses lowered his eyes but didn’t move.

  “My mother?”

  “She’s in the kitchen with Pheby.” He mastered up all his courage. “It’s for Spencer.”

  The girl bowed her head. “I can’t do anything, you know. Mom doesn’t listen to me. Do you think I wouldn’t helped him if there was a way?”

  “He wants to leave, Miss Lily. He wants to go down there.”

  The girl just made a grimace. There was no need to explain where it was down there.

  Moses pulled the strange watch out of his pocket. “Spencer says it’s this. This is what allowed him to go back. He says that marks today’s date.”

  A wrinkle appeared on Miss Lily’s forehead. “You did not destroy it!”

  Moses bowed his head. “Please. Spencer can’t live like this much longer.”

  Miss Lily took the watch and studied it carefully. “Even if it was, what should I do?”

  “I don’t know”, Moses admitted.

  There were buttons above the numbers, and Miss Lily crushed them. The numbers changed.

  Miss Lily looked around and then went to the window.

  “It doesn’t work”, she said. “Nothing happens.”

  They stayed silent for a long time, then Miss Lily asked him: “What did you do with the capsule?”

  “I buried it, as Miss said.”

  “Let’s go to get it back then. Do you remember where you buried it?”

  Moses nodded.

  “Bring it there, and bring Spencer too.”

  “It’s the capsule, it must be.”

  “What does it mean?”

  They were all there, in the new field, around that strange object. Moses and his son Spencer, Zeb and Miss Lily.

  She handled the clock. “This indicates the destination, or rather the arrival time, but alone is not enough. It’s the capsule the medium. No, it’s not a time capsule, it must be something different.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It could not have been by chance, it was sent here for a very specific task. So, there must be a way to get it back.”

  “What task?”

  Miss Lily didn’t answer, she continued to look at the fake watch she held, then walked, getting nervous. She began a strange conversation, which confused Moses. “Why? I hate my life, this is not my world! Do you think it’s easy to be a woman, always having to say yes? If there is a world where negroes are at the same level as whites, is it not possible that women in the same world are equal to men? I want to go down there! I desperately want to go over there, I don’t want anything else.”

  She had tears in her eyes, and Moses couldn’t quite understand.

  She continued: “It’s not for me. It’s not me who came to pick up. To save. They don’t want me. I’ll have to stay here forever.”

  Time was running, Master Hennessy could also be back early, Moses was getting more and more agitated. “Spencer, Miss Lily, what must Spencer do?”

  Miss Lily pointed at the object. “He needs to get in there. Do you think you can, Spencer?”

  Moses crippled. “In there? To go where?”

  There was a strange light in the child’s eyes. “I can go there? Where Alan is? In that new world?”

  Miss Lily shook her head. “No, it’s impossible.”

  “What does that mean then?” Moses asked, seeing the disappointment on the face of his son.

  “Even if we could send him over there, what would we achieve?”, Miss Lily asked. “The capsule was buried. He wouldn’t be able to breath, there would be no one to free him.”

  “Then it’s all worthless!” Moses exclaimed.

  She smiled. “No, not really. It is no coincidence that it’s here, but a very specific choice. That’s the purpose of the content, to make us understand. We know exactly when the capsule will open again. They told us, they left us a message. On December 15, 2250, at noon. That’s when they will have the opening ceremony.”

  Moses felt his heart in his throat. “But we can’t know if it will happen! We have no idea how the world will be then! If it will still exist! They might have forgotten it! It may no longer matter. There may be no one to open it anymore.”

  “Yeah, it could happen”, Miss Lily admitted.

  “Spencer might die choking in there, even if it worked!”

  “It could, yes.”

  “Let me go, Daddy, please.”

  Spencer begged him. Moses knelt in front of his son. “Do you know what it means? You could die there. You will certainly die.”

  “I don’t want to live here, Daddy. Please.”

  What life waited for him? Spencer wouldn’t have made it, Moses was sure. He was a child full of dreams and illusions. They would have annihilated him, completely.

  Spencer slipped off his hands and reached the capsule. “Lo
ok, I fit in!”

  It was not easy; the capsule was tight for him too. But Spencer was so small that he managed to get in. He struggled to speak, crushed as he was. “You see? I’m fine.”

  “Yes, it’s made for him”, Miss Lily said sadly.

  Moses shivered. How much air could there be in there? How much could he resist before choking? Five minutes, ten?

  “It’s madness!” Moses cried.

  “I don’t want to live here!”, Spencer shouted.

  What would be his life, knowing that he had killed his own son? Because this was the heart of the problem: they could never know if it had succeeded or not.

  “What do we have to do?” he asked Miss Lily.

  She pressed the keys and the numbers on the clock that changed. Then he leaned over the capsule and passed the object to Spencer. “Keep it tight.”

  Her voice also trembled. “Now close it. And bury it where you found it.”

  Moses’ heart went crazy. Bury Spencer, alive? His mind was against it, with all its strength.

  “Why? What’s the need?”

  “That’s where it started, three centuries in the future. Here one day the school will be built, where you have seen it. And this is where the capsule will finally open.”

  “But…”

  “Hurry up before daddy comes back. He doesn’t have to find out what we did.”

  Moses loved him, loved him a lot. He loved him so much to let him free. Even though he was risking his life, even though he only pursued a dream. He told him. “I love you, Spencer.”

  “Me too, Daddy. I love you and mom.”

  Then he closed the capsule and sealed it.

  They dropped it into the hole, he and Zeb, then buried it completely. Moses couldn’t stop crying, the reason was screaming in his head at that moment that Spencer was dying choking. But there was also a hope, a slight illusion that the child was no longer there, that he had reached a better world.

  They remained silent for a long time, around that pile of ground, almost as if they were at a funeral.

  “Did he leave?” Moses finally asked Miss Lily.

  She didn’t answer.

  “We can look at it, check it. We’re still in time.”