Encephalon: Emergent

Chapter 4

As the hours and days passed, she was no longer sure if she had been there a week or a month. Her wrists and ankles were swollen from where the binds rubbed her skin raw and she had lost some weight from the basic rations they had been giving her. She took to stretching every morning and every night as the only form of exercise she would have; the hours spent locked in front of the wall made her all the more grateful when she could finally move, and she developed a regimen of sit ups, pushups and 1000 laps of her cell, anything to keep her body from falling into decay. She felt sure they were watching but wanted to send a clear signal: she wouldn't let herself be taken as easily she was in her apartment.

Then they would come for her. Two knocks on the door so she would stand aside. She complied. The big, burly man would come in and she would reluctantly step into that machine. The anger, self-loathing and shame of her compliance, why was she participating in this game? It fatigued her. But then sense would kick in and she would reason it out; she could hardly fight the man in front of her and what was unseen beyond. She needed to pick her moment.

The contraption squeaked as they wheeled her backwards down a long corridor and into the hall where they parked her in the same spot every day. Locked in place they quickly spun her round to face the same words, the same shade of white, day in and day out. Her eyes desperately stretched to their corners, trying to see further along the wall and into her peripheral vision than they had before, but each and every time she found herself repeating the same latin words and phrases, unable to see to those faraway and out of focus.

It was a daily grind just to keep her emotions at bay so she could focus her mind enough to work on the problem at hand. How could she view beyond what she saw? Was there something she was missing: a mirror, crossing her eyes perhaps, or straining as far to the edges of her eye sockets as possible? Nothing worked. And all the while Justin would be nearby, whispering into her ear. She came to loathe the sound of his voice. Frustration finally overwhelmed her, and she shook the contraption vehemently.

"You're not an animal, reason your freedom," He said to her. She glared back with a mixture of frustrated, confused and hopeless anger. "See with your mind, not your eyes."

This only perplexed her further and he smiled knowing he was speaking in riddles. He walked away and she had nothing left to do but take his words on board, letting them rattle around her head, dissecting them for any hidden meaning, unable to do anything else and pushing herself to the very limits of her mental ability trying to grasp those words beyond her focal reach.

She broke down into tears, sitting each and every night in her cell zombie-like, staring at the silver spiral mural on her wall. Its silver paint sparkled in the half light and she would lose herself in its pattern, the swirls seemingly coming alive and spinning out towards her, whisking her away into a sleep of waves and whirlpools, dropping her into its vortex.

She could no longer concentrate and lost all track of time. Justin alternated between anger and amusement, not yet sure whether she would succeed, whether she would truly become emergent, and doubting all the more as he saw her crumble before him.

It became too much.

Locked back into that machine, her head sagged from exhaustion and her eyes barely lifted to see the wall as it dropped in and out of focus. She felt disengaged and had given up any hope of ever getting out of there. No one knew where she was, even if they were looking for her, she was sure of that now. What had she got to go back to anyway? She felt weak and desperate, almost making her laugh, almost making her--

Her eyes rose with a dull hint of excitement.

"I-- I see it," She said weakly, mumbling and laughing quietly to herself.

Justin stepped forward not sure he had heard correctly, "See what, Elena?"

"I see it," She said, her eyes widening.

He rushed over, "Tell me." She could hardly bring herself to say it. "What does it say?"

She looked directly at him. "Fuck you," She said vehemently before addressing the wall and emphasizing each syllable, "Fuck you."

Justin took on an indignant look and swiftly left.

She smirked and let her head sag back again, chuckling to herself. Her laughter grew, shaking her body and with it the machine. It was the most fun she'd had in days. It was the most fun she'd had since-- Since when, she could not remember. Since before all this, before the daze, the haze, words stretching unintelligibly out of focus, before the single, unitary vision of whitewash in front of her. Her laughter subsided and she sank down into the machine letting the contraption take her full weight, ignoring any of the pain and stiffness she felt all over her body, experiencing a warm glow of insubordination despite all the pain, until--

Her smiling eyes startled and she turned absolutely silent: a faint line had appeared in the centre of the wall.

She watched in shock as the line slowly spiraled, wrapping itself in an endless repetition of concentric circles, grinding and slithering out across the wall. She tried desperately to wake from her lethargy, gulping as the line thickened to take on an unmistakable silver hue, a dazzling silver all too familiar: the spiral from her cell was hallucinating onto the wall in front of her. There became no doubt in her mind that insanity had finally hit.

The spiral twisted out, gaining ground, reaching far and wide from the center of her vision, circling over familiar words and phrases she had torn herself apart to memorize. But it did not stop there. It snaked out to the very edges of her vision, beyond the wall and seemingly into the air around her. There was no escape, she let out a cry and braced herself as it engulfed her into its tunnel.

But the moment passed. She opened her eyes and her look of fear slowly dissolved into one of awe as the soft silver slithered above and all around. It soothed somehow until something caught her attention back towards the wall; at the center of her vision, the tail of the spiral opened up signaling the end of the tunnel, the wall reemerged and the spiral slipped completely out of view.

Elena stared dumbfounded. She couldn't quite believe it. "Hey," She croaked. "I see it."

No one came. She barely believed it herself.

"Did you hear me? I said I can see it. I can see it!"

And with that she launched into her recital, an endless stream of words and phrases from the very top to the bottom of the wall, the very edges of her peripheral vision. The spiral had left behind a vision: the words in full resolution, full focal vision and all their glory.

Justin rushed back in, the widest smile on his face, suddenly the same man she met in the cafe. He and the Burly Man rushed to release her from her bonds. She fell to the floor and smiled broadly at the wall. She had done it. She had done it! An amazing sense of elation swept over her weathered body like no other. She had done it, she had--

Wait. How had she done it? How was this--?

The Burly Man opened a door at the end of the long room and natural light swept across the wall, but stopped short of her, cutting off her thought process. This was her opportunity. Her body poised.

Justin stood opposite, far enough away that she could make a run for it, "You're free to go." They watched and waited to see what she would do. "You're free to go, if that's what you want."

There was a moment where she considered it, about to invest in her muscles and run out as fast as legs could carry her, but she turned to look at the room for the first time: a large open space, a warehouse. Then she looked at the open door, the white wall and finally her disheveled self. She was overwhelmed, but she did not feel like running. "How is this possible?"

Justin smiled relieved and helped her to her feet wrapping a blanket around her. "It has always been possible, Elena. It is just not known to all."