Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.comA Prisoner of Triskelion
Chapter 1. Intake
A man sat on a bench in a fluorescent-lit corridor of green-painted cinder blocks in the institutional night. He did not know that he was in the night; existence only felt of night, and there were no windows to hint the drifting hours through shifting natural light, only painted steel doors here and there, the hum of the fluorescents, and the slight movement of mechanical air.
The man could not remember a time before sitting on the bench. But yes, he could. Images of airport waiting-areas flickered across his synapses. Corridors. A book stall where he rejected first vampires then spies then bosomy maidens on the covers of fat paperbacks. A foam cup of coffee and a newspaper. An airplane below and beyond, through a window. Baggage handlers driving little trolleys. He remembered. A foam cup of coffee. Was there something else? Name. His name would come.
These were not his clothes. Some sort of scrub suit thing, and cloth sandals.
A man in a black uniform came along and wordlessly helped him to his feet. Black uniform – with dandruff. Black is not a good color because it shows dirt and stains and dandruff. A room, a table, a chair, a plastic tray of plastic food.
“Try to eat something; you need it.” A voice neither cruel nor comforting, rather, a mechanical one.
The prisoner’s hands – for by now he realized he was a prisoner – moved clumsily. Toast – he knew what toast was. It tasted of nothing. A foam cup of something. Not hungry.
Walking slowly along a corridor. Someone held his arm so he wouldn’t fall or get lost. The cloth sandals slipped off. The man in the black uniform picked up the sandals and smiled. “The floor’s clean anyway. I don’t know why they have these things.” Corridors. Fluorescents. A lift.
“Brush your teeth.” He had been on a toilet. Why were they watching him?
A door. A key turning a lock. A box of white fluorescent light. A bed. In bed. A white cotton blanket pulled over him. Silence. White fluorescent light. Sleep.
At some point without time he awoke with a slight headache, but he knew who he was. He remembered his childhood in Newfoundland, how much he didn’t like his French teacher in school, his time in the Navy, his job. He remembered everything up until the hour he was sitting in an airport lounge in Copenhagen drinking a foam cup of coffee and reading an English-language newspaper.
The room was a box indeed, a high-security cell – he had seen pictures of them – associated with something called a supermax prison. But what had that to do with him?
The cell was slightly wedge-shaped, maybe ten feet long and as high, with a toilet half concealed, and thus not concealed at all, at the back. He was sitting on a mattress on a bed of smooth concrete, and facing a ledge of smooth concrete with a sink of smooth concrete and a water tap of smooth steel operated by a button of smooth steel. The bulkheads were smooth concrete and the deck was smooth concrete.
Why did he think in terms of bulkheads and decks and hatches? His youthful service in the Navy years ago hadn’t influenced him all that much. Maybe it was the fluorescent lights and painted walls and the smell of chemical disinfectant. The milieu was like some office block in the bureaucratic wilderness of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, often known to recruits as Saint-Jean-sur-Bitch-ilieu.
A vague click. The small square of glass set in the hatch was opaque, so he couldn’t see if someone were watching him. A double knock, and the door opened. A man in a black uniform brought in a plastic tray of plastic and foam dishes. Behind in the corridor was a cart with other trays, and another woman, a watchful woman, in a black uniform.
“Brekker, old man. Enjoy it. You’ll be wanted for an interview in an hour or so. Oh – and there’s some aspirins next to yer coffee. That stuff they use on ya gives you a header. You’ll be wanted in an hour or so.” The accent was vaguely Yorkshire with a hint of a failed Oxbridge fresher term in it.
The warder set the tray and a fresh set of scrubs next to the prisoner’s own shaving kit and left.
His own shaving kit. The prisoner searched it carefully. His shaver, toothbrush, comb, a few coins, and other untidy odds-and-ends were still there, as well as the large-denomination notes secreted in the probably not-so-secret pockets.
Breakfast was bacon and eggs and potatoes, the bacon somewhat limp in the tradition of roadside cafes where the cookery is indifferent. The toast was buttered with real butter, not yellow-stained grease, and the coffee was quite good. Eating with a very soft plastic spoon was something of a challenge, but then, he wasn’t dining in the ambassadors’ room at the United Nations.
After a wash and a cat-bath from the sink he changed into the fresh scrubs, feeling quite vulnerable without any underwear, and was ready for the new day, whatever that might mean.
The prisoner straightened his bedding, not out of any sort of neatness compulsion but because, after examining everything in the white-lit space, there was nothing else to do. He wished he’d tucked a paperback into his shaving kit.
After a time which the prisoner had no way of measuring, another double-knock signaled a change and some time out of the white concrete box.
“You’re up for your intake interview,” said the black-clad warder. A curious little three-armed device in brass adorned his collar.
After a few metres the cloth slippers had made their own break for freedom. The prisoner paused to pick them up and carry them. The floor was very clean. “I dunno what they even bother with them things,” observed the warder.
The prisoner tried to estimate distances and count doors and, on the lift, count floors, but he was unaccountably weak and mentally vague. He was brought to a white-painted metal door free of names or numbers. The warder knocked and entered.
The office was clearly an outer one, an interview room with little more than a desk with two chairs facing each other. The walls were paneled wood, though, and an incandescent lamp on an etagere somewhat humanized the room.
Behind the desk sat a man with the sturdy, no-foolishness-now look of a chief petty officer or sergeant-major. On the table before him was a file folder with a few typed papers.
“Have a seat, me lad,” said the man, who nodded a dismissal to the warder.
“Let me begin this unpleasant interview by giving you the worst possible news in the worst possible way: you have been sentenced to death…easy, now.”
Existence seemed to fade out of the prisoner in a nothingness of white light. Voices. Hands holding him up, firmly but without cruelty. Had he fainted?
“Don’t be embarrassed; if I was to get that news I’d probably turn a little green meself. Here drink this…”
Brandy? The prisoner drank whatever it was. From a foam cup. He was alive. The drink had stung his throat and made him gasp for two breaths.
The interviewer’s eyes were very, very blue, the blue of a Norse captain considering whether to let his prisoner live was in his best interest.
“Now, then, back to business. No one you’ve ever known will ever learn what happened to you. Your death will be very quick and probably painless – clearly I haven’t taken that trip meself – and your body will be ground almost into powder and disposed of quietly in the ocean. Your future, lad, is fish sticks.
“Now, then, it gets better. Your death sentence’s not to be carried out unless you make it happen. It’s your choice.”
“But…but there must be some mistake…”
“Oh, Brendan, me lad…”
Brendan. His name was Brendan. Brendan O’Cannan. Right.
“Oh, Brendan, me lad, and you a readin’ man – Agatha Christie, Wodehouse, the Romantic poets, all them flamin’ English writers – I was expectin’ you of all people to come up with something more original.” The interviewer almost smiled.
“I’m not trying to be original; I’m trying to stay alive and figure all this out, eh.”
“Now, then, you’ll stay alive, probably for a good long time, but you’ll never know why you’re here. Neither will I. It’s not important.”
“Well it’s important to me.”
“Yes, but you’re not important at all.”
“I’m important to me, eh.”
“Then you’ll want to stay alive. Now back to business. You now belong to Triskelion. I’m Triskelion. This little rock of an island is Triskelion. Your world is Triskelion.
“You’re important only as a source of income for Triskelion. We deal in humans. We keep humans. We’re paid to do that. Some government, some institution, maybe your employer, maybe some very rich individual has found your continued existence inconvenient. They’re paying us to keep you, well, convenient. The world’s a little kinder this century; a few decades ago and you’d have been shot or hanged or starved for being unfashionable. Tyrants are a little softer these days; they let people like you live. At least for a while.”
“But I haven’t done anything.”
“I don’t know why you’re here, only that you’re here. I signed a receipt for you, and that’s it. I accept that you don’t know why you’re here; I certainly don’t know, don’t need to know, and will never know.”
“There’s nothing I can tell you.”
“Where am I, then?”
“You’re in an island. I won’t tell you where, but you can probably work it out by checking out a book on basic astronomy and looking at the sky. But it’ll do you no good; you’re not leaving.
“Bet me.”
“Don’t think about it, me lad. Triskelion is pretty patient with his children in most ways, but like Kronos he’ll eat you if you try to escape.
“Here’s the plan to begin with: you’ll spend three days in that little closet, and we’ll be lookin’ at you. Like this morning when you were checking the sheets for labels, and the plumbing, looking to see if there were manufacturers’ names, and in what languages. Maybe that would give you a clue as to where you are. But we’re careful about that sort of thing. And we’ll be looking at you, seeing how crazy you might or might not be.
“If you’re stable, we’ll move you to a ward, a dormitory, like, to see how you get on with folks. That’s maybe a week. Then we’ll find you a nice room of your own, unless you want a roommate, and your file indicates you prefer solitude. When you’re all settled in, you’ll pretty much have the run of the island – but you won’t escape. If you try, we’ll probably have to go ahead and give you the death.
“And if I’m not stable – by Triskelion’s norms?”
“Then you’ll stay in that little room and you can babble to the ceiling for the rest of your life; I don’t care.
“But I reckon you ought to settle in and enjoy life. It’s not so bad here – library, movies once in a while. You’ll find no books and see no movies more recent than fifty years ago. Newspapers, the wireless, the telly, the ‘net – no longer a part of your life. You don’t need to know what’s happening out there now and Triskelion doesn’t want you knowing. And it’ll do you no good to know.”
“But I don’t know anything. I have no secrets. I can’t tell you anything.”
“We don’t need anything from you. I’m here to tell you things, things that will keep you alive, if you want to be alive, and maybe you don’t, and that’s okay too. But I’d rather you be alive, because we’re reimbursed for each team member on a monthly basis. You know, lad, if we have to fulfill your death sentence, we’d wait until the second or third day of the next month. It’s a month’s more income, you see. So, hey, choose life.
“Notice the file folders, the typewriter, the old rotary telephone. Minimal technology, barely out of the 19th century inside the island. But outside, this community is enveloped in an electronic cloud of unknowing – you’re a Catholic; thought you’d like the allusion. I can’t hear it myself, but some people say there’s a perpetual hum from the Cloud. Radios, the telly, computers – nothing like that’ll work here. No information comes in except on paper, and no information goes out except on paper, and that’s kept to a coded minimum written in rapidly-deteriorating gel ink on flimsy paper that crumples into powder if someone even gives it a dirty look.
“We once had a fellow who built a radio receiver mostly from an electric shaver. Remarkable what’s goes into an electric shaver. Anyway, when he gave it a go the thing blew up in his hands. He still has his hands, by the effin’ way, but they’re not pretty. The Cloud picked up the first little signal and immediately fed it back, amplified, into the batteries, and, well, POOF!”
“Sounds like incarceration got him into a lather.”
“Now back to business. Triskelion have plenty of inexpensive amusements for you – a nice library, movies one night a week, fishing tackle, a little gardening on the few bits of arable ground, musical instruments, records and record players – the Cloud won’t let anything magnetic or digital work. We even have our own little newspaper.”
“Printed in disappearing ink on disappearing paper?”
“Certainly. But don’t disapprove; after all, isn’t the ephemeral the very core of everything Steve Jobs ever did?
“We unlock the door to your room at 0600, and breakfast is in the mess hall at 0700. You are free to roam around the buildings and anywhere on the island except for restricted areas, and those are posted and locked. We won’t watch you much once you’re out of isolation because, after all, except as a warm-body source of income, you’re just not important. And, really, you’re not all that capable. If you were a super spy or something like that, dangerous and skilled, you wouldn’t be here. We tuck you in all nighty-night and cosy at 2100 hours.
“No signaling with flashlights or mirrors or handkerchiefs, please; we’ll break your hands for that sort of thing and then lock you down in a hole…I mean, therapy…so dark and so deep you’ll think you’re in Hell. We’ll keep you there until what’s left of you promises to play nice. And don’t look for rescue; this island is not some sort of Doctor No experience; it is a homeland territory of – well, you’ll figure it out. Our host nation lists this island as a military no-go zone, so while the Russians and the Yanks occasionally snoop from trawlers and submarines because Russians and Yanks are preternaturally nosy, all they can do is look at you from a distance. The Cloud and our own careful avoidance of technology mean they can’t pick up any signals because there are no signals. The antennae on the roof are dummies there to give the snoops the fits about some sort of superior technology. But mostly the nations think this island is a military prison and don’t bother with it.
“We have men and women, both as clients and as minders, and we’re very progressive about romance. We also have some troublesome priests on the rock so you can go to Mass like a good, obedient Catholic and pray for the effin’ soul of Triskelion.”
“Triskelion needs praying for.”
“No doubt, me lad, no doubt.
“You patients have names; we, oh, client specialists have numbers. You may address a caregiver by his or her number if you know it; otherwise 'sir' and 'ma’am' are fine. No doubt your mother – let’s see – died four years ago – thought you special. That doesn’t mean anything, so did mine. You get to keep your specialness; Triskelion keeps itself to itself behind another Cloud, the Cloud of numbers. Useful things, numbers.
“And now you’re going back to your cozy little room for the next few days. Any questions?”
“Lots, but I don’t suppose you’d tell, eh.”
“Oh, yes, I would. We’ve got all the time in the world. Eh.”
O’Cannan smiled and rose. “Maybe another time.”
“Lunch in an hour or so,” said the warder as she locked the door.
