ELSPETH LUNE OPENED her eyes slowly. The world was a wash of grey. She wasn’t quite sure where she was, but she did not panic: she assumed it was yet another hotel room. As her eyes adjusted, she knew it would all come back to her …
And in a stab of panic, it did.
Where —?
She had been with the TSA Agents. They had been questioning her when …
That was the last thing she recalled.
Elspeth sat bolt upright. Her vision snapped into clarity with the force of a punch. She was in a cell of some sort, some kind of a jail. The walls were stone and the air was sharp and cold. She saw her shuddering breath in puffs of vapor.
There was noise — a lot of noise. Something playing on a loudspeaker or bullhorn … she couldn’t make it out.
She looked down at her lanky body. She was not wearing her own clothes. Instead, she was wearing ragged burlap or canvas pants, tied at the waist. She wore a long sleeve shirt made of the same material, drab blue in color.
Someone had changed her clothes!
Had she been raped?
A quick check reassured her. No. That, at least, had not happened.
She was on a bed, a rough metal bed with squeaky springs and an old mattress. Brown wool blankets lay on it. She snatched one up and threw it around her shoulders to contain her shivering.
A slap of adrenalin caused her mind to focus. Her physician’s training took over. She was used to emergencies. She could function even if part of her wanted to scream.
With the cold clinical detachment of a triage, she observed her surroundings.
A toilet in the dark corner. A desk and chair. Two beds on either side of the room. A game — chess? — Something like chess on a table. The place was Spartan, but relatively clean. And stone ceilings, stone walls, she was as enclosed in stone as a sarcophagus. Scrawling of all sort on the walls in multi-colored chalk or marker — but she read none of it yet.
And bars — vertical black bars on the front of her cell instead of a wall. So. A prison or holding pen of some sort.
And beyond those bars …
She rose to her feet and went to look out. A gash of fear flooded in her belly.
Her cell was one of many lining the inside of a massive sphere.
A vast open space yawned in front of her, like being on the inside of a hollowed out moon. There were walkways at each level, circling around the circumference of this strange prison like lines of latitude articulated in granite.
In the center of this hollowed-out sphere was a massive black cylinder. It was supported from above and below with black metal column that ran through it like a rotational axis. There were lights on inside the cylinder, she could see that clearly.
There was someone home.
At various points on this central structure, several massive circular screens were attached, each pointed and angled in different ways such that all the cells of this prison could get a view that worked for them. The same movie played on each. It seemed to be a nature film: there was cut after cut of exotic insects crawling and then eating each other, then birds and lizards eating the insects.
The soundtrack to this film — music, mostly, with a man’s voice matter-of-factly describing something — blared out of loudspeakers. She couldn’t tell exactly what he was saying, his voice was muffled and echoed to the point of inscrutability.
Thrumming shook her temples. Where was she? What was this?
The place had the electricity of a sports arena. Random howling punctuated the dark — she pictured madmen in straightjackets.
She smelled smoke.
Far, far below in several cells across the inside of the hollow prison-sphere, there were small licks of fire. Somebody trying to keep warm. There must be other fires nearby, she reasoned, fires she could not see because of the curvature of the cellblock.
She shivered: it only reminded her of how cold she was.
Nearer to her cell, she now noticed several cameras. She was being watched. The tiny cameras were everywhere: red lights steadily on, living electronic eyes.
What in the fuck was this?
“You’re quite a tall woman, aren’t you?” said a voice, coming from behind her. She whirled.
A man sat on the other bed, dressed much like she was in drab olive burlap. He was fortyish, and wore his ink black hair in a short, clipped cut. He was smiling.
“Who are you?” she snapped.
“A prisoner, like you.”
“A … prisoner,” she swallowed the words. They stuck in her mouth, saying them out load like that.
“Yes.”
Ok, Elspeth. Calm down. But she chewed copper panic. Visions of Locked Up Abroad skirled through her mind. But she wasn’t abroad, she reminded herself. She had been at the airport, in Los Angeles. In America.
But this place did not look like anything American.
“Is this Homeland Security?”
The man shrugged. “Nobody knows. It’s somebody’s government, that’s for sure.”
She was a prisoner, she breathed. Imprisoned. Locked up.
Why would anyone want her imprisoned? She had done nothing wrong. This was a mistake. Someone had made a mistake …
Unless this had something to with her missing husband?
“Who’s in charge here?”
“They are,” the man said, nodding towards the black cylinder that hung suspended from the metal shaft that pierced stone moon like a rotational axis. “The men in the Panopticon. They have line of sight all around — they can see every cell from the center. Like they need it with all the cameras.” He snorted a laugh.
“And who are you?”
“Your cellmate. My name is Titus.” He held out a hand; she declined to shake it. She went back to her bed and sat, facing him squarely.
“Well, Titus. I want to know what the hell I’m doing here.” She spat her words like they were laced with venom.
Titus smiled wanly. “We’d all like to know that.”
Elspeth blinked. He wasn’t getting it. “Listen. I was just at LAX. There was plane crash on the runway. There was a man —” A strange man, in a suit, his face tattooed with hieroglyphs. He’d said, Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. They always have been. “I tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen. Then TSA took me away for questioning. The next thing I know, I’m here. I guess they think I was involved or something.”
Titus shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. There are prisoners from all over the world here.”
“So what, it’s like Gitmo?” Had she be rendered to a foreign location? She’d read about things like that happening since 9/11. “Is this the CIA? The NSA? Are they trying to say I’m an ‘enemy combatant’?” Enemy combatants didn’t have Constitutional rights.
Titus laughed aloud at that. “No. It’s not the CIA. At least, I don’t think so.”
“What do they —” She stopped short, seeing her right hand for the first time.
Her pinky — the one that she’d lost in the accident — was there. Or at least, something like it.
It looked like it was growing back. It was about two-thirds done.
She gaped at her own hand. She wiggled her new finger. “That’s impossible.” Severed fingers did not grow back! She was a physician. She knew. Medical science had no way to regrow lost fingers or toes! She touched it with her other hand, horrified that she could feel the contact with her new pinky.
“I’m hallucinating,” she said.
“I think they injected your hand with something,” Titus said. “You were unconscious when they brought you in.”
“When was that?” she asked in a daze.
“Yesterday. You’ve been out for almost twenty-four hours.”
“So this … this grew in a day?”
Titus nodded.
“Okay,” Elspeth said. “Forget that. I’m just going to ignore my impossible pinky for a moment. Where is this place? I mean, where is it located physically?” She couldn’t bring herself to call it a ‘prison’.
Titus shook his head. “Nobody knows.”
“So we don’t even know if we’re on United States soil right now?”
“No.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About two years,” Titus said.
“Are you American?”
“No. I’m from Rome.”
“Italian,” Elspeth said. She looked through the bars at the Panopticon. “I need to think this through. None of this makes sense.” After a moment, she asked, “What were you doing when they brought you here?”
“I was asleep. I went to bed, and I woke up here.”
“And do you ever see anyone who runs this place? You know, like guards?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll meet them soon enough, when they come out for the morning count.”
“And have you asked them why you are here?”
“Oh, yes. Of course I have. We all have. It’s pointless though. They never tell. They say they’re under orders, but they won’t say whose orders or why.”
“Well. They haven’t met me yet,” Elspeth said, her eyes crinkling.
THE LIGHTS in the interior of the globe-shaped prison came on with bang. Instantly, a gaudy, sharp sizzle of illumination cast a contrast of deep shadows and starkly-lit objects and people. The noise sent a flurry of parrots and parakeets flapping and chittering, screeching and howling, throughout the interior space of the great hollow bulb.
Elspeth was startled awake, and then startled again when she realized she’d actually been asleep.
Another bang, and the cell doors all sprang open in unison.
Out of the Panopticon came a flood of shouting men, barely managing to hold their own against the din of tropical birds. Bridges extended from the center to the various levels of the prison, and these men now swarmed across, clubs drawn, seemingly eager for blood. Elspeth noted that all of the prisoners were now stepping out their cells and standing there meekly.
She turned to ask Titus if she should step out as well, but he was nowhere to be found.
What the hell?
She marched out of her cell. But she did not stand obediently and patiently. Instead, she kept moving towards the horde of men heading her way.
She saw now that they were all covered in some sort of black body armor — it looked like riot gear or some sort of futuristic exoskeleton. Even their faces were hidden and enclosed completely.
“Hey you! I want to talk to you!” Elspeth yelled, taking some pleasure in the fact that she was considerably taller than the men and women she passed: all of whom stared at her like she was mad. “My name is Elspeth Lune! I demand to talk with Amnesty International and a lawyer right now! You’re going to —”
She stopped short. The TSA agent Danny Trenton, the same one from LAX, stood before her. But he was not in uniform: instead, he wore the same drab clothes she did. He was in the lineup for the count, just like every other prisoner here. He stared up at her with sleepless eyes, his mind clearly soaked in terror.
She grabbed him and howled in his face. “You! What did you do? Why I am here?”
But he only shook his head. “I — I — I don’t know! I was talking to you and — and then next thing I know, I was here! I thought you did this to me!”
She drove her gaze into him. But it was clear that Trenton was just as terrified as she was: he was not responsible for her incarceration.
She threw him away in disgust. Elspeth was about to lay into him with obscenity-laced tired when she spotted a young girl of about ten standing calmly in front of a cell just two doors down. The girl was Indian, and wore her burlap garment as though it were a sari. Her steel eyes bore into Elspeth’s soul.
Even children? Kids were prisoners here as well?
When Elspeth turned towards the guards again, she caught a billy club squarely in the jaw. Her skull thrummed in its flesh casing. The prisoners roared with delight or horror, it was hard to tell which. Despite the unbearable pain, she turned again. She looked down at the guard that had hit her — and spat at him. He wound up to hit her again, but she grabbed his wrist, stopping him.
Instantly, the other guards were on her like a pack of wolves. Blows hit every part of her body, driving her to her knees.
I’m going to have very, very bad injuries, she thought, oddly detached. There would be broken bones at the very least. Possibly internal bleeding.
A blow to her head knocked her out cold.
SHE AWOKE in a chair. She had been restrained: metal clasps gripped her wrists and ankles. She was in a small room — there was some smell she vaguely recognized as medical, though it seemed somehow odd, out of place. Her head was clamped, keeping her from turning it even a molecule. It pointed her gaze squarely a circular movie screen in front of her. Presently, this screen was light silver — and empty.
However, she did not feel too badly. This surprised her: a beating like the one she had taken ought to have left her wracked, bones broken, organs bleeding.
But oddly, she felt none of these things.
She found she could move her eyes enough to see objects in the room peripherally. There was a black top hat, like a magician’s, resting on a table. A magnifying glass and a compass sat atop a large stack of browned paper. Out the other side of her vision, she saw a very large globe cupped by a dull brassy a stand on the floor, colored beige with cursive black writing, like the very old globes she’d seen in museums. There were smudgy stains on it, and a small region with fierce, intense, tiny writing in bright red. This mad scrawling was punctuated by a small tornado of red question marks.
All of these objects seemed from another age. There was nothing digital or modern at all.
That smell! She suddenly recognized it — it was ether: a medical implement from a long ago, more bloody and brutal age of medicine …
“Welcome back,” said a man’s voice nearby. It was somewhere behind her, but near, intimate. “You’re in the Panopticon. That’s the thing at the center of … Sorry about the chair. But we needed to talk to you. You know … without you … losing control.”
“Who are you?”
“Our name is of no use to those who know us.”
“Fair enough. What about those who don’t know you?”
“Who we are, is not as important as what we are.”
“Okay. Then what are you?”
“What we are, is who we are.”
Exasperated, Elspeth said, “Okay. Fine. You want to play word games? Good for you.” After a moment she added, “I’m not supposed to be here. You’ve made a mistake. You think I’m someone else.”
She heard the voice smile. “Your name is Elspeth Lune. Doctor Elspeth Lune, actually. Yes. We have the correct person, alright.”
That surprised her. She tried not to let dismay show on her face.
“Why am I here?”
“Doctor Lune … did you ever stop to consider your loyalties?”
The screen in front of her filled suddenly with the gushing colors of a film. Music swelled. The flag of the United States waved there: majestic, tranquil.
“I am a free woman,” Elspeth growled.
“Are you?” the man said. “So you don’t think you’re citizen of the United States of America? Do you claim to be a so-called ‘sovereign citizen’?”
“Do I …?” That caught her off guard. “No! Of course not! I never said that! Why — is that what all this is about? I’m an American! I believe in the Constitution!”
“Then you’re not free, are you? Your country now spies on its own citizens: everyone, all the time, with no warrant — just like the old Soviet bloc used to. And any US citizen can now be imprisoned indefinitely without trial — all one has to do is declare someone an ‘enemy combatant’. The Constitution actually means very little these days.”
“So I’m being held as an enemy combatant? Is that it?” When there was no answer, she said: “Or maybe you’re Al Qaeda? Why don’t you let me see what you look like? You’re all middle-eastern-looking and you don’t want me to see?”
“The world is big place, Elspeth Lune. Bigger than you think. There are a lot of … competing world views. Confusion. Disagreement on what is to be done.”
“Yeah? So? What does that have to do with me?”
Laughter. “We are the answer to the confusion. You asked who we were. What we are, is who we are. What we are is an answer to the abyss, an answer to the void.”
“Get me out of this chair.”
“You are valuable, Elspeth. You are —“
“Do you have my husband?”
That shut them up for a moment. The silence hung there emptily.
“Answer me! Do you have Oscar, my husband? Did you take him? Is that why he vanished? Is he here?”
“No,” the voice said, somewhat quietly. “No, we do not. He is not here.”
That hurt her. She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but that hurt her. She didn’t realize how much hope it had been giving her: the possibility that Oscar was here and her imprisonment had somehow brought her closer to him. But she believed the voice, as much as she did not want to.
“Okay. Alright. What about my pinkie? You grew back my severed pinkie. How does that work?”
The grin was back. It was self-satisfied, smug. She could actually sense it in the darkness. “Call it a gift,” the voice said. “This place is not without its benefits. But they can be removed, rescinded. Consider this a friendly warning — you’re getting a ‘free one’, as they say. Next time, when morning count is called, you will come out of your cell and present yourself — without incident, without protest, without a show. Yes?”
Elspeth didn’t answer. But this seemed to be good enough.
“Oh — and, I’ve giving you the rest of the day off. To acclimate to your new life and situation. But tomorrow, your work starts.”
Then the owner of the hidden voice departed: she heard his footfall recede and then the slam of a door. Elspeth’s restraints popped loose and the lights snapped off, plunging her into darkness. But she was not left alone long: two guards appeared and wordlessly accompanied her back to cell block 1515.
WHEN SHE arrived, Titus peeked out from beneath his bed sheet. After the guards left, he pulled back his covers, startling her. “Where have you been?” she asked.
“Interrogation,” Titus said, groaning. “They do that now and then.” She could see bruises on his arms.
“Did they torture you? Here. Let me examine you.”
“No, no,” he protested, pushing her away. “I’m fine. Used to it. Really. How about you?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “They beat me pretty hard … or at least I thought they did. I must have been mistaken.”
“Well,” Titus said. “That is a mystery. But here: I have just the thing to take your mind off it.” With that, he rose, limping a little, and approached the chess board Elspeth had noticed when she had first arrived. “This is called Pantheon Chess. It is played more or less like ordinary chess, except the pieces are representations of various gods and goddesses of various cultures.”
“Interesting,” Elspeth muttered, actually thinking it wasn’t very.
But Titus seemed somewhat intense about the subject. He produced several wooden boxes from beneath the expansive wooden chess board. “For example. If you choose the Greek pieces, your King is Zeus; your Queen is Hera, your Rook is Hermes, and so on. If you choose Norse pieces, then your King is Odin, your Queen is Freya, and so on. You see? One pantheon versus another!
“You could think of it as an actual war between the gods — or, at least, the cultures they represent. That’s what ancient peoples thought, you know — when one land fought another, that their gods fought too. What do you say? Want to play?”
Elspeth took one look out of the front of her cell. All of the other cells from to bottom were completely deserted and empty: all of the other prisoners were at work.
She plopped down into one of the chairs and shrugged. “Sure. What else are we going to do?”
“Pick a pantheon,” Titus said, waving the boxes around.
“Okay … What’s that one? The one with the eye thing on it?”
“You mean the Eye of Ra?”
“Yeah. That one. I’ll be that. What is it, anyway?”
“Egyptian,” Titus said, and then he grinned so widely that Elspeth feared he might smile his own head in half. “You’ve chosen to be Egyptian.”
They played. Elspeth won.
Afterwards, she went back to sleep. A new sort of exhaustion took her.
SHE WOKE at dinner time.
Titus was gone. Probably eating. That was fine. She wanted some time alone anyway, some time to acclimate. Looked like she was going to be here for a little while at least.
What intrigued her the most was something she’d only glimpsed earlier: a giant work of art on one of her walls, nearly one thousand hexagons, all neatly the same size, all interlocking and adjacent.
It was like looking at a giant beehive. Only, these hexagons were annotated. There were scribbles and drawings and notes and warnings and icons of all sorts.
It seemed to be a map. But it was incomplete. She felt as if she were looking at a representation of something only partially explored. There were question marks around the edges. And there were question marks inside many of the hexagons.
Near the very top was a hexagon drawn in bold red. Inside of it was etched the hieroglyph of a honeybee.
She scanned the writing associated with certain hexagons, reading at random:
… Water trap. Cannot survive without air.
… Lies grate on the ears, they are palpable. Fighting is likewise impossible here.
… the Heliotrope Hexagon?
… 1882 is where (illegible)
And finally, near one edge of the strange hexagon map, she saw a longish note. It read:
The Glass Prison. You are here.
That took her aback. The Glass Prison? Was that was this place was called? What did that mean? It certainly did not seem to be made of glass. Or perhaps it referred to the Panopticon? The fact that everything could be seen by those inhabiting the center?
And what did this map mean?
