work on you.” He smiled. “ Work on you is obviously a euphemism,” he said. “By the time we’re done with you, I don’t know how much of your mind will be left.”
He struck the door twice with the flat of his hand. “Then again,” he said, “it’s an open question how much of your mind is there now.” The door groaned and slid open. “Be seeing you,” the gray man said, and slipped out.
11
But it was months, or what felt like months anyway, before he saw the gray man again. First they left him alone in his cell for a while without food or water, and then, once he was very weak, finally gave him water. Then they beat the bottoms of his feet with a steel rod until he couldn’t walk or even stand. They they put a bag over his head and poured water over it, so that it felt like he was drowning. They stripped him and left him shivering in a cold bare room and then yelled at him and insisted that he talk until he felt he had no choice but to retreat deeper and deeper into his body and watch it all from a distance.
Most of it he watched with horror, but their growing frustration at being unable to crack him he watched with a certain delight. How many days that went on, he couldn’t say for certain. But then abruptly it came to an end: they again put a sack over his head and bound his hands and hustled him careening down a corridor, laughing at him when he fell before yanking him back to his feet. Is it the same sack? he couldn’t help wondering. They put him in a vehicle again, but he didn’t think it was the same vehicle they had put him in before—it felt different somehow. The tone of the space, even through the sack, was different. There was someone next to him holding him firmly by one arm and someone on the other side of him holding him firmly by the other arm. They drove somewhere for a long time— maybe not all that long, suggested a voice somewhere inside of him and when he heard it he grunted with satisfaction into the hood. Welcome, voice, he thought. He felt one of the hands tighten on one of his arms. However long it was, eventually the vehicle stopped and he was rushed out of it and brought quickly into another place. At first he thought he was going into a building, but when they finally had him inside and seated and had removed the sack from around his head, he saw that he wasn’t in a building at all, but in some kind of aircraft. He was alone except for two guards.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
But the guards with him would not answer the question. They would not even look at him. There was a grating sound above them and he saw light begin to flood in and realized they were in the spaceport, and then the ship’s engines began to rise and they were lifting straight up and into the air. That, of everything he had experienced so far, turned out to be the thing most akin to a carnival ride. He could feel his stomach pushing down, threatening to leave his body, and his whole body felt heavy and he had a hard time breathing, and the voices in him drifted tingling down from his head before getting tangled within his legs. And then they were through the upper lock of the dome and the pressure began to diminish, to become less and less until it was almost nonexistent. Soon they were circling a space station, synchronizing speed with it and slowly coming closer until with a gentle thunk they had docked.
“Is this where we’re going?” he asked. But neither of the guards answered. It felt strange to be weightless, to feel like you hardly even had a body. It was like how sometimes the inside voices didn’t have a body, he thought, and then thought, Maybe I am becoming an inside voice. Or maybe the inside voices weren’t inside at all, he told himself, but in space, where they could exist without a body. He was webbed into his chair, but floating now, jostling gently back and forth against the webbing. But the two guards seemed to be sticking to the floor, something about their
He struck the door twice with the flat of his hand. “Then again,” he said, “it’s an open question how much of your mind is there now.” The door groaned and slid open. “Be seeing you,” the gray man said, and slipped out.
11
But it was months, or what felt like months anyway, before he saw the gray man again. First they left him alone in his cell for a while without food or water, and then, once he was very weak, finally gave him water. Then they beat the bottoms of his feet with a steel rod until he couldn’t walk or even stand. They they put a bag over his head and poured water over it, so that it felt like he was drowning. They stripped him and left him shivering in a cold bare room and then yelled at him and insisted that he talk until he felt he had no choice but to retreat deeper and deeper into his body and watch it all from a distance.
Most of it he watched with horror, but their growing frustration at being unable to crack him he watched with a certain delight. How many days that went on, he couldn’t say for certain. But then abruptly it came to an end: they again put a sack over his head and bound his hands and hustled him careening down a corridor, laughing at him when he fell before yanking him back to his feet. Is it the same sack? he couldn’t help wondering. They put him in a vehicle again, but he didn’t think it was the same vehicle they had put him in before—it felt different somehow. The tone of the space, even through the sack, was different. There was someone next to him holding him firmly by one arm and someone on the other side of him holding him firmly by the other arm. They drove somewhere for a long time— maybe not all that long, suggested a voice somewhere inside of him and when he heard it he grunted with satisfaction into the hood. Welcome, voice, he thought. He felt one of the hands tighten on one of his arms. However long it was, eventually the vehicle stopped and he was rushed out of it and brought quickly into another place. At first he thought he was going into a building, but when they finally had him inside and seated and had removed the sack from around his head, he saw that he wasn’t in a building at all, but in some kind of aircraft. He was alone except for two guards.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
But the guards with him would not answer the question. They would not even look at him. There was a grating sound above them and he saw light begin to flood in and realized they were in the spaceport, and then the ship’s engines began to rise and they were lifting straight up and into the air. That, of everything he had experienced so far, turned out to be the thing most akin to a carnival ride. He could feel his stomach pushing down, threatening to leave his body, and his whole body felt heavy and he had a hard time breathing, and the voices in him drifted tingling down from his head before getting tangled within his legs. And then they were through the upper lock of the dome and the pressure began to diminish, to become less and less until it was almost nonexistent. Soon they were circling a space station, synchronizing speed with it and slowly coming closer until with a gentle thunk they had docked.
“Is this where we’re going?” he asked. But neither of the guards answered. It felt strange to be weightless, to feel like you hardly even had a body. It was like how sometimes the inside voices didn’t have a body, he thought, and then thought, Maybe I am becoming an inside voice. Or maybe the inside voices weren’t inside at all, he told himself, but in space, where they could exist without a body. He was webbed into his chair, but floating now, jostling gently back and forth against the webbing. But the two guards seemed to be sticking to the floor, something about their
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