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Duck Soup
The room was dimly lit. The only objects I could make out were several stainless steel containers and some implements that I didn't want to know about.There were no windows, not even a skylight. A small fluorescent tube flickered intermittently, and by its cold light I could see a padlocked door upon which was pasted a sign that I'd previously only associated with Pine Gap or "The China Syndrome".
I could just make out my watch-face. 3:00 p.m. So I'd been here alone for thirty five minutes. Luckily I knew the signs of sensory deprivation and so was not alarmed when I began to experience a certain disorientation. I knew I had to do something - to give myself a sense of reality.
On the far wall I could make out the eerie flicker of a CRT. I tiptoed over and lightly touched the spacebar on the keyboard beneath it. Immediately a myriad of graphs and cryptic instructions emerged from the green screen. I scuttled back to my bench, fearing that I'd set off something dreadful.
My mind wandered. Wasn't it only twenty four hours ago that I'd been standing in the sun about two miles away, watching the aftermath of a plane crashing into a building across the river? Come to think of it, wasn't that building almost adjacent to the one that housed this solitary room of my imprisonment?
With no noise or visual input to disconcert me, my mind was wandering through the maze of my remembered life. I longed for the pale sun of yesterday. Even for the more recent experience of the vice-like instrument that had only two hours ago, been the cause of such pain.
Who knew where I was? When would people start looking for me? Perhaps another plane had crashed and everyone in the building had been evacuated. How would I know? And if this had happened, the authorities would assume that the building was empty of anything human.
If I tried to leave would I be shot by the security forces surrounding the building in the aftermath of the imagined plane crash? But maybe there had been no second plane crash. I looked at my watch.
Another five minutes had gone by. And although it was very cold, fear had caused me to sweat. Droplets of my own saline solution fought with the greasy cream that covered my upper torso. The paper smock stuck to me in patches. It had no buttons or clasp to close it. I may as well have been naked. If the security forces didn't get me if I burst through the door, the funny farm police certainly would.
"Why an earth had I touched that keyboard?" I was thinking. Clearly I'd set something off, as from across the cell I could see the screen filled with dancing coloured shapes and strange alien-like graphs. I turned my eyes from the digital monster and discovered a tiny desk in the far corner. Upon it was a framed photo, or rather a daguerreotype, a faded sepia-hued reproduction of a man who looked like something out of Tsarist Russia. Why would THAT be here?
I'd had enough. I gathered my paper smock around me, and tiptoed to the door - not the one with the radiation sign. I tentatively tried the handle. It turned. My luck was in. But would there be any sign of human life on the other side?
I took the plunge and turned the handle the whole way. I pushed the door. It opened.
There were people in white coats wandering about, calmly.And although they had the distinctive look of androids in a SciFi movie, they clearly were untouched by any panic of crashed planes - imagined or real. They turned in choreographed unison, staring at me.
They looked so professional, with their clipboards and coiffured hair. I clutched my paper garment ineffectively around me. Bits of it stuck hard against my skin, cemented with the now solidifying cream that was blotched unevenly about my body.
"I'm COLD," I whined. "I've been in that room alone for forty five minutes."
"Doctor's not finished looking at your films," a Nurse Ratched-like figure hissed.
"Look at her smock", said another more kindly-looking White-Coat. I'll get her another. And so they ushered me back, disapproving looks all around.
I'd obviously done a 'bad thing'. Back to the cell. For how long? Oh, until 'Doctor' is ready.
All was well with the world. No second plane had crashed. People were still in the building. I'd get out eventually. The androids were paramedics. I hadn't been a prisoner - merely a 'patient' - an object of disrespect. Everything was normal. The instrument of torture was merely a mammogram machine. The daguerreotype was obviously some nurse's grand dad.
I was 'the patient'. Why on earth had I expected to be treated with any dignity. .
Till next time,
Kate Juliff
New York
October 2006