D3CONF3D3RATION

Daniel and I sat in silence as he drove the dark sedan away from the mountainside research facility — this time I was fully conscious, able to see it clearly for the first time. I was surprised to recognize it as the university research centre I’d driven past countless times on the highway to Murphy’s place, before the turnoff to Daniel’s grandfather’s cabin. Daniel turned onto that familiar highway and roared off in the opposite direction from Murphy’s, toward the…

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I stood a bit longer in the hidden doorway from the room of mirrors, taking in the new small (but not cramped) room before me. It was plainly furnished and decorated, with a bulletin board, a small kitchenette consisting of a few cabinet doors, a stone sink and an electric plastic kettle, along with a table and a couple of chairs around it, all of it in natural wood. The walls were painted in a matte off-white eggshell and the…

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I looked closely at the brass key in my hand, and saw that it was a narrow metal post with notches in its sides, the kind of key that was difficult to copy and would fit in a rounded slot. Looking around the mirrored walls and polished floor, it was almost impossible for me to find a locking mechanism with such a small, innocuous opening to push the key into. The strange man was searching the room with me, his…

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Back in the darkened hall outside the bright comfortable glow of the library, I let my eyes adjust to the shadowy space punctuated at regular intervals by the bright, naturally-lit opaque skylights running down the hall. I recognized the door to Dr. Vasquez’s laboratory down the hall and the door to the prison cell beside me. The library’s door closed behind me with a soft click, the sliver of welcoming light narrowing to nothing. I was at the intersection of…

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I held the notebook open, clearly illuminated from the opaque skylights in the ceiling high above me, preventing any shadows anywhere in the library the ensconced me now in a comfortably bright and cool space between the meandering shelving surrounding me. Nothing reflected my existence in that space, no mirrored surfaces to remind me of myself, no one watching me from outside myself. The pages were not blank. I had expected them to be—somehow, I had expected an empty notebook,…

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I stood before the impassive door in the dimly lit hallway, my palm pressing against it gently. The door swung open silently, revealing a brightly sun-lit room, expansive in every direction, with a seamless, opaque skylight for a roof and walls made of the same material, letting in light from all directions, erasing any shadows in the corners. The room was very much a warehouse, filled with lines of wooden bookcases that sometimes were organized in straight rows and sometimes…

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Justine and Daniel followed me into the hall, paying attention to everything I said and did. They didn’t say anything while I was examining the mysterious door that I was drawn to earlier, the one I told myself I was not ready to enter. I turned to look down the other end of the hall, showing in the dim lights above the door to Dr. Elena Vasquez’s laboratory. It was like the door I was just looking at, with no…

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I felt someone gently shaking my shoulder, massaging it a bit and then getting a bit more insistent. I could smell an intoxicating fragrance of soapy roses that burned my nostrils a bit by its sharpness. Someone was speaking to me, quietly at first and then impatience creeping into a woman’s voice. My eyelids fluttered a bit, and I winced in the bright light coming fromoverhead. I could see the outline of the woman speaking to me, and then focussed…

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I counted the hours by the hum of the lights. The skylight dimmed and brightened on a cycle I had no way to measure, but I started to feel its rhythm—a slow breath of light and shadow that had nothing to do with the sun. Someone outside was controlling it. Someone who wanted me to lose track of time. I didn’t. I lay on the bunk and listened. Not to the speaker—to the room itself. The ventilation grate in the…

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I sat on the edge of the bunk, my feet flat on the cold concrete, my hands resting on my knees. The residue of the meadow still flickered at the edges of my vision—a faint shimmer of green, the ghost of a stream I could almost hear. But I wasn’t chasing it anymore. I was thinking about the speaker. It was embedded in the ceiling, flush with the concrete, unremarkable. A small circular grille painted the same grey as everything…

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