Margot Pepper

by Margot Pepper
From the forthcoming book by the same title

When Ian W— opened his eyes, his head felt as though it had swelled beyond the capacity of his skull. At first he couldn’t make out anything except the pounding. Or was the pounding merely the reverberation of the disparate din resounding around him like a hundred warring walky-talkies? He sat up on the flimsy cot, eyes still shut, and became acutely aware of the throbbing with each motion of the broken springs. He grabbed the mattress and panicked as his grip told him it was only the size of a camping mat, not the foot or so of luxury wonder-foam top on his Divine® king bed at home.

His eyes darted open, scrutinized with horror the chipped walls with remnants of gouged out graffiti. He swung his long legs around on the cot with a start, injuring the funny bone at his knee on the drawer of a small writing desk, nearly knocking it over. In the process an empty tin cup rolled off the desk, some books between two bookends slid to the right and his wallet fell to the floor. It was then that he caught sight of the cell bars along the right hand wall, doubling as the bed’s headboard. The sight of the bars distracted him from the electric twinge of pain in his knee. He attempted to hobble over to the front of his cage, particularly to see the source of the dull roar of amplified voices beyond, but the floor underneath him began moving in the opposite direction. The surprise of the motion caused him to lose his balance and twist his back in order to avoid falling backward. Instinctively, he managed to fall toward the bed and sit down again.

He looked at the flooring that was parallel to his bed and stood between him and the bars. It seemed to be a rubber mechanical walkway of some kind. He could make out the rollers at either end through a hairline gap in the cement floor. Gingerly, he tapped his toe on the walkway. It remained still. He caught sight of his wallet lying on the floor under the desk and automatically stooped to pick it up without regard for the walkway. The walkway didn’t move as he crossed it. Under the desk he noticed a few jacks and a grounded power outlet, as well as a docking station with speakers for a MEphone®. Habitually, he felt for his own mobile in his shirt pocket. Of course they would have taken it from him.

His camera! And MEpad®! He had a sinking feeling as he thought of his briefcase in the hands of the authorities. They were supposed to return them eventually. At least he had backed up all of his photos on the net.

Again, he regarded the outlets and docking station. Strange, he thought. Instinctively, he placed the wallet in his trouser pocket and sat back down on the cot. The walkway seemed to pose a threat only if one started toward the bars, not if it was approached in perpendicular fashion.

The bars were odd, he mused; only four feet high, buried within the remaining three feet of cement. The cell door continued the strange plan: four feet of bars embedded in an ordinary wooden door. It was as though the prison had been converted from one originally housing small juvenile offenders—the age had been reduced so over the years.

Ian stared at the wood portion above the door bars. Wouldn’t it be rather simple to kick it out, move the cot over and clamber out? The wood was sturdy, clearly four inches thick, but didn’t it go against basic principles of security? Or was this a low security prison?

Then Ian noticed some gouges in the cement by the ceiling. Rust had bled through. So the bars were buried within the walls as well. Ian puzzled over this. They must have been buried within the wood of the door then, as well.

He continued to inventory his surroundings. To the right of the desk, high on the wall opposite where he sat, was a flat interactive screen. To his left, the chipped porcelain of the rusty wash basin was practically on top of the foot of the bed; a stained lavatory to the right of it.

Ian hopped over the rubber walkway and pushed on the power for the screen. Nothing happened. The power cord and source were buried within the wall, so it was no use searching for those. He noticed a small door below the set and discovered a small closet with a bar from which hung, to his astonishment, his business jacket, leather jacket and many of his favorite suits. The shelves also contained familiar changes of underwear, socks, T shirts and work out gear. He knit his brow in baffled amusement. He glanced at the pile of books on the desk. These were some of his favorite photograph and art books.

Rather than reassure him, the sight of his belongings sparked a fight or flight reaction in him. Suddenly, he felt overexposed; who had gathered these possessions up on his behalf? He was not consciously aware of the likelihood of a long stay, and rather than acknowledge this, he bounded to his feet and stood on the walkway. Not a motion. He turned and faced the cell bars. Stillness. He took a step, and with a groan, the walkway met it. He stopped, it stopped; he proceeded, it proceeded, but he found that if he walked normally, he would make progress. It took a few minutes, but eventually he hopped off the walkway right in front of the bars. Strangely, to his right, between the head of the bed and the bars, was a stair master which led right into the wall. With such a small cell, these treadmills kept the prisoners in shape, he reflected. Indeed, it took him several minutes to fight his way on the bi-directional treadmill, to the john. A thought came to him as he zipped up his trousers. These costly treadmills were obviously intended for a lengthy term.

A wave of panic overcame Ian. He fought his way over the walkway toward the bars and seized them. Their immutability greatly disturbed him, seemed to him an outrageous violation. He had to stoop somewhat to grasp and peer through the bars.

“Hey!” he yelled, craning his neck. From Ian’s cell, he could see the cells opposite him, across a tremendous chasm of about 100 feet wide, whose depth he couldn’t discern. Some thirty or forty floors above, rays of sunlight poured down from a tremendous skylight into this wide atrium in the middle of the building and brightening the balconies of the cells. How considerate, Ian mused. How strange. Though perhaps typical for a low security prison.

Almost echoing the color scheme of the light, balconies of white opaque glass obstructed his view directly into the cells across the atrium, except for that foot of bars above the balconies, below the cement. Through this foot gap, he could peer into cells directly across him and on the floor below as well, but not below that. Up above, the floors jutted out in pyramid fashion, so he could only see the underside of the floor of the prisoners’ cells. Not a great place to be an earthquake, he thought to himself.

Ian couldn’t tell whether the cells were empty, or the captives were lying or sitting on their cots. He could hear the muted droning of interactive screens, which at first he had assumed was for communications between the guards and from their superiors. Yet there seemed to be dozens of different programs running. He strained his neck to see further. There were no guards to be seen in the few feet of visible corridor across the chasm or to his immediate left or right.

“What’s going on?” he called out. Contrary to his expectations, his words did not echo but were utterly absorbed, as though by carpeting in the atrium some 80 stories below.

The disparate sounds from the various programs, though obviously programmed at a minimal volume, were disconcerting, the way Ian had felt walking into a store to purchase his multi-screen. He had always felt sorry for the salespeople in stores like that. Particularly after the advent of the interactive sets. He simply could not stay here.

Ian leapt to the farthest corner of his cell and peered through the bars. In the cells next to him, there were no signs of life either, save for the drone of two competing screen programs.

Ian scrutinized the wood portion of the cells in view to see whether any looked as though they were newer than the rest, hinting at previous escape attempts. Strangely, from the outside, the top three feet of the cells appeared new and tastefully done. The top portions of the doors looked as through they could have belonged to an elegant apartment building or hotel. They reminded him of something familiar which, perhaps because of the interference from his headache, he couldn’t place.

Fighting the treadmill, Ian sat back foolishly on his cot and scrutinized his own cell more discriminately. From this vantage point, as well as from the john, he could see only the opaque milky-white Plexiglass of a balcony outside his cell. The privacy was actually somewhat of a relief.

He opened one of the three desk drawers. It was filled with papers and his photographs. The other two contained albums of his favorite pictures, as well as some photograph and art books. Again he was overwhelmed by a feeling of being invaded. How could the officials have known? Only weren’t most of these catalogued in his MEpad and MEphone. It would be relatively easy to figure out, he realized.

Only— his favorite underwear? The black ones, the tiger ones? They had been inventoried in his travel lists. Ian could feel his face flushing. Shame. Wasn’t it standard practice to shame inmates?

Judging from all the accessories, his stay was intended to be a lengthy one. Still, such luxuries? Perhaps his notions of jails were just outdated—from movies like the Birdman of Alcatraz and whatnot.

He had a thought. His MEphone. Hadn’t he realized he had left it at work the previous day? He was in a rush to leave and left his briefcase with his camera and pad there as well. Now, ironically, the thought of his devices being at work instead of in the hands of authorities was a welcome relief.

He leaned back against the wall on his cot and let escape an audible sigh. He cradled his head, as though trying to put things together inside it. Yes, it had to be Thursday, his day off. He remembered very clearly standing on the ferry’s lowest deck, where bicycles were parked. He had been hanging over the railing, looking at the sun play on the water, the flecks of gold multiplying to become an infinity of sparkles, gold dust. He remembered having become mesmerized, high. As he watched San Francisco and the Bay Bridge shrink behind the wake of foam, he felt as though he had been flying with the gulls over the wake. How alive he had felt, how gloriously joyful and at peace after such a pleasant afternoon. He remembered that distinctly, because, regardless of his surroundings—be they the stunning and calming Samovar Tea Lounge framed in the perfumed lavender wisteria and magenta magnolia of the Yerba Buena Gardens or floating in the Penthouse Jacuzzi of the Monterey Plaza Resort gazing out at the biologists name-tagging otters frolicking in the bay—it was so difficult for him to fully enjoy the moment. He had come to the realization that he was the happiest when he was reliving his life in his photographs; relishing events in retrospect, minus the blemishes, touching them up when necessary.

He had once mentioned this to his old photography teacher. She only smiled, her usual cryptic Cheshire-cat smile. “So that’s your secret, why you can’t be without your camera. Well, maybe that explains why your work is so alive. We benefit from your loss.”

His ecstasy in situ that sunny afternoon was interrupted by the presence of a bicyclist. He had been fumbling with his beat-up looking bike and his exit ticket went overboard. Ian laughed, along with the young man and after quickly assessing the desperate condition of his clothes and pack, offered him his own ticket.

“That’s okay,” said the boy, looking down, then trying to smile again.

“Why don’t you take it,” Ian said, pulling out another from a book of tickets. “When we exit, I’ll explain what happened and if they allow you off the ferry without it, you can return my ticket to me.”

Only Ian could not remember exiting, nor speaking to anyone about the overboard ticket. Instead, there had been some kind of jolt. Yes, on the way out of the port, they had passed a Chinese cargo boat the length of several city blocks that one of the deckhands said had taken a week to get to San Francisco. Two tug boats were guiding it under the Golden Gate, toward Oakland, to be unloaded. Ian remembered the majority of containers had been labeled Bear-T’nT, probably containing MEphones and MEpads.

There had been a jolt, yes. Had the ferry hit the cargo boat? He tried to remember what had happened next. To his relief, his headache had subsided: it seemed not to bother him as long as he sat still. In this stillness, his mind went blank.

A terrible sensation overcame him, like pins and needles. For the life of him, he could not remember any of the details which would have had to follow: stepping off the ferry, the pleasant shaded jaunt along Ark Row, past the steep shop roofs, under the ficus trees, their potted bases adorned with impatients and fuchsias. Winding his way down past the lavish flower arrangements to the bay, where he could see his house.

He searched his aching head for clues and found none. Had he hit his head? Why was he in jail then, and not in the hospital? What could he have possibly done to end up here? Or had some struggle ensued after his false arrest which injured his head and erased his memory? Worse still, had some blow to his head made him do something foolish?

“What is this place?” he demanded, fighting his way over the conveyor again to the bars and trying in vain to shake them. He craned his neck up and down the corridors.

His head began pounding again as though the pressure of his pulse had no outlet. Then he saw someone’s chin, then blonde and red streaked hairline through the foot-high gap of bars between the balcony’s white glass and the cement and wood portion of the cell diagonally across the way. “Hey!” He screamed at the prisoner who kept stooping down or bending, perhaps changing attire. There was no response. He strained to catch a better look. Now and then he could almost swear the inmate was a woman, because of the curve of the neck and cascade of hair.

“Hey,” he screamed again. “Can anybody hear me! Help!”

No response.

“Hey! I have the right to a lawyer and to know why I am here!”

He endured another twenty minutes of broadcast noise.

“Somebody! This is wrong!” He began whimpering, “Help! Help!” he suddenly called out desperately. Then, “Fire! FIRE! There’s a fire here in my cell! Do you hear me? We’ll all burn up! There’s a fire here!”

The screens didn’t seem louder than his yelling, but they must have been. “This is just wrong!” Ian W— screamed again. He battled his way back to his cot, before adding foolishly, “I’ll sue!”

Eventually, after several more attempts, the contrast of the volume of his words against the white noise hum of screens forced him to search his own mind for answers.

What incriminating act could he possibly have committed? Yell at a businessman to stop shouting on his MEphone so Ian could enjoy the view in the tranquility of his own thoughts? He simply could not recall a single confrontation with any sort of person or authority. Nothing unusual at all. He was an upstanding citizen; he was never late for a credit card payment and never showed up late to work. Even his job was commendable: Bear-T’nT was saving countless lives of patients who otherwise would have died of AIDS or cancer. Ian’s photographs and collaboration on the ad slogans had certainly contributed to this.

He began retracing the day’s sequence for cues. It had begun like all the other Thursdays. As usual, after the gym, he had enjoyed his croissant from the Sweden House bakery on his third floor terrace, while glancing through Times on his MEphone. He remembered the crystalline view of San Francisco earlier that morning on his left, with the dissipating dreamlike white puffs of fog behind the skyline softening the panorama spanning from the Ferry Building and TransAmerica pyramid downtown, to the towering, Gothic spires of Grace Cathedral on Knob Hill. Now, again in his memory, it seemed more alive than it had earlier.

Directly across the Bay, framed by the oversized red geraniums he planted in the tremendous terracotta pots along the terrace, stood Belvedere with all the houses poking out of the lush hillside like Capri island in Italy, their window boxes dripping with more hanging flowers and pots boasting roses of every shade.

On hot nights, Ian loved to drop by happy hour at Sam’s floating dock bar, next to the Water’s Edge Hotel. When the deck was packed with a hundred or more people, it reminded him of the summer nights along the water in Majorca. Tourists flocked to the spot like seagulls to the scraps they left behind on their plates.

Ian thought back to nights flirting with exotic foreign tourists, sometimes inviting them to his terrace for a drink. How awestruck they always were, looking up at the myriad stars, listening to the creek of the masts on the yachts in the harbor, the lights of San Francisco as tantalizing as rubies and garnets, an occasional emerald. Breathing in the sea air, glimpsing occasional shooting stars and trying to identify the faint, fast moving satellites, as the boats slumbered in the harbor, always reminded Ian of faraway coastal towns and fantastic lifetimes. It was these random recollections of enviable moments that gave him the most pleasure in the present.

Ian was startled by the sound of outside footsteps. A guard slid a tray of food under the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. He had short kinky hair cut flat at the top and square around his round, dark face. A pair of gold square framed dark glasses matched his hair cut.

“Sir, would you mind telling me—“ Ian stumbled, but the guard only turned, talking to someone at the other end of the device attached to his ear, as he walked away. “Sir!” Ian called after him. He pounded the top of the door with his fist, hoping to make enough racket to get the guard’s attention and only injured his wrist in the process.

Ian’s head felt as though it would explode after the sudden expenditure of energy and he sank back down on the cot. From where he lay, he was sickened by the faint smell of what looked like a scoop of dog food in the tin just before the door. After what seemed like an hour of debate, he summoned the strength to rise and fetch the small tin of water. It tasted incredibly good and cool, unlike the warm metallic-tasting tap water from the sink, and he found he lapped the last drop up desperately.

The rest of the afternoon dragged. He kept reaching in his shirt pocket to check his messages or rearrange his calendar engagements in vain. He managed to fall asleep several times, waking each time in a fit of sweat, with insatiable thirst and increasing faintness, his head pounding harder. He seemed to be floating in and out of delirium.

II.

The following morning three policemen with tinted glasses came to his cell. Ian recognized the one with the flat-top hair cut. He wondered about the glasses; was it to reinforce the stereotype or was the light from the tremendous skylight at the top of the building bothersome?

“Sirs, if you don’t mind my asking, I have a right to know why I’m being held. It’s in the constitution,” Ian said, searching the guards’ glasses for the eyes behind the reflection.

Ian could not be certain if the guards could hear him because of the devices on their ear. Now and then they’d talk at each other or the air.

The older, heavier cop with sagging grey jowls sniggered, possibly coincidentally. “Please put on your coat and tie.”

Ian followed the orders almost eagerly; perhaps he was having his court date. He was relieved that his fever—if that’s what it had been—had subsided, though he still felt weak. He cleared his throat and glanced around. “Where’s my attorney?”

The older cop stuck a boiler gun in his back. From a screen special showcasing a convention of modern anti-terrorist weaponry, Ian knew the shooter had the ability to make its victims feel as though their blood was boiling, searing their flesh and nerves.

“Where are we going? I have a constitutional right to know why I’m being held.” Yet, judging by the weapon, Ian feared that he had already been branded a terrorist without any rights. He’d clear that up in court.

The policemen led him down a hallway, through some locked double doors to a bank of five elevators. Inside, Ian was struck by the lift’s bay windows. The elevator stopped several times to pick up various well-dressed people, some in suits as though off to work.

“Late shift today, finally?” a balding man holding a brief case inquired of a woman in a green surgeon suit. The woman nodded, grinning, then glanced at her feet. Two men who were more casually dressed, but in a hurry stepped in, one talking on a mobile. Then entered two women in nice dresses and heels, one listening to a clear tunes device, another talking on her MEphone. The surgeon was forced to move closer to Ian and the policemen. She smiled awkwardly at him as though she didn’t know he was being escorted by the uniformed men.

Suddenly, the elevator was flooded with light. Ian turned around and saw through the clear glass walls, which earlier must have been encased in cement, the familiar lobby of his work station drifting toward him, with all his co-workers in their cubicles and his manager busy at work in his larger station. Everyone was slaving away except in Ian’s cubicle, which was empty.

A sinking sensation overtook him. He was late! He reached into his empty shirt pocket for him MEphone, then withdrew it quickly, as though he had received a shock.

As he waited nervously for the elevator doors to open, Ian could see the pink table cloths and potted ficus trees in the restaurant and the waiters closing one of the sections, as they did when the breakfast rush was over in preparation for the new lunch configuration. The view was the self-same one Ian occasionally enjoyed upon descending in the glass elevator after having had lunch or dinner in the building’s rotating restaurant on the top floor.

Baffled, Ian searched the faces of his company in the elevator. One of the women in the nice dresses looked nervously at her watch.

“Excuse me. Do you have the time?” Ian asked timidly, glancing sideways at the policemen, but they now seemed to be ignoring him.

“Half-past ten.”

Ian gasped. He had never been late before, much less two hours!

The doors opened and everyone rushed out. “You’re late!” one of the policemen said sternly into Ian’s ear. Reflexively, Ian bolted out and walked toward his work station. When he entered the office, Tracy, the brunette office manager smiled mischievously, peering over her glasses. She was big-boned, with a big nose and big smile. “Well, look who finally decided to show up for work. Is everything okay?” She asked in her New York accent. “Late date with your MEphone again?” she laughed.

Ian looked nervously over his shoulder. There was no sign of any guards. Had he been released? A mistake, perhaps, that the legal system wanted flushed down the memory hole.

“Great!” Ian responded, almost giddily.

“Work’s beginning to pile up on your desk,” Tracy cautioned. “It’s been crazy since Pat’s been gone.”

On the way to his desk, a few of his coworkers greeted him casually, as they always did. Others seemed too absorbed in their work to notice he was late. Everything seemed as it always was; with the exception that Ian’s supervisor was out, which actually made things a bit more pleasant.

Hurriedly, Ian found his way to his cubicle and sat down. Yes, judging from the pile on his desk, yesterday had been Thursday, his day off.

Ian sank into his leather chair nervously and rolled backward as far as he could in the cubicle, tilting his head back to get a good look at the upper floors from which he’d just emerged. His office was designed in open air style, like the restaurant next door, sharing the ceiling of the tremendous lobby.

To his relief, everything looked as it always had. Nothing but the elegant hotel rooms overhead. Working in the cubicles, though somewhat confined, was actually very pleasant, because of the loftiness of the encompassing atrium hotel lobby over 100 stories high. From his particular cubicle, which had one of the best views, often Ian would gaze up at what looked like an inverted right angle pyramid of floors, with each subsequent floor jutting out several feet further than the one below. The effect, from the lobby gazing upward, was like staring at an M.C Escher print. No door was visible. In fact, from his vantage point, it looked as though the entire hotel were empty. Seldom had he seen anyone walk the balconies above. Even the glass elevators which floated up and down the hundred something floors always appeared empty because of the special tinted glass. The sanctuary-like setting was hardly a jail. What had come over him, he wondered. Was it a stroke? His heart began palpitating.

Ian closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Then he glanced with relish at the pile of work on his desk. There was the stack of photos he had just printed a couple of days ago to review, his mail, his computer. He turned his computer on. Not much time had lapsed at all, judging by the email he had to return. Automatically, he began answering the messages, working on the tasks required, before eventually pausing to consider the hallucination he had just experienced. The computer stated that it was indeed Friday. He found himself reaching into his empty shirt pocket to check his messages.

Suddenly he remembered his MEphone and looked in the bottom drawer where he usually hid it, under the papers. To his delight, his entire briefcase was there, with his MEphone, MEpad and camera!

“YES!” he found himself saying aloud. Certainly his MEphone and MEpad would have some answers to his strange experience or dream. He could make some calls later, do some investigating.

To his dismay, his MEphone was dead. He tried pressing the power switch several times to no avail. Not a flicker of light softened the cold black displaying greasy finger prints marks. He pulled his MEpad out of his briefcase and hit the round power button. The machine remained silent and dark.

He cursed aloud. He almost felt like weeping. He was overreacting to low batteries. Perhaps he was just suffering from low blood sugar. He hadn’t slept well at all and didn’t remember having eaten breakfast. He took a breath and remembered the spare charger in his desk drawer and umbilical cord that he could use to tether his MEphone to the pad until it was charged sufficiently for the wireless radio sync to kick in. Happily he hooked everything up. To his delight an orange light on the side of the MEpad power cord had turned on.

Now he’d just have to wait several hours for the machines to recharge. Reassured, his thoughts reviewed his day off for more clues. Ah yes, yesterday, Thursday, had indeed been his day off. He distinctly remembered having had to race to catch the special 11:45 ferry to San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

As usual, upon boarding, he had turned to the right of the hoards and sat right down on the secluded bench in the nook behind the gangplank. The water below had looked like cut green glass, the foamy wake conjuring images of Grecian voyages, ferries through the Caribbean. From there he enjoyed the view of Angel Island, then Alcatraz. He got to the bow in time to see the Golden Gate Bridge on the right, the Bay Bridge on the left and the San Francisco skyline straight ahead with its Ferry Building clock tower. There he was, dreaming, spray tinting his sunglasses, the taste of summer in his mouth. —At least now, as he thought about it.

The city loomed up with its beautiful brick seaside skyline, Coit Tower like an upright leaning Tower of Pisa and illogical palm trees ruining the ambiance of brownstone buildings yearning for Sycamore and Walnut. He walked over to Market Street, hopped on the California cable car and enjoyed the brisk hike to Union Square to meet Barb.

Thanks to her looks, she had secured one of the best tables on Macy’s rooftop. She looked magnificent with the sun catching her blonde hair, high cheekbones and the tight, metallic fabric covering her breasts.

It had been a flawless afternoon; twenty degrees hotter in that sun than in the rest of the city. Ian couldn’t really remember what they had talked about, only that he had taken some fabulous pictures: of Barb, of the French-looking angel in the center of the landscaped square holding Neptune’s fork, her copper oxidized to green. The beautifully-crafted brownstones and marble buildings surrounding Union Square, with their textures and flourishes: green marble, copper, awnings, gold gilt, chandeliers glistening, surrounded by sycamores and church spires. The airbrushed wisps of cloud from the fog brushing the azure backdrop of sky behind the high rises and Transamerica pyramid downtown.

He remembered feeling like the Greek Gods on Mount Olympus looking down upon Barbie dolls sipping their cappuccinos at the polished metal tables of Il Caffé—one of his favorite haunts—or relaxing on the benches. His camera had recorded the diorama quality of the square, the toy taxis, toy children with a balloon, a model of an elderly woman walking a dog, miniature motorcycle, a child’s red and gold cable car passing. From that high, even the homeless were transformed into contented dolls. From that high, it seemed as though everyone else was having a good time too, which made it far easier to enjoy oneself.

Ian glanced at his phone. Certainly by now there’d be just a glimmer. He’d be able to use it as long as it was connected to the pad. He pressed the power. An icon came on, and then a little thin white bar at the bottom. Nothing he did seemed to change the image. At least it was on.

Then he realized with horror where he had seen the configuration before. It belonged to the master reset. Something was erasing the contents of his phone. All his photographs, his movies, his podcasts, all his MEtunes, MEcalendars, all his friends, his notes, passwords to his accounts, directions.

But I can just sync it with the pad once the pad comes back, he reminded himself.

The incoming email blow sound on his work computer compelled him to desist obsessing. It was his boss with some suggestions for the current campaign image.

Ian grabbed his MEphone again. The thin little bar was now filled with a tiny corner of white. He wanted to check his email, and messages, but there was no way to do this. Ever since he quit smoking, Ian had taken to playing with his MEphone whenever he got fidgety or lonely. If there were no new messages to receive or send, he’d google his own name to monitor whether the links to his photographs and work had shrunk or expanded.

But alas, his mobile had gone a tenth of the way through it erasure. Nothing he did could stop the progress of the white bar from filling up completely, not even the power switch and he had no access to the battery.

“Oh well,” he thought and got busy on his boss’s email.

III.

Miraculously, work ended a bit early. Ian had been so swamped, he forgot to check on the status of his computer. He glanced at the MEphone. It had rebooted, but to his dismay it was bereft of data. Even the calling mechanism must have been erased, he soon realized, because the phone would not receive calls nor call out. Not to worry, the computer backup would reset everything correctly. Only when he examined the pad, it was still dead. Something had gone wrong with the connection. He’d charge it back at home.

Ian packed up his valuables and decided to relax with a drink and dinner in the revolving restaurant on the top floor. The panoramic view of the downtown buildings, Bay Bridge and bay was stunning as they revolved around the diners. That would help restore him to the mood he was in before his devices and mind began deceiving him.

Funny, he thought, it’s as though some common fuse in all three had shorted.

After washing in the restroom beyond the lobby fountain, he headed over to the glass elevators and waited for the express. He loved watching the work cubicles and diners at the restaurant tables becoming miniatures, then nearly disappear as he floated upward.

This time, however, the elevator did not sail upward without its usual interruption. It stopped abruptly on the third floor. Three policemen entered. The doors closed. Ian tried to reassure himself, it was just a coincidence. After all, the ones in his nightmare had dark sunglasses.

The lobby became a toy model below and the view went dark. Ian turned around to behold one of the officers pointing a boiler gun at him. He was large without being overweight and had a large, bald head, a mustache the color and texture of a broom and cold blue eyes. After a what seemed like an eternity, Ian’s heart in his now cotton-dry mouth, his eyes studying the lumps and uneven terrain of his captor’s light cranium, the elevator stopped. It was the 84th floor.

“Out,” said the officer with the lumpy large head, waving his gun.

“Is something the matter, officer?” Ian inquired.

“Out!” bellowed the bald guard, before putting on a pair of sunglasses. The other two officers followed suit.

The doors opened onto a row of jail cells.

“Could you please tell me why I am being held?” Ian pleaded, the events of the morning suddenly a raw wound again.

“Why don’t you ask your conscience that same question?” the slender guard offered, almost cordially, with a sympathetic smile.

The meaner-looking cop snorted.

“But I have a right to know the charges,” Ian turned to him, his tone begging. The guard only shrugged. The bald guard stuck his gun into Ian’s spine, as though to discourage conversation.

As they made their way onward, Ian noticed the cells were largely empty. Through the four-foot-high bars, hidden from his cell view by the ivory glass balconies, Ian saw a couple of captives lying or sitting on their cots. They passed another fellow, who seemed immobile, with his head in his hands. Surprisingly, they passed two women as well. Neither gender seemed to notice Ian. Particularly those staring at the color screens droning in their cells. Of these, half were actively engaged with their interactive sets, laughing, conversing, nodding as though deep in conversation. One tall woman with long hair in pigtails was engaged in an interactive game of tennis. Perhaps this was the reason for the balconies and short bars—to give the inmates in this co-ed setup their privacy, since one could not really see into the cells very well except when passing them.

They came upon a cell with an elderly couple. Ian wondered if the two had met in the jail and were allowed to marry, or had been incarcerated for a crime they had both committed. Failing to pay a mortgage? Homelessness? At least they had been allowed to be housed together Ian thought. Whether this new humane treatment of inmates owed to his being in a low-security prison, or to a new trend, it was a good sign.

The thinner guard pulled out a card and waved it at a tiny red light that unlocked the door to Ian’s cell. He held the door for Ian.

“I have a right to an attorney!” Ian said. “Will you arrange a call for me?”

“You expect us to pay for the minutes? You got a MEphone, don’t you?” the bald guard laughed.

“What if it won’t work?”

“Why is that our problem?” The thinner guard shrugged.

“So no one’s going to fix my set either?” Ian grumbled.

“We’re working on it,” the slender guard said before the door slammed on its spring. The meaner-looking, bald guard just stared at Ian through the bars. “Now, tomorrow at work, no hanky panky. No trying to leave to go to lunch or you’ll come right back here,” he cautioned, picking a piece of food from his teeth.

“But my coworkers often invite me out. What am I to tell them? That I’m in jail?”

“You try that!” the guard laughed. “Or if you want, you can try to escape and have them see us escort you.”

The thought of being interrogated by this official was more than Ian could bare. He sank down into his cot. He felt like breaking down crying, but everything was too absurd. He was dreaming; certainly, one of those dreams where he thought he was awake. It was like some nightmare by Franz Kafka, Ian thought to himself.

A few visitors marched past Ian’s cell. They looked like commuting refugees from the financial District, some with their wires dangling, others with dark GPS mobile glasses and pale blue or white buttoned shirts with ties and neatly ironed slacks. They all seemed to be distracted by conversations on their devices or the scenery or ads on their GPS bifocals. While the bifocals were part clear lens and part GPS, most people relied on their GPS scenery simulator to guide them as they walked, instead of the actual scenery. It was especially helpful for directions as holographic arrows would light the way. The bifocals also enabled various stores to advertise through the earphones attached to the glasses, as one passed them. It always startled Ian how only the stores that contained items or packages he might actually purchase would call out to him, merely based on his purchasing profile.

More clumps of commuters emerged, with women in work skirts and heels, most of them attached to wires or mobile glasses. Then came several women with children, a male here or there with a child. Probably a tour, Ian thought. He stood and craned his neck. More marched by obstructing his view, some on the balcony opposite. Ian noticed one with a brief-case and scooter remove a card from his breast pocket and wavie it to open a cell door. Up and down the corridor and across the way, other doors were opening. Soon the sound of sets or pads starting up began to drone out the noise of the doors opening and closing. The floor came to life as inmates began interacting with their sets, computers, music or other electronic devices, moving back and forth in their cells. Ian saw only the tops of the heads—some removing clothes and putting on night clothes or lounging attire.

“Thank god it’s Friday!” came a male voice from the cell next to his. To his surprise, a woman called out to him from what seemed like the same cell, then the sound of two children.

“Turn that screen off! It’s dinner time!” the woman shrieked at them.

So the hotel in which he worked also housed a co-ed prison which allowed families. Obviously it was the kind of low-security, luxury prison where corrupt politicians and millionaires ended up. That made sense, given his own status and that of Bear-T’nT. Now he was part of the work prison part of the building. Clearly his work place was not a part of this prison; else, wouldn’t he have recognized some of his co-workers as they returned to their cells now?

Judging from the hubbub which seemed to issue from the floors below and above, there seemed to be such a great number of these returning inmates. Ian knew prisoners were farmed out to various corporations, but he had never fathomed the scope of the phenomenon.

Ian scolded himself. How could he have not realized he had been working along side prisoners? What a fool his co-workers would think him for being so naive! Or were they inmates all along, as well? Did his boss know about his predicament? Would he fire him if he didn’t know about Ian’s incarceration and were to find out?

The answers to these questions obviously would find no response until morning, Ian realized. One thought was reassuring, however. Regardless of the details, the prisoners were obviously allowed to keep their electronic devices in their cells.

Anxiously, Ian fumbled in his briefcase for his devices and charger. and plugged the latter in below the desk. He retrieved the docking station that was left there for him, set it on the desk and placed his MEphone inside. A sliver of green lit up the phone’s battery icon, denoting that the battery was charging. Once his pad was fully charged as well, he told himself, things would begin looking much better. He’d sync his phone, get back in touch with his friends who’d connect him to a lawyer. Then, even if he had to spend some time in jail, what could be better than time to rank and catalogue his photographs on his MEpad, syncing the best to his phone? It was an embarrassment not to have these updated for viewing. Next, he could organize his texts and docs and tackle his budget. At least he’d save money cutting out vacations for the time being… And he’d finally have time to explore more music and those million apps.

And all those games! And films I never have time to see! He laughed aloud.

He decided to busy himself with a new photo series on the jail. After about an hour of shooting with his Canon, the already-loaded card was full.

Ian checked the MEpad. The orange ember had burned out. He cursed and jiggled it until it turned on again. Another hour wasted, he thought.

He thought of how dismal his events calendar would become; how he’d have to create a new, grey-colored calendar for jail obligations. His fun calendar, the color of the Caribbean by the Tulum ruins, would cease. All the events would be grey or red for work, possibly army green for chores. Recalling his stay-positive podcasts, he reassured himself that the calendar he used to set aside time for his photographs was almost turquoise as well. That would brighten things up a bit, once he was able to download the pics and free up his card again. What could be better than jail time for a closet artist?

Ian tried the power switch on his pad. Nothing happened. He’d give it a good hour, he told himself.

Directly opposite, a woman with a child entered into a cell in which Ian had already witnessed a man enter. Ian also noticed some prisoners leaving later on, one cute woman with a blonde pony tail in grey, three-quarters running tights and white tennis shoes, adjusting a tunes pod on her hip. It seemed as though some of the prisoners were on the honor system, he mused, baffled.

Ian waited. By seven o’clock at night, at least according to the time on his MEphone, most of the cell doors remained shut, with a few exceptions. Throughout this period, Ian kept checking his useless MEphone for messages, out of habit.

Again, Ian tried the pad’s power button to no avail. The little orange ember was no more. He cursed and wiggled it and it came back on.

The next two hours were consumed trying to charge the dead MEpad. The phone was now fully charged, so it had to be the power cord. This explained the problem at work as well. No sooner did he realize this, than he began to panic at the idea of being denied a new cord. The thought of jail was bad enough, but the thought of enduring without his beloved devices seemed too much to bear. He had no idea how attached he’d become.

I’m going through withdrawal, he told himself. Perhaps this explained his headache when he first arrived.

Ian didn’t hear the cell doors open very much again for two days, though he did notice some seniors and families wandering in and out and a few inmates on his floor leaving, then returning with shopping bags. Every time they left the cells, an alarm would sound and a cell number would be announced. Were these escapees? Or just under heavy surveillance.

Of course, he realized, it’s the weekend; we’re let out mostly to work. Only why would the chap next door be so happy it was Friday, then? He must have been one of the ones they let out to go shopping.

Ian knew the society had a been jailing criminals at record proportions, but he had no idea it had come to this.

Over the course of the next two days, with no devices and nothing to do, Ian’s feelings of panic only increased. Whenever he had felt like this in the past, he’d plug himself into his tunes, seek out new songs. It was the music he was missing most now. And texting. He was also vexed by the idea of his email piling up, unfiled. He still could not shake the habit of checking his pocket for his MEphone. At first, he kept the device inside, to see if it would calm him, but several occasions of staring at his own reflection in the dark glass cured him of the desire.

Now all his obsessive tendencies were focused on one sole goal: to be set free. He had decided that in order to figure out how to accomplish this, it was imperative to understand the motive behind his imprisonment. When he tired of tinkering with his pad charger or poking at his useless MEPhone screen as though for messages, Ian would pace on his treadmill and replay what he could remember of the last year, searching for clues.

He recalled having taken a magazine from his neighbor’s mailbox when she was out of town. He had read somewhere that tampering with mail was a federal offense that carried a five-year minimum sentence. That was it! He stopped in the middle of his sixty-fourth sit-up and grabbed the bars. He had forgotten to return it! Probably Helga’s husband had complained. He was such a whiner.

Or were the cops called by that other psycho neighbor with the short hair and body of a pear—the one who was always screaming at neighbors and calling 911 to report canvassers and con-artists. The one who hated her dog and had gotten it only because the house at the end of the street had been broken into. She had seen Ian getting the mail and called the cops.

Or was it when he raced through the Fast Track lane behind the Mercedes after his account expired and he had failed to notify them of the new credit card bank?

Or had he really hit a bicyclist the time he thought it was a tree branch or his neighbor’s side-view mirror and he had sped off without looking back?

That was absurd. He wouldn’t be in this situation over a magazine or a hit and run, would he? Surely, they would have informed him. Clearly, they thought him a terrorist. There was that Marsec warning on the ferry. Had he done something on Federal waters to trigger that? He knew penalties were stiffer in certain maritime zones.

Absentmindedly, he pulled his MEphone from his shirt pocket and checked it. He congratulated himself for only having checked a few times this hour. The behavior was clearly diminishing.

Let’s see, he had taken the ferry Thursday. It had been exquisite, but not unusual in any other way, nothing which corresponded to his current surroundings. Ian got up suddenly and shook the bars again in disbelief. His cheek pressed against the bars as he wracked his memory. He had been leading the life most people wished they could: working to improve the world and having a heck of a lot of fun doing it.

Maybe Bear-T’nT had some enemies. Someone somewhere always had an ax to grind about a poor relative who died because of their inability to pay for a Bear-T’nT drug, as though that were the company’s fault. As though the small predictable margin of error, the plus or minus five percent inherent in every calculation, was not worth the countless lives being saved.

Everything was pleasant and uneventful, for as long as he could remember. Each day, he walked down to the dock and caught the ferry to Fisherman’s Wharf, then jumped on the Powell-Mason cable car to the Embarcadero to work. At lunch, he’d walk through the intricate towering marble and brownstone buildings of the financial District, past the tourists, through bustling China Town, up Columbus into North Beach.

Monday had been unusually hot for the city. Ian had stopped for his suits at Ko and Company. Karen, who owned the dry-clean business, often worked past seven and, took only Sundays off. Her husband did all Ian’s mending. Over the years, Ian had learned that Karen’s son had an immune disorder which required all her free time and much of her revenue. To help Karen, Ian bought all his nieces and nephews some of the extra toys Karen sold there as well.

“Look, your orchid is growing another row of blooms!” Karen said, motioning at the window,” her smile lighting up her dimples. Her black short styled hair was cut in angles and points around her pretty face accentuating her almost eyes.

“It really likes that spot,” Ian had commented.

“Yup, every year, this time,” Karen said.

Ian had purchased several at a bargain price one Christmas, and had insisted Karen and the help at Puccini each pick one out.

“Going to work on your photographs now?” Karen had inquired.

The two often exchanged stories about interesting occurrences. Earlier that February, Ian had told Karen about a series of parking and speeding tickets, as well as being put through an hour of tests for a DUI which resulted in 0.0 on the breath-a-lator. And I don’t understand,” he had said. “It’s my year! I’m a tiger.”

“But this, year of the tiger,” Karen had said. “Very bad for tigers. Not good.”

Ian had been incredulous. “That explains it!” he laughed.

“Oh, Ian. Excuse me,” Karen said. She rushed into a room with a small icebox and brought out a sandwich wrapped in a napkin. She dashed out the door and handed it to an elderly homeless woman who was struggling to walk down the sidewalk with her cane and a discarded baby stroller piled with garbage bags full of belongings.

Karen popped back in. “I’m sorry, Ian, it’s just that I thought of her when I made my sandwich this morning and—“ She shook her head. “It’s not right. Someone that old. Some people in this country have everything and they don’t care that they leave nothing for others.”

Ian nodded sadly. He handed Karen a bill. “Give her this next time you see her.”

“You’re very generous,” Karen smiled. “What were we saying. Oh yes. I’m sorry. Very bad year for tigers. Stay home. Don’t take risks.”

Ian ran his fingers along the bars. He had a sinking sensation. Was this more of the same bad luck with the authorities. “Absurd,” he said aloud. For the homeless woman, it was always an unlucky year.

He did notice that his headache, which he was learning to live with, subsided when he began to daydream.

Next, he had gone into Molinari’s, his favorite deli, for a custom-made Italian sandwich. Franco, the older, rounder butcher with a mustache and gold spectacles, was busy singing opera with a customer from Puccini’s while, Vince, the younger, handsome butcher with streaked hair who’d grown up in the Bronx, served out a taste of Italian syrup to a Italian man in a suit.

“Pretty early to be hitting the bottle, isn’t it?” Ian joked.

“It’s never too early. That hits the spot.” The Italian business man played along. “Another shot of Cuervo, please.”

Ian walked over to Washington Square Park and sat down to enjoy his feast on a bench directly across from Saints Peter and Paul’s Parish with its white sand drip castle spires that, at night, lit up in pale blue light. He noticed a homeless man, who had been napping in the sun, eyeing the half sandwich he was carefully wrapping to take home.

“You wouldn’t want this, would you? Shame if it goes to waste….” Ian said, handing the parcel to the man, who got to his feet eagerly to receive it.

Ian’s pacing on the treadmill stopped. He used to think that the homeless problem had improved tremendously in the last decade. He thought the wealth was finally being distributed a little more equitably, as in Europe. Now as he thought about it, he wondered whether or not the diminishing number of homeless wasn’t owing to increasing incarceration. He started pacing again on the mill, trying to recall more clues about his own predicament.

The rest of the week, his work was light and he was able to take two-hour lunches. He had brought his MEpad to work on his photos. He stopped at one of the last independent stores that still sold books made of paper, City Lights Books, purchased a book of photographs by Scott Brailey and headed up to Caffé Puccini.

Like City Lights, Puccini was one of the only North Beach venues that had preserved its original style. While seeming cozy back in the 1980s, it now seemed expansive and authentic, given that most restaurants and cafes were a third their size the previous millennium. This change was due to the increasing popularity of wall-size digital picture frames, allowing restaurants to project virtual views through false windows of scenery like the Venice canals, Greek windmills or other exotic locals. This had helped boost ethnic cuisines, which had previously fallen out of favor. The virtual restaurant had remained popular with the sober lunch crowds. As a result, Puccini was never as packed as the other eateries during lunch—another reason it was among Ian’s favorite locals. The quality of the cuisine, thanks to a cook named Patricia de León, and the decent prices kept it from going under.

Ian remembered Telma saying, “Look, your favorite table.” She always gave him extra olives.

From the adjacent window, he could see the spires of Peter and Paul’s Parish and watch the trolley pass in front of Calzone’s red awnings. Dolores and Areli, always seemed happy to see him as well, though Ian sometimes occupied his table for hours. On Wednesday, it had been hot enough for Dolores to slide open the windows and play Patty Prado on the jukebox. Ian disappeared with the breeze into the photograph book.

The following night, he had returned to North Beach, along with the fog, to meet some friends at Vesuvios. Another refuge from the wall-size digital scenery, the bar had worn wood antique wood, Tiffany lamps and old-time photos of James Joyce, Beat Poets and patrons from the previous century. Ian and his friends sat upstairs on the balcony at a table overlooking the neon lights on Broadway and Trish Trip’s recreation of an indigenous mural in Chiapas that was burned down by the government the previous millennium and repainted in cities throughout the world. It looked lovely on the City Lights wall, with the city’s gargantuan flower arrangement hanging from the lamp post in the foreground; the fuchsias, red geraniums and cascading pink, white and yellow flowers echoing the mural’s vibrant colors. Ian had taken various shots of this, as well as of the walk home that night. The fog had accentuated the flashing gold, red, green and purple lights of stripper joints along Broadway, like New York playhouses or Mexico City movie theaters.

He noticed his imagination was working better on his headache than would Ibuprofen. Out of nowhere a thought entered his mind which cheered him immensely: Of course! Everyone else at work had a MEpad. He’d simply borrow their charger and charge his pad in their cubicle.

Somewhat elated with this realization, he continued to retrace his footsteps before his jailing. Certainly there had been nothing criminal in any of his jaunts, he mused. Had he miscalculated on his Federal Income tax forms the year he did it himself? Ian found himself pacing back and forth on the treadmill.

Or that time he didn’t tell the sales clerk when she forgot to ring up the artificial log for his fireplace? Or the fact that the artificial log company had just been cited for destroying a rain forest for some weird reason—

By Sunday night, he began to wonder whether his crime had been committed as a child. He had done graffiti when he was eighteen, then got busted for smoking pot in the high school bathroom, then underage drinking. So the magazine or mirror or person could have been his third strike.

Then a terrible thought occurred to him: what if he had been jailed for something or someone he had photographed. His head began to throb.

First thing, back at work, he’d get hold of a phone and charger.

IV.

The following Monday, Tracy seemed to heap on the work when he arrived. A new supervisor named Neil had apparently replaced Pat. The other change was that his work phone had been disconnected to “minimize interruptions.” And Tracy never stayed off hers long enough for him to borrow it. Eventually Ian gave up; all his numbers were on his dead devices.

Ian didn’t have a chance to speak to anyone about all his questions until mid-afternoon. He scrutinized his co-workers and none behaved as though he or she were an inmate. Then again, why should they? He wondered whether he himself was. He always began to doubt his imprisonment whenever he was at work.

Finally, Ian ended up at the coffee machine at the same time as Steve, the walking world-wide web. Steve and he had often gone out for a drink in North Beach. He was one of the few co-workers Ian could tolerate. He was friendly and had a great sense of humor.

“When are you getting out?” Ian asked, jovially.

“Five, like everyone else.”

“Not ‘off,’ ‘out.’ I mean, your release date?”

Steve peered down at him almost coldly through his good looks.

Ian almost regretted having asked the question. What if some folks were inmates but kept their identity private?

“December, before the Christmas rush,” Steve responded politely. The date was the deadline for the ad campaign.

“Your release date. They haven’t really told me mine and—”

“Excuse me?”

Ian wondered whether or not he should tell Steve what was happening to him. Only chances were he’d just think him daft and that would be the end of their tenuous collegiality. After all, wasn’t he going nuts? “Nothing,” Ian mumbled almost stumbling back to his desk. He was glad for the privacy of his cubicle walls when he arrived.

When lunchtime arrived, Steve asked him to grab something at Mijitas, by the Ferry Building. “I couldn’t really understand what you were asking me earlier,” Steve said. “I was sort of distracted.”

“Sure, Steve,” Ian agreed, setting his chops on one of Mijita’s puffy quesadilla delights with pumpkin flowers. “I wondered if you could do me a favor. Could you plug my pad in at your station. I’m trying to trouble shoot why it’s not charging.”

“No prob,” Steve led Ian back to his desk and plugged the pad in. Within minutes it lit up.

“Now why wasn’t it turning on before? Can we wait a sec?” Ian asked, leaning over the machine.

“Sure,” Steve said politely. “If you’ll excuse me. Be right back.” He headed toward the rest room. When he returned, Ian was fiddling with his pad in an agitated state.

“My files have all been erased! This is the weirdest thing! My desktop looks like the default, yet some things, like this stickie note I wrote on the desktop is still here! How do you explain that? If this was reformatted…. This shouldn’t be here…”

“May I?”

“Be my guest!” Ian stood up and pulled over another chair, while Steve explored his computer. “Oh, this is all that’s wrong my friend. Here, type in your password.”

Ian obliged. “It says this is not my password, but I’ve used it for a decade.”

“Your password’s been reset,” offered Steve. “Since all your applications, your photos and music files are stored or purchased online, you can’t access them anymore without your password. Anyway, once you get that right, everything should snap back into place.”

How convenient, thought Ian. Did this mean they, not he, owned his programs, his documents, his photographs? It was an outrage! How could things have come to this?

The orange light glowed and died.

“Oh look, the light on the charger has gone off,” Steve observed. “Looks like something’s wrong on the computer end of your plug.

“That’s what my cord does,” Ian protested.

“Maybe it’s time to ask Mr. White for a new book.”

“Great,” Ian said, following Steve out of the office. Obviously, they had removed his device privileges. What had he been thinking?

His heart sank to his stomach at the thought of all his photographs. Ian noticed the flat-top officer he’d seen before, peering at him through his square-framed dark glasses, arms crossed.

They started outside, toward the entrance. Only, Ian reflected, the other inmates seemed to have these devices. Maybe they were as bereft of real data as his—or maybe he was higher security. If only someone would answer his questions!

Flat-top followed, caught up to Ian.

“Excuse me. Can I have a word with you, sir,” he inquired, reaching for his blood-boiler.

“Certainly. Steve, why don’t you go on without me. I forgot I volunteered to provide some information, ” Ian lied.

Once alone with the guard, Ian demanded to know why his devices failed to work and what his new password was. Again, he was denied any information. Instead, he was escorted up a tremendous number of floors and led to a solitary cell. There was no light inside.

“The policy is not to tell prisoners who end up here for escape attempts when they’re getting out. But since this was your first infraction— Seventy-two hours. Like I said, next time, they probably won’t tell you, so watch yourself. In the corner is a clean bucket for your needs. Food will be dropped off twice a day,” the man offered.

For the first hour, Ian pounded on the walls, shook the bars, sobbed, screamed. Finally he settled down in a heap. There he found a scratchy wool blanket that smelled of mildew. He curled up without the blanket, and tried to makes sense of what was happening to him and what he would tell his co-workers upon his return. What day would that be. It was Monday. Three days from now was Thursday. He would be coming up on his week anniversary in jail.

He fell asleep.

When he awoke, there was a tray of odorless glop. It had the consistency of dog food, but didn’t really taste offensive. He lapped it up hungrily and spent the next few hours trying to figure out what he’d tell his boss and co-workers upon his return.

Then his thoughts returned to the most compelling problem. What was his crime?

Over the course of the following two days, he turned every detail of his life over in his mind and found not a single skeleton. All his life, he had been responsible to a fault. Especially when it came to work. It’s a mistake, he kept insisting, calling out.

Then he had a realization. Maybe the movie company had caught up to him for mailing back a lousy movie he had purchased elsewhere instead of the classic they had sent him, which he still enjoyed from time to time. —Or for copying the movies he downloaded onto his hard drive.

His third strike had probably been something petty like that, but which was considered a Federal Crime punishable by a quarter million dollar fine and a decade in jail. That’s why he was in a low-security prison.

Finally, on the last day, a terrible thought struck him. What if Bear-T’nT had been found guilty of some crime somewhere? It was never the CEOs or owners who took the rap in situations like this; it was always the poor lowly fools slaving away in the company, simply following orders who took the rap. Vaguely now he seemed to recall several law suits filed overseas claiming that a monopoly by Bear-T’nT had driven out inferior, cheaper products. Well, perhaps not inferior, but produced by companies who were inferior when it came to competing.

Ian recalled, that in the largest class action suit with a few thousand claimants, a couple of Americans living abroad had died, supposedly because they could no longer afford their medication. The judges had ruled that no anti-trust laws had been violated. There was just no solid case there.

Perhaps some nut fringe group had finally won a class action suit arguing the company’s liability in the soaring cost of medical care. In the two decades Ian had worked for Bear-T’nT, it had managed to buy up most of the pharmaceutical market. They had undercut local competition and once they had gone under, Bear-T’nT prices and profits soared. It was just smart business. If not Bear-T’nT, then some other company would have done the same.

The ads Ian had put together had certainly contributed, he realized, especially when his images and slogan began airing regularly on the screen. Could it be this is why they were after him?

There were certainly a lot of angry people looking to blame some pharmaceutical company for driving up the price of health care, making universal health care an utter implausibility and driving thousands to homelessness. Only these homeless were so powerless, no worries there.

Could people have died as a result of Bear-T’nT? Yes overseas, yes. Here? Okay, but the company had saved so many lives as well. Certainly more than it helped terminate! By far! By far!

The solitary was breaking down his ability to reason.

V.

As the elevator descended, Ian felt as though he was riding down a waterfall of lights, Spanning the entire lobby, dazzling sheets of tiny snowflake lights hung down from the fiftieth floor reminiscent of Niagara Falls. He used to love Christmas time at the Embarcadero Building and would often take the elevator up to the revolving restaurant and down just for the rush of lights.

During his work breaks, he’d walk to the East wing of the lobby and stand at the window overlooking the elegant Ferry Building clock tower and steely bay beyond. On the brick pavilion, with the Bay Bridge and palm tees in the backdrop, stood the Embarcadero Center’s fountain sculpture. Though it did not snow in San Francisco, the pavilion would be turned into an ice-skating rink, giving the appearance of snow. A couple of times, he had brought a date to the rink. It was a great way to get close quickly, helping the girls dodge all the overly-confident skaters who had not been on ice since their childhoods and hadn’t updated the perceptions of their abilities accordingly.

Once off the elevator, Ian lingered with some other tourists at the tremendous lobby fountain that spanned a city block, before heading into work. A miniature winter wonderland stood atop the endless marble platform. Mysteriously originating under the platform, sheets of cascading water fell so uniformly, they gave the appearance of cellophane. Walking around the exhibit’s perimeter, Ian imagined himself getting off the train after a scenic tour of the snow-covered village chalets and shops, riding on the musical carousel, then rushing with a pair of friends over to the gondolas and taking one to the top of their favorite ski slope before catapulting down. Where had he actually done this? This was Tahoe, or Lake Arrowhead or Cambridge; someplace he’d spent a lot of time as a kid. Where was that?

Ian approached the copper sign attached to the exhibit for an explanation. Yet it didn’t mention the local. Instead it referred to the 3,000 piece exhibit as “imaginary,” stating that the Embarcadero Building inherited the collection from a deceased local artist the previous millennium named Len Connacher Ian loved watching the faces of his friends’ children when he invited them to view the exhibit.

It was at times like this that Ian nearly forgot he was in jail. Aside from the huge turn-over at work, not much had changed in his work life, Ian thought, as he meandered toward his cubicle. He was fortunate that he loved his job. And that was most of his life anyway, so really things weren’t that dire, he argued with himself. He was even beginning to enjoy moments like this without his music or MEphone; he even forgot about checking it for several hours at a time.

At times, he’d be overcome by a heightened sense of liberation he had experienced once or twice in his lifetime, when he came out the other side of having quit smoking, before the addiction to his devices. Although, he had to admit most of the time, he was still miserable without the devices. But the thought of more enlightened moments helped him endure his withdrawal.

At work, he replaced personal message-checking moments with observing his co-workers. Although Ian was always looking for signs that they were in his situation as well, he had failed to find any. With the possible exception of his good-looking colleague, Robin, who kept mostly to herself. He shook off the absurd thought. Ian had seen most of his co-workers either enter or leave the building at some point from the outside. Probably, I’m the only one, he reflected. Because of this, Ian had come to consider himself fortunate to work among all the other free citizens. He had known that both the need for more prisons and popularity of prison labor had expanded exponentially, but hadn’t had the slightest inkling that jails were now being situated inside everyday plants and companies—or was it vice versa? He had been naïve not to notice all the security guards at his job.

From his cubicle, Ian had a perfect view of the ten story Christmas tree with the ornate, giant-size, blown glass ornaments. He did have one of the best views from his cubicle, he thought with pride.

Then he realized, sadly, that this would be his first Christmas without his own Christmas tree and inadvertently punctured his velvet desk board with his Cross pen.

In all these months, he had still never learned what his crime was nor his release date. Because of this, he had resigned himself to the conclusion that his crime was indeed terrorist-related and his location, for security purposes, kept secret. Were it not, surely by now his mother would have learned of his imprisonment and visited. Only so much was terrorist-related now, this didn’t really give him any real information. He had heard that even the White House had an interrogation chamber in its basement beyond the corridor of the West Wing.

Surely by now his mother would have tried calling him. The longest they had gone without talking was two months. She must have been worried sick. Maybe he could borrow Tracy’s phone and call during his mother’s exercise class. Leave a little message, like, just wanted to let you know things are going great at work. Hope you’re well. He had decide until he had more information it was a blessing to not have to explain his strange circumstances to others.

Ian absentmindedly checked his shirt pocket, and pulled out one of the mints that were ever-present at work. He was eating so many of these now, his stomach had begun to develop burning sensations. He put the mint back and logged into his email for a distraction. The fact that he was being held without his knowledge of an accusation infuriated him to the point of sheer panic and he could not let one of these panic attacks manifest themselves at work.

He persuaded himself to reflect upon whether he had ever seen anyone else suffer from similar panic attacks or odd behavior at work, but only wound up feeling more alienated.

Just then his co-worker Robin approached on her way back to design from a meeting with the boss. “Mr. White wants you to stop by his office.” She looked at Ian and shrugged, as though wanting to be an ally, but not having enough information.

Robin was tall and trim with green feline eyes, her stylish short gold and copper hair streaked with red. Her voice was throaty and sexy, like that of May West and she spoke with very little movement of her facial muscles. Consequently, her face was young and smooth.

Why not Robin? Sometimes her cynicism had made Ian suspect that she might share his same predicament. Unlike the mannequin-like cheer of his co-workers, Robin never masked her unhappiness in ingenuous smiles. Instead of cheerleading poorly-thought out ideas, she was always the first to happily throw a wrench of integrity into the machinery, to pour cold water on the upbeat, dishonest babbling at staff meetings, causing a sudden void of silence.

Ian had always marveled at how candid Robin could be without losing her job. More than ever he was willing to please at work, for fear that the only island of sanity in his life might be taken from him.

Obviously Bear-T’nT knew the value of Robin’s graphics. It was her forthrightness which won Ian’s trust. Once, when he’d asked her where she lived, she responded that she used to live in Noe Valley but didn’t want to discuss her current place of residence. This statement intrigued Ian. Was she dropping a hint that she too was an inmate? Yet it was difficult to find time away from the other co-workers to ask her more questions. Several times he had tried to invite her to the restaurant next door for lunch, but she always said she had too much work and ate at her cubicle. The fact that Robin never left the office to go to lunch and that Ian had never seen her come and go from the building lent more credence to his theory.

Inviting her to lunch in the restaurant would have been risky, anyway, Ian thought. At the behest of an official, management could easily turn all the MEphones into listening devices through the net, Ian realized. This is probably why in the past he’d never heard from other inmates in his situation.

Fortunately, the previous week, Ian had gotten his chance to probe Robin when they were both working overtime alone in the office to meet a campaign deadline. They had been entrusted with preparing a plastic camera-ready pill and background for a shoot the next morning. First, Ian asked to borrow her MEphone. He was reassured when she told him it was broken.

“So when do you expect to retire?” Ian tested the waters.

“Never.” Robin shrugged.

“Do you ever feel like you’re an indentured servant… like you’re in jail?” Ian gazed into limpid emerald eyes. Robin didn’t flinch or meet his gaze with judgment.

“How’d you guess?” she laughed. She cocked her head in an almost flirtatious manner. “You in jail too?”

“I really am. Really. That’s where I go every night. Right upstairs to my cell. You?”

“You’re funny,” Robin laughed, painting a corner of the pill with some more lacquer. He could not see her eyes through her hair. “Seen any good movies?”

“None. Absolutely none.” Ian said with irritation.

“I just saw ‘Avatar’ at a friend’s who lives a few floors up, the other night,” she said, still not looking up. “That ancient 3-D classic about colonization? Before the advent of GPS bifocals.”

“Oh way back.” Ian shrugged coldly, focusing on the lighting as Robin nattered on about the plot. Had she been testing him? Perhaps she thought the office bugged. Everyone had MEphones, after all.

“Please shut the door,” Ian’s boss instructed, motioning with his head of thick grey and black hair, parted on the side. His short legs barely rested comfortably on the top of his desk. Ian felt his nerve settle in the pit of his stomach.

Neil White coughed into his fist. “Some of your colleagues have come to me asking for help. It seems they are concerned we are going to loose clients. More than one has complained about some inappropriate comments they overheard coming from your desk when they were interfacing with Tracy. Perhaps we should move your cubicle. Matilda said she’d be willing to trade.“

“How generous of her,” Ian muttered. Matilda, everyone knew, hated her cubicle, which faced the corner with no view at all. It was probably she who had come to Mr. White. “Only I’m afraid I’d be unable to do my work because of the light. That’s why Pat had put me there…” Ian lied about his old employer.

“Oh, right the light. I’ll have to think some more about this… Meanwhile, please watch what you say. You’re co-workers are concerned.”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. White. I’ve been under a lot of pressure at home. It won’t happen again,” Ian mumbled.

The statement only seemed to irritate his boss. He stood up.

He knew. Employers must know, Ian realized.

“Another thing,” Ian forced the words out. Bad timing, but he was like a heroine addict and it was his last chance. Then he’d know where he stood. “Mr. White, it seems I need a new MEpad.”

“Oh?” his employer’s demeanor was stern.

“To work on the campaign at home. The book’s not charging.” Ian could feel his ears burning up.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible at this time,” Mr. White responded, escorting Ian to the door almost forcefully. Ian felt like breaking down sobbing, though he had predicted the response.

He put his earphones in and tinkered with his MEphone, though nothing came out.

No relief from the withdrawal. No vices. I knew that, Ian stewed. He knew his boss knew about his imprisonment, “So what,” he said aloud. Probably the others didn’t realize he was only talking to himself. “So what,” Ian said again and submerged himself in his work.

Back in his cell, that evening, Ian had trouble eating or sleeping. All he could do was obsess about which co-workers had conspired to help Matilda steal his desk. From his bed, he could not help fixating on the scratch marks which included bits of nail dark stains in the wall next to his bed, the most private place he’d sit whenever he was having a panic attack.

At least, he realized, he had not checked his MEphone since he’d returned! He had really been trying.

Finally, at 4:42 in the morning, after much back and forth about his enemies, after having narrowed it down to two main adversaries, he fell asleep.

This obsessing about work continued for the next couple of months. Around his co-workers, he increasingly felt like a leper. He constantly dreaded that they would learn about his terrible secret and further isolate him. He hardly ever smiled or laughed on the job anymore. Unless he was interacting with Robin.

In the cell, work was almost never off Ian’s mind. It was as though he never left his job. But wasn’t this better than dwelling on his imprisonment, he consoled himself. He liked his job, right?

After a while he began to think his life had always been nothing but work and wondered how he ever had time to think about his photographs.

VI.

During the second six months in jail, Ian did not glean any more information about the exact nature of the crime for which he was being held, nor his release date. A new thought had occurred to him. He recalled a Bear-T’nT campaign overseas about which he had cared little at the time of its height, since it had nothing to do with his responsibilities. Bear-T’nT had been testing a new vaccine against a type of flu. While the flu was not deadly, the vaccine had a known 10% mortality rate. At the time Ian had learned about this, he laughed at the ignorance of the population that had deigned stand in six hour lines in 102 degree heat for the vaccine. Now, however, he could see how the vaccine’s high margin of error might ignite accusations of negligent homicide abroad.

At times during his increasing frustration with the lack of information about his incarceration, it was almost merciful to believe that the primary forces behind his company, Bear-T’nT, had indeed been found guilty by some judge who had been swayed by such overdramatic testimonies. Whether the deaths had been caused by testing new vaccines on desperate populations abroad or by driving up local health care and pharmaceutical prices, or both, Ian had no way of knowing. Perhaps because his ideas had propelled the company’s fame, he had been faulted as well.

What seemed to give credence to the negligent homicide theory back at work, was the fact that both his supervisor and boss had been replaced within a few months of Ian’s incarceration. In fact, every supervisor at the company had less than six months there and worker turn-over was very high as well. At his job, Ian never came into contact with the engines of the machine. It was quite possible that they had all been placed in jail.

Slowly, over the course of the next six months, Ian began to believe with increasing conviction that his company had indeed been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Perhaps this, the hypothetical judge had ruled, outweighed the company’s good deeds. And perhaps this is what placed the crimes of Bear-T’nT employees in the category of “terrorist.”

During his darkest moments, Ian would wonder what kind of suffering his own ad campaigns had inadvertently caused. Whether someone somewhere would not have died were he to have selected a different career. He began obsessing about this, attempting to put a face to the person. Some nights he was haunted by the images he recalled his boss dismissing as propaganda submitted to a judge in a case against Bear-T’nT a few years prior; an infant trying to nurse at his dying mother’s breast who couldn’t afford cancer treatment.

Other nights, he felt directly responsible for the recurring image of a family weeping over what they denounced as the senseless death of their son, proudly showing the camera photos of him taking his first steps, then the medicine cabinet with his empty medicine bottles.

Had Ian caused the death of a child? More than one? How many would still be alive if Ian had never taken the job? If collectively the company, through its workers, had been responsible for thousands of deaths, how many was he directly responsible for?

At these times of excruciating guilt, Ian’s incarceration seemed fitting, almost a relief. His remorse for having accepted the job in the first place grew proportionally to the point of being almost unbearable. Ian would glare at his dead MEphone and MEpad with abhorrence, for inadvertently, had they not been at the root of his woes? He had fallen in love with the device, then gone after the job that issued it, since that was the only way to obtain a ME.

Why, he berated himself, had he not settled for a second-rate device that didn’t require a specific employer. Or for that matter, a job that provided the b-phone with the blue b-tab available from City-Chased Bank Group; the clear ones from Wolf News; the black devices and wires from BlackW-RAW-AG Water; neon lime green wires from Chev-GT Energy or red ones from Alianz Axa? Those were certainly respectable companies and he would have adapted to their devices eventually. Of what use where the Bear-T’nT devices now?

He remembered his obsession with his first MEphone and dismay at learning that not only did he have to land a job with Bear-T’nT to obtain one, he couldn’t buy insurance for it; if it was stolen, he was entirely at the mercy of his boss for another. He remembered joking with his colleagues that he had become so addicted to the devices, he was virtually indentured to his company to retain possession of his prized electronic vices. Fortunately he was able to joke—he did so love his job in those days, he thought sadly.

Then there were times after a day’s work that Ian just felt like a nut. This usually occurred after he’d probed an employee about the company’s practices; whether they were harming some people; whether the company had changed. These inquiries were usually met with indignation or patronizing shrugs that left Ian feeling as though the co-worker thought him lunatic.

During these moods, Ian was convinced that he had had a psychotic break and was in a mental institution. That would explain all the other mental patients returning after mainstreaming into society in regular jobs. Were they all talking through mobiles and radio-wave ear devices or to themselves?

Ian had once read in the paper Street Spirit, sold by the homeless, that mental institutions were increasingly becoming more jail like.

VII.

One evening after work, Ian’s heart leapt at something he saw in the cell across from him, three cells to the right. The chamber had been recently vacated by an older man who had suffered a heart attack. Ian’s tall co-worker, Steve, was being shown into the cell by two guards. One of the guards turned on the interactive set. Steve tuned in attentively, gesturing and speaking as though to the set itself. One of the guards tipped his hat in a gesture of polite farewell, as if he were a porter after a tip. The other smiled his goodbye. Why were they so good natured with Steve and not Ian? He was used to being on everyone’s good side. Yet Ian was so overcome with gladness, he didn’t let this irritation bother him.

By gum! I knew it! Ian thought to himself, restraining himself from leaping with glee. I knew it! I knew it!

“Steve!” he shouted. “Steve,” but the man was too absorbed in his conversation with his screen to hear.

So that settled the question. Bear-T’nT employees were being arrested. Only Steve was not particularly high up on the food chain. He was just a copy editor for the ads that went out. Were they arresting everyone now? Poor Steve, Ian thought. Giving up his nice house in Marin. Though, finally Ian’d be able to talk to someone about what had happened to him. “Steve!” he kept shouting, before realizing he’d have to wait until Steve turned the set off.

Ian fell asleep waiting.

The next morning, Ian was up before dawn. It seemed to take for ever for the light to stream into his cell. He schemed about walking over to Steve’s cell on the way to work but the cell was on the other side of the chasm and the guards didn’t grant him this opportunity. They had been allowing him to walk to work with the rest of the heard of inmates, instead of directly under their supervision. These guards wore no dark glasses. For some reason that Ian could not figure out, they belonged to a kinder, more humble breed, like regular security guards. At times, they were polite, helpful, almost willing to please.

When he arrived at work, Ian was a half-an-hour early. He thought Steve would never arrive. Finally at 9:45 Steve walked in apologizing to Tracy about oversleeping because of a headache.

Screen hangover, Ian snickered to himself. As soon as Steve sat down, Ian sauntered over to his cubicle with a few slogans for the latest campaign.

“Steve, have a minute?”

“What’s up?”

“What do you think of these?”

“Can you give me a moment to think about them?” Steve asked. “I’m not myself this morning.”

“Sure,” Ian began to walk awkwardly back to his desk. “Hey Steve,”

“Yeah?”

“Want to grab a bite at lunch?”

“Puccini?” Steve asked naively.

“They didn’t tell you? We have to eat here in the restaurant.”

“A little pricey. I’d rather not. Anyway, since when can they tell us where to eat? Bear-T’nT paying for it?”

Ian shook his head.

“I’d rather do Puccini.”

Ian gave up trying to convince Steve. He’d learn soon enough when the guards came around for him, he reasoned.

When lunch time came around, Ian shadowed Steve until he walked straight out the Embarcadero Building doors.

“Something wrong, Ian?”

“I forgot something. Why don’t you go ahead. I think I have to skip lunch today,” Ian said, starting away. “Hey can you get me a Turkey sandwich with provologne, hold the mustard?” A guard in dark glasses started toward him. He glanced around, but there were no other guards on their way to apprehend Steve. Steve’s long legs carried him away down Drumm Street with the ease of a gazelle.

Later Steve dropped by Ian’s cubicle with a paper bag containing his sandwich. “Thanks, buddy,” Ian hesitated. “Still living in Marin?” he inquired.

“Yeah, why?”

“They’re expecting some winds this evening, no?”

“Yeah, thanks for reminding me. I’d better move the begonias off the deck railing when I get home tonight. Veronica will cry if the pot she made breaks…”

“You’re going right home tonight?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Nothing. I’m working late’s all.”

Ian repaid Steve for the sandwich and absorbed himself in his work. His heart sank. Apparently, he had mistaken Steve’s identity. He stared at the pile of work before him. He never seemed to be able to keep up now. He glanced around at his co-workers. His closest friends had been replaced. He wondered whether they had also been arrested. Now there were so few colleagues to whom he could relate, really. In fact, the opposite, increasingly there were more unpleasant exchanges among him and the rest.

That evening, Ian strained to see the man he was certain was Steve inside his cell. He only saw the top of his head, for the man was mostly sitting this evening, probably in front of the screen. At last, the lights in the mystery cell went out and Ian was left lying alone on his cot with his thoughts. He was flooded with memories.

As the months had worn on to become almost another year, Ian had became more convinced of his own guilt and resigned to the consequences of his crime. With less of the puzzle to solve, more of his thoughts had become occupied with the memories of his life outside of the cell.

The next day, the burden of these memories nearly broke his spirit. In the rooftop courtyard during the exercise period, the air was chilly, the asphalt wet with a recent rain. The weak sunlight through the snowy clouds felt so good on his cheek, the smell of the rain on the patches of gold and green grass. At the periphery of the yard, some bamboo rustled in the wind. Ian bumped into the branch of a tall willow, which dumped water on him as he passed by. It was dusk and the cheerful chatter of birds and soothing sound of water dripping from a faucet into a barrel of water reminded him of the sound of his fountain from his balcony back home.

He missed philosophizing with his buddies, Clif, Jesse and Eric. When would he ever sit on that back bedroom balcony again listening to Eric spin his stories? He had taken a photograph of the trio in the weak fall late-afternoon sun, enveloped in the lava red and orange embers of the Chinese maples, their fire echoed in the red geraniums in the flowerboxes and pink impatience. Hopscotch for the eyes. That afternoon, the sky above the crimson leaves had been a piercing autumnal blue. The setting sun caught the trunk of the pine three levels below in the garden, and had turned the fern and bamboo an iridescent yellow-green. The cherub hiding under the rose arbor glowed with celestial light.

Above, on the patio, lavender impatience framed the Italian fountain, the water falling in little tears down the three levels of shells reminiscent of Boticelli’s Venus. Ian remembered being undecided about where to sit with his friends that afternoon, whether at the marble table or on the stone bench at the garden’s foot, watching the finches bathing their yellow chests in the fountain next to the angel or the squirrels forage for the nuts Ian had scattered earlier. They had decided upon the balcony, with the breeze massaging their cheeks and the sound of the bamboo rustling in the breeze and fountain trickling directly below. He remembered feeling drugged.

He recalled all this with longing that seemed unbearable and began to sob.

Several mornings later, Ian noticed Steve show up with a knick from shaving. He slaved diligently at his desk, trying to speed up time to go back to the cell, where he’d be able to see if the new inmate also had a bandage on his chin.

Ian left work early on an excuse to make sure he arrived before the Steve look-a-like.

Eventually the man entered. Ian craned his neck. There it was! There was no question that the two men were one and the same.

The following day at work, Ian cornered Steve by the coffee machine. “So why’d they move your cell?”

“I didn’t move cubicles,” Steve replied, stirring some white waxy powder in his coffee.

“Not cubicles. Jail cells.”

“What?”

“Jail cells.” Ian crossed his arms and looked Steve straight in the eye. “We’re in jail together.”

“What’s going on. I thought you loved your job!” Steve looked concerned.

“Steve, you don’t have to hide the fact. I go back to a cell each night too, dude!”

“I’m happy about my home life. Forgive me for saying so, bro, but sounds like you’re depressed.”

“Really, Steve, you don’t have to be ashamed that I know. We’re both in jail together. Your cell is right across from mine. Haven’t you noticed?”

Steve put down his mug on the light laminate table. “We’ve had this conversation before, bro. I think I’ve said this to you before, but maybe you’ll really act on it now. Bear-T’nT offers counseling and other help for people in crisis. I’d be happy to get you the number,”

“No wait!” Ian called out, but it was too late, Steve had already approached Tracy for the hotline number.

Ian slammed his fist down on the table and walked back to his cubicle.

By the time Steve approached him with the hotline number after lunch, Ian had cooled off. He had spent the break at his cubicle, picking at the Caesar from the Atrium restaurant next door, contemplating Steve’s theory about losing his mind. Of course he was. No sane person would think they were living in a jail and going to work every day. He was obviously psychotic, like some of the homeless people he’d seen who heard voices and saw things that weren’t really there. Ian barely had the strength to thank Steve for the number. As soon as his colleague walked away, Ian put his heads in his hands. Tears came, in spite of the will to suppress them. He punched in the numbers on the slip of paper.

“I’m cracking up. I’m cracking up,” he whispered into the phone.

VIII.

Ian’s operation was scheduled for the following month. He anticipated this time with hope; something had gone terribly wrong in his brain and nothing was making sense anymore. At work he searched for internet articles on the subject of brain damage and memory loss and the findings restored in him much optimism. In turn, his coworkers seemed more cheerful toward him.

The operation went well; the hospital workers were kind and Ian was grateful for the time to rest without thinking of anything in particular. As usual, he missed his devices, but soon grew to appreciate the luxury of being able to laze in bed and read, watch the screen and escape on the Bear-T’nT Vicadin they gave him for the pain.

His first day back at work did not go as smoothly. To begin with, Matilda was sitting at his cubicle. Tracy came running over to escort him to his new spot.

“Matilda convinced Mr. White that it would lessen the distractions, and he agreed because of your health! So now you have the cubicle you wanted!” Tracy beamed.

Ian furiously took a seat at the corner cubicle and stared at the joining walls. His terrible headache left him too weak to react and instead, he summonsed his energy to attack the mountain of work on his desk. The only bright side was that now, perhaps because they had taken his primo view, or perhaps because news had circulated about his illness, everyone was treating him as nicely as they used to in the old days, before his incarceration.

At night, back in his cell, the good news was that the screen finally worked. His headache left him with little energy for anything else. The aqua-colored images of Lake Sirmione in Italy framed by the arches of some ruins entwined in bougainvillea were making him drowse as they evoked memories of his own journey there, until he caught sight of Barb in the next travel episode. The program’s focus was San Francisco and after a ride in a cable car, the camera stopped at Union Square and drifted up the Macy’s façade to the Cheesecake factory. There was Barb, having lunch with a good looking blond fellow in mirrored sun glasses. And she was wearing the shirt Ian loved so!

“How about that! Barb on the screen!” Ian said aloud. He wanted to call her, but his phone privileges had obviously been taken. Barb smiled, as though at Ian and offered him a chair. Ian sat up on the edge of his cot.

“How have you been?” Barb flicked her blonde hair behind her shoulder and smiled again at him, waiting for an answer.

“Barb!” Ian said aloud.

“Mmmm hmmmm,” Barb said, cocking her head coquettishly to the side and resting her cleft chin on her knuckle as though listening. “What else have you been up to?” she said after a while.

Ian peered at a cell in which he could see the top of a male’s head engaged in a conversation with the talking heads on his interactive set. That’s crazy, he thought to himself. It just looks as though Barb’s talking to me; it’s not real after all.

“Terrible! Barb, Terrible!” he shouted at the set. “I’m being held in jail without any evidence against me! Get me out of here!”

At once he felt terrible for lying to her, for he had already begun to come to terms with his own guilt.

“That’s nice,” Barb flicked her hair, which had fallen over one of her eyes, to the other side of her head, creating a breaking wave of golden hair.

She got a job working for the station? Ian puzzled. No. She’s just caught in a reality show.

Ian noticed a guard without dark glasses pass by his cell. They made eye contact for an instant, in the gap of the bars. The guard quickly turned away, as though embarrassed for having invaded Ian’s privacy—quite different behavior than the guards with the glasses who would stare right through the walls at Ian, if they could.

The cable car proceeded on a tour of North Beach, including Puccini. The reality camera dipped and rose with the slope of the San Francisco hills, giving the viewer the feeling that they were right on the cable car, enjoying the tour first hand. Ian was excited to see Thelma and Dolores on the screen. He was so involved, he stood and waved to them, before realizing they could not see him. The conductor rang the bell and they proceeded down Columbus to the Embarcadero, admired the clock tower at the Ferry Building fashioned after a Spanish tower, then doubled back toward Fisherman’s Wharf, where the camera took viewers onto the Tiburon Ferry.

Ian enjoyed the slow ride out of the San Francisco Harbor, then the speed up on the open waters. He unrolled his shirt sleeves and buttoned his top button, bracing himself for the cold. He could almost feel the foam on his face, taste the salt on his lips. For a good twenty minutes, Ian felt as though he were right aboard the ferry. Maybe this is where things went wrong, he thought to himself. I’m going to get back on and continue the ride home—“

The ferry stopped and everyone, including Ian, disembarked onto the dock in front of Guaymas restaurant.

The blonde narrator of the reality show stepped off the boat and removed his sun glasses. “And now we’ll take a stroll along Main street and historic Arc Row,” he said. After a tour of the elegant open air Mexican restaurant patio overlooking the water, the camera paused to look in the window of the Candy Store on Main Street. Toy trains hauled candy around Sugar Mountain and a neighborhood built of candy and gingerbread houses.

Ian was thoroughly absorbed. I’m going home! he beamed inwardly. He spotted the familiar brick walk, then the stairs leading up to his house. He opened the door, and made his way to his terrace. Everything was just as he left it; perfectly neat and clean as well. Elsa must have come yesterday, he thought to himself as he made his way to the deck. The view was stunning. How he had missed it. Only helping themselves to his marble deck table, and sunning themselves on his patio furniture, were four absolute strangers. A very stacked brunette with long wavy hair adjusted her recliner, then took the hand of her well-built bronzed blonde husband, while an elderly couple talked to the man Ian had just seen narrating the show, who had just joined them at the table.

Damn it! Ian stood and slammed his fist into the wall. They’ve taken my apartment! Ian sank back down into his cot, took his head in his hands and shook it, back and forth. What did I expect while I was here? He began to sob. He had lived the life most people would envy; the quintessential American Dream half the world killed and died for; he’d held the whole world in his palm at one time and somehow had allowed it to slip through his fingers…. “Jerk! Fool!” he cried. “How could you be so stupid!”

He had had such talent, such promise. If only he hadn’t been so selfish and had tuned in a little more to other points of view. Was that it? Or was it that he had tuned those points of view out in order to be better liked? As a child, Ian had joined his friends in calling Mexican-Americans racial epithets so that he would not be confused with one of them, as he sometimes was in the summer, when he tanned.

“What’re you, siding with the hippies and cooks?” he could hear Steve saying when Ian winced at the photographs from the law suit against Bear-T’nT.

Had it been cowardice or ignorance? he chastised himself. If only he had stayed a little more alert, and better informed. Instead, his eyes always glazed over whenever figures and statistics were rattled off on the screen. If he had only paid a little more attention to the criticisms of his company perhaps he’d still be sitting on his patio instead of that family. The real thing. Not watching his life flash before him on the screen.

Suddenly, he noticed a grey-haired guard with a mustache and black leather boots standing very close to his cell, observing him. Probably getting off on his misery, he thought, like one of the vultures that preyed on Tantalus’ liver.

“Cruel and unusual punishment is illegal!” he yelled at him. But the guard didn’t as much as blink.

“How long have you lived in your beautiful home?” the narrator was asking the elderly couple.

“Almost thirty, no, Martha? Right?”

The man looked very familiar to Ian.

“Thirty next month!” she said, revealing a mouth full of implants and gold bridges. “Just before Jacob was born.” Her son turned from his fiancée to smile at his mother.

“Liars!” Ian shouted. “You have some nerve to just bury my history and legal right to my house like that! Liars!”

Ian fought the treadmill over to the bars. “Enough! I need a lawyer!” The guard reached for his blood-boiler. He seemed to be talking into his wire. Ian backed up on the treadmill, falling backward on his cot.

The camera zoomed in on the deed. Ian made a mental note of the year, added thirty to it and arrived at the current date.

It’s a forgery is all, he thought, enraged.

The flat-top guard with square-rimmed dark glasses appeared and said something to the first.

The camera panned back to what the announcer said was older footage of the family, fifteen years prior in their home, focused on the elderly man seated at Ian’s desk in his bedroom, looking over his photographs.

This was clearly Ian’s secretary, just small enough to fit inside the nook by the French doors. How Ian missed sitting there with the French doors open to the balcony, listening to the water trickling from the fountains enveloped in the fragile green leaves of the Chinese maples.

This had been where Ian had liked to do the more creative, intimate work on his photographs. This had also been where he had brainstormed the slogan and had combined his photos for the ad which helped Bear-T’nT launch the campaign leading to the takeover of most of the pharmaceutical market, he recalled with a mixture of old pride and new shame. His shares in the company had soared, allowing him to consider retiring within the next decade. And now? he thought sadly.

He continued watching the footage of the man at Ian’s desk, examining what appeared to be Ian’s photographs. The man and his family looked fifteen years younger—something stage make-up could have solved. All of the footage could have been fabricated, except for one glaring fact. Ian had seen this man and his teenager, before and the more he thought about it, the more he was certain that he had seen all this footage before as well, many years ago, before he moved into the Tiburon house. He knew this because he recalled watching the footage and wishing he were that man living in that house and being grateful that his wish had been fulfilled once he moved in.

Ian experienced a chilling sensation at the nape of his neck. His arms broke out in goose flesh.

This is how I learned about Tiburon in the first place. I know that man, that family has lived there a long time. I’ve always known it. Ian was baffled. How could this be?

Well, he thought, suppose I wasn’t living in that house, where would I have been living?

The chilling sensation overcame his entire body. It was an awful sensation, like falling off a cliff into an endless abyss.

Ian battled his way back to the bars and peered at the other inmates. They spent most of their time at work or interacting with their screen shows. Yet take a worker like Steve. He was in jail, yet claimed to be leading his regular life in Marin. Was this a nut house, or—an idea struck him. What if something really creepy was going on. Steve didn’t believe he was in jail; he thought he lived in Marin. Maybe Ian had been in jail as well, thinking he had been living in Tiburon all the while.

“Hey, Sirs!” he walked up to the guards. “You could at least be so kind as to tell me how long I’ve been here, couldn’t you? I mean, even if you can’t tell me why. How many years? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty?”

The older guy looked at Flat-Top. “This guy gets on my nerves,” he said.

Flat-Top mumbled something into the older one’s ear. The older one shrugged and shook his head.

“You’re going to get yourself into trouble with those sorts of questions,” Flat Top told Ian.

“Why?” Ian asked.

Flat Top rocked back and forth on his heels, hands on his gun belt. “Think you know why.”

Told you this guy gets on my nerves. It takes a certain kind to—-” the older guard was shaking his head in disdain. They deserve—” Suddenly, he lit up like a devilish child about to lop off a mouse’s tail. “Do you really want to know?”

“Tell me!” Ian demanded.

“You’ll regret it, but okay. … Let’s see, I was hired fourteen years ago, or was it 15, Derek? Oh, right you weren’t here. But you,” the guard pointed at Ian, “came the year after I did.”

“I knew it!” Ian spun around. “What on earth did I do?”

“You tell us. The fact that you’re in denial of such a terrible—That’s a crime in itself!“ the older guard was yelling.

Ian took the treadmill back to his cot and sat down, shaking his head.

“You’re just trying to make me go nuts, aren’t you?”

Both guards stared at him, stone faced.

“This is a nut house, isn’t it? I’m in a nut house. Why won’t you ever tell me? This is a nut house, isn’t it?” Ian inquired.

Flat-Top’s face finally showed some emotion. He laughed. “Absolutely. Folks have to be sick in the head to end up here.”

IX.

At work, Ian had little time to dwell on the feelings of self loathing stirred up by the guards, nor to ponder the philosophical questions they posited. The bright side of staying so busy was that it also minimized the unpleasant interactions with his colleagues. If he allowed himself any time to think of personal matters, he’d try to conjure excuses to talk to Robin, whose cubicle was now at the opposite end. He was no longer near Tracy and people didn’t pass him very often anymore. Robin seemed to pick up the cue, because whenever he got up and idly made his way to the coffee maker, she’d be there shortly thereafter. This cheered him immensely.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” he told her one late afternoon. “How’s it going?”

“As well as can be expected. You?”

“Oh, I just found out I’ve been in jail since I was nineteen, not much else.”

“You been here that long?”

“Not here. It’s the home life.”

“Wife and kids that bad?”

“Single.”

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Robin said through her teeth, flashing a flirtatious sideways smile before heading back to her cubicle.

As the days went by, Robin didn’t seem put off by his increasingly stranger remarks. Ian found himself thinking about her incessantly—that is, when he was not watching the screen or obsessing about his Tiburon home, previous life and the plausibility of returning to it.

There were three likely possibilities.

Scenario one: he was nuts. Along with Steve. If not, what had been the point of the operation? Just headaches? Steve and he had cracked up from the pressures of work. Only Ian always envied Steve’s relaxed work pace. But maybe he had a false impression. They had both cracked up and Ian’s mother had consented to his admission in this low security nut house and wanted to make sure he’d make his house payments by not losing his job. Only his mother was too preoccupied with his happiness to do something this deceitful without coming to see him. And why had she not visited? Something must have happened to her. This scenario didn’t make sense, since surely his mother would have visited. Unless it was forbidden. Maybe she didn’t know. It was just a nut house for workers of Bear-T’nT, since so many cracked up. Then wouldn’t he be able to sue?

Only he didn’t feel like he was nuts. Wouldn’t he notice?

Scenario two: He was not in a nut house, but in jail. Of course he was in jail. He grabbled hold of the bars. The problem was for what and how long?

In the second scenario, a family had taken possession of his home and the government was involved in a cover-up. For whatever reason, the state was collaborating to drive him insane with the help of the guards, perhaps so they could lay claim to his terribly-appreciated home with more legitimacy, though wouldn’t it revert to his mother? How could they get away with this? What was the motive? He was just a nice, successful guy. Or possibly an accomplice to mass murder. But then so were the government officials; why go after him? Unless there was a conflict of interest between someone in office and Bear-T’nT. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Scenario three—and this was the one which most intrigued him. The guards were not playing a sadistic prank. He really had been in jail thirteen of his thirty-two years. He had never lived in his Tiburon home; it belonged to the family he had seen prior footage of living in it. But he had memories of living in his Tiburon house all those years…

At this point in his reasoning, he’d flip on the screen. He realized he now watched it with the frequency of the other inmates. He’d stay up late, pouring though the programs, as if they would offer him more clues to his existence. He was barraged with images of his previous life; programs set at Café Sarafornia in Calistoga; the dreamlike coves of Majorca’s Calo Vicente; Paris, Florence and Rome, Mykinos, Paros, Corfu and Athens; Quintana Roo; pink flamingos at Casino de la Selva; the pink jeeps winding down pink paths to the beach with pink shells at Hotel Las Brisas in Acapulco where he’d wake to sweet bread, coffee and pink hibiscus strewn in his private pool; Pink Las Rosas in Baja; the Pink Montecarlo Hotel in Mexico City, Hotel Lagunitas in Yelapa with its artificial aqua lagoon pool overlooking the beach—. It seemed as though the screen was playing a tribute to the life of Ian W—. Or was it merely a concerted attempt at his psychological torture?

“Ohhhhh! How bout that shot!” Ian recognized Steve’s excited voice across the chasm. He was absorbed in a game of interactive golf on the screen. Steve had marched home from work with the other commuting inmates, who mostly interacted with their sets or electronic devices. Countless times, Ian had felt such pity for the other prisoners: their lives consisted of nothing but work and interactive screens, work and mobiles and the screen, work and b-tabs or listening devices, work and e-pads and the screen, work and the screen, the screen, the screen, the screen, then work again and now he was just one more of them.

Steve insisted at work that he still lived in Marin, but this was clearly Steve in jail. Which is why he’s in a nut house, Ian thought. This is a nut house.

For hours, Ian would pace back and forth on the treadmill or up and down the stair-mastser obsessing about his future, hands riffling his head, making his hair greasier than it need be by morning, Would he ever recover his sanity? And why did the asylum look like a jail? Was it a prison for the criminally insane? Had he been responsible for more deaths than he admitted working for Bear-T’nT?—actually killed people without acknowledging this fact, like a sociopath.

Maybe that’s what it was. He couldn’t feel remorse or guilt for his crimes because he didn’t admit to himself that he had committed them. Or was that not a sociopath? It was so darn difficult to talk to any of the guards or staff or whatever they were. Wardens, who was he kidding? Who was he kidding about the bars?

At this point in his internal monologue, he’d convince himself he were in jail again. But that led to the problem of pinpointing the reason for his incarceration.

This obsessing was the worst on weekends, when Ian had not much else to do. The work week was kinder.

After much observation of Steve at work, the nut house hypothesis seemed less plausible. Instead Ian began to modify his third hypothesis slightly. He had come to the conclusion that nothing else about Steve seemed unstable. Just his claim about his living situation. Which was Ian’s problem if the Tiburon deed on the screen were not a fake. True, they could be in a nut house for this very reason, only this did not explain the bars and jail-like aspect of their imprisonment.

We both have in common that we thought we were living in idyllic situations but were really in jail, Ian tried to comprehend. But where do our memories of our idyllic lives come from?

One Friday after a work reception celebrating a successful new campaign, during which Ian made sure to polish off the equivalent of three quarters of a bottle of champagne, the answer came to him. It had been over year that he had not been allowed a drink and the alcohol went straight to his head.

Once home, he began to long for company, especially Robin’s. He stood at his bars and called out to Steve, but Steve was busy on his MEphone. He must have had it fixed, because when Ian had tried to borrow it at work, it had been broken. Ian didn’t understand why Steve was allowed to keep his.

Ian felt a pang of longing for his old MEphone.

Maybe Steve’s didn’t really work. Maybe it was an illusion, like Steve’s life in Marin.

“Steve, dude!” He yelled again.

We’re so isolated here, Ian thought. Not that he spent much time after work with people in Tiburon. He mostly went to work and puttered around alone at night as well. But in a situation like this, he could have called people before—at least left a long rambling message or text or blip and felt better.

As usual, when he began feeling lonely, angry or frustrated, Ian flicked on the tube. This time, the program focus was a stay at Rio Villa resort in the Russian River, ironically the last vacation he had taken before his imprisonment. He stood and glanced at the other inmates. What if our memories come from our screens somehow, his drunken mind mused.

Absurd. His last vacation to Rio Villa had been so real. He could recall being seated on the patio shaded by the lovely pastel lavender and aqua umbrellas, the gurgle of a fountain behind him and the river framed by graceful tendrils of the aspen and willow blowing in the breeze. How could he have imagined everything so vividly from screen images?

The screen focused on a child smelling honeysuckle hanging down from one of the balconies. We stayed in that room! He thought. Only he didn’t remember the scent of the honeysuckle.

“Say I’ve been in jail thirteen years. Then my memories of the outside would have only taken place in the years I had on the outside before I was nineteen,” Ian said aloud, to an imaginary listener. “If I were always in jail, I never would have lived in Tiburon. ”

Yet, oddly, the only scents he seemed to be able to recall were the roses and jasmine in his Tiburon garden. This could have also been memories from his teenage job in the flower store before he was nineteen. There was no honeysuckle. He tried to recall other smells—chocolate, for example—and began to panic.

His mind returned to his Río Villa vacation. It had been so tangible. He could see the redwoods on the far bank and colonial-style pale yellow clapboard houses with white picket fences. One of the guests had been playing guitar on the lawn, the music gently sailing in and out on the wind. After three full days there, he had developed a way of life, as though this were his summer villa, the river, his back yard. He remembered taking his breakfast on the patio under the umbrella until it became too hot, then the little hop, skip and jump down to the beach, relaxing in the sun, then sitting in the low river, a shower of sunlight playing on the surface, the little minnows darting around at the bank and his feeding Cheerios to the ducks. He recalled gazing upstream at the river winding its way down from the mountains where there was nothing but redwoods… staring at that pristine view all the way back to Neolithic consciousness… the ripples taking him back to the lazy, endless summer days of childhood.

No doubt that it was a genuine memory. How could he have been in jail?

He remembered the feel of water evaporating from his skin in the sunlight. The temperature of the water was— He traced his steps to the water. Imagined swimming to the other bank. The water was—- warm. It had no temperature because it felt like his own skin. Or had it been icy? It would have had to have been cold in the mountains, he realized. Would one necessarily remember the temperature of the water?

Ian turned off the screen and sat on his cot, riffling his hair with his fingers. His thoughts raced to the temperature of the three pools at the Calistoga Village Inn in the summer. All he could remember were their heavenly color, the hue shifting from green aqua to a more heavenly neon Caribbean aqua as the water deepened. The jaccuzzi was certainly hot, but he couldn’t remember where the jets were, nor their feel, which was odd. He could remember the warm breeze on his skin, the feel of evaporating water as he lazed in the sun, but this could also have been the open air locker in the jail where the sun and wind came in on a few rare hot days.

At Calistoga, there was a long row of white tables along side the two pools, under an an arbor heavy with grape vines and wisteria. The pools were surrounded by tall mountains full of redwoods. On the other side of the more shallow wading pool, the one which was greener, was a little wooden house in which the Jacuzzi stood. Yes, it had been hotter than his skin, but the pool? Cool, and he remembered seeing his shadow as he swam, feeling free, as though he were flying. He had stayed under it seemed indefinitely. And this is when the realization knocked him down onto his bed like a brick.

He had never learned to swim. He had grown up with constant admonitions from his mother about this fact. And he had no recollection whatsoever of any lessons ever rectifying the situation.

He decided to think of a more recent memory. The heat wave the weekend before his imprisonment. He had spent an afternoon with Eric at at McKnee’s Ranch beach. He remembered lying on his fluffy Egyptian towel on the coarse grains of primo sand and looking at the cotton wisps of fog clouds teasing out the sun… the glitter on the piercing blue-green grey water, water the color of Robin’s eyes.

Because the beach was tucked into Devil’s slide, it was forgotten by rangers and time and the hoards. It was also hidden from the fog bank. It reminded Ian of a secluded beach he once stumbled upon in the French Riviera… yet the cliffs were as dramatic as those he had once seen in Rabat, Morocco. A beach to dream, imagine… Everything always seemed alright there.

He remembered having removed his shoes, but again, couldn’t remember being chilled by what must have been very cold water. Nor if the coarse white sand had clung to his feet and clothes, or if it had easily been shaken off. Had they brought a lunch? The more he probed into his memories, the more he realized he didn’t know.

He had been living his life half asleep without really being aware of the details.

“Wait a minute!” he protested aloud. He thought about his morning at work the week before the beach. To his horror, could recall everything about it, from the bitter black coffee, to the trouble he had untangling paperclips that morning. That settled it.

X.

Ian never slept that night. He poured through all his memories for evidence that they were not fabricated—by some combination of the screen and his childhood memories, most likely—but he found little. Steve and he and the other inmates were imprisoned with fabricated memories of a life they had never lived.

In the morning, not a guard was in sight as Ian boarded the elevator alone. They were giving him more and more independence again, like Steve. He hardly ever saw any guards in dark glasses. Ian laughed aloud.

It’s because I’m watching the screen so much! Ever since I came back from the hospital.

A chill surged under the surface of his skin, raising the flesh. What then, had they attempted to do in the hospital? Did inmates have implants installed? If so, his obviously malfunctioned. That could have explained the headache of his first day in prison. Perhaps it was after a failed operation. Nothing had happened on the ferry. He had never been on the ferry. Just dreamed it somehow. Something in the implant projected this false reality. He had been living in the jail for quite some time and had merely woken up there by accident.

As he marched off the elevator with the rest of the inmates, off to their jobs somewhere else in the building, he realized that he used to be under the illusion of a long journey home to Tiburon every night. How did this work if he was just going upstairs? And how could Steve maintain his illusion. Clearly he was lucid at work; but once outside the office doors—of course, that was where the illusion took place.

Ian had once read about experiments conducted with REM sleep: subjects could even perform complicated tasks like preparing a meal or driving a car while sleepwalking and dreaming that they were somewhere else. They didn’t appear to be sleeping, they just seemed robot-like. Like commuters on the BART or walking down Montgomery, Ian thought.

Something must have triggered the workers’ REM sleep as they left work. Sure, Ian would always plug into his tunes. Maybe those wires were what did it. Or the GPS bifocals. If a riffit chip had also been implanted with whatever chip triggered REM, that would account for the consumer purchasing profile triggering advertisements by certain venues as he walked past.

Ian had seen old documentary footage of a time when people wore full GPS glasses that gave the viewer the feeling they were in alternate idyllic places. For some reason, they had fallen out of favor, perhaps with the advent of the sleep chip, Ian realized.

Sometimes after work, Ian thought he was going to Puccini for dinner. Perhaps he did walk there without being in REM, then back to the cell… He’d never know.

Ian looked up from Matilda’s cubicle before proceeding to his own. The inverted Escher-like pyramid architecture of the jail served a purpose. From the cubicles, no cell door or bar was visible. The tinted elevators and special balcony glass projecting white opaqueness prevented workers from seeing that they were really working inside a jail. That’s why the bars were only as high as the balcony line as seen from the lobby!

The workers or inmates or whatever we are, he thought, feel as though we’re the only ones in the whole building. Same goes for the inmates when we’re in our cells. They would not have taken the trouble to hide the fact that we are in jail, Ian thought, if we were in REM sleep during work. Besides, he recalled, REM sleep is triggered by electrical impulses and must be expensive.

That would mean prisoners were not in REM sleep going to lunch. Yet they always came right back to work, so it was not a problem.

At work, Tracy backed away from Ian when she approached with some mail, making him realize he still stank of alcohol. He chewed a few mints and headed to the coffee machine. Within minutes Robin was there. A cleaning technician was vacuuming a coffee spill.

“Our nice lives,” he said, peering at her through bloody eyes, “it’s an illusion, right? We’ve been in jail most our lives, right?” He was barely audible over the noise and too tired to preface what he was saying so as to give her a way out, if what he was saying was indeed crazy. He took a sip of coffee.

Robin nodded.

“Excuse me,” he almost choked on his coffee. “You’re not just humoring me?”

“No. Unfotunately.” Robin smiled and walked away casually.

XI.

Ian began to accept that workers like himself had always been imprisoned, that he had led a life of pure illusion, though he could not understand exactly how this had transpired, nor the motive, nor the perpetrators of such a crime. If he had been jailed for some wrongdoing at Bear-T’nT, then why was he still working at the company and why had they not informed him? It really made no sense, though by now he realized the entire company and its workers had committed more harm than good. But criminalizing folks who were just trying to obtain their slice of the American Pie was just not how the system worked, regardless of the outcomes. Rather, the opposite.

Ian continued to allow the screen to run in his cell in order to deceive the guards, but he now spent most of his free time on his cot, thinking about Robin and his life. He had remembered that shortly before his awakening—what he used to call his recent imprisonment—he had just come up with the concept of “work think,” and was cautioning his co-workers not to engage in it after work, but to enjoy themselves instead. Had this been the beginning of the malfunction of some implant inside him?

As usual, he tried to search out clues in the other inmates or coworkers; signs that there were other inmates who knew they were in jail or coworkers who might be imprisoned like Steve, but who were aware of it. Most of these clues and signs had turned out to be false leads. Except when it came to Robin.

His realizations and almost intolerable isolation caused him to become increasingly depressed. The more depressed he became, the more he put his hopes in Robin, his potential ally. He’d dwell on her sexy slanted smile, almond green eyes, and half swallowed words. She had the cutest, petite ass, what he’d give to… Only ever since their last conversation, she had avoided him. Perhaps she was worried about the guards finding out.

He longed to stroll with her as he had seen so many other lovers do, through the gardens outside the Berkeley University Muse Café. In May, the scattered fog clouds hung like small dreams here and there on the satin blue horizon behind the poplars, now in their full verdant splendor. The grass looked like Eden, with the graceful plum tree’s auburn leaves. He missed sitting behind the institutional museum glass, looking out at the tables with canvas umbrellas and well-groomed grounds. How he hungered for a little walk up through the terraces of the bronze sculpture with Robin, where he would kiss her under the poplars… whether or not it was all illusory.

One day, Ian and Robin had to work late together again to prepare for another ad shoot. When the others were out of ear shot, Robin whispered into Ian’s ear, almost intimately. “Don’t give up before your miracles.”

Ian turned to her and smiled. He was convinced she knew.

“We’ll meet the deadline,” she said aloud, throwing some doubt on his certainty.

XII.

Ian cleaved to his memories more than ever now, as though not to do so would be to slowly erode them for ever. Whether or not they were real, they were all he had; to lose them was to lose his identity beyond that of a prisoner.

He missed even the cold rain now, the winter clinging to Bay Area skies and young trees that suddenly would shake their water onto heads and bare necks if one happened to bump them getting into cars. The ground would be soaked, cloaked in a delicate green, mud clinging to the soles of shoes, white calla lilies and azaleas fighting desperately to stand tall under the weight of so much water.

In his old life, his mirage life, his garden was lovely but too chilly to admire for more than a few minutes. Rainy winter days, he would head across the Bridge to the Montclair Egg Shop; a breakfast place that was all bricks and had trains running around a track on the walls, acrobats cycling on a tight rope and Henry Thoreau quotes all over the slanted ceilings.

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”

It had been started by an eccentric dreamer and sold to a cook named Miguel Barrón.

The place must have existed, he realized; it must have been featured on the tele, but he likely never set foot inside.

How he would have loved to make love to Robin on his bed overlooking the Bay, then drive to the Egg shop for breakfast the next morning or at least live the illusion.

And what about February in the City? It was painfully beautiful, as he remembered it now, with the cherry and plum trees looking so dramatic against the newly fixed up Victorians. Their trim and molding so fastidiously painted in gold like historical landmarks. There would be the slow pace of the elderly Chinese going to market in China town, that distinctly San Francisco smell of the asphalt after the rain—or was that only the distinct smell of the jail yard that he had grown to love?

When would he ever see the life he cherished so much again?—or, rather, visit his haunts for the first time, since these were not real memories, the water shaken on his head just the willow in the jail yard. When would he have illusions again, then? He missed his illusions! He wanted to share his illusions with Robin.

He was flooded with sadness at the realization of the impossibility of the fulfillment of his desires, of never seeing his favorite spots again, or of ever having seen them to begin with. All this confused him terribly.

Yet, what difference did it really make? How happy he had been regardless. Did it really make any difference whether he’d been sitting in a jail cell the whole time?

As the days wore on, the only thing Ian wanted more desperately than to make love to Robin was to know why the illusions had stopped and to make them start up again. What drug had they been withholding?

Sometimes Ian would stand shaking the bars, calling out, “I give up. I want the drug. I want the drug back.” Sometimes he’d do this until he was hoarse; at other times he’d cry.

He tried to sleep and found that increasingly, he could not. He tried to imagine bringing Robin into his former illusory life. But this only led to endless tossing and turning.

One early evening, mercifully, he fell asleep in a field he had never seen before, next to Robin. Sometime before he entered the dream state, he had realized it didn’t matter where they were.

I’d give it all up, my old life, all of it, to sleep with her, he laughed to himself. We could build our own new reality.

XIII.

Six weeks after Robin and Ian worked late together, he found an envelope on his desk, marked “urgent.” Inside, was a piece of toilet paper with black felt tip ink scrawled on it:

“YOU’RE RIGHT, BUT WE HAVE TO BE CAREFUL.”

Ian lit up. He wadded up the paper, stuck it in his pocket and headed straight for the restroom. Robin passed him on the way to water cooler. She nodded as she saw him walk through the swinging door and head for the john.

He was determined to have lunch with her and waited for the opportunity to ask her. For some reason their paths did not cross over the next few days. Ian made repeated trips to the coffee machine in vain.

Two days later, at long last, he caught her at the coffee machine.

“Thought you quit coffee.”

“Almost. I wish they had decaf. But sometimes one needs a drug to cope, no?” She looked at him coquettishly.

He took the opportunity to ask her out to lunch.

She declined, taking all the buoyancy out of his step again.

The next day, when he arrived at work, there was another envelope marked “Urgent.” Inside was more toilet paper with black letters: “WE’RE BEING WATCHED. WAIT FOR THE CONFERENCE.”

That evening, on his way out of the office, Ian glanced around the tremendous lobby, searching for a place where he and Robin might converse in private before the conference. Robin’s note seemed to confirm Ian’s suspicions about her unwillingness to talk in the Embarcadero Building restaurant. If the entire structure was a covert prison, there was obviously no privacy anywhere within its walls, Ian realized glancing furtively from the restrooms near the far window overlooking the Ferry Building, back toward the entrance.

The conference was set for late August in Half Moon Bay. About a week prior, Ian and Robin managed to leave work simultaneously.

“Mind if we step over to the fountain?” Ian hoped the sound of the water would make their conversation difficult to discern.

“Did you say you live in the same kind of studio I do?”

Robin let a chuckle escape from the side of her smile and nodded.

“How many?—“

“I should get going,” Robin cut him off.

“Wait!” Ian caught her shoulder. She spun around and looked up at him. They stood this way for a few seconds too long.

Ian cleared his throat. “I can’t see them sending us to the conference—“

“They have to. The others wouldn’t understand if we protested. Last time they just gave me a special room with special attention. One thing. Bring swim trunks to the first session. They sell them downstairs in the tourist boutique. Trust me.”

Ian was startled when Tracy gave him his room assignment at the Beach Boutique Hotel: a private two-room suite overlooking the sea. He could feel excitement bubbling up, bursting out of the top of his head.

“Why such a nice room?”

Tracy shrugged and snapped her gum. “You tell me! Somebody likes your performance.”

The hotel was packed with white collar Bear-T’nT employees. The first day of the conference, everyone was kept busy for nine hours listening to a consultant blather on about a new strategic plan. Food was catered and workers ate both lunch and an early supper on their laps, without moving from their seat. The nine hour stretch was excruciating for Ian without a sign of Robin, through the rows of heads and not so much as a MEphone to distract him from the nonsense. I am, after all, in jail, he kept reminding himself.

After they were released at last from the session at 7:10, he noticed her behind him, at the very back. She waited for him.

“Heading off to change in the restroom?” she smiled with some apprehension.

“Exactly,” Ian assured her.

When they came to a pocket of space in the hallway without anyone else in earshot, Robin grabbed his arm.

“Go straight to the Jacuzzi, not your room, okay?” Robin looked at him intently, then headed for the restroom.

Instead of heading back toward the elevators with the rest of the crowd to fuss with the personal luggage that had been deposited in each of their rooms, Ian approached the front desk to retrieve two towels and a bag to send clothes for cleaning. A guard with red hair approached, staring at him intently though brown eyes. With his red hair and freckles, he looked as though he had just come of drinking age. The guard followed Ian to the restroom, where Ian removed his clothes. The guard was posted outside when he exited. He followed Ian to the Jacuzzi.

The Jacuzzi was situated, like the hotel, atop a cliff, with the ocean steps away, below. Surfers sat like seals in dark wetsuits on their boards, some zigzagging across the six foot waves. To Ian’s relief, two forty-something old women and a graying man were chattering away over the jets. Ian opened the circular gate. The guard put his hand on his blood-curdling gun and patted it. Ian smiled in acknowledgment at the hotel guests, then at the guard. He then removed his clothes, hung them on the gate and stepped boldly onto the first step. He withdrew his foot immediately with a yelp of surprise.

“You must be cold. It’s usually hotter.” the prettier of the two women with long, thick layered brown hair said.

“I just didn’t expect—“ Ian stammered, realizing this was his first encounter with the real thing.

Of course. Prison water wouldn’t be warm. I’ve gotten used to cold showers, he reflected.

The guard entered inside the gate and sat down on one of the lounge chairs.

The heavier of the two women looked at the guard with disapproval, then sank back down below the bubbles. The man noticed his wife’s discomfort.

“Something wrong?” he asked the guard.

The young guard adjusted his hat and cleared his throat. He stepped over the water and stuck in his hand. “Just checking the temperature,” he responded. All three guests stared at him expectantly, until he left the gated area. He took a seat on a bench not too far away, but to Ian’s relief, out of earshot because of the roaring of the water jets.

Ian noticed his ankles and feet had acclimated to the water and lowered himself slowly into the pool.

“Attending a conference?” he asked the male of the group.

“No, no. Thanks for the compliment but I’m retired,” he laughed. “We’re part of a wedding party.—The outcast part,” he snickered at the two women.”

The woman with the thick hair, which had shrunk in size since it became increasingly wet spoke up. “The rest of the group’s staying at the Half Moon Bay Lodge.”

“We procrastinated with the RSVPs,” piped up the heavier woman.

“Good thing,” her husband said under his breath.

“Shut up,” his wife laughed. “They’re a nice bunch!”

Ian was confused by all this. They clearly were not inmates since this was no dream. Was this the real ruling class then?

Ian’s body had acclimated to the new temperature. He reclined his head and wet his hair. Then he sank back into a jet, inviting it to work his knotted shoulder muscles as he took in the extraordinary view beyond the bars of the gate. At first these bars irritated him, for he felt once again like a caged animal.

Eventually, Ian stood and allowed himself to see beyond the bars. The low lying pink and peach puffs of fog had caught fire over the horizon as a swollen sun sank into them, its embers lighting the water. The surfers sat still on their boards staring reverently at the tangerine orb as it sank. The three other guests had fallen silent as well as they admired the vanishing globe. Ian’s eyes followed a boogie-boarder in a red suit with long hair and what appeared to be breasts kneeboarding across a wave.

“Aahhhhhhh” he exhaled as he sank down again into the water, marveling at the new sensation. He couldn’t remember anything else feeling that good. Except making love, he smiled to himself. Certainly that hadn’t been an illusion. Inmates had to be able to procreate or the work force would die out.

Ian thought of Robin. He imagined inviting her into his luxurious room, kissing her on the edge of the bed, helping her to remove her clothes, then tumbling back with her, the windows open to the roar of the waves just beyond. He looked over at the guard, still staring intently at him and the feeling that was growing between his thighs subsided.

He glanced around for Robin and wondered if she had encountered an obstacle. It was then that he noticed a bouquet of flowers on the ground just outside the gate, their petals seemingly alive with the colors of the setting sun. He leapt out of the Jacuzzi, startling the guard, who also stood and touched his gun. The male of the trio startled and stared at the guard. “Trigger happy, isn’t he?” he smirked at Ian. “It’s okay, that belongs to our party,” the man spoke out. Ian withdrew the hand he had begun to reach under the gate toward the bouquet. “Son, go ahead. That was a bride’s maid bouquet we brought back to give away, but our friend’s off shift now.” He looked at his wife.

“Yeah, she won’t be back at work until they’re wilted! Please take it!” his wife chimed, echoed by her friend.

“Thank you. Really,” Ian said, rescuing the bouquet tied with a wet white satin ribbon.

Ian ran his fingers over the spongy, spiky galactic petals of the five flowers, round as blow fish. Together they looked like frozen fuchsia fireworks or a snowball melting into pastel and hot pinks, a warm hint of sunshine within.

Something about the feel and look of them was unbearably erotic. How he ached to touch Robin, possess her, stroke her, feel her breasts quiver beneath his open palm and tongue.

She appeared as though from his thoughts, tall and sleek in a black bikini with metal rings, the gold light beneath the horizon framing her red and gold hair, reflecting in her sea-green eyes. Ian felt himself turning the same color as one of the dahlias, as though she could read his mind. He adjusted the too-small trunks he had purchased. Fortunately he had positioned himself now so the guard was staring at the back of his head and could not see his expression as he grinned at Robin. She pretended not to acknowledge the guard’s presence as she sat down next to Ian, staring straight ahead.

Ian suppressed his urge to greet Robin, instead playing along with feigned unfamiliarity until Robin made the next move.

“He just got a job in marketing at a subsidiary of Hewlett Bank,” the prettier woman was chattering about her husband to her friends as their eyes glazed over.

Immediately, the guard approached the two. He leaned over, pretending to check the water again, glaring at both inmates.

“Oh, hey, glad you’re still here,” the trio’s male addressed the guard. “Can you go tell them to turn up the temperature of the water?”

“Well I don’t—“ the guard stammered. The three looked at him expectantly. “Be right back,” he said, fingering the gun at his waist, scowling again at the inmates.

Robin stared down at the water, Ian straight ahead at the sea, until the guard disappeared behind the double glass doors.

“Yes!” Robin exclaimed in a low voice once the doors shut, holding her palm up in a high sign, which Ian enthusiastically met in mid air with his. He noticed how strong her arms were; how much like a man’s her biceps were. They both laughed with relief. Ian handed her the flowers.

“Dahlias. How lovely! These two lemon bursts with orange peacock tips—- The colors are so vivid. They look as though they were painted by Frida Kahlo or that Haitian artist whats-his name— Look!

Ian nodded enthusiastically, noticing she was as overwhelmed by the new sensory input as he.

“Jean-Edner Cadet. That’s his name! And this one! Lavender dragon flames! Doesn’t it? And this one! Red and gold butterfly wings.”

“Yes! Yes!” he was laughing. “You’re quite a poet, aren’t you?”

The prettier woman was nattering on about the details of her husband’s job description and marketing schemes. Her friend, in turn felt obliged to interject all the most boring details about selling school and corrections officials on his company’s elementary school text books.

Confident that this chatter along with the jets was preventing anyone from hearing their conversation, Robin leaned her head on Ian’s shoulder and explained in a low voice very quickly:

“The reason we have double rooms is that one is for the guard that is posted inside.”

Ian’s heart slid down the Jacuzzi drain.

Look, he’ll be back any second. “Come.” Robin jumped out of the pool and took something out of her jacket pocket. Ian, stood dripping by her.

“Dry your hands and put this in your towel. You’re going to tether this to the screen in your living area which sends code to your guard’s infrared censor. You won’t need to turn the phone off, since the prison removed our phone and internet privileges. —I did manage to jealbreak the internet connection, though,” Robin smiled parenthetically. “Just tap on Rawtooth, then type in the numbers I typed into the notepad.” Robin hopped back into the Jacuzzi. “He won’t be aware of our actions when I come in.”

Ian stared at the ordinary looking MEphone, then quizzically at Robin. He wrapped the object in his clothes, inside the plastic cleaning bag he had retrieved from the front desk. Shivering, he joined Robin back in the Jacuzzi.

She noticed his brows. “I’m sorry. The censor is implanted behind your guard’s retina. Screens send out different codes corresponding to different groups of users to trigger them into REM at various times,” she explained.

“I knew it was REM. What—”

“REM is the sleep state all the inmates are in which makes us believe we’re leading fulfilled lives. Like what you thought was your life in Tiburon, or Steve, in Marin. We’re really just in our jail cells. But they want us alert at work—“

Ian’s head was bobbing up and down in agreement. He had already figured out most of what she was telling him.

“I knew there was something in there!” Ian tapped his head.

Robin nodded. “But they’ve malfunctioned. Our chips. Because of some way our brains have overridden them. They’ve given up on me after five operations. I’m on high security now. Charlie, who’ll be back any sec, is one of my personal guardians. You’ll meet yours when you get back to your room. I’ll explain more later, when we’re alone.”

“But we can trigger the guards into REM with that too?” Ian sniggered, motioning toward his towel.”

“Kind of,” Robin nodded, grinning. She looked radiant. “After years figuring out how to jailbreak my phone, then the screen, I finally learned how to hack into the screens to find where the user group and user numbers are stored and how to shorten or lengthen their REM sleep cycles. See, our two guards have a certain group number in common. You and I and all our co-workers belong to another group.”

“Sort of like work shifts—“ Ian began to understand.

“Exactly. The number you’ll type in will reprogram the code in the internet screens, which are transmitted simultaneously to the wires, to send them the signal which triggers their REM sleep, as though their shift is over!” Robin was beaming.

“So when I manage to trigger my guard’s REM, your guard will also slip into REM?”

“That’s what I’m hopping,” Robin smiled.

“Wait a minute,” Ian stood up, unable to take much more of the heat from the spa. “If both our guards are triggered by the same screen signals, why do I have to be the one—“

“Practice,” Robin grinned, stepping out of the Jacuzzi, followed by Ian.

“So elsewhere, a hundred more with the same group will—“

“Start to behave strangely,” Robin tried to suppress a laugh, which only made up bubble up like a giddy teenager.

Ian was not laughing. “And if I don’t pull it off?”

“You mean if it works on my guard, not yours?” Composing herself, Robin leaned in closer. “I’ll come over at 9:30 tonight,” she whispered. “Make sure you’re naked. I’ll knock. If your guard is still awake ask him to allow you to put on your robe. That’ll give me a sec to get away. But, if he’s asleep—“

“I’ll come right to the door as is,” Ian laughed!

Robin squeezed his shoulder, then said, “Shhh. Charlie!” She motioned toward the guard as he approached the guests with his news that the water would soon warm up.

“Good,” Robin said, sinking back down into the water.

Ian took the opportunity to leave, the guard scowling at his back as Ian wrapped his towel about his waist and gathered his clothes. The guard patted his gun and sat down again to watch Robin.

XIV.

Ian felt as though he were walking on the moon, strolling the carpeted hallways of the Beach Boutique to his room. Two pretty young girls were working the desk.

“Good evening,” the one with the brunette, curly pig tails welcomed him, glancing at her blonde co-worker. He smiled back his greeting and the girls broke out into self-conscious giggles, perhaps at Ian’s good looks.

Just past the desk, the lobby opened up with the light from the front entry doors. Ian glanced over his shoulder. Right now would be his chance, he thought to himself. He’d be in a better position to help Robin from the outside, he rationalized as he headed straight through the large glass doors.

“Lost?” he heard a woman call out after him as he began to sprint.

He stopped and turned.

A beautiful female guard with a blonde pig-tail had her boiler gun pointed at Ian with subtlety, nodding her head in feigned interest.

“I just wanted to see if—“ he began to explain. “If the ice-machine—“

“ICE machine? As in Immigration and Customs Enforcement?” the woman wrinkled her cute, slightly upturned little nose at him. “It’s in there,” she motioned with her gun.

Ian walked toward the hotel.

“Room 207?”

“Just down the hall, right at the stairs, right at the last corridor. I’ll be happy to show you,” she said, motioning him to keep moving with her gun.

At the door, Ian waved the card he had received from the front desk A little light turned green with a click.

“I’ll take that,” the female guard said, opening the door and snatching the card from his grip.

She motioned him to step inside and closed the door after him. He was greeted by the loud drone of a screen with a ball game in process.

With the female guard on other side of the door, Ian’s reality shifted. In spite of the distraction from the screen, the beauty of the view from the tremendous four pane Bay windows overlooking Half Moon Bay was overwhelming. The middle two panes were actually sliding glass doors leading to a balcony. Jetties sealed out the rough ocean currents. Some sail boats drifted lazily on the sun-swept surface of the water and the silhouettes of some fisherman could be seen casting lines from the long jetty on the left.

From the far right side of his balcony, Ian could see a restaurant perched on the cliff he recognized from the screen as Sam’s Chowder house. The restaurant had the reputation of a luxury resort with various patios and levels overlooking the sea and hillside adorned with fluorescent magenta and cream ice-plant. Diners who had the intention of leaving after lunch might find themselves taking in the sunset from one of the lounge chairs on the outer deck by the fire pits. Wouldn’t it be lovely, he thought, to lounge in one of those deck chairs while working on his photographs, momentarily resting his eyes on the curve of the peninsula and jetty, the calming hum of a fog horn on the horizon and the sound of waves lapping?…. Better still, he thought, what he’d give to go bounding through the incredibly beautiful waves of golden wheat and ice plant, along side the sea, then do nothing more than lie for hours on the sand, staring up at the clouds. Ian exhaled rather loudly, but the sound was covered up by the screen’s volume.

Ian noticed he was standing in a loft which contained a king-size bed with a white feather comforter. His small garment bag had been hung in the closet opposite a bathroom with double sinks, a shower and separate bath tub with view of a large screen inset into the wall at the foot.

Beyond the sleeping quarters lay several stairs leading down to the living room area. Above the stairs, a partition served as both a wall for the living room below and to house an oak desk and bureau in the bedroom area. On top of the oak bureau, to the right, was a tremendous, silent black interactive screen.

Ian’s eyes adjusted to the room, scanning it for signs of life and saw none. On the right of the steps, down below, in the living room area, was a tiny brass stove, refrigerator, oak cabinets, then white fireplace. Directly across from the fireplace was a large coffee table, some comfortable chairs and what, from his vantage point at the desk by the stairs, looked like a long, convertible couch.

Ian was immensely relieved that they had decided to guard him from outside the unit. It was the most luxurious hotel room he could remember entering. And it was real, he thought with some excitement. Ian stood, staring at the sun dancing on the sea as though sparks from a welding iron were perpetually falling upon it. But although the view and accommodations were stunning, Ian thought to himself that in the grand scope of his life, he would not be looking back at this time with fond memories. He wondered what the drop from the balcony was to his freedom, and whether there were guards outside.

But first, he thought, he had to turn off that screen to be able to think clearly. He set his bag of clothes concealing the MEphone Robin had given him on the bed. His eyes scanned the desk area and found the master remote. He shut the screen off and stepped down toward balcony.

“Hello, Ian.”

Ian spun to face the relatively soft male voice that had addressed him. Suddenly, he felt self-conscious in just his trunks and towel. The man sat upright on the far left of the couch; previously hidden from Ian’s view by the room’s partition. He looked to be in his mid-to-late fifties, with coarse streaks of thick grey hair parted on the side. He was lean and tall, with angular long facial features; long chin, a beak of a nose, thin lips. He smile boasted a perfect set of teeth, which contrasted sharply with his red skin, marked by pockmarks and age-spots. His icy cold blue eyes stared directly at Ian’s. There was an unsettling, but casual air of authority about the man, like a bureaucrat in charge of massive lay-offs, or genocide. Perhaps it was the uniform.

“I hear the screen doesn’t do much for you,” he smiled, standing.

“No, no, I was just trying to change channels—” Ian said, leaping up the few stairs in a single bound and fumbling for the remote. “I had no idea I had a roommate—“

“You didn’t think we’d overlook a high security risk, did you?” the guard smirked.

Ian turned the set back on. He reached into a drawer and removed the bundle of neatly folded clothes with the MEphone he was clearly not supposed to utilize inside.

“You don’t mind me showering, do you, bud?”

“Kevin,” the guard said, sitting back down and staring at the game. “Live it up,” he said, his eyes beginning to glaze over.

Ian unzipped his garment bag, pulled out his toiletry bag and lay the fresh clothes on the down comforter on the bed. He glanced at Kevin. He was leaning forward, intently staring at the ball game.

Ian felt for the MEphone. He tapped the Rawtooth on, copied the numbers written in the notepad program and pasted them into the box on the “advanced settings” screen. He aimed the mobile at the screen the guard was watching. Two thin bars of static flickered across the screen, the hue changed momentarily, then reverted back to its normal state. Was it working? Ian satisfied himself that Kevin was too involved with the ball game to notice. He had risen and had begun interacting with the set. Perhaps this is what Robin meant. Ian tapped Rawtooth off. Again, the static flashed across the screen, followed by a barely perceptible, momentary change in hue. The man blinked and sat down. He yawned and began looking about the room.

Ian tapped Rawtooth back on. Static again, hue. Kevin stood once more and slowly began interacting with the screen.

Confidently, Ian headed for the shower. As instructed, after shaving, he wrapped the towel about himself and sat on the bed. It was 8:55. The guard was sitting down with his arm extended on the couch, his head turned as though there were someone next to him. “I told you you’d love this, Michelle,” he said, stroking one of the pillows of the couch. One of the players hit a home run and Kevin stood, “Ooooh! Michelle! Look at that!” he put his hand over his eyes to shield an imaginary sun and strained to see the ball on the screen.

“Michelle?” Ian said. The guard didn’t respond. Ian walked over to him. “Could you introduce me to your wife?”

“Girlfriend!” Kevin beamed. “Oooooh! Just a sec—he sat back down and stared at the screen.”

Ian disappeared back into the bathroom to look for some cologne in the drawers where he had noticed all kinds of goodies including toothpaste, a toothbrush, mouthwash and a razor. He found a blow-dryer and absent-mindedly began styling his hair. It reminded him of the salon by Union Square where he once thought Barb took him when she was getting her hair straightened. What had he been doing there in fact, he wondered. Did the salon even exist? Did Barbi?

He turned off the dryer and returned to the bedroom. He put his feet up on the bed and sank into the fluffy quilt. It felt like clouds under his bare back. He sat up and stared at the water over the partition. From this vantage point, the living room, screen and guard were not visible. Ian allowed his imagination to wander.

All his experiences in hotels probably before this had been fictitious. Or at least derived not from real occurrences, but from a combination of television images and real memories. Yet had he been any the less happy? On the contrary.

But it wasn’t right! he thought to himself. Certainly if we all knew how we were being duped—we’d need a revolution certainly… Then we’d all have the opportunity to eat real food, live in real houses.

He wondered: As a prisoner, he had the illusion of frequenting hotels in exotic places. He lead an idyllic life. Would freedom really be worth the price of giving up all these illusions? Had his life been truly empty, since he had spent most of it in a jail cell? Sure, his job had been fulfilling and he had been content, happy. Even joyful at times. He remembered President Franklin Roosevelt calling for four essential freedoms: hadn’t he enjoyed these? Freedom of worship, freedom from want, certainly. Freedom from fear—at least until now. And until he woke up, he thought he enjoyed freedom of speech and expression. O.K, there was a problem with that now too.

He focused on a fisherman casting a line on one of the jetties. The loud cheering on the television, along with the incessant babble of the announcer and guard were making it impossible to think clearly.

His life. Images of hopping in his neighbor’s yacht at the dock below his house and around the Golden Gate; his 18st birthday party when he was in college and the humorous spread they served of Twinkies, Ho-hoes, Hostess Cupcakes, Spam, Velveta and all sorts of other retro American junk food—only he must have been in jail college the remaining years before he graduated, he realized.

Sitting on the grassy knolls at Dolores Park and taking in the view of San Francisco... True, these memories had all been false. But did it really matter? Wasn’t it more important to have an impression of a nice life, than to have lead a mediocre one?

If the powers that be had found a way to reduce suffering, enhance enjoyment, was it really so terrible to repay them with effortless labor?

The obvious lack of freedom of expression had begun to eat at him. Okay, perhaps he was indeed at liberty to inform others about the way the society was structured with the prisoners living an illusion—but they’d think him a nut. Was this freedom of expression?

And who was benefiting the most from his and all the other inmates’ toiling? Someone had to be making out like bandits and wouldn’t it be far better to be they than he? Obviously the wealthy were best off, who really did own all the nice homes and resorts on the screen. The overhead was certainly low on whatever companies they ran with prison labor. The prisoners put a good deal of their pay back into clothes and electronic gadgets for their cells. All those things he had seen in the cells must be got with the money they earned, he reflected. And they put money into the service industry during lunch and after work….

No—Ian shook his head. It wasn’t right. Regardless of the perks.

He glanced at the clock. He still had fifteen minutes. He leapt off the bed, down the stairs, past the chattering guard and slid open one of the glass doors. A gust of cold air burst into the room. Ian wrapped his arms around his bare torso and peered over his back one more time at the oblivious guard. The afterglow from the hot shower, and perhaps his adrenalin, kept him warm. He flared his nostrils and breathed in the tangy salt air, something he had never before experienced, it seemed. He stood there with his head slightly back, trying to take in as much of the seductive aroma as he could. He glanced over his shoulder, but the guard was still involved in his program. Ian shut the glass door and, with it, the maddening noise of the screen.

Ian glanced down off the balcony to the sea walk. The fall onto the ice-plant below was not more than a story. A broken wrist or ankle at most. But he had no idea how the world out there really functioned. He’d have a greater chance with Robin, certainly.

The fabricators of this status quo were obviously wealthier than any class which had come before them. And if they shared this wealth with all the inmates—how would Ian’s standard of living compare then?

It wasn’t right, he repeated to himself. Regardless of the quality of his former life. People at least had a right to know so they could make their own informed decision, whether or not they made a decision which was against their collective interest. Whether or not they felt that ignorance was indeed bliss, as George Orwell had once written in 1984—a book he must have downloaded in prison! Or how?—

Or had the majority somehow voted to implement the current order, knowing that only a small percentage of them would win the lottery, knowing that the compensation prize for the losers, the vast majority, would be blissful ignorance?

The stinging cold and anticipation of Robin’s arrival drove Ian back inside, into the bathroom. There, with the door shut, he could continue his internal conversation, yet still hear her knock.

The knock came at 9:31 according to the digital numbers on the black screen by the bed, when he bounded out to get the door. He knocked back on the door to let Robin know he was there. He called over to the guard. “Do I get it?” To Robin he said, “Just a minute!” He approached the man and repeated his question. When Kevin continued nattering on about strategy, probably to his invisible girlfriend, Ian passed his hands up and down, before the guard’s eyes. The man only waved him away and walked toward the screen.

Ian bounced back to the door and flung it open, smiling with unmistakable confidence.

Robin had changed into a short black miniskirt, black top and worn, black knee-high boots with thick rubber heels.

“Nice,” Ian said, looking her over from top to bottom, his eyes lingering on her boots.

“My running shoes,” she explained, looking over Ian’s bare shoulders toward the guard.

He shut the door. He decidedly liked the mix of feminine and masculine attributes; her boots and short hair, low voice, direct strong nature. After all, hadn’t he once been with another boy. Shawn! Had they been of legal age? One of the first real memories he recalled. He had just turned eighteen. Is this what landed him in jail? Had he been brainwashed to think he was het’?

Robin noticed his expression and strained with perceptible panic to view the guard.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Don’t worry, love. He’s at a ball game with his gal.” Ian’s ease with women—whether imagined or real—returned as he put his arms gently around her waist. She yielded like warm butter to his touch as he gazed into her sea-green eyes. His large hands slid up her body, cupping her face, one searching out her breast. No doubt I’m bisexual then, he thought to himself, almost laughing as he devoured her mouth with his. They stood intertwined like this inside the room’s entryway for quite some time.

Finally Robin turned their bodies, leading Ian toward the bed. She looked intently into his eyes and pulled off her black spaghetti top, her generous breasts leaping out of a rotund faded leopard skin bra—something she must have purchased before she was determined to be a high-security risk, Ian couldn’t help contemplating.

The sound from the ballgame’s final quarter was deafening, Kevin now yelling and shaking his fist at the screen without pause.

Robin pulled Ian toward her on the bed. His towel began to slide away from his waist.

“I don’t know if I can handle a three way,” Ian laughed nervously, tucking his towel back into place.

“Would you feel better if we were in the bathroom, with the door locked?” Robin sat up. I’m actually afraid where he’ll go once the game’s over.”

Ian gathered the pillows and comforter from the bed, and Robin grabbed some extra pillows and blankets from the closet. They stepped inside the tiled room and locked the door. Next, they began working on their nest, laying the pillows down for a mattress, covering them with the comforter.

“Who gets to lie down first?” Robin joked, removing her tights and underwear.

“Me,” Ian said, falling backward and removing his towel and mounting Robin on top of him in nearly a single gesture.

“Wait!” Robin said, pulling a pack of condoms out of her bra, before removing it entirely.

He brought her moaning mouth closer to his and sealed it in a kiss.

Through the door, Ian could hear that the television outside had switched into a program about Italy, Renata Tebaldi’s operatic voice in the background. He thought he heard the guard snoring and allowed himself to become lost in Robin’s body. Several minutes later, he reached climax. She wanted to keep going.

“Be careful, love,” he whispered, holding the bottom of the condom so the semen would not leak out.

Robin’s motions became more rapid, heated, until she threw her head back let out a soft cry and stopped. She collapsed in a heap on his chest.

Gently, Ian removed the condom. “Listen, love,” he said to her.

Robin turned her head, playing with the hairs on his chest. Gently she lifted her head and allowed him to get up. “He’s snoring!”

They ran the tub and got in together. Ian gazed at Robin lying placidly against the porcelain in the steaming water, her body with freckles and moles unfolding delicate pink lips. A human flower he thought, kissing it under the water. Ian, came up for air. He fumbled outside the tub for one of the condom packets Robin had brought and ripped it open with his teeth.

“One of the details they forgot to include in the hotel package!” he joked.

He made love to her once again.

“So this is ecstasy!” he said finally. “I mean this isn’t a dream. This is real,”

“You bet it’s real. See?” Robin said, biting him on the lip.

“This is the first time. I mean that I can remember,” Ian said, suddenly wishing he hadn’t. “You?—“

“More often than you want to know,” she laughed.

“How?”

“With inmates. The guards don’t prevent it. It took them a while to realize I was not in REM sleep. But,” Robin began kissing Ian’s chest. “This is the first time probably that I’ve made love to someone who was awake. Let me tell you. It’s much better!” she threw her head back in a laugh.

“I never imagined I’d like conferences this much,” Ian joined her in the laughter.

“We were lucky,” Robin looked up. “They’re about to get rid of conferences since they can do it all in REM time.”

“Yeah, why would they go to the expense?”

Robin shrugged. “To keep fueling our memories with real sensory input? Perks for the managers? Did you know you look great when you laugh from this angle?” Robin began flirting again, then resumed kissing his torso. “I like that you haven’t shaved.

Eventually they dragged themselves out of the tepid water and fell asleep in a wet heap on the comforter.

Ian thought he had been asleep for days when he felt Robin’s lips on his back, her thin arms around him. “Wake up, babe,” she repeated.

Ian sat up. “What time is it?”

“Three twenty-two. But you’ll need some time to stomach what I’m about to tell you.”

Through the door, he could hear the guard snoring over the television din. The noise from the set would help mask their conversation.

Cautiously, Ian opened the door. The guard was still sprawled on top of the large couch. Ian pulled a blanket out of the closet and threw it over the fellow, then returned to the makeshift bed in the bathroom where Robin lay. He shut the door and locked it. Robin put her head on Ian’s chest and stared up intently into his dark eyes. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for someone like you.” It was not a question. “Someone who could understand what I’m about to say.”

XV.

Ian poked his head outside to peer at Kevin. The blue glowing numbers on the dark screen by the bed said “6:22.” The star spangled banner was playing on the screen in the living room by the guard and some cheerleaders with red, white and blue matching lipstick, hair and tattoos were singing along. The guard had turned over and the blanket had fallen off his shoulders. Ian glanced at Robin. “The blanket,” he whispered.

“Let’s leave him. We can turn the heat up,” she whispered as she headed over to the control.

Ian entered the shower, shaking his head. “How many of us are there? I mean who are awake?” he yelled over the spray of water.

Robin opened the glass shower door. “Shhhh! Not enough. We’ll talk when you’re out.”

There was some frenetic motion behind the door. Then it snapped open.

“You miss our guard?” Robin asked with irritation.

“I’m sorry,” Ian said, grabbing a towel and scouring himself dry, leaving red marks. “I’m just—-

“Overwhelmed, overloaded with all the information I gave you?” Robin offered.

“What’s being done? There must be some kind of resistance—”

“There aren’t too many of us. I waited a decade for you! They kill most of us,” Robin whispered. “Only three of my close friends are left. And there’s already been an attempt on my life.”

“How did they fail?”

Robin took a deep breath. “I withstood the electric shock and they couldn’t do anything that would leave a trace. I went into a coma. They took me off all life support, but then, I don’t know, maybe because I work out in my cell, I snapped out of it.”

Ian gasped self-consciously. They sat there in silence for some time. Finally Ian cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry, love,” he said sadly, putting his arm around her. “You are in great shape,” Ian said, giving her large biceps a squeeze. “Does it still—I mean—“ he said awkwardly. “Why—?”

“I wanted to organize a prison boycott. I wanted to convince the prisoners to stop purchasing. To shut it all down."

“Purchasing?” Ian said. “You mean during our lunch breaks, or after work before returning to the jails—when we’re not in REM?”

“I mean everything we purchase while we’re in REM. All those virtual trips you took around the world, all the virtual Bay Area vacations, all the meals you ate at virtual restaurants, they cost money. Embedded in every receipt you have every signed or consent you have given with a retinal scan, is consent to pay for the virtual privilege you are enjoying.”

“Of course! That makes sense. The virtual mortgage payments, the virtual furniture I purchased. ” Ian was pacing back and forth.

“Shhhh. Keep your voice down,” Robin cautioned, turning from her image in the mirror where she was applying some red lipstick “Those were no virtual mortgage payments. Those were real mortgage payments for the privilege of the living in your virtual mansion.”

Ian was shaking his head. He flushed the toilet to muffle a cry of anguish.

Robin laughed. “Ever wonder where the money for your MEphone, utilities, cable connections goes?”

“Of course. How naïve of me. So the jail is charging the inmates for their own upkeep.”

“How else do you think this economy was able to stay afloat after it farmed out all its labor and gross domestic product dwindled to almost nothing? After the resources and labor they’d been exploiting in developing countries dried up?”

“After the pyramid scheme bottomed out.” Ian offered.

“Exactly. Thus virtual products. Owners think they’re being humane. They think it’s ‘green.’”

“Back to your story.” Ian looked concerned. “How—“

Robin cut in, almost mechanically. Her tone was flat. “…So I tried to wake some co-workers. They thought I was a nut and turned me in. I’d rather not go into all that, if you don’t mind,” Robin said in monotone. “I was so naïve, then. I was only twenty-two.”

“After that,” she continued, “they tried to disable the breaks in the airport rent-a-car for a conference I attended. But their guy in the rental company got food poisoning and they killed some marketing rep from another prison instead.”

“And now?” Ian inquired.

“Now, my days are numbered, so I don’t have anything to lose by trying. But you, you seem to be starting to go back off their radar, I think, since they think that your REM has begun to work again after your last operation. Your guard is just a precaution, I think.”

“The two of us might have a chance to increase the numbers for a boycott,” Ian was pacing around the bathroom.

“How do you plan to increase our numbers?” Robin said skeptically.

“Challenge them at work to unplug and not buy anything for a week? Then a month?” Ian began to laugh at how ridiculous his plan sounded. “During our commute back to our cells, pull out their wires, pour cold water on them?”

“And if by some miracle you succeed? What then?” Robin laughed, though her tone almost contained anger as well.

He was silent. One obvious obstacle was why would the prisoners want to be woken? What was in it for them? To risk their lives and their paradise for a distant hope that things would be better than a jail cell? Their task paralleled that of Sysyphus.

Something occurred to Ian. “How did you learn all that you know, Robin? Who told you?” he inquired soberly.

The animation vanished from Robin’s face. She looked down. “A friend from work. Before they terminated him.”

“But you believed him? Or had you already been awake?”

“I sort of believed him. I think it helped me wake up.”

There was hope in Ian’s tone now. “Don’t you think we can do the same for the rest?”

Robin looked away, grinning with embarrassment. “I had a crush on him at the time.”

“Do you regret it?” Ian asked.

“Sometimes,” Robin said.

“Do you think it is selfish of us, even cruel to wake them?” Ian asked finally. “I mean my mother brought me up to leave the world a little better for people, which is what I thought we were doing at Bear-T’nT.”

“We owe the world a lot to restore our Karma after working for that devil,” Robin smirked.

They both remained silent for some time. Ian shook his head. Finally he spoke up. “Are we thinking of the world, of the inmates, or just ourselves by waking them?” he asked.

“Sometimes a part of me thinks it’s crazy—wanting to wake them,” Her tone was full of naked disdain and bitterness. She paused, bit her lip. “But my higher self knows better. For all it may accomplish, I guess they should have the right to make up their own mind. Isn’t that what democracy is?”

XVI.

The guard was still snoring on the couch as Robin and Ian entwined themselves in a lengthy good-bye kiss. After closing the door softly behind Robin, Ian headed down to the living area. He flipped off the screen which the guard had been viewing, dressed, and stepped onto the balcony to digest the world Robin had dished him up for breakfast that dawn.

With what felt like sandpapered eyes, Ian watched as three fishermen with olive skin untangled a net they had cast. Behind them stood several buckets with their dawn prize. The bay was silver and glassy, almost like wet paint under the thick cover of early morning fog. Though he hadn’t slept much, the deliciously tangy and brisk morning salt air was invigorating, conducive to reflection.

Ian had managed to piece together much of the new paradigm correctly, only now, Robin’s explanations lent many of his ideas specific details and terminology. The society was divided into two major classes: owners and inmates. There were also free citizens that were not in the owning class, who had somehow escaped imprisonment, but these lived precariously on the fringe.

The wealthy citizen owners were the ones Ian saw glimpses of on the screen, particularly in reality and travel shows. They were hyper-consumers of real-time products with many over-stocked real-time mansions each. They actually lived out the lives upon which Ian’s and so many other inmates’ lives were based. The lives of owners were relatively stress free. Competition for their preferred haunts and places of leisure was slim—there was only a rush at lunch hour and right after work for the restaurants and shops they frequented.

Moreover, they had at their disposal an army of what Robin cynically defined as their slaves: inmates who looked after their every need and whim; who did their cooking, cleaning and gardening; who performed their plumbing, electrical and automotive work; who flew their jets and limos; pampered them on their vacations; tended to them when they took ill and fixed their rotting teeth; who designed, built and transported their favorite toys and gadgets; who listened to them inexhaustibly natter narcissistically on about every solipsistic neuroses, desire and imperfection in their near-idyllic lives—lives shared by less than one percent of the planet.

The owners were well aware of the compromised position of the rest of the society, but argued that the ends outweighed the means, since inmates were leading far more fulfilled and joyous lives than had the generation of workers in the old order. The owners took great pride in their own ingenuity—the advent of interactive screen implants—for having improved everyone’s overall quality of life. If the old order had been democratic, they reasoned, the new one was far more so, for more of the population not only were able to carry out the pursuit of happiness, but a greater majority were able to achieve it.

As far as Ian could understand, the toiling recipients of the owners’ generosity—the majority of workers—known as working citizens in the previous order—were almost entirely all entangled in the criminal system until their dying breath—either imprisoned, under probation or as ex-cons. Policemen and guards belonged to this class as well.

The underclass—defined as merely criminals in the old order—robbers, petty thieves, addicts and dangerous offenders—were in traditional jails without the relief of illusory REM sleep nor the ability to leave. They were the only inmates who really understood that they were in jail.

Except, of course, for immigrants and the working poor.

The more fortunate group of inmates, the productive working class, though aware of the crimes leading to imprisonment, was able to remain in denial of the latter: their imprisonment. Most felt as though they’d gotten away with something, and in fact had received a promotion, since once imprisoned without waking knowledge—but all made legal through consent waivers— their lives would suddenly take a turn for the better as they began living out their REM sleep television fantasies from within their jail cells.

Thus the working class of prisoners was afforded the illusion of a contented, even luxurious life through radio chip implants in their inner ear and behind their retinas. Low voltage radio signals from electronic devices such as MEphones and tunes pods triggered the implanted chip’s sensors in the inner ears into stimulating a certain sector of the brain which brought on and slightly modified REM sleep mode. The same could be achieved in the implant behind the retina, through a series of images on interactive screens, coupled with the radio waves, first known as Blue-Tooth in its most rudimentary form in the old order.

From the inmates point of view, the world which she would inhabit would be slightly more visually tangible if stimulated from the screens; more auditory, if stimulated through the inner ear.

The advent of implants came on the heels of a discovery by Psychiatrist Elena Rasmukian, who found that human beings rarely inhabited their five senses in moving through the world, but instead muddled through much of it unaware in a semi-sonambulistic state, particularly after the extension of the working day. Now thanks to the implants, the workers transitioned into a desirable hyper-REM sleep state once they left work. They would remain in hyper-REM until they turned in for the night, at which point, they’d enter deep sleep, then surface to REM where they would remain until they entered the workplace. Here they would finally awake. In other words, the only time workers were actually awake was to perform their jobs. Some, who commuted from their jail elsewhere, often began their waking states at some point during the commute, once they had exited the jails.

Given the dramatic increase over the years in responsibilities and the sixty-hour work week leading to a marked reduction in sleep among workers, the REM sleep arrangement worked out quite nicely to produce alert, awake and effective workers. As Ian had suspected, maintaining workers in constant REM was slightly more costly due to un-renewable energy demands and made for too ineffectual a workforce. Thus, those in the service industry were really working those jobs in the outside world. Those who enjoyed those services were the owners or free citizens, as well as the inmates during their lunch hour or on the way to or from the jails. When Ian was at Caffé Puccini, neither he nor the other workers: Telma, Dolores, Areli, Paco, Isaac and so forth, were in REM. Those in the service industry simply returned to their cells like all the rest, via public transport, on foot or autos.

The economy would have taken a severe blow were it not for the inmate’s dependency on their autos and the electronic gismos. They paid for these things, as well as the prison’s utilities, food and clothes bills. They paid for purchases, privileges and meals on their own non-REM time after work or during lunch. And moreover, they paid for the rights to live in their virtual homes, the rights to purchase their virtual possessions and other virtual privileges such as virtual travel. This, coupled with the owners’ rampant consumption kept the latter class in its privilege.

The virtual economy was built upon hyper-REM. It was through the REM that the workers agreed to fork over the fruits of their labor without anything tangible in return. It was through the REM that they were not only willing, but eager to spend most of their lives in cage-size spaces. They worked in such a cubicle, lived in a cubicle and dined in restaurants with such closed cubicle seating, they nearly resembled chickens whose beaks had to be hacked off so as not to peck each other from the duress of such close quarters. However contrary to the chickens—and there was a growing movement initiated by offspring in the owning class to subsidize REM for animals—through the REM, workers believed they were living rich, fulfilled, luxurious lives, once they left work. Of course those who loved their jobs—as Ian once had—were the happiest of the lot. Thus the entire basis for the economy, from the owner’s point of view, was a benevolent one as long as they were in charge to enforce it.

Two joggers ran by on the path toward Sam’s Chowder House. Except for an occasional group of inmates escaping for a longer lunch break, or a lucky cluster of inmates at a conference or meeting, most diners had to belong to the owning class, Ian realized, since this was real time. As for the joggers, these could belong to either the owning or inmate class. Ian reflected upon the joggers he would see along the Embarcadero. Some were coming from work and this was part of their commute, some had gone back to their cells, changed and come out to jog.

Contrary to the situation of those prisoners who were jailed without the relief of REM, middle-class worker inmates were given much more freedom to frequent the outside world, to come and go at their leisure. Owners were not too worried about people going astray since the advent of tethering workers to the jails through the implants and wires. It was possible to control them as long as they stuck to a dozen or so haunts each. They were programmed through their wires to repeat these haunts like hamsters running the same confined treadmills and paths over and over.

After commute hours, inmates were not limited in their comings and goings, just closely monitored. This freedom enjoyed by the inmates—insofar as it could be considered freedom—made it possible for couples to meet each other, then raise families inside their cells. Of course they would be in REM—sleepwalking during this time, so to speak.

Ian W— recalled walking against rush hour traffic up Montgomery to Columbus after work, when he ate dinner at Caffé Puccini. The marching armies of men in suits, pressed shirts with collars and ironed slacks; or the women with heels, short skirts and tight tops revealing no cleavage rushing by him to get to the BART train or parking lots must have mostly been inmates making their way back to their jails. Even those not wearing suitable office attire were easily identifiable as inmates because of the various wires and attachments that issued from their ears, Robin had pointed out. Those with the metallic wireless devices which looked like externalized brain implants connected to their outer and inner ear were really receiving REM signal, though they believed they were just awaiting radio-assisted phone calls. Same went for mostly anyone using mobiles or wearing white, green, black, red or clear tunes wires. Their wires were their tethers, their umbilical cords to their imprisonment.

Ian reflected. There was a time when he despised these devices, poking fun at their brain-dead converts. Somehow he’d become one of these pod-people. First lured by utility of an inferior product, then increasingly frustrated with its limitations and seduced by the slick, self-assured glow of MEphone and pad users, he sought out his first Bear-T’nT job with a subsidiary petrol company. He remembered his mother joking that it was like a new lover, keeping him up at night while he delved into unexplored territory. He’d spend hours learning all the facets of each option and program, shortcuts; then countless more hours organizing his data, calendar events, contacts, accounts, photographs and files. Sometimes he’d forget to sleep. His mother had been right, Ian chuckled—how he grew to adore his MEphone and the company that gave it to him. He remembered the same fascination when his company had issued his first MEpad at a discount. It was like double-timing, he joked—he didn’t know which of the two he loved more nor could do without.

So that must have been when he had first become tethered. Maybe that had been how his REM first got triggered, for he began having oodles of money to travel, then buy his Tiburon home… a sure sign of the jails.

This might imply that the inmates first entered the jails of their own volition. If this was so, would it be just as easy to leave? He would have to discuss this further with Robin.

Robin had told him that the society finally began allowing implants as a matter of convenience, the way GPS and airport retinal scans had first caught on in spite of a cacophony of objections by human rights groups fighting desperately to hold on to the antiquated constitutional notion of a right to privacy. Efficiency had won out, as implants afforded their hosts the option of breezing through long lines in banks, airports, stores, museums, theaters, bridges and public transport. This was especially useful during commute hours.

Thinking back to the tethered commuters, Ian wondered how much of his own commute had been real. Though he believed he was taking BART to the Ferry Building or Pier 21, then catching the ferry to Tiburon, something had triggered his REM sleep state. Perhaps this had occurred before he ever left the building—triggered by the large screen by the fountain, or his MEphone—and he was merely taking the elevator back up to his jail cell. Or he had actually begun the commute, the cable car to the pier, then something in the terminal had triggered his REM and he had sleepwalked back to the jail like all the other commuters.

Ian’s thoughts were interrupted by some brusque noises below his balcony. Beneath the left side of patio, by the Jacuzzi, two dark-complected women, one slender, one lovely one who was a bit stouter, were dragging aside heavy wooden lounge chairs, probably to make more seating room for the afternoon’s conference luncheon. A third, who had been sweeping, had stooped to pick up some dog droppings with a napkin.

The women looked Mexican, Ian noted, refocusing his thoughts upon them through his new lens. Immigrants—whom Robin had christened slaves—were funneled directly into the inmate class, though they were not housed in the jails. Instead, they were kept in penal colony ghettos without any REM relief, similar to the underclass. The most unsavory, most arduous, worst paid jobs were reserved for these “slaves.” These were the ones who worked in the excrement processing plants of the owners, who cleaned out their sewers, excavated their foundations and hauled their garbage; who wiped their runny asses and mopped up their vomit; who bled their beef and deplumed their chickens. They were the backbone of the society. Not only were they willing to carry out the work rejected by the more uppity inmates; they kept them in check as a reminder of how fortunate they were, reinforcing once again, the illusion of their privilege.

Just as inmates who possessed REM sleep-triggering implants tethering them to the jails, immigrants were allowed to wander freely about, outside the jails. Their return to their penal colonies was guaranteed by two constants in the society: its willingness and ability to crush the most irresistible of toddlers and the most feeble of grandparents alive in the metallic jaws of its machinery, be it economic or martial. This eternal state of war drove these modern slaves out of their homelands and into a foreign caste system which effectively stripped them of all entitlement to anything vaguely resembling human rights. Thus they ferreted out an animal existence trotting from work to the jail slum, and from the jail slum to work and very little else because of the economic impossibility of their escape.

This new realization, along with Robin’s crass, made Ian cringe as he watched the brown women below. His eyes alighted on a retired couple out for an early morning stroll with their poodle down the beach path. Now, let’ see, Ian thought. Obviously, part of the genuine owning class. The neighboring homes were real and one belonged to this couple. The rest of the elderly—he had seen a few on the floor of his jail—resided mostly inside, almost always in REM sleep, probably until they got Alzheimer’s or mad cow disease, he reflected with cynicism. The few times they’d step outside to go to the store, the bank or other errands, the REM would be temporarily turned off, as it was for the working inmates whenever they left the prison. Probably their state-subsidized hearing aids, Ian thought.

So there were inmate pets and free pets too, Ian mused, staring at the poodle as it lifted its leg on a bright pink ice-plant. What did its captive counterpart care if its home had bars on the windows?

In fact, the dogs of inmates fared better than those of the fringe population. Ian recalled the scraggly looking grey-haired hippy woman cradling a dog he had seen on his way to Puccini one evening. Now there was a problem for the owner-citizens. The hippy was obviously not an owner-citizen, but clearly not an inmate either. Ian thought of the beggars and homeless people camped on the sidewalk. Most had been jailed, without any respite of REM programming, but those who had been released or were on the brink of being caught were certainly a problem as free thinkers from the owner point of view. Or was it a problem, since they were marginalized as nuts and usually blamed themselves for the society’s inhumanity?

There were some fringe people who could also be the offspring of owners—slackers. They were not be confused, since they ran little risk of ending up as inmates. Ian recalled having seen in Tiburon a square thirty-five year old man with longish hair sitting on a park bench. Onto his t-shirt he had taped a lined essay paper with words in thick marker: “Study buddy.” “Nice day!” he said enthusiastically to a passing olive-complected woman with curly hair.

Since Ian had never lived in Tiburon, either the man was a composite of something he had dreamed or invented in REM or seen on the screen. Ingenious, he thought, how the utopian REM dreams were tainted with flaws like this trash, even muggings, which rendered them so realistic.

Thinking back to the imaginary nut’s sign, Ian pondered the status of students in this strange paradigm. Most ivy league and UC students would fall into the citizen-owner class, though there was sure to be some downward mobility. Other students and young adults, upon their release from their parent’s cells at age 18 or so, might have had some time in the outside world until they committed the strikes necessary for life imprisonment, as in Ian’s case. This was probably where Ian built up his store of sensory information for his phony memories.

How twisted is that? Ian thought. How could we all have allowed things to decay to such a degree? The frogs failing to jump out of water coming to a slow boil phenomenon?

Ian recalled the plan he and Robin hatched and began to get cold feet. It had seemed so much more rational, possible, with Robin standing next to him, combing her hair in the bathroom mirror, in the hour preceding her preparations for the conference’s culminating workshops that dawn.

Robin claimed that they had no way of knowing whether they were an isolated minority or growing movement. It really made no difference, he reasoned with himself. Now that he had woken up, there was no returning to the comfort of sleep.

If they were in the majority, action made the most sense. But supposing they were indeed an anomaly, then didn’t he have even more of a responsibility to the rest of his fellow inmates for having been granted the gift of sight?

Ian thought back on his last minutes with Robin. At 7:00 am she had stuffed the MEphone in her bra.

Just don’t wear any tight shirts,” Ian had laughed.

“This is just until I get back to my room. There’s little danger they’ll figure out what we used it for, it’s so archaic. I’ll just put it in my briefcase.” She hesitated.

“What’s wrong?”

“I guess we would have found out if my guard woke up already.”

“And if we’re wrong?“

“You won’t see me at work,” Robin said.

A long silence passed between them.

“It was worth it, though,” she said giving him a long drawn out kiss.

When they composed themselves Ian spoke. “We’ve got to get a lot more done before we can get caught,” he winked.

“When, how do we meet again to figure out the next steps once we’ve begun?” Ian asked before their final parting kiss. He realized he didn’t even know where her cell was and inquired.

“I’m on the 19th floor,” Robin said.

“I’m on 84.”

“Well I’m cell 84, if that makes it easier to remember,” Robin said. “Like you’ll be calling,” she laughed. “We have to be cooler than ever now at work. In a month or two—depending on how well things go— I’ll ask you to go to lunch in the Atrium. Make up something about why you have to leave suddenly—stomach cramps, whatever. Meet me by the main entrance, by the screen. I’ll have the MEphone. We can try and see if we can really go to lunch on the outside.”

“And if that doesn’t pan out? We’ll talk after we’re out of solitary?” Ian asked.

“Try the Medieval house of horrors. Stay clear of me until I signal you to go outside. I’m already on their hit list. There’s some hope that you’ll still be able to act if something happens to me. The commute is your best bet. We’ll figure out a way to communicate.” With that, Robin pressed her lips to his and melted into his embrace. She was so delicate, so soft, he thought, so, so, so real.

As Ian thought back to the past evening and morning, the anxiety and sadness of the past years began to be replaced with a sensation of lightness, like helium swelling his chest.

Savor it, he thought to himself, reflecting on the plan Robin and he discussed. You’ll probably need to remember what joy feels like for what could lie ahead.

XVII.

Ian was seated on the rim of the tremendous cascading fountain, waiting for Steve to emerge from work and begin his march upstairs, back to his cell. His heart was pumping as though he had ingested a gallon of coffee trying to catch Robin at the coffee machine. From his vantage point at the corner of the fountain, just by slightly turning his head, he could keep his eyes on the entrance to his office, as well as the elevator bank.

A heavy set couple stumbled into the lobby and stood staring, wonder-eyed, up at all the cells as though mesmerized by one of King Ludvig’s Bavarian castles. The look of child-like stupefaction on their faces evidenced that they were tourists. Tourists were forever tilting their heads up, looking skyward, which is why they were so susceptible to being assaulted, Ian reflected with malicious envy.

What about tourists, he wondered. He was in real non-REM time, so they had to be owners. Tourists were all owners, he realized. This explained the blissful look on their faces. Of course, he realized, recalling the tourists he had actually seen throughout North Beach in real time. They looked ecstatic compared to the commuters, staring at the birds and trim on the tall buildings, not just because they were on vacation, but because they were not in jail.

Ian looked at the big digital numbers on the screen by the entrance, then nervously around for Steve. He wondered if he had missed him though he knew that inevitably, Steve would have had to walk by him to get to the elevator. Patience, he told himself. He scanned the scene for signs that the guards had noticed his odd behavior.

Look up, like the tourists, tilt your head back, he told himself. The architecture seduced him as though for the first time. Again, he was struck by its duality. It was more like being trapped inside of one of Escher’s paradoxes than he ever imagined: San Francisco luxury hotel converted into a lofty office complex on the one hand; insidious prison on the other. From a detached perspective, one could argue that the mirage was indeed ingenious.

Robin had pointed out that not even the lower security guards were aware that they were working inside a jail, for the balconies masked the bars from the ground floor. These were told that the hotel had been designed by an artist with an industrial flare, should they for some reason find themselves on an upper floor, wondering about the bars. Thus they believed they were simply guarding a trendy, industrial-style hotel in which some high-net worth individuals also resided.

The only security guards who could actually see the existence of the bars were the top-level guards who wore blood-boiler guns and special dark glasses with the same color and wave pattern as the glass, to see beyond the balconies, through the bars, directly at all the prisoners. Thus it only took six guards, at either end of the top, middle and bottom floors to see all the thousands of prisoners housed in the jail at once. More than anything, this is what helped perpetuate the illusion of a moderately guarded set of offices, rather than a jail.

These higher level security guards believed their job was to keep privileged but highly skilled terrorists, like Ian and Robin, under house arrest in their high tech condominium complex upon request of their employers. They thought nothing of invading their privacy by peering through the glass directly into their lives.

While Ian now had trouble imagining the scene as his co-workers saw it—without the well-concealed cell bars below the balconies—he foresaw the futility of communicating this to them during working hours or real, non-REM time. After all, from their view point, he’d been admitted to a sanatorium for a brain operation. Without changing their REM sleep patterns to be awake once they left work, none of his coworkers would ever see any of the cells from their vantage point in their cubicles, the restaurant nor from any other point inside the lobby.

He missed Robin. It seemed as though months had transpired since their return from the conference, yet less than two weeks had passed. During that time, he had tried to distract himself by focusing on their project. Instead, his mind would eventually wander to their tryst in the bathroom of the Beach Boutique Hotel. Over and over, he replayed their meeting, beginning with their first flirtations at work; the goose-bumps he got when she whispered in his ear, “don’t give up before your miracles;” her coy little sideways smile at the coffee machine, to their first interaction at the Jacuzzi. He ran the reel of their affair over in his mind recounting as many details as possible, as though engraving tracks in the golden record of his mind for eternity. Inevitably, he’d be overtaken by desire. At this point, there was no way out but to force himself to refocus on their plan.

Steve was to be his test case.

It turned out, however, that Steve had chosen this evening to work late, keeping Ian on tender hooks for well over an hour. Ian debated whether or not to carry out his plan, since the commute crowd would be much thinner.

“What are you doing here?” Steve slapped Ian on the back, startling him.

“Steve! Oh, I just returned from too big a dinner and was contemplating getting a cab back to Tiburon, though I need the exercise,” Ian lied. “You?”

“Working too much before I go on vacation.”

“Where you going?” Ian said with boredom as they walked toward the entrance.

“Fiji or Tahiti or one of those “i” places. I forget exactly, but it’s one of those islands where your hotel sits on stilts over that unreal, fluorescent aqua-colored lukewarm water,” Steve said dreamily, automatically putting in his white earphones.

“See ya,” Ian took the cue. Steve deliberately changed course and began walking toward the elevators. He had slipped into REM.

Ian turned around and followed him, keeping a distance. As soon as Ian saw Steve entering the middle elevator, he turned and walked hastily toward the bank of elevators. “Shit, shit, shit,!” he feigned as though he had forgotten something upstairs. This absurd gesture, he felt, gave him license to gallop toward the elevators, though within seconds he realized that the behavior of inmates must always look erratic to guards, since they were responding to cues in REM sleep, not the real world.

Ian noticed Steve’s elevator was now at the 32nd floor and began tapping his polished foot on the carpet. Finally an elevator came. Rudely, Ian squeezed in, ahead of his turn. Steve’s elevator was on the 41st floor. These folks are asleep anyway, he reassured himself. If Ian timed it right, he might catch him before the final corridor turn to his cell.

Ian’s felt as though he had stuck his finger in a light socket. An old woman with a wire cart full of groceries blocked his way out of the elevator. Ian huffed and puffed, towering behind her. Finally she was out and he darted around her and with his long legs bound down the corridors with his briefcase, looking at an imaginary watch on his wrist for the benefit of the guards, he supposed. The crowds were thin and it was easy to notice that he had not yet caught up to Steve. Finally, he spied Steve’s mile-long legs and perfectly pressed green-grey suit. As usual, no guards were within view.

Ian caught up to Steve from behind and pulled out his earphone wires. Steve spun around to look at him, a look of bewilderment on his face. Ian pulled out a bottle of water and poured it on Steve. “Wake up, man,” he shouted at him, slapping his cheeks.

Steve shouted out, then rubbed the water off his face. He began blinking rapidly, the beads of water falling from his dark lashes.

Ian’s heart was doing cartwheels, sit-ups, sprinting into his throat. This was the decisive moment. “You’re going to be O.K, here, sit down on my brief case.” Ian propped the case on its side and helped his colleague perch on top of it. He used every ounce of his powers of persuasion, rubbing Ian’s back with feigned confidence. He resisted the temptation to turn his head this way and that, looking out for guards. Out of the corner of his eye he could see to the end of the corridor, now and then a bored-looking commuter marching toward his or her cell.

“What happened? What happened?” Steve inquired, still blinking rapidly.

“You passed out, Dude. But you’re going to be, okay.”

“Where are we?” Steve suddenly began turning his head, in what seemed to be the panicked gestures of a spooked horse. “What is this? What is this?”

It was working. “It’s okay, Steve. You’re going to be fine.”

“What did I do? Why are we here?” Steve looked as pale as the dead, save for a little tell tale splotch of pink on each cheek.

“Steve, you’ve been here for years. You just don’t remember.” Stooping, Ian put his arm around Steve’s shoulder. Steve remained perched precariously on Ian’s briefcase. He kept rubbing his head, rifling his short hair. He stood up.

“Let me show you the cell you’ve been living in.”

“Are you crazy?” Steve threw Ian’s hand off his shoulder. “Where the hell are we? I’m getting out of here!” Steve looked baffled. He craned his neck this way and that, looking for an exit.

“Go ahead, try to leave,” Ian said, shaking his head.

“Why wouldn’t I be able to? Look at all these other folks coming and going.” Steve protested.

“Steve, they’re all in REM sleep. They’re not really awake.”

“What?

“Look, if it’s true that we can come and go, what difference would five minutes more of your time make.”

“What are you saying, buddy?” The color had returned to Steve’s face. He looked irritated now.

“Look,” Ian began walking toward Steve’s cell. “Does this look familiar?”

“What?” Steve followed. “Right around this corner… look.”

Steve followed Ian, somewhat grudgingly.

“Does it look familiar?” Ian asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You have the key. Check your pocket.”

Steve fumbled around his slacks’ pocket. “What are you talking about? I don’t have any keys on me. Listen! Steve jingled change in his slacks.”

“It’s a card. You have it somewhere on you. Check the inner compartment of your suit jacket.”

Ian helped Steve produce, out of his left pocket, the key that opened the cell. A green light flickered and Ian pushed the cell door open for Steve.

“How do you explain your having the key if you haven’t been living here? Just look inside! Who are those photos of?”

“Roxanne, Trent… What— Steve turned to face Ian, a look of anguish on his face.

“What’s going on? How long have I been here?”

“At least a decade. Maybe longer, like me. Just not on this particular floor.”

Steve sat down on his cot. “But I have an eight-year old. I have memories of his childhood growing up. Where is he then?”

“He’s here too— The school is in the jail.“

Steve collapsed against the wall. “Help me out here, buddy. What are you talking about.”

“First off, let’s step outside again,” cautioned Ian, who was still holding the cell door. This door will trigger some visitors if we open it again later—-It’s safer if we talk with all the noise of the commuters around us.”

XVIII.

Steve was playing it cool at work, Ian thought. He refused to talk about anything that had transpired the previous day. Finally Ian caught sight of him by the coffee machine when no one else was around. Ian congratulated himself; an entire evening had passed and his curiosity and enthusiasm about his interaction with Steve had temporarily reseated his memories of Robin.

“Have you been able to notice the difference in how people behave here?” Ian inquired of Steve, stirring milk substitute into his coffee. “Remember, no one is in REM during work.”

“Excuse me?”

“The paradigm we talked about yesterday,” Ian said, looking about. “No one’s around.”

“Why are you acting so paranoid, bud?” Steve laughed.

“Cut it out, Steve. I’m serious,” Ian said with irritation. “What do you remember about what we talked about.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. After work. After you passed out.”

Steve looked baffled.

“I passed out after work? I don’t remember anything… except this weird dream. Yeah, yeah you were in the dream.”

“That was no dream. It was real,” Ian insisted.

“How could you know what my dream was?”

“That we’re all in jail, right? That we’ve been in jail most of our lives and are going to remain here. That your life is Marin is an utter illusion. Sound familiar?”

Steve was silent. “Right, Ian,” he said finally.

“That wasn’t the dream? You don’t remember what we talked about?” Ian almost pleaded.

Steve continued to look perplexed. Then his face took on a look of genuine concern. The same look, Ian reflected, when Ian was sent for his brain operation and Steve thought he had gone nuts.

“Why don’t we talk more about this later? I have a pile of work. Excuse me,” Steve said politely and headed back to his desk.

He had slipped into denial. The news had been to much for him, Ian thought sadly, lumbering back to his desk on legs of lead. At one point in the conversation the previous evening, Steve had become hopeless, desperate in his despair, it seemed. “Can we go back?” he had asked.

“You mean back into REM? I suppose you could. But wouldn’t you rather know the truth?”

“I’d rather be back in Marin,”

“Even if you knew it was an illusion.”

“Of course! I was happy then,” Steve said sadly. “I just want to be happy. Don’t we all?”

They had traversed the circumference of the floor a dozen times that evening. A few more commuters passed by them, one fidgeting in his pocket for his cell key.

“But we’re enslaved. Enslaved to this pursuit of illusory happiness!” Ian stopped suddenly and leaned over the railing, looking down into the lobby. “Enslaved to the corporations that own this prison! It’s not right. Don’t you think, it’s not right?”

“No, it’s not right,” Steve agreed sadly. He clasped his hands and bowed his head. Then he cocked it, looking over at Ian. “But what can we do? Just look around you! What could we possibly do?”

“Wake everyone up.” Ian was pacing back and forth. “If we woke everyone, we could stop this. Then would you still want to live your deluded life in Marin?”

“If things were fair, I might give it up. If there was a way to reclaim that lifestyle, I suppose—“

Ian sat back down next to Steve. “And if your lifestyle was not that idyllic, but more people could live decent lives? Would you be willing to give up some of your luxuries? Or would you rather go back to REM sleep, back to your Marin?”

“I’m tired,” was all Steve had to say at that point. “I guess I’ll check into my cell and get some rest.”

XIX.

8:25 am. Wednesday morning. The office was still pretty empty. Ian closed the bathroom stall and fumbled in his coat pocket for a felt tip.

“Woke up, but he forgot paradigm. Again?” he wrote.

Back at his desk, he sealed it in an envelope and dropped it on Robin’s desk.

Hours turned painstakingly into days.

During this time, Ian began to oscillate back and forth about their plan, about their motive. After all, what awaited people like him, Robin and Steve but a perilous life filled with many hardships and few immediate rewards?

Ian recalled a foggy summer Sunday he’d spent with his neighbor, Angela, viewing the Monet Exhibit at the Palace of Legion of Honor. It seemed as though the two of them had spent a couple of weeks along the French coast staring at the crashing waves and breathtaking sunsets; watching a storm come and go; the wind rise up along the cliffs; swimming under psychedelic stone arcs; strolling along the hot beach in too much clothing; swimming in that warm, aqua green-blue water together and wriggling their toes in that clean, white, grainy French sand.

They saw all this again from the large transparent windows of the Cliff House, seated directly above the Camera Obscura, after the exhibit. His camera had captured the gulls soaring over the enraged San Francisco sea crashing on the dramatic rock formations, echoing Monet’s stone arcs and stormier pallet; Angela’s black hair streaked with fog, her full lips, lovely Japanese almond eyes.

Back in Tiburon, the fog had succumbed to summer. Ian took a stroll along the Tiburon Boardwalk along the green, Monet’s paintings merging with the dramatic seaside scenery, San Francisco in the backdrop. He was asking Steve to give up the belief of a life full of days like this one. Once awake, some false memories might persist, but most would begin to disappear, depending on the consistency of the individual’s internal insistence upon their falsity.

Ian would never set foot again in Tiburon. Nor would he be able to afford places like the Clif House, nor even the special exhibits. He thought of what he had that was real. He could walk with Robin on the sea wall by the Camera Obscura, gaze at the waves, climb down to the ruins of the Suitro Baths, explore the sea cave and kiss in front of the opening where the waves came in, knowing that what they had was real, genuine, was right.

Suddenly, now as he contemplated the mirage that had been his life—supposing his mirage life had been real—even with the sporadic moments in a nice Tiburon home or enjoying exotic tourist destinations—the bulk of his life had been whittled away in that rat box of a work cubicle creating what amounted really to utter nonsense, or worse yet, toxic nonsense. Yes, the idea of simply walking freely by the sea at his leisure with Robin, leaving, at worst, mere footprints in the sand, was more than enough.

Finally Friday, he received a note in an unaddressed envelope. Inside was a wad of T.P, with the following:

“NO. Wait.”

That’s all there was. Ian shoved the note in his pocket and headed toward the latrine.

Weeks grudgingly turned to a month, then another. Work had never seemed so laborious, now that Ian knew the truth about the society. He was an inmate, a slave and his employer—not his supervisors but the company’s actual owner—or owners, he corrected himself—the stockholders—were gaining from his lack of freedom. He was acutely aware of this and as such now resented every task demanded of him. Moreover, he was painfully aware that anything he did well would only add another link on the chain that bound him and his colleagues in prison. He found himself increasingly tempted by a desire to perform his job poorly, to sabotage it, in fact. But he knew this would arouse too much attention and to carry out what he and Robin had discussed, they had to slip under the radar.

So he suffered through the most inane staff meetings, the most humiliating and dull trainings and retreats, fighting the urge to make snide little comments during patronizing ice-breakers and team-building games designed for social klutzes with a developmental age of four. Instead, he obediently mooed like a cow through his blindfold, listening for other cows in a farm full of roosters, dogs, cats, horses and sheep. At the retreat, he went along with the team building shootout, in spite of the tennis ball size bruises on his thigh and having had the wind knocked out of him by Black W’s, black paint pellets.

One Saturday morning, Ian was awakened by the strong scent of jasmine from his Tiburon garden. It must finally be Spring, he thought, lazily, dreamily, luxuriating in its scent before opening his eyes. He imagined his balcony door open to a warm spring night, the air sweet with jasmine and French Lace roses. Only where was the gentle gurgle of water from the fountains? He could almost see the marble table in the garden below illumined by tiny star-dust lights swirling in a cloud of scarlet bougainvillea that entwined a tree in the garden’s center; an angel bathing in the soft blues and greens illuminating the fountain and greenery.

Then his lids darted open. It was morning and Tiburon was a long ago dream, he realized. The scent beckoned him forward closer to the bars of his cell.

He was struck by a question. Why the bars at all? For a high-security prisoner such as Robin and himself they made sense. But if the others, the overwhelming majority of the prison work force, were allowed to mostly come and go at their leisure, with keys to their own cell doors, why the bars? It wouldn’t make sense— unless! The hypothesis made him giddy. Unless there was a large number of prisoners who had become or eventually would become high security risks! Perhaps a much larger number of prisoners were already in resistance than was evident. Apparently, the owners lived in fear of a rebellion! He remembered the scratch marks in the wall of his own cell. He had to tell Robin.

The scent from his garden wafted into his cell again. A few moments later, a crew in tan jumpsuits backed out of the cell next door.

“That should take care of the problem. So just don’t flush the hair that collects over your shower drain down the toilet,” one of the men called out. “Oh, I hope you don’t mind. I used some of that air freshener.”

How many flowers in his Tiburon garden had been manufactured by prison air fresheners, Ian wondered.

Ian recalled how his mother had loved to work in her garden. She obsessed and talked about it a lot to Ian. Had it been a prison garden? An obsession with air fresheners? It must have been her own REM fantasy—in which he shared, for he remembered venturing out into this hypothetical garden together to cut jasmine.

Once, during his teen years, he worked at a flower shop on Columbus Avenue—the same one which had employed his mother during the summers and school holidays. It had been she who had taught him to make arrangements. He remembered being so taken with their creations, he began photographing them. This is where his interest in photography had begun, he recalled. And, this must have been how he had been able to amass the sensory material for his memories of his mothers’ garden and later his own in Tiburon, he realized.

Children are impressionable, Ian thought. His mother’s dreams would have helped form his own.

Ian fell back on his cot, thinking of his mother, revisiting his childhood with his new eyes. He had grown up, an only child, in a family cell, which he believed had been a luxurious house, until his parents divorce. When his mother’s maternity leave from her work at the flower shop ended, he had been enrolled in the prison daycare, then what he believed was school—prison foster care in a different wing of the jail.

School was nothing more than indoctrination for leading a future life in prison. In the name of meeting high testing standards, children were taught to obey authority, not to think for themselves, to open books at the same time, close books at the same time, write and line up and march to the jail yard for fun at the same time, as their teachers taught the same scripted lessons at the same time, much like their commuting parents marched blindly like lemmings, back and forth from and to the jails. This mindless regurgitation of scripted lessons of course led to worse test scores, increasing the likelihood that the children would wind back up in the jails at an accelerated speed.

Besides sleeping together in the family cells, the offspring of prisoners were allowed limited visits with their jailed parent: an hour before school and a couple of hours following their so-called after-school programs. In this way, the kids were under the illusion that they had parents, though the waking time they spent together was insignificant.

Ian remembered his resentment toward his own mother. How often when he was upset with her, had he said to her or to his father, “you’re not my parents.”

There had been more truth to that statement than he realized. At 18, the children were released from this situation, but within four or five years—particularly after the advent of high stakes testing and scripted programs—ended up back in jail permanently, what they believed to be studios or bachelor pads.

Ian’s mother and father had divorced when Ian was quite young. His mother was a school teacher by profession, but had to supplement her income after the divorce selling flowers. Their home after her divorce was small, according to Ian’s recollection, but then again, he had been in REM sleep when they were together in the cell. She was never home and, during summer, away at a million conferences and workshops, if she was not selling flowers, so off he went to summer camp and all kinds of other programs which didn’t require the REM, but instead helped build up his store of sensory imagery for future REM fantasies.

Ian was now aware that the sensory images for his ecstatic memories, as well as those of all the other inmates, were largely derived from a combination of real experiences in the outside world in their jobs or post imprisonment teen years and the screen—which was mostly visual and auditory, not tactile nor culinary.

In fact, Robin had explained, “That is how you can tell the source of the memory. If you can remember tasting or feeling something, it has to be based on reality, instead of the screen.”

Ian remembered once exiting the North Beach garage in China Town in Barbi’s car. Barb had insisted on parking in the overpriced garage because she said it was an experience in itself, with elegant bamboo planted between the turns, growing up three floors high. On each space a fortune was painted in the bright paint belonging to the particular floor. One Ian loved read: “One day you won’t be here.”

“Why do you like that one so much?” the mirage called Barbi had asked. Had she been another inmate or completely made up, like a dream?

“Life looks like paradise from the eyes of the grave,” Ian had responded.

Whatever she was, she hadn’t appreciated the sentiment.

Another fortune read: “Perception is not reality.”

“Park here,” he remembered saying to Barb: “Look, ‘You are very close to the place you’ve always dreamed of.’” She continued up to the roof. “Here!” But she passed up, “A wish will be granted after a long delay.”

“I like the view here,” his dream Barbi had said. The space they finally landed in read,

“Everything will now come your way.”

Funny, Ian thought; the following week had been the one in which his censor began malfunctioning and he woke up to the reality of jail. Perhaps it was a good thing after all. Robin had certainly been a stroke of luck, he smiled.

He recalled that it had been dusk when he and Barb got out of the space. He had looked out at the bracelets of lights on the Bay Bridge, over the water, Coit Tower to its left. Farther West, pale blue lights illumined the spires of Saints Peter & Paul’s Parish; Alcatraz in the distance. Behind them was the Transamerica pyramid. It had inspired him to finally take Barbi in his arms and kiss her, right there on the roof of the North Beach garage, even if they did get charged an extra hour for taking too long to exit.

The rest of the evening had been strained. Both had been embarrassed about the kiss and wanted to revert back to the safety of their friendship—she perhaps more than he because of her back and forth with Kennedy.

Now in retrospect, Ian was glad he had kissed her. What would it have mattered had he stripped her of her clothes right on the spot, since Kennedy and the situation was probably as fictitious as was she?

Ian had noticed the lot before because whenever he had passed it on the way to dinner in China Town from work—a real memory—he had noticed the glass elevators with the passengers riding with their backs to the beautiful view, staring blindly at the doors, waiting for them to open. Their myopia symbolized to him something he detested in humanity. But now with new eyes he realized they might have been in REM—or just afraid of the view.

On the way out of the lot with Barb, something strange had occurred. Blue and red emergency lights were going off on all the floors, yet there was no sound, even with the window down. He also realized Barbi had complained about the fan running in the car, yet there had been no sound. He had had a terrible sensation at the time, as though he had been dreaming and couldn’t wake up, and something was going wrong. This must have been because the memory was based on screen images.

Maybe the mute had been on, Ian thought with some bemusement.

Now, looking out past the gulls, over the Bay, Ian searched his memories for clues that Barb was a real person. He had met her at Puccini, he realized, his heart leaping with happiness. It had been for lunch. Yes, lunchtime, so he would not have been in REM yet. Or at least it was daylight out and warm. Even if he had met her at Puccini’s in the hour or so following work in the summer, since this was one of his programmed routes, there would have been a good chance that he would not have been dreaming.

Then he realized it had been on a day off—the time he would have been in REM sleep in the cell. Did she live in the hotel-prison with him? The Embarcadero Building was large enough that he might not have run into her over the last few years. Of course! Barbie and Ken dolls! he thought sadly, feeling foolish.

He began to think back on his friends with equal apprehension: Metchthild and Javier, Noah and Diana, Sandy, Angela, Adriana, Silja, Lynn K., Clif Ross, Eric Robertson, Jesse Clarke, Beth, Kitty, Harriet! Peter Najarian, Jean Pauline, Jim Smith, Luis Rodriguez?…. Real? If they had been inmates why hadn’t he run into them? A sense of loss overwhelmed him. As though they had all been wiped out in the next San Francisco earthquake. He’d have to ask Robin. Robin, he thought and his heart began to swell up again. Now he had Robin.

XX.

“Pay day,” Tracy winked at Ian as he stepped into the office. Don’t forget to check your account online. You keep forgetting.”

Ian smirked and slogged over to his desk. It was all so meaningless to him now. He logged into his account and stared at the screen. He had accrued 89 days of vacation leave. He laughed aloud at the absurdity. Before his implant malfunctioned, this meant months in his cell, thinking that he was in Paros or Paris. Now it would mean staring at his three walls for days on end without any respite. Not that work was any better. He’d be able to read, lie in bed. Plot a rebellion with Robin?

There was no telling how large their movement was, nor who the members were. Certainly they would not achieve any kind of victory in their lifetimes. Still, he knew he’d try just the same, for that one in a trillion chance that victory was possible. He couldn’t help himself anymore.

He strode up to Tracy’s desk. “Any chance I can trade my vacation days for pay?” Something real and concrete that Robin and he might actually use, he reasoned.

“All work and no play makes Ian a dull boy!” Tracy said sarcastically. “I’ll see what I can do,” she smiled, standing up to head toward the boss’s door. She turned around. Sympathetically she added softly, “Are you—?” Then, awkwardly, after seeing his dejected expression: “Never mind.”

Ian headed back to his desk. Someone had placed a blank #10 envelope on top of his stack of papers. Eagerly, he turned it over and saw that it was sealed with something puffy, like cotton inside. He opened it and found Robin’s note, scrawled as usual on toilet paper so that he could dispose of it easily:

The dahlias refuse to wither, as flowers will, in unlucky love affairs, or so they say.

Each time i gaze at them, i'm caught by surprise, seduced into yet a deeper layer of labyrinth, more beautiful, more intricate, more mysterious than the last. "It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day," Einstein once said. Loving you is like that.

Ian’s spirits soared. Yet he could feel his heart pounding in his throat. The time had arrived to attempt their rendezvous on the outside.

“When I ask you to go to lunch in the Atrium, meet me by the main entrance screen. Make up some excuse about why you have to leave early,” was his recollection of what she had told him. Now all he had to do was exercise patience.

The minutes limped by on crutches, painfully dragged themselves into hours. His stomach was grumbling. He began to wonder whether he had misunderstood Robin about attempting the breakout the same day as his receiving her letter. Twice he resisted the temptation to walk toward Robin’s cubicle to sneak a peak after getting up to retrieve a cup of coffee.

He wondered what their risks were. Were the guards themselves even aware of the power of a reprogrammed jail-broken MEphone to trigger their REM sleep? Suppose Robin bold-facedly pulled hers out and aimed at them? Unless they mistook it for a weapon and fired, which they were more likely to do than not, they might simply find it amusing.

No, the danger lay in a failure to notice guards cognizant of their escape. Someone they had not seen who was aware of their identity from a different floor— Perhaps a higher level guard posing as a lower level guard. They could be shot at. Or locked up in solitary, as he had been for trying to have lunch on the outside with Steve. That was optimistic. Treason inevitably meant termination—if they were fortunate.

His stomach remained in knots well past the lunch hour. In fact, it was four o’clock, he realized. He decided he couldn’t eat anyway. Had something happened to Robin?

The next day, his stomach was just as upset. All morning, Ian felt all pins and needles, as though he had ingested several thousand milligrams of niacin. Finally, at a quarter to one, he caught sight of Robin and let out a sigh.

“Want to get some lunch at the Atrium,” she grinned. She was glowing. She had obviously just trimmed and re-died her hair, the new red streaks really highlighting the green in her eyes.

“Great, I’m starving,” Ian smiled. He tried not too look too long at Robin, for fear that their emotions would be acknowledged by unfriendly witnesses.

“Got you a present,” she said coquettishly. “Try them on!”

They were a pair of Polaroid sunglasses. “How much did these set you back?”

“Two for one sale. Besides, What else can I spend our good salaries on? A bigger house? A vacation?” she laughed, putting her own on. “Let’s see.”

It would be a good idea to conceal their eyes from the guards, he realized.

As they approached the entrance to the building, under the large screens, where three guards stood—only one wearing the glasses—Robin fumbled in her purse. She kept her jacket draped over the purse, so the MEphone could remain hidden from plain view. Discreetly, she scrolled through a document of long numbers, copied a line of them, turned off the Rawtooth and pasted the numbers into the “advanced settings” box. She aimed her mobile at the screen. There was no flickering. The guards didn’t seem to change from their present course of action.

Robin flipped through the screens in her MEphone until she came across one that looked like code. She typed in some lines and pulled up a document with long lists of numbers and photographs.

“You’re on the net now? How’d you do that?” Ian whispered.

Robin flashed Ian a disapproving glance and continued scrolling. She stopped on an image and referenced the tall, bald and elegant African American guard who was distracted giving an entering tourist directions to the front desk. Ian nodded. “That’s him! Are the others part of his group?”

“We’ll find out,” Robin said as she copied the line of numbers next to the picture into the appropriate Rawtooth box, then aimed the mobile at the screen again.

Suddenly the bald guard stopped talking to the tourist, and lifted his head toward the screen, nodding vacantly. Ian noticed he had been holding his breath and exhaled. He glanced at the other two guards. One, a slender Pilipino man with pockmarked skin headed out the door to talk to one of the valets. Ian and Robin had overlooked the valet parking personnel outside. No telling how many lurked out there.

“What about the valets?” Ian whispered.

“Too busy fetching and parking to keep track of inmates.” Robin assessed the tall blonde guard with short parted gold hair done in the style of old 50s movie stars and two white wires sprouting from his ears. Ian studied him for a change in appearance. The guard rubbed one of his eyes. His features were handsome, except one hazel eye seemed asymmetrical. He looked like an arrogant fellow, probably unaware of the bald spot in the center of his head when he looked in the mirror, Ian thought to himself. His back was to the door, as he looked the guests over, bidding them a good afternoon as they departed. Now and then he seemed to scan the lobby, then the visible floors for irregular patterns.

Ian looked quizzically at Robin.

“What am I thinking? I didn’t realize, his wires—-“ she said. She aimed her mobile at the guard’s belt, where a MEphone hung. The guard took several steps back and stared up at the screen. He remained there, transfixed.

Ian noticed the African-American guard was still staring up at the screen as well.

“Ready?” Robin smiled, her words seeming to escape from the corner of her sexy mouth without her having moved her lips.

“What happened that first time? Some other guards somewhere else are in REM now too?” Ian asked.

Robin shrugged.

“And our third buddy with the valets?”

“It’s getting late,” Robin said cryptically.

Ian walked confidently next to Robin out of the entrance where they came face to face with the Pilipino guard. The man stared at the couple. Ian’s heart stopped. There was a small screen by the cashier, but…

“Can I get your auto?” the man inquired politely.

“Oh no thanks,” Robin smiled and walked on. Ian followed her lead. She was talking about getting something into the mail on time to make a deadline. Ian played along as they walked up Drumm Street towards Jackson Street. He dared not look back. He expected the guards to come after them, tackle them from behind with boiler guns at any moment. Robin stopped at the corner to wait for the light. Ian stared down at the ivory mosaic swirls that were the signature sidewalk of the Embarcadero shopping center. Casually, he moved his head enough to search for the guards discreetly. To his relief, he spied only pedestrians.

“That guard wasn’t part of the group?” he asked.

“Apparently not. Apparently it didn’t matter,” Robin snickered. “Pretty low security. Even for me. Figures,” she said, heading toward the bay.

Now, out in the sharp autumn sunlight for the first time in a couple of months, Ian was grateful for the sunglasses. The sky was piercing blue, satin, he reflected, suddenly aware of the chill in the early February air.

Ian caught sight of the gargantuan apartment complex on their left along Jackson, with its basement boutiques, gym and supermarket spanning three-square- blocks. “I never realized these luxury condo deals were actually prisons,” Ian laughed.

“Yup. At least four around here,” Robin pointed out. “One at Battery, at Front, at Davis and Drumm.”

Robin stopped as they approached the Embarcadero plaza and fountain. As through drawn by an invisible cord, she headed for one of the metal tables on the eating court directly across from the fountain, peeled off her leather jacket and rolled it into a pillow. She stopped, and pulled out her MEphone from the pocket and set it carefully on the table in its red and black case. “Oops. Wouldn’t it be something if I had broken that thing! Although, who knows. Maybe we didn’t even need it! Not too many of us wake up and defect, apparently.” She promptly sat down and stretched out like a feline, head back on the make-shift pillow to catch the rays of sun. Ian sat down rather stiffly and looked around.

“Relax, Ian. We’re free,” Robin said through her teeth, lips barely moving. Her eyes were shut, and her mouth parted ever so slightly in a sideways grin. “This is pretty amazing!” she began laughing. I can’t remember feeling anything so good… Try it,” she said, stretching out her long legs even further so as to lie as prostrate as possible, though face up, in the chair.

“You don’t remember? You don’t remember!” Ian teased, suddenly straddling Robin. He bent over her, lifted her face toward his and locked her into a long, sensual kiss.

“I meant besides you, of course!” Robin laughed when he finally allowed her to come up for air.

Ian stood and adjusted his trousers. “Shouldn’t we get going, Robin?” he riffled his hair.

“You kidding? We just got here!” She laughed.

“Robin, don’t you think that’s enough, now?” Ian pulled at her wrist.

“Out here there are just inmates and owners. Guards aren’t really needed. It’s all under control. Remember?” she said, pulling her arm away and putting it behind her head. Ian noticed the unusual size of her biceps as she stretched her bare arms out. “We’re free, babe,” she repeated, turning toward him, stretching her arm toward him. “Have a seat.

“Ian allowed himself to sit down. Habitually, he checked his shirt pocket to retrieve his MEphone, found it empty, took a breath and looked around, somewhat anxiously. After a while, he stretched out, lifting his face to the sun as well. The heat felt so wonderful on his skin. It was actually a relief that all his gadgets, his tethers, were broken. He grinned. “I’ve really missed this,” he laughed. “We’re free? Really?”

“Really. What kills me is that we probably could have done this weeks ago, without the help of my MEphone. Just walked out together.”

Ian sat up and looked at the fountain. A combination of Dr. Seuss’s fantastic swimming pools and industrial post-modern design; half a dozen waterfalls issuing from gigantic angled rectangular tunnels of cement over a small emerald lake, over which children skipped through the torrents of water on floating cement steps. Ian watched the children for quite some time. A little boy fell in and the father scooped him back out. The child wailed, on the edge as his parents figured out how to dry him out for the journey home.

Ian, instinctively removed his own coat and began to stand as though to offer it to the child. Almost at the same, the father removed his sweatshirt, buttoned his jean jacket around his bare torso and exchanged it for his son’s wet top and sweater, which covered most of the boy’s wet legs.

Somewhat relieved, Ian sat back down. “Why go back at all?” Ian laughed. He could hear his stomach rumbling again.

“Because we have some work to do there, remember?” Robin said. “And I don’t mean for Bear-T’nT.”

“Right,” Ian sobered.

“And it’s so easy to leave!” Robin laughed.

“Glorious!” Ian exclaimed, standing. “Where to now?”

Suddenly the afternoon and the future’s uncalculated possibilities stretched out before them like the sapphire blue of the Bay past the ferry building clock tower.

“Onward to The Waterfront,” Robin said. “I used to go there on special occasions in REM. I want to see what it’s really like.”

The stroll through the Embarcadero docks was lovely, lavish baskets of hanging flowers adorning the wooden walkways over the water. Finally, they emerged just shy of Broadway and made their way into the Waterfront Restaurant. During the summer, diners along the open-aired glassed in patio felt as though they were floating on the Bay. Neil, a most hospitable maître d’ with Indian roots, led Ian and Robin past a dining area lit by a fireplace, past an enclosed patio hanging over the water, upstairs to a mezzanine above the bar.

Before them, the Bay Bridge unfolded toward the shores of Oakland. There was a long fishing pier in the foreground, with a white Southern-style barge that looked like it belonged on the Mississippi. Gulls flew lazily back and forth over the green water. High up on one of the Oakland hills, Ian could make out the white shape of what he knew to be the Mormon Temple near where a famous couple of writers lived, though how he knew this was beyond him. Reality is turning out so strangely, for all I know, maybe the reason I know this because I’m one of the characters in one of their stories, he thought to himself.

“Well?” Ian smiled, taking Robin’s hand in his. Her eyes seemed to him the same color as the water.

“Pretty spectacular. I feel like I’m sitting on that ocean barge over there, cruising around the Bay like a tourist,” Robin beamed.

“Is it better than hyper-REM?” Ian grinned.

Robin laughed. “I remember being pretty happy in REM here as well. But this is—-“

“Real?” Ian laughed. He watched a large cargo ship the size of a few blocks pass under the Bay. With global warming, the clearance was getting tighter each year. There was something about the scenery, the real non-REM moment that made him feel more alive than he’d ever felt. The new scents and sensations were quasi-orgasmic. A wonderful sensation of calm, as well as joy seemed to percolate inside him. Perhaps it was Robin. “Do you feel as though you’re using all your senses for the first time?”

“Something like that,” Robin agreed.

A nice looking waitress with her blonde hair tied back in a pony tail interrupted their reverie. They decided on an appetizer of pancetta wrapped prawns, a Goddess Caesar with shaved gorgonzola cheese and clam linguini to share.

“How much time do we have?” Ian asked Robin, once the waitress had left to put in their order. Should we start talking about a plan?”

“They think I’m off on a shoot. What did you say?”

“I told Tracy that I had a bunch of pain—a kidney stone—and needed to make an emergency visit to urgent care. She told me to leave immediately, but I told her I only wanted to be docked half a sick day.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice to spend the night at the Saint Francis overlooking Union Square?” Robin said dreamily.

Ian frowned.

Robin leaned forward and whispered. “For all they know, you’re at the hospital and I’m at my shoot.”

“Why so decadent, love?” Ian smiled.

“Because,” Robin smiled her lopsided smile concealing a laugh.

“Because?” Ian prodded.

“Because the Saint Francis is one of the most romantic hotels in all of San Francisco.”

Ian looked non-plussed.

“It’s a historical landmark!”

Ian shrugged.

“It’s the only one on Union Square.”

Failing to elicit the response she wanted from Ian, she continued. “Let’s live it up while we can. What are you afraid of? That you won’t be able to make the mortgage payments on your Tiburon mansion?” Robin laughed. “Haven’t you saved quite a bit of money since you stopped taking imaginary trips half way around the world?”

“We’ll need money for our plan, Robin.” Ian shook his head. “What a scam. Did the prison system get any of that money?”

“You bet the owners of our prison gets some, since the prisons became privatized. All money streams lead to the owners eventually, no? But don’t forget there are also owners of your virtual mortgage, owners of your virtual vacations—dozens of parasites,” Robin smirked.

One waiter served their food; another ground fresh pepper and refreshed the water glasses. Once the feast was before them, Ian and Robin’s conversation stopped. They savored each morsel sensually, staring silently into each other’s eyes, as though contemplating in a church. Now and then one of them would break into giggles.

It was Ian who spoke first. “Doesn’t this seem like the best meal you ever had?’

“It probably is,” Robin said. They both laughed. And laughed harder, as though it were one of the funniest jokes they’d ever heard.

“Hey,” Ian said while they were waiting for the bill. “See that white triangle over there on the Oakland Hills? What is it?”

Once confident that they were discussing the same object, Robin answered that it was the Mormon Temple.

“How do we both know this, though it may be the first time we’ve really seen it?” Ian inquired.

“Television. Virtual reality memories. Because that couple of authors that live over there put it on the map. What do you think?”

“Yeah—“

“Think it’s used as a prison? I mean why else is it on top of a hill with one of the best views of the Bay and San Francisco, yet has no windows?”

“Absolutely,” Robin said. She picked up the electronic slate and allowed it to scan her retina. Several accounts flashed on the screen and she tapped the appropriate one, then entered a tip.

“What are you doing?” Ian grabbed the slate. “They’ll see where we are!”

“They know where I am,” Robin said. “I’m on a shoot.”

“But you’re a high security risk!” Ian said, slapping some bills down on the table and helping Robin with her jacket. “They’ll be on your tail in a second.”

The final amount flashed for her approval. “Cancel,” she clicked with the pen and set the bill down.

Robin and Ian walked down Embarcadero, through the tangle of people at Fisherman’s Wharf and after a half hour of waiting in line, caught a cable car up Powell to Union Square. They were fortunate to end up on one of the seats facing outward. Robin reclined into Ian’s arms. The other tourists—all owners, clearly—were too busy looking at Ghirardelli Square, the crab shacks, seals and Aquatic park, to notice Robin and Ian kissing the entire way. Finally, past all the commotion, the couple came up for air.

Ian stared at the pastel Victorians, some with intricate gold trim. Some had drawn curtains. In one or two, an inhabitant could be seen walking or sitting at a table or desk. “So who lives in all these if most of our society is in jai?”

“The small percentage of owners, mostly. A single owner often owns dozens, even hundreds of houses, so most of these—I’d say about 80%—are vacant, waiting for their owners to go on holiday or on business trips. Some are rented to young people who don’t have their third strike yet. College kids, maybe. People who’ve fallen through the cracks.”

“Would we be able to rent one eventually, you think?”

“It would be easier to squat, both logistically and morally, no?”

“I love it,” Ian said.

XXI.

On the other side of consciousness, someone was knocking at the door. Ian stirred. His back felt magnificent. The soft wonder-top mattress beneath him reminded him of his Divine® bed back home in Tiburon. He stretched and curled Robin into his arms, kissed her. She continued snoring lightly, like a little animal. Quietly, Ian pushed aside the down comforter and swung his legs over the king-size bed.

Another knock on the door. The screen clock said 10:23. Housekeeping. He decided to ignore it.

The knocking stopped.

Ian stretched and walked barefoot to the window, marveling at how clean the carpet beneath his feet was. The large windows at the foot of the room boasted a view of Union Square opposite Il Caffe, Macy’s to the right.

For a minute Ian felt a wave of nausea. What had he been thinking? Tiburon was not real. How could this be? What if his REM sleep implant had started working again?

Another knock. This time, louder, more insistent, male.

Wait, hadn’t he and Robin escaped the jail? So this was real.

A more threatening pounding nearly sent him into a panic. The knock could be—

“Let me grab a robe,” Ian called out reflexively, trying to buy time to think. His mind was assaulted by images of armed guards demanding to confirm his identity. He inhaled deeply, trying to orient himself. Could the authorities have discovered the couple’s whereabouts so quickly? The prospect of their end sent blood cursing through his arteries. What if they had heard their plot the previous night through Robin’s MEphone?

Robin had been right. At least they had enjoyed one last, dreamlike tryst.

Ian tried to relive the events of the previous afternoon in the flash of a second, as though preserving an anodyne for the poisonous prospects of what lay ahead, on the other side of the door.

Robin had sweet-talked their way into a room in the historical wing built in 1902 that survived the SF earthquake and fire. No sooner did she first glimpse the room, than she had thrown herself on the bed, spread eagle, a look of ecstasy on her face. After several minutes, she sat up and got to her feet as though she were about to jump up and down. “Look at this! A real bed!” she exclaimed and let herself fall onto her buttocks. The room was spacious, complete with wet bar and chez lounge.

“Check out this fridge!” she exclaimed, examining the contents. “Snacks. Want a bourbon?”

“Don’t touch anything!” Ian exclaimed. “They’ll charge us!”

“How much cash did you get out of the machine in the lobby before we left?”

“Daily limit,” Ian responded with some irritation.

“We can afford it for now. Tomorrow’s another day,” Robin shrugged and grabbed a bourbon. “Shall we talk about the plan now?”

They sat at the large desk, overlooking the city streets while Ian recounted his experience with Steve in full detail. “I’ve been thinking about the fire hoses at the end of each floor,” he whispered. “We could wake up an entire floor of people if there happened to be a fire.”

“Too risky. But setting off the alarm or sprinklers could work. We’d have to walk by China Town on the way home. Pick up some of those smoking fireworks left over from Chinese New Year. They’d be perfect—It wouldn’t be too unusual for an inmate to have brought one home—”

Ian smiled. Robin beamed and tucked her head under Ian’s.

“But,” Ian sobered. “In the past, if such systems went off, what kept us all from waking up?”

“The systems were designed to wake us in emergencies. As you know, when we wake up from deep sleep at night, we’re in REM until we’re triggered through special visual or auditory stimuli in our earphones or from a screen. Alarms and sprinklers wake us completely, but it doesn’t take much to persuade the mind that it was just a dream…. I see what you’re saying. So we’d have to repeat the incident.“ Robin paused.

“We should experiment on just one floor, before trying to wake the entire building,” Ian cautioned. “And you’re a high risk, let me—“

“You haven’t been studying the weak points as long as I.“ Robin protested.

They argued back and forth.

Finally, Robin said, “My friends are also in this complex. By now, they’ve probably found others.”

“How do we know they are not agents?” Ian asked.

“How do I know you’re not an agent?” Robin half grinned out of the corner of her mouth, but her brows and eyes seemed to betray concern.

“Like this,” Ian said, taking her face in his hands and bringing her lips to his.

After a while, Robin wiped her lipstick and laughed. “Seriously, one of the ways you can tell is whether they agree to go to lunch on the outside or not, whether they can or if guards start to follow them. Another is with the remote. If it works on them.“

“How convenient,” Ian smiled. “Tell me more about your friends.”

“I’ve known Angelina since fourth grade. She’s part Italian, part Puerto-Rican. Green almond eyes, double-size lips. I’m sure you’ll recognize her. Just look for the prettiest woman on the floor—like a Brat doll. Mary Liz is cute too with light brown eyes and brown wavy hair, full lips. I went to a screening of a documentary she had made before she was marginalized into oblivion and we could see we were kindred souls. As for Rickey. He’s a brilliant writer. Professor of Ethnic Studies now. I’ve known him since the pseudo-college days from the jail we thought was a dorm. We were both working in the kitchen, “ Robin said. At first, my mother worried when we began dating that we’d have trouble for being a mixed couple, but he grew on her so quickly, she forgot all about it. She’s changed a lot since those days, thank God.”

Finally they agreed on a strategy and that it would be best for Ian to execute it.

Now that the details were in place, Robin slowly sidled up to Ian for another kiss and began removing her clothes. They made love late into the evening, trying out various facets of the room besides the bed, such as the chez lounge and bathtub with double shower head.

Eventually they developed quite an appetite again.

“I don’t feel like getting dressed until tomorrow,” Robin said, heading for the bathroom when room service arrived. The Pilipino man wheeled in a table set with a white table cloth, ice water, bread, butter, and two steaming plates with silver lids containing crab-encrusted Halibut and green mashed potatoes from the Oak room downstairs. They lit a fire in the hearth. It seemed to Ian as though the day had stretched on and on with endless indulgence, conversation and relaxation. After dinner Ian couldn’t remember when each of his senses felt so fully sated. It was the last thought he coherently pieced together before he and Robin fell asleep in each other’s arms.

“Mr. W—“ a deep male voice called from the other side of the door.

Whatever the consequences of their adventure, at least Ian had been granted the opportunity to be truly alive in his body and mind, truly inhabiting all of his senses. He had truly loved and been loved. Moreover, he had come into possession of the truth.

Would he rather have been Steve, still clinging to his virtual delusion? For the first time Ian felt confident about his choice. Boldly, he opened the door. “Yes?”

“Room service, Sir,” smiled a tall African-American man. Ian laughed as he beheld the rolling table complete with tablecloth and carnations, iced water glasses, a basket of croissants and two crab omelets—probably the rest of their cash, Ian reflected with a combination of elation and irritation.

“Everything okay?” the waiter inquired, perplexed.

“I’m sorry. It’s not you. Everything’s perfect!” Ian smiled.

The waiter wheeled the table in front of the window.

“Robin, your addiction to this kind of luxury—This, The Waterfront—is what’s enslaving our society!”

“I know, I know. Don’t worry. We’ll have to give it all up soon enough. Meanwhile, why not enjoy!” Robin said through bulging cheeks full of crab and melted cheese. She was so overcome with excitement, Ian forgot his irritation. He tried to distract her by making love to her a final time. They enjoyed each other as though it were their last time together. Afterward, they dressed in silence, Ian hungrily devouring his omelet, and Robin polishing off the last of her. Then they headed back to the prison.

XXII.

Five-eleven. Friday evening. Commuters were so thick, Ian had trouble stopping to fumble with his briefcase. He had trouble locating the hidden firecrackers and lighter through his badly scratched and now too-dark sun glasses.

He turned to a commuter that was in REM and slapped him on the back. “Hey dude!”
The man stopped and smiled, almost automatically.

“TGIF!” Ian called out, lighting the firecrackers and placing them inside a planter attached to the balcony. The man laughed and stepped back.

The firecrackers began smoking and cracking. Some commuters turned to look,

Ian walked on to his cell as though nothing had happened. Very quickly his cell became flooded with smoke. Outside his cell he could hear shouting.

“What’s going on?”

“Fire!”

“No, it’s just some idiot celebrating.”

The sprinklers came on in his cell soaking the furniture. Ian had stored the few books he had in his desk; his clothes were in the closet.

Ian grabbed a wooden ruler from his desk and exited his cell. The scene looked surreal, somewhat like a conservative version of the wet-T-shirt crowd scene in a Balliwood film.

Many of the people had stopped, looked bewildered. Ian began running down the hall, ratting the bars with his ruler.

“Wake up! Look at where you are!” Ian rattled the bars. “You’re in a jail! Wake up!”

More and more prisoners stopped as they noticed others doing the same. Ian paused to observe their reactions. One or two seemed to be waking up to their surroundings of their own accord, without any interference on his part at all.

He stopped the next person he saw, a man in his fifties in a soaked pin-striped suit.

The man blinked stupidly, water falling from his lashes. His lips sputtered with water.

“Where am I?” he choked.

Ian put his hands around some cell bars. “You’re in jail! You’ve always been in jail. It’s a work camp. Don’t let those prison clothes fool you! Help me. We can break out!”

“How? But what— Agnes!” the man moaned. “Where are you, Agnes?” he began weaving down the hall, lost.

Ian ran to a pair of young women jiggling and giggling in the shower of water. He could see one woman’s nipples through her thin wet sweater; another’s red bra.

“Girls! Wake up! We’ve been in jail and we’re trying to break out! Help me! Help me wake others!”

“What do you mean? How?” the red-head with side pony tail laughed.

Just the thought of the work ahead was dizzying.

One of the two young women screamed and fell to her knees. “Help! How did I get here! Help me! I want to go home!”

Her friends tried in vain to console her.

“Ian?” Ian turned around abruptly at the mention of his name. He was staring at a girl with dark hair, green eyes and cartoon goldfish lips. She was with a good-looking, dark-skinned male with a strong chin and tight kinky black curls.

Alarms began sounding throughout the building. More screaming indicated guards had shown up.

“Angelina and Rickey! You’re early, but I’ll have dinner ready in just a jiffy. Something caught fire on my stove,” Ian lied, motioning them toward his cell. The couple followed.

“Nice to meet you,” Ian whispered when they were safely inside. “How are you guys trying to wake them?”

“Same as you. It’s going to be a slow process,” Rickey rolled his eyes.

At work the next day, it was business as usual. However, that evening, back at the prison, there was a surge in the number of higher level security guards. Unaware security guards and inmates were informed that there were terrorists in their midst.

Over the next week, Robin and Ian studiously avoided each other, as planned. The number of higher level security guards in the building increased. The incident had to be repeated on the same floor, same approximate time, to work on as many of the same inmates as before in order to avert the “Steve” effect of selective amnesia. Once the workers went to sleep, then were triggered into hyper-REM by their interactive screens, their memories would in effect reset. They’d truly awake from REM once they entered the workplace. It was during this waking state at work that Robin and Ian had to ensure that the memory of the jail would be powerful enough to be recalled at a later date.

Ian waited for a guard-free gap in the commute crowd to repeat the incident on the same floor. Finally, ten days later at 6:24, in the far corner by the stairs across the hall from his cell, he found such a gap and lit the fire crackers, reciting the numbers he remembered in Cantonese as well as a massacred “Happy New Year.”

“Gout, Bot, Sep, Gung Hay Fat Choy!”

Instantly the hall was flooded with the acrid stench of smoke; the air began to get thick. Within seconds, a terrible alarm began sounding, causing people to cover their ears, then walk frantically toward the elevator or into their cells. The sprinklers went off, almost instantly soaking all the “commuters.”

“Wake up!” Ian screamed at them through the deafening sound of alarms. “You’ve been in jail all these years. We’re all in a work camp! Wake up! Look at the bars!”

He ran through the crowd, screaming and shaking the inmates.

A tall, elderly man with a crescent of white ostrich hair on his head began to cry out, his wife, a tiny, older woman with a page boy hair cut turned about like a ballerina in a daze, covering her head, a group of two suited men and a woman in a business outfit peered inside the cell bars as though for the first time, yet others ran frantically toward the elevator in a panic to escape. Cries of “Let me out!” began to flood the halls, igniting more panic.

Ian emulated the same behavior, spinning and darting erratically down the hallways until he found his cell. Confident that no one was watching, he waved his key and stepped inside. He reached for the umbrella he kept by the door, opened it, put his briefcase on his soggy cot, sat carefully upon it and listened.

The alarms sounded less imposing, but still intolerable. He could make out moaning, anguished cries, sobbing. Then, he could hear shouting, struggling. The guards. He felt a helium-like sensation in his chest, originating in his navel and traveling up, buoying his heart. Resistance was increasing!

XXIII.

For the next couple of months, Ian, Robin and their growing cadre carried out a dozen more actions on various floors. Angelina helped them gain confidence using her and Robin’s remotes to trigger the guard’s REM sleep states during the actions, to increase the likelihood of their forgetting the incidents. Judging from the number of actions they were able to get away with, apparently their theory was working.

Then, a few days before Ian was scheduled to set off the alarms in the entire building, two blonde men recognized Ian in the elevator on his way back to his cell after work.

“Isn’t that the one who woke us?” said the handsome one with hazel eyes.

“That is Dude! Hey, my friend!” shouted the one with hair like porcupine bristles. He put his hand on Ian’s shoulder as they stepped off the elevator. “We’ve been looking for you to thank you. You’re the one who woke us up, aren’t you!” They continued walking down the hall.

Bristle-head stopped. He grabbed Ian to stop him; looked at him hard. “Yes you are. Dark. Good looking. I’ll never forget your face. I don’t know what you did. I don’t know what the fuck happened, but I can’t get home now. It’s all gone. My Marina townhouse and walks there, my second home in Tahiti right on the water. They operated on me, told me I’m crazy. But I know it’s you. What did you do to it all?”

“I don’t know but I want to kill him,” the other said.

“Good idea, “ said the other. “You watch out, dude. Watch out for your life. You got 24 hours to put it all back.”

Ian refused to walk back to his cell until the men left. “I’ll call for the guards,” he threatened.

“You know how quick they’ll be to respond,” Bristle head smirked.

“I had a respectable life. Why did you do it, dude? Why?”

“You got the wrong guy,” Ian said.

“Remember, now. We’ll catch up with you, if you don’t put it all back,” the other man said.

Ian was shaking when he waved his key at his door.

The following day, Ian managed to get Robin’s attention at the coffee machine.

“Lots of work lately?” He muttered.

“Yeah,” she said without looking up.

“Some nuts threatened me,” Ian mumbled.

“I can see you’re sick. You should stay home tomorrow,” Robin said cryptically. “I can take over your ad assignment tomorrow.”

“That’s unnecessary,” Ian responded. “I’ll be fine, but, hey, thanks.” He did not want Robin to put herself at such risk because of her status. The chances of her being recognized and apprehended were now much greater.

They argued back and forth.

“Tomorrow, don’t bother coming. I’m taking over the work on the ad whether you’re here or not,” she hissed her warning and strode back to her desk.

That evening Ian could not sleep worrying about Robin and the fall-back plan they had discussed for emergencies back at the Saint Francis. He began to have second thoughts. He recalled his conversation about whether it was cruel or humane to wake the inmates. In a democracy, they would have the right to make up their own minds, Robin said. But clearly, the men who had threatened Ian were telling him that given a choice, they would choose to remain deluded. Was he wrong to ignore their wishes? In a genuine democracy, wouldn’t that point of view be respected as well?

XXIV.

It was five forty-seven in the early evening. Ian was around the corner from his cell on his floor. He had intentionally spilled the contents of his briefcase and had nearly finished sorting through it and putting it neatly back. Still, the alarm and sprinkler system had failed to activate. He could feel his pulse throbbing in the side of his neck, his heart skipping irregularly. What if Robin had been caught? Only there was no smell of smoke. The bank of elevators, where she was positioned, was quite some distance away. Could she have been apprehended after she had escaped in the elevator? Ian milled about as long as he could without arousing suspicion.

He spent a long night awake, wondering whether he’d ever see Robin again, anticipating an unwelcome knock at the door. Sometime, near dawn, he fell asleep.

The next day, he was late for the second time.

“Sick?” Tracy smiled.

He just nodded and rubbed his hair. “Coffee,” he grunted and headed for the machine. When he saw Robin trot up behind him, waiting her turn, he felt like a scuba diver whose oxygen had been turned on again after too dangerous a hiatus.

“What are you doing here?” she said. “You’re supposed to be in bed.” Then, barely audible, she whispered as they parted. “Duds. Next week, same time. Lay low for a while.”

Ian was on the elevator when the alarms went off in the lobby. A guard was in the elevator as well. Ian made eye contact with him, feigning confusion. To throw the guard off, , he exited on the 25h floor. No sooner did Ian step off the elevator, than he could hear shouts and cries issuing from the lobby and floors below. He was immediately soaked by water. Robin must have set off the sprinklers throughout the building. Ian ran through the halls shouting as usual, trying to wake the fellow inmates. He took the stairs down to the next floor to continue his routine there.

“Oh thank gosh! Thank gosh, Ian! What is happening? Why are we here?” Karen, the Chinese woman who owned the North Beach dry cleaning store suddenly embraced and clung to Ian as though to a raft in a flood. Tears shown in her eyes and Ian could see she was trying to suppress them. After explaining to her, as best he could, what was taking place, Ian asked for her key. He waved it until one of the cell doors opened.

“See, this must be your cell,” he showed her.

“Oh, no. Let’s not go in there,” she said. She stopped cold when she noticed her son, husband and two daughters inside. They were soaked, sitting on their drenched cots, staring, arms folded, at a black screen, looking miserable.

“Quickly! Come!” she motioned them.

“But ma, that’s not the problem,” said her oldest daughter, standing. She was taller than her mother. “The door is open. But just look. I’m not going out there. …What are we doing here?”

Her husband began speaking to her sharply in a low voice in Cantonese.

“I knew it,” Karen shook her head. “I just knew it,” she sank down on the cot. “I made mistake on the taxes.”

“No, no, no!” Ian tried to console her. “We’ve all been here for years. We’re all guilty of something minor, but that’s just a pretext. You have implants that make you all think you live in that nice house you’re always painting yourself in South San Francisco.”

“Why have they rounded us up?” her husband demanded of Ian, standing, as if he hadn’t heard anything he just said. Then turning to his wife he asked in Cantonese, “Who is this?” He glared at Ian suspiciously.

“This is Ian. Customer,” Karen stammered awkwardly.

Ian continued with his usual, practiced refrain about their situation. The two girls and Karen nit their brows, nodding intermittently. Mr. Ko’s temple throbbed. He nodded too. In spite of the signs of a black out, his son was determined to get the screen to turn on. After Ian finished, Mr. Ko stood as though to show Ian to the cell door.

“I had no idea. No idea,” Karen was shaking her head. “You’re right, something has to be done.”

“Why should we believe you?” Mr. Ko asked.

“Why would I make this up?” Ian asked. “Don’t you think others have a right to know what’s going on?”

“He very good person,” Karen said to her family. She began speaking to them in Cantonese. “Something has to be done,” she repeated in English. Mr. Ko shook his head, arguing in Cantonese. Karen sounded passionate. This continued for some time. Finally, Mr. Ko nodded. “Good,” Karen said in English, smiling at him as she stood.

“Ready?” She motioned for her family to join Ian outside. The daughter who had shown apprehension about the chaos outside volunteered to stay in the cell with her brother, but Mr. Ko wanted them to stay together. Slowly, they all ventured into the commotion. Mostly they kept Ian company as he tried to wake the others. Every now and then, Karen would join in, shouting and explaining to confused inmates about their situation. The bolder daughter listened attentively, then began doing the same.

For about an hour, there was mayhem. More and more people were waking up. Now and then Ian noticed one trying to wake the others.

Suddenly, loud alarms resounded throughout the building, as though from every floor. Then there was some blaring on loud speakers.

“The terrorist is by the west side of the fountain. Repeat, she is by the fountain. “

Ian bolted out of the cell and peered over the railing. Far down below he could see armed guards with helmets scuffling by the fountain. A shot rang out and the smoke trail lifted towards him.

“The terrorist has been apprehended. Everyone may go back to their homes. Repeat,’ she has been apprehended.”

Ian felt as though he had fallen through ice to drown in the shocking cold-waters beneath.

Karen and her family had joined him in looking to see what the commotion was.

“What’s going on?” Karen inquired. “You don’t look good, Ian. Come, sit down.” She tried to get him to go back to her cell.

“That’s okay,” he said.

“It’s not. You’re face is all white. Like snow. All white.” She stood with him, patting his back for a while. Her family stood, waiting, peering at the commotion below. Mr. Ko stared at his polished shoes, shuffling them nervously. Karen and he exchanged a meaningful look.

“What we do now?” Karen asked finally.

“I don’t know,’ Ian choked. “Return to our cells.”

He stumbled toward the stairwell. Lights were flashing. “Return to your homes,” came the edict from the loud speakers. Up above he could hear the stairwell door being slammed shut, probably bolted by the guards. He ran toward the eighteenth floor, with his heart in his throat trying to hold back tears.

“Please not her,” he found himself saying through gritted teeth.

“Evacuate the stairwell. It is not safe. For your good, evacuate the stair well,” a guard blared on a speaker system. Ian looked up. He could see the guard peering over the stairs, staring at him. Ian headed toward the door on the next level down. He opened it and shut it and hid along a wall inside the stairwell, where he could not see the guard. He heard other doors opening and closing. Footsteps, running.

“Evacuate the stairwell!” the loudspeaker continued.

Ian began running down the stairs. He made it several more flights before he heard heavy boots coming his way. He looked up and saw three armed guards. He saluted them respectfully and made a beeline for the door. Floor 20 it said.

He cursed under his breath and opened it. A few stragglers wandered around, looking lost. A young bicyclist with long, blonde curls was trying to incite others to break out, followed by a group of three or four other young people. Two guards who had been escorting a family to their cell, turned and headed toward the bicyclist.

“This is a lock down,” one bellowed on a load-speaker. “Return to your homes.”

Ian headed in the opposite direction at a fast clip.

“Hey, young man with the briefcase,” one of the guards called after him. Ian turned a corner and began sprinting toward the stairwell on the other end.

“Young man! Stop or we’ll shoot!” one of the guards announced through a speaker. Ian had his hand on the stairwell door when he heard a shot. Rather than turn, he ducked into the stairwell and bolted down the stairs. He was all right. He heard the stairwell door open and the guards clomping down the stairs. He clung to the wall as far out of sight as he could.

“Robin, Robin, Robin,” was all he could think. He opened the door silently on the 19th floor and walked quickly toward her cell. He listened for the door to open again and the guards to burst forth, but they didn’t. Perhaps he had lost them. He turned the corner and his heart settled down from his throat back into his chest. He passed a few people marching back to their cells.

“Don’t go back!” an older man in jeans was shouting at them. “This is our chance! They’ve had us captive here for years making oodles money off our sweat!”

When Ian approached Robin’s cell, he could hear sobbing. He wondered if it were her neighbors. Someone else who knew, he thought. The sobbing grew louder. It was coming from inside her cell. He ran up to the door.

“Robin! Please—“ he cried out, peering into the cell. Whoever it was hiding in the closet behind a pile of clothes she had used to obstruct the view into the small recess in the wall. The crying stopped.

“Robin? It’s Ian!” he cried. He noticed he was literally holding his breath and exhaled.

A flash of blonde and red hair poked out. Ian braced himself for the sight of a terrible injury. She must have survived the bullets and managed to escape.

“Robin?”

To his relief, she did emerge. He was beside himself when he saw her run to the door.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered. Then she opened the door and threw herself into his arms.

“Angelina,” she said and began wailing again. “They got Angelina, bastards!”

XXV.

Predictably, lockdowns followed each alarm incident. After a good night’s sleep, many inmates and guards had little memory of what had taken place. Yet, more and more people were managing to remember and adding to the resistance. Karen Ko was among these. She lived a few floors from Rickey and now with Angelina gone, Rickey was more than happy to train Karen in the strategies he and the rest of the cadre had developed.

The next action was scaled back and scheduled for Karen’s floor. Robin had begged Ian to stay in his cell for the next month, but he refused.

“The chances of that mob finding me in a building with this may people is pretty, slim,” he insisted. “They could get me on my way back from work… anytime, really. I’ll make sure I’m not alone.”

It was 5:34 Wednesday evening, when Ian emerged from the elevator after work on the 25th floor. Within minutes, he heard several were several loud cracks, followed by shouts and cheers of “Happy Birthday!”

He walked toward the designated stairwell, shouting to wake the commuters, rattling bars. He spotted Karen and Rickey a few feet ahead doing the same. They had been joined by others he’d never seen before.

“Oh no, it’s real! I knew it! It’s real!” came an agonized cry through the alarm. Several people were hunched down, sobbing. “What are we supposed to do! “ one man wailed.

Karen rushed over and began explaining what was taking place to the man.

“You’re right. This did happen to you before. You been in jail for years….” Karen began to detail the paradigm to the men. Rickey and the others group continued on to wake more prisoners, turning the corner. Ian smiled as he watched the men follow Karen, looking for the rest.

Ian decided to work on the opposite end of the corridor. A man was crouched and sobbing.

“I want to kill myself,” he said. Ian leaned down to console him.

“Kill him! This is the one! Kill the motherf—-!!!” someone shouted. Ian looked up in time to recognize the two blonde men who had assaulted him earlier. They were joined by over a dozen others.

“It’s all his fault!” they screamed to everyone on the floor.

“He’s the reason we’re here and not back in our homes. He took it all away. Get him!”

Ian could not believe his eyes. The man he’d been consoling stood up and looked at him with a mixture of confusion and anger. He took several steps back and joined the crowd. More people were approaching, standing over Ian with their arms crossed, some pounding their fists.

The blonde, beefy guy with the bristle hair cut repeated his case to the crowd. He became impassioned. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, creating so much misery? Do these people look happy to you? Don’t they deserve to live their quiet, decent, contented lives? How can you live with yourself!” he screamed.

“He shouldn’t live with himself!” someone shouted.

“That’s right!” the crowed began to yell.

That was the last thing he remembered before a crowd fell upon him with briefcases, and blows.

XXVI.

The blade glided skillfully over Ian’s face, carefully averting the area by the left ear where the skin was still healing from the removed stitches. Ian grasped the razor as firmly as he could in his right hand with thumb and three fingers, trying to anticipate the alarms that could sound at any minute, so as to avoid further injury. It was these sorts of tasks that were so difficult to grow accustomed to without the use of a little finger. Never had he imagined how vital the flange really was.

The pain had been so acute when it had been crushed and severed from his palm, it was as though the circuit that connected all his nerves had shorted and he passed out instantly. After the accidental amputation was re-cut and sewn closer to the palm, the wound was not treated with antibiotics and Ian nearly died from the fever. Had it not been for Robin rallying the other workers, they would have let him die in the hospital from “complications.”

Now, many months later, he was guarded very carefully in his cell. He was escorted to and from work and to and from the Atrium restaurant at 12 noon for lunch. The escorts came wearing the masks of “new co-workers” or “friends,” but they spared no time in letting Ian know exactly what the consequences would be, should he not follow their suggestions.

Yet Ian’s spirits were the best they had ever been when he was not with Robin—at least since the old days when he had been deluded and deliriously happy. Who could blame those poor sods, he thought, for wanting to kill him for having burst their bubble. Yet among those who reviled him, a surprising number were equally as indebted to him for having dragged them out of Plato’s cave of ignorance into the light of truth, though this truth in itself was hideous to behold. It was they who were now carrying the movement forward, along with Robin, since he could not. And the rest—those that lay in between—they were more like sheep to be led by whosoever claimed the reins of power.

At 8:12, at the time the morning commute was in full swing, the alarms sounded with such intensity, Ian had trouble gathering his thoughts. He had finally fallen into deep sleep near dawn and had trouble now rising. Within seconds, a cold rain fell down on Ian’s head, before he could run for cover under the counter. Water dripped from his lashes and soaked his running pants. The sprinkler system in the entire building must have been activated.

Then an odd thing happened. All the lights shut off. The opaque milky balconies turned clear, exposing the cell bars to cells opposite the chasm. All this would be certain to wake more of them, incite far more to join the rebellion.

The interactive screens blared orders in unison: “Terrorists have set fire to this building. Evacuate all quarters! Convene downstairs in lobby!”

“Fuck that!” Ian heard some people yelling. It took a superhuman effort not to grin. Ian wondered whether or not the resistance had resorted to a real fire this time.

Others were screaming, “Where are we?”

“What is this? Let me out!”

“What am I doing here?!!”

Ian threw on a suit. Now for the first time, the bars on his cell made sense, Ian realized, as he stepped in line with those inmates who had chosen to obediently follow the directions to evacuate to the lobby. Ian expected to see someone outside his cell waiting to escort him, and happily found none. Apparently the escort was badly-needed elsewhere. It seemed as though more than half the prisoners were headed in the opposite direction as the orders, some banding together to huddle inside a stairwell, even a cell.

“What are we doing here? Who’s in charge!!!’ a man in a soaked tie screamed.

“I demand to see a lawyer! You’re going to have quite a law suit!” a heavy woman in a blue and white flowered dress and pearl necklace yelled.

“Let’s just bust down the place,” others were suggesting.

A crowd of angry people charged past Ian. “This way!”

A terrible lock down of all prisoners would clearly follow what seemed like an inevitable rebellion. Doors would be permanently sealed with the pretext of keeping the terrorists from escaping.

The elevators were filled beyond capacity. Fortunately, thanks the legendary terrorist attacks of September 11, the evacuation protocol favored the inmates on the upper floors. Ian managed to squeeze through the crowd in the elevator toward the panel of buttons. A guard was trying to block his access, but with so many bodies, Ian was able to press 19 fairly easily without the guard’s acknowledgment. Ian stared up at the illuminated numbers. 22, 21, 20, 19, 18. The doors would not open. In this chaos it would be difficult to find Robin. Out of desperation, Ian managed to push the alarm button. The elevator jolted to a stop on the fourteenth floor. Ian jammed the “open” button and pushed his way out. The guard went after him, but was immediately pushed aside by the crowd in a mad panic to access the elevators. Ian made his way to the stairwell.

Up, he climbed, his heart racing from sheer fear or physical activity, he had no idea. Regardless, never had racing up five flights of stairs seemed so effortless.

Ian emerged on the 19th floor stairwell where he and Robin were to meet and glanced around for signs of her. Finding none, he crouched down on the hall carpet and waited.

“What’s going on?”

Ian spun around at the sound of Rickey’s voice. He was standing next to Mary Liz and apparently had come with a large group.

“I’m so sorry,” was all Ian could say, embracing the man. When they separated, Ian saw that his friend’s eyes were bereft of their former spark, his face deadened, as though his soul had been extracted leaving behind just a shell of a human being.

Mary Liz twisted the water out of her long, wavy hair, a tear welled up in one of her large brown eyes and cascaded down her wet cheeks. She wiped it and busied herself with introductions, as though nothing had happened.

Another crowd of people descended the stairwell. The tail end of the crowd stopped and made their way onto the floor. Ian counted about twenty more people, of various ethnicities. He felt an arm on his shoulder and spun around.

“Sorry I’m late,” Robin said, forcing a smile. She was holding onto a purse, which seemed to be the only dry article on her. More people descended the stairs and poured onto the floor.

One woman pushed her way toward Ian, calling for him. He walked toward the sound.

“Karen!”

They embraced for a while. “My daughter too!” she beamed.

The group, now numbering close to 40 stood, waiting. Motion on the stairwell stopped. One of the young men walked back toward the stairs, looking up.

“I think that’s it,” he said. People edged toward the stairs again, extending their hands. Ian took Robin and a young Asian man’s hand. They began making a slow descent down the stairs, allowing other, more panic-stricken inmates to pass them.

At last, the group emerged in the lobby. They continued linking hands. Resisting the motion herding them toward the center, they managed to snake their way along the walls toward a source of natural light: a side exit. Several times they had to stop and wait as one of the group was broken off.

“Ma! My mom!” Ian heard Karen daughter screaming.

“We’ve lost Karen!” someone a male voice shouted. “Stay with us! Stay with us,” others were calling to her daughter.

Ian felt lead sink toward his ankles. “I’ve got to go!” Ian said.

Robin held firmly to his hand. The Asian man next to Ian explained that Rickey and two other people were already designated to find people in her situation. The linked hands began pulling forward, toward the light.

Robin explained. “Rickey has Angelina’s remote.”

Ian was relieved to hear the guards hadn’t gotten hold of it. Then a sad thought occurred to him.

“Is that why they got her?”

“She gave it to some others,” Robin panted as they walked on. “Working on a different weak spot in the lobby. She thought they’d need it more.”

“I should go help Karen,” Ian shook his head.

“Don’t abandon the plan, babe,” Robin said. She brought his linked hand toward her other hand which was holding the MEphone. “It’s a good one. It’s all set up. We just aim it now.”

“Hold it. Freeze right there!” a guard pointed a tazer at Ian. Before he could blink, Robin’s linked hands were going up above her head, both she and Ian aimed the hidden mobile at the nearest screen.

“Drop the object in your hands!” the guard demanded.

Ian dropped his hands and fell to the floor, hoping to buy more time.

“Freeze!” the guard screamed. His eyes began blinking stupidly. Ian stood back up with the others. The human chain of rebels slinked past the guard toward the side exit. There they encountered two more guards; most were involved trying to contain the prisoners in the lobby. Ian recognized one of them as Flat Top with the gold wire-rim glasses. The guards instructed them to sit.

“What?” shouted Robin, suddenly cognizant that these guards belonged to a different user group. She spun away from the group and crouching with her back to the guards, huddled over her MEphone, scrolling through the various images and group numbers.

“What’s she doing?” Flat Top began walking toward Robin with his boiler-gun aimed at her back. “Hey! Put your arms in the air and turn around!”

“What’s wrong with your security guards over there?” A bearded man in the rebel group spoke up. Other prisoners had discovered the drugged-like state of their captors and were heading toward the exits.

“Backup!” The remaining guard at the side exit screamed at his colleague before sprinting toward the commotion.

Once his colleague was out of view, Flat Top turned back to Robin. “Hand over that MEphone, young lady!” he repeated with his gun in her back.

“Sure,” she smiled, extending her palm with the device.

The guard picked it up and placed it in his pocket. Then he turned his chin up toward the screen.

“Sir, would you mind lending me your MEphone to call my husband to pick me up? Someone just walked away with my purse!” Robin said sublimating all her anxiety into the fictitious scenario.

“Certainly,” Flat Top handed Robin back her phone mechanically, without shifting his attention from the screen.

“Thank you!” Robin beamed at the group, which immediately began pouring past the remaining stupefied guard, through the doors, into the sunlight.

Immediately, like a burst damn, once the mass of nearby prisoners felt the draft from the open doors and saw the exodus, they began pushing their way toward the passageway to their freedom.

XXVII.

Ian and Robin and their co-conspirators were dashing madly toward Market St. The plan was for the group to loose each other and meet May 1st at the crest of Dolores Park, overlooking the City. Word spread like fire to the freed conscripts. Shots and screaming broke out as the guards tried to round up the tail end of those who had managed to escape. Inevitably there would be a death toll. Robin and Ian had argued about such potential casualties when they were first thinking through the strategy at the Saint Francis Hotel.

“But what kind of life did these prisoners have anyway?” Ian had argued. “I’ve been living like the walking dead since I found out. I’d rather die trying.”

“That’s you,” Robin said flatly.

As Ian heard the shots, he longed for the luxurious days of conspiring with Robin. The reality now was chilling and terrifying and more tragic than he ever imagined. While he ran, he remembered Robin’s words: “Every life is sacred. It is the most sacred, wondrous thing in the universe.” Now, one of those sacred lives, her closest friend, was gone and Rickey and Karen, disappeared.

The resistance had decided that once they attempted to awaken the entire prison, it would be too dangerous for any of the plan’s conspirators to remain inside.

“Besides,” Robin had said, falling back on the wonder-top Saint Francis bed, arms folded behind her head. “It’s going to take generations for this paradigm to change and I’m not going to waste my life inside Plato’s cave meanwhile.”

“You remind me of the Greek and Roman Stoics,” Ian said.

“Hardly Stoic. Try a closet hedonist,” Robin grinned devilishly.

Ian could barely resist her and began to jump her bones. Between kisses he explained that the Stoics had been a combination of hedonist and cynics—those who tried to minimize what they needed from life. “Stoics were not only lovers of tranquility and joy, but they had a strong sense of social commitment; and a philosophy of life—like you—to leave life better for humanity—“

“While enjoying life as well!” Robin had laughed.

Police helicopters began circling overhead to put down the terrorist rebellion. How many of us will now be caught, tortured to find out our plans and allies? Ian wondered. As always he wondered sadly about what fate had befallen Karen and Rickey. Yet, he persuaded himself to pick up the thread of his argument. Even if Intelligence learned about the plans to reprogram more MEphones to hack into the system, what could be done? Recall all the MEphones and bring down Bear-T’nT and its stock-holders? Wouldn’t it be great, Ian mused, if they had to shut everything off! More likely the guards and police would be sent to the hospitals for new implants. The rebels had planned to weed out infiltrators at their next meeting by rolling in a big screen and triggering police into REM sleep with their hacked and jail-broken mobiles. As Robin said, the work was cut out for them; it could take generations to turn the tide.

It had been understood by the rebels, that they would seek lives on the outside if possible, from where they would continue to agitate and awaken prisoners, be they inside or outside the jails. Those who had recently awoken during the last uprising would need guidance and support.

The members of the movement would disappear into the many empty flats that abounded in the city; squatting in the vacant vacation homes of the owners; they’d announce themselves as house-sitters; carpenters; painters; plumbers and dog walkers…

Robin’s squat idea for the couple was a condo owned by the great-grand-daughter of a former San Francisco Poet-Laureat, Jack Hirschman. The poet had been a rebel and genius of sorts during the old order. His books had lined City Lights books and he had held court in a bar called Spech’s in Saroyan alley. A patron had subsidized his meager existence in a second story SRO in the heart of North Beach, then after his death, his daughter had bought the condo and preserved it as a historical curio, now run by the great-granddaughter.

Robin led Ian up Broadway to Columbus, past the strip joints and hookers peddling their wares in broad daylight. At the light, they overheard a tall blonde woman and brunette with ironed hair that was beginning to frizz from the fog.

“But can he slip it in and out?” the brunette asked.

“Yeh.”

“But how?”

“The rubber holds it in.”

“Things never change,” Ian scoffed.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Robin asked, grinning.

“What do you think?”

“Not. They’re taking about their MEphones and belt clips. See—“ Robin passed the two young women. They were both holding their MEphones, examining them. “Remind you of any other obsessive people?”

Ian pinched Robin on the rear and they laughed as they proceeded right on Columbus, up the hill. After several blocks, Robin led Ian through a narrow doorway between two restaurants and up some stairs. Instead of a card slot, the door had an old fashioned brass door knob. While all the condominiums had been expanded to include state of the art bathrooms and kitchens, this one had been left intact as a historical monument. Robin inserted a stick she had picked into the key hole and worked it until the door opened.

The walls of the flat were covered with psychedelic swirls and streaks of paint reminiscent of James Pollock. A few bold abstract canvases whose hues contained much black and white hung on the walls as well. There was a small porcelain sink, still stained with paint and urine, though the latter whether from recent squatters or the old days, it was unclear, since in the old days before the remodel, the bathroom was an unpleasant one, down the hall.

There was a small shelf that served as a desk; a twin size mattress; an easel still displaying an unfinished abstract painting and cans of dried up paint, the brushes still in them.

“Now doesn’t this blow the Saint Francis out of the water!” Ian boasted. “It’s real! Like the sand, the sea…. Know what I mean.”

“It’s ours, I guess. So it has to be,” Robin smiled.

They gathered each other up and kissed for what seemed like hours, somehow managing to remove their clothes without seeming to untangle themselves from each other. They could hear rain softly patting the sills. They made love into the dawn, then the next day, until finally hunger drove them into the night.

The rain had stopped and it was so late only one or two screens still blared. Mostly the streets were silent. The red and green lights of the traffic signals were reflected on the wet pavement. Now and then a car would pass, hissing water under its tires. It was wondrous to hear this sound, Ian reflected, as though for the first time; glorious to be walking the streets without listening to his MEphone jabber or play music or stores calling out his name announcing special enticing offers; magnificent to be with so much silence.

Even Caffe Puccini was closed. They walked past City Lights. Vesuivios bar was taking a last call. When they got to Ko and Company Dry Cleaning, Ian noticed a light. Karen was ironing clothes behind the counter!

Ian and Robin tapped excitedly on the glass. Karen motioned for them to be quiet.

“Family asleep,” she whispered, unlocking the glass door and motioning behind her to the other rooms. “I got a microwave and hot plate and now we have everything here. More comfy than the jail,” she laughed in whispers. “No one suspects. Cops and guards walk by all the time, come in, do business, smile and go again,” she giggled quietly like a little child staying up past her bed time, trying to contain her laughter so it wouldn’t wake the parents.

“Until now they haven’t needed high security,” Robin whispered. “They would just think you’re working as usual. Now there’s too many of us and they don’t have their security in place,” she laughed.

“Oh you know, I’ve seen your friend Rickey too. Rickey and Mary Liz have both stopped by,” Karen grinned.

“How is Rickey?” Robin bubbled. They talked in whispers for a good hour, catching each other up on events and making plans. But since Robin and Ian didn’t have the heart to impose on Karen, Ian’s grumbling stomach urged them onward.

By California Street, the sparkles in the sidewalk caught the street lights, looking like leaping magic particles of white fairy dust. Everything to Ian seemed so vivid, so colorful and alive. He had never felt so immersed in life, his senses so full of it.

Just like hundreds of other rebels he and Robin would disappear into the mass of commuting prisoners and owners. And even though they would live like Achilles with the knowledge of unfathomable misery in their suddenly truncated future, should they be apprehended or slain; now with his senses dancing in the symphony of lights and colors around him, Ian could think only of the equally as probable possibility of one of the richest, most fulfilling lives, given his new knowledge of the current order.

Never could he remember feeling so alive and ecstatic, so free unfettered. Unfettered, un-tethered, Ian thought to himself. So secure in his truth.

And so Robin and Ian walked on in their eternal moment, giggling, gathering up each other, the way lovers do strolling through parks on Sunday, grateful for the love and friendship in their life.

For after all, Ian thought, in five billion years the sun will extinguish itself. Then none of that other insanity will matter anyway….

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