by Allen Steele
I wait anxiously, hoping that it won’t ask me for the next number after ten. I know what two ones placed next to each other look like—I can visualize it in my mind’s eye, and don’t need to blink three times to see it—but I don’t have the word for it.
“What is your name?” the voice asks.
I open my mouth, close it, open it again, close it once more. There’s something in the back of my mind—a stream of half-recognized images that are at once as familiar as my toes and yet as unreal as this room, that are real and significant and mean everything to me, but nonetheless untouchable…and yet, at the nucleus of this strange atom, I perceive a sound, a feeling, a word…
“Ah…ah…al…al…aleh…aleh…alekk…alekk…”
“Yes,” the voice says. “That’s correct. Your name is Alec. You may go to sleep now, Alec. You have done very well, and we will continue this when you wake up.”
Exhausted, I fall back against the pillows, pulling the sheets and blanket around me as I curl into a fetal position with my hands tucked into my crotch. The voice loves me. The voice is proud of me. My name is Alec, and I can stand up and walk and count to ten, and the voice says that’s okay.
I slept, and woke up when the voice told me to wake up, and practiced walking some more, this time to a small table and chair a few feet from my bed where a bowl of soup was waiting for me.
I don’t know how to use a spoon, but when the voice tells me to blink three times, the stick man appears to show me how it’s done. Although I drip much of the soup on my chest, the table and the floor, I manage to get most of it in my mouth.
The soup is good. It has a taste that I vaguely remember, but can’t quite identify. At one point I freeze with the spoon halfway to my mouth, and stare at it as two syllables fight their way up from my subconscious. “Ken…chi…ken…chi…chi…chi…ken…chi…ken…”
“Very good, Alec,” the voice says. “You’re eating chicken soup.”
I nod happily, very pleased with myself. I like chicken soup.
When I’m done, the voice instructs me to walk through a narrow door at the opposite end of the room. This is the farthest distance I’ve yet traveled, a journey which takes me past the beds where the other people lie. As I slowly walk toward the door, I see that many of them are awake. Some are trying to get out of bed; others simply lie still, staring into space and blinking rapidly as they murmur to themselves. A few are curled into tight little balls, their eyes wide as they clutch themselves and tremble uncontrollably. I feel nothing for them; they’re just naked bald men and women whom I don’t know.
The door leads into a smaller room, one with white tile floors with a drain in the center and small holes in the ceiling. A row of seatless toilets are lined up against the far wall. The voice tells me to sit on one of the toilets. I obey, but don’t know what to do next until some primal instinct takes hold and my bowels empty themselves. Again, there’s a vague sense of satisfaction and relief; when I’m through, the voice tells me to stand up, walk to the nearest ceiling hole and wait there.
This I do, and after a moment a tiny rainstorm of soapy hot water erupts from the hole. This startles me and I leap out from under the water, but the voice sternly tells me to remain beneath the hole. I’m more afraid of the voice than the water, so I reluctantly return to the shower. Three blinks, and the stick man reappears; this time he’s rubbing his hands all over his body, and when I imitate him I once again feel great satisfaction, until the water suddenly turns cold and I yelp and nearly jump out from under the hole again. The voice tells me to stay under the hole, so I obey it, and once I’ve been rinsed I’m rewarded by a long blast of hot air that warms and dries my goosepimpled skin.
The voice tells me to go back to bed, but as I walk through the door I see something that scares me so much, I nearly duck back into the shower room.
At the far end of the room, a man wearing a long hooded robe is removing my soup bowl from the table.
None of the others in the room appear to have noticed him, but he sees me, and motions for me to come closer.
I’m badly frightened and don’t want to go to him, but the voice tells me that he’s my friend and that he has a gift for me because I had been so good, so I step through the door and timidly walk down the aisle between the beds.
Halfway through the room, I feel a strange prickling at my neck: a feeling that I’m being watched from behind.
I stop and turn around, and see that one of the bald naked men I’ve just walked past has sat up in bed. He’s bigger than anyone else in the room, and he’s staring straight at me. His gaze is intense; I mewl in fear, and then he raises his hand toward me and opens his mouth, and once again hot urine escapes from my body.
“Don’t pay attention to him,” the voice says. “He can do you no harm.”
The big man stops what he’s doing. His mouth closes as he stares into space, and then his arm drops to his side. I have the odd notion that I know him, but when I blink three times the stick man doesn’t appear to help me understand.
“Go to your friend, Alec,” the voice says. “He’s waiting for you.”
So I turn around and walk the rest of the way to the hooded figure. He’s nearly as tall as the man behind me, but his face is as kindly as the other’s had been intense. My soup bowl is in one hand, and draped over his other arm is a long white robe much like his own.
“Hello, Alec,” he says when I stop before him. “I’m your friend. My name is John. Can you say that? John?”
“Ju…ju…ju…joh…jon.”
John nods. “Very good, Alec. I’m John, and I’m your friend.”
“Fr…fre…fre…friend John.”
“Excellent,” John says, and even though that word goes right over my head, I know that it must mean something good. “We’re very pleased with you, Alec,” he continues, “and we want you to keep doing as we tell you to do, because we have a lot of wonderful surprises for you. All right?”
I nod my head, even though much of what he had just said is confusing. “Very good,” John says. “Now I have a little present for you, but you must promise—”
He stops abruptly, and then blinks three times. As he does, I see something strange; although his eyes remain open, translucent membranes come down from beneath his eyelids and over his pupils. There are tiny sparks against his brown eyes for a couple of moments, then the second pair of eyelids sweep open again.
“You must not urinate on the floor anymore,” John says. “Do you understand?” I shake my head. “If you feel like you’ve got to…if you’re afraid of something and you want to do like you just did…then you’ve got to go in the bathroom and urinate into one of the toilets.” He pauses. “Blink three times, Alec.”
The little stick man shows me how to properly use the toilet. “This is your associate,” John says. “He is always here to help you, and no one can hear or see him except you. If you ever have any questions about anything, blink three times and ask your question, and your associate will tell you what to do. Do you understand?”
I nod. “Very good, Alec,” John says, then he extends the robe to me. “This is your present. It is something to wear. Put it on.”
I take the robe from his hands. It looks just like John’s, but I don’t know what to do with it until I blink three times and the stick man—my associate—reappears to demonstrate how I should put it on. I fumble with the robe until I find the widest opening, then I duck my head and pull it over me. There’re a few moments of anxious struggle before my arms find the sleeves and my head comes through the opening.
Now I’m dressed much like John. That makes me very proud of myself. The robe is clean and warm against my skin, and I know now that I’m truly loved by John and my associate.
“Very good, Alec,” John says. “I’m very proud of you. You can go back to bed now.”
He turns and walks toward the wall behind him. A round portal that I hadn’t noticed before irises open and John steps through it, and I’m s
till staring at the door long after it closes behind him.
No one else in the room has robes. No one else in the room has been fed. No one else has learned to go to the bathroom. These thoughts follow me back to my bed, where I go to sleep still wearing my precious robe.
I had no perception of day or night. The soft light from the ceiling and walls of the room never dimmed, but always remained lit at the same level. I slept, I awoke, I ate, I relieved myself, I showered, I learned how to do fundamental things such as making my bed or dressing myself, and then I went to sleep again. This went on for a long time, but I didn’t try marking the passage of time by counting the number of times I had slept or eaten because it never occurred to me to do so. Nor did I have any desire to learn what lay beyond the door John occasionally came through.
I existed in perpetual dream state in which things simply happened. My few emotions were at the most primitive level; I wasn’t bored, curious, or irritated, although I should have been. I was hungry sometimes, but that seldom lasted very long, because John always materialized with another bowl of chicken soup. I was sometimes a little scared to go to the bathroom because that meant passing the bed where the large man with the intense eyes lived; although he sometimes stared at me when I walked by, he never pointed at me again, and after a while I disregarded him entirely. When I was tired, I went to sleep, and when I was through sleeping, I got out of bed and went to the bathroom.
My associate—the voice that spoke to me from nowhere, the little stick man who appeared whenever I blinked my eyes three times—became my tutor, teaching me new words when it became necessary to do so: “soup,” “bowl,” “spoon,” “bathroom,” “toilet,” “hot water,” “cold water,” “robe,” “blanket,” and so forth. It never occurred to me to give a name to that voice, nor did I ever wonder where it came from, or why blinking three times caused the stick man to materialize before my face. Like everything else, it simply…was.
I was not alone in my daily routine. The others in the room were also learning how to do these same things, even though I was the first one to master the basics. Most of them, at least; a few simply lay in bed and whimpered, and from time to time John would come through the door to feed them or change the soiled sheets on their beds. After awhile, some of them vanished; this usually happened when I was asleep—all of us tended to sleep at the same time—but once I saw John come in and escort out of the room a man who had been crying uncontrollably for nearly as long as I could remember. I didn’t know where he went; I never saw him again, and I didn’t have any curiosity about his fate. His bed was empty, and not long afterward it too simply disappeared.
But most of my fellow inmates gradually went through the same learning process as I did, and it wasn’t long before all of us wore robes that John had given us. We learned to walk, we ate chicken soup from bowls that had been placed on small tables near our beds, we went to the bathroom, we fluttered our eyelids and spoke aloud to voices we alone could hear. Yet there was seldom any desire—or need, really—to communicate with one another, for we existed in happy somnambulance. Sleep, eat, walk, crap. Life was good.
But things began to change, and not always for the better.
John and another robed figure brought in a long table, and John told us that we would all be eating our chicken soup at the same time at this table. That went well for the first few feedings, but then our meals started arriving further and further apart, not just whenever we were hungry. When that happened, there was always a rush to be at the table when John and the other robed men brought in the bowls. Once there was a scuffle between two men over a bowl of soup, which was abruptly settled when both of them suddenly went still. They blinked their eyes, murmured things to their associates, and waited patiently until two men entered the room and led them away. My associate told me that fighting was not allowed, and there were never any fights after that. I never saw those two men again.
I eventually learned that the man who lived in the bed next to mine was named Russell, and that the woman on the other side of his bed was named Anna, and the woman on the other side of her was named Kate. Russell and Anna and I became friends simply because we saw the most of each other, but I never really met Kate because she spoke only to Anna and the man who resided in the bed on the other side of her, whose name was George.
Kate didn’t seem to like George very much. I didn’t have an opinion either way, except that I noted that he ate less than the others; sometimes he would double over and vomit on the floor, and then John would bring him a towel and make him clean up the mess he had made. But that wasn’t what seemed to make Kate dislike George; after awhile, I noticed that he was always trying to touch her, and most of the time Kate didn’t want to be touched by him. I didn’t know why, but neither was I very curious. This was just one of those things that happened.
I’m in the bathroom while Anna and Kate are standing beneath the showers. I’m sitting on a toilet with my robe hitched up around my waist; Anna and Kate have their robes off and are naked; but I don’t think much of this other than to blandly observe that the women don’t have penises (another new word my associate has identified for me) and have breasts (ditto). Their nudity means as little to me as the fact that I’m relieving myself in their presence; we all share the bathroom’s showers and toilets with no embarrassment or shame.
George comes into the bathroom. He starts walking toward the toilets, but then he stops and looks at Anna and Kate. He stares at them for a long time, then he suddenly strides over to Kate, grabs her from behind, yanks up his robe and thrusts himself against her.
Kate screams. She tries to pull away, but George has locked his hands around her waist as his thighs pump hard against hers.
Kate screams again. Anna turns around, sees what is happening. She blinks a few times, remains motionless for a moment, and then she screams “Stop!” and hurls herself at George.
George disengages himself from Kate and turns around to grab Anna instead, but Anna kicks him in the groin. George howls and falls down on the slick floor, and then Anna is all over him, savagely beating his head with her fists and kicking his legs with her feet. George cries out, but he doesn’t seem injured; instead, he grabs at Anna’s ankles, trying to make her fall down even as he tries to clamber to his knees.
While this is going on, Kate has collapsed on her hands and knees and is crawling away, sobbing and screaming, until she reaches a corner of the bathroom, where she curls into a tight little ball, her hands clutched between her legs.
Russell rushes into the bathroom. He sees Anna attacking George and Kate huddled in the corner. He goes to Kate and tries to comfort her, but she flinches away the touch of his hands.
And then George screams.
Very loud now, and not from anything Anna has done. He grabs at his head as he howls in agony, his back arching as his legs thrash at the floor.
Something fluid and red starts dribbling out of his nostrils. Anna stops beating him and steps back, horrified yet fascinated by what she’s seeing.
Then, all of a sudden, George stops screaming. His entire body trembles, then it goes limp. There is a soft exhalation from his mouth—a kind of a “haaa”—and there’s a faint, nasty odor in the humid air. Then he’s very still.
Blood mixes with water on his chest, seeps down his skin, washes down the drain. Russell stands up from Kate and stares at him. Anna steps farther away, her breath coming in ragged gasps. They both remain that way until John and another robed man walk into the bathroom.
Without saying a word to any of us, they pick George up between them and carry him through the door. When they’re gone, Anna and Russell go to Kate, gently hoist her to her feet, and lead her back toward the white room. She’s still crying, her hands still clasped between her legs.
Anna turns her head and looks straight at me. She doesn’t say anything, but simply stares at me for several long moments. Then she helps Russell carry Kate out of the room.
When the bathroom is vac
ant once more and everything is still and silent, I rise from the toilet and go to one of the ceiling holes. I stand beneath it and take a nice, long shower, all by myself. Some diluted blood, pink and filmy, remains on the floor; I watch it with faint interest as it curls in on itself and spins down the drain.
I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t done anything right. At no time did my associate instruct me to do anything, either right or wrong; therefore my conscience is clear.
I’ve simply…existed.
That’s all that counts.
CHAPTER
THREE
* * *
THIS IS A CALL
I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building,
a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.
—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
About the same time that I become vaguely aware that I’m getting tired of chicken soup, John comes to see me.
I’m walking back to my bed from the shower room when he steps in front of me. “Please come with me, Alec,” he says. “I want to show you something.”
Not that I’m given much choice; he’s already taken my arm and is leading me toward the vanishing door. I whimper a little as it irises open, and glance back to see Anna watching me from her bed. John reassures me with a gentle pat on the shoulder, and then I leave the White Room for the first time since my first awakening.
We walk down a short, narrow hallway which ends in another door; it opens to reveal a bisecting corridor. Just as much as the White Room is plain, the corridor is wonderfully ornate: walls of some dark, whorled substance that looks like mahogany, brass handrails, high metal archways, doors with carved lintels, ceiling fixtures that cast oval spots of light on a checkered floor. The corridor is wide enough for five men to walk abreast, and so long that I can’t see where it ends.
Nor is it empty; it’s filled with men and women who step around us as John and I slowly walk along. Although by now my hair has begun to grow out a little, I’m astounded by the styles in which they wear theirs: roosterlike mohawks, long braids, bowl cuts, dreadlocks. They wear blue jumpsuits, tunics, drawstring pants, flared trousers, long and short dresses, high-necked shirts, embroidered vests and jackets, long sleeveless coats, capes, sandals, boots. Some have their eyes masked by opaque glasses; many wear tiny headsets. Now and then they stop before closed doors which slide open to let them enter; I catch brief glimpses of the rooms before the doors shut behind them, and none resemble the featureless place I’ve just left: chairs, desks, panels with little lights on them. There are tiny signs above the doors; although I recognize the numbers on some of them, I can’t read the words.