Jeffrey Thomas - Subject 11

“Do you think there are cameras?”

“Oh,” 2 said, flicking his eyes this way and that, “I’m sure of it.” His gaze returned to his companion. “So what nationality are you? Filipino? Thai?”

“Irish.”

“Irish. Riiight. Me, I’m an Eskimo.”

“You look Italian. You look like an Italian cop. Or a mafia guy.”

“Hoo-boy,” 2 chuckled. “You see right through me, huh? Truth is I’m a cop but I moonlight as a mafia guy on weekends. No, seriously, do you want me to tell you what I do?”

“I’m sure that’s against the rules.”

“Whatever. How ‘bout telling me how old you are, at least? I’m thirty-four.”

“I’m thirty-eight.”

“What?” He stopped in his tracks. “Get out! Come on, now.”

She beamed bright teeth, pleased by his reaction. “It’s true. Maybe I look young to you because I’m small.”

“Well it isn’t just that — it’s your face, everything. You’re so cute, you look twenty-something. I can’t believe you’re older than me.”

“I am.”

“Do you have kids?”

“You mean, am I married?” Looking away from him but still smiling knowingly, 3 resumed walking.

“Well…”

“Divorced. One kid: Tania. She’s with my husband right now, so I can do this. How about you?”

“Same and same. Divorced, but mine’s a son — Nathan — and he’s with his mom.” 2 wagged a finger at her. “Hey, if you’re divorced you can’t call your ex your husband.”

3 shrugged. “Habit.”

“Is he the same nationality as you?”

“White, like you.”

“So he’s a mafia guy, too?”

“An Eskimo mafia guy.”

“Oh! They’re badass. One wrong move, you wake up with a seal’s head at the foot of your bed.”

In the confessional, on the ground floor and just off the great room that served as their banquet hall, 5 had decided to get her daily monologue out of the way. Outside, 7 waited her turn, after which they had agreed to widen their exploration of the facility together. As 5 explained to the mural she faced: “I think that’s part of the experiment; you’re waiting to see which of us will be timid or lazy and stick close to our quarters, and which of us will be more daring or curious and want to explore. Maybe you want to see if we’ll follow an instinct to find a way to escape, even though we’re not prisoners.”

5 pivoted in the padded office chair, from one side to the other, surveying the explosive splashes of black and white graffiti, like an entire galaxy of stars all gone supernova at the same time, spattering their glowing fire and dark matter in every direction. As she did so she continued speaking. “It’s natural that we’re pairing off. I’m sure you want to see how that breaks down. Of course some guys and girls are bonding. Me and 7 hit it off right away. Maybe she’s not interested in finding a boyfriend, even a temporary one… same as me.

“I already have my Seth. He works with me in the pharmaceutical company I mentioned in my interview. I have more vacation time than he does, so I figured why not do this, and get paid for it by you and my company at the same time, huh?

“I miss him already. I hope he’s missing me. Sometimes… well, sometimes I get the feeling he wouldn’t miss me if I just upped and disappeared. But that’s a story for another day. Or a bunch of days.

“Anyway,” 5 said, waving away her digression, “the pattern here is obvious, especially when we sit down to eat. I’m 5 and female, and 7 is female. So sure enough, 1, 3 and 9 are female, and 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 are male. Does that mean women are always perceived as odd? Heh. I’m sure it’s just an arbitrary way to do it.

“No one is very young, and nobody’s old. I’d say 7 is the youngest; she told me she’s twenty. 10 looks the oldest. He hasn’t said, but I’d say he’s at least forty.

“Do I win a prize for my observations? Does that make me a star guinea pig? If you want to reward me, how about some bottled water? The water from the sink is gross. I can’t believe we have to drink that. Aren’t you afraid we might get sick from old chemicals or whatever that might be in the system?

“Speaking of chemicals — like I say, I work for a pharmaceutical company, in the R & D department.” She smiled. “I don’t know what these meds are that you’ve got us taking every morning, whether they’re the basis of the test or just something in support of the test, but…” she wagged a scolding finger in the air “…I can tell you, if this is a drug trial it’s not the way the FDA would want to see it done.”

5 rose from the chair and stretched, deciding she’d given them enough for today, and itching to get to exploring with 7. Before she opened the door, looking up at the blank ceiling as if an eye might be peeking through a crack in the plaster, she said, “And maybe there’s something funny in the water that you want us to drink.”

She put her hand on the doorknob, but as an afterthought turned back to address the room again in a low, confidential voice. “Actually, I get the vibe that 7 might be a lesbian, or at least bisexual, but that’s okay. I’m not prejudiced, and I don’t feel threatened — I’m secure in who I am.”

“Well, will you look at this,” said 2, as he and 3 turned into a corridor they hadn’t encountered before.

He had the impression they had passed out of one building in the complex and into another, older section — maybe the original body from which the other had sprouted over time. The walls of this corridor were composed of bare ruddy brick, not plaster or cinderblock, and the windows lining one wall were narrow like those of a castle tower, arched at the tops. They apparently didn’t require bars, being made up of small panes set in a metal web, like the huge windows in the banquet hall. The floor here was of wood, having lost its sheen of varnish, the boards squeaking under their weight. The ceiling of wooden beams and exposed pipes was festooned with sooty cobwebs.

But more striking than the red brick and worn wooden floorboards was the mural that entirely filled the wall opposite to the one lined with windows. Like the mural in the confessional, the paint had not encroached on the floor or ceiling, though it covered every inch of the bricks along this length of wall. It was identical in style to the graffiti mural in the confessional. Riotous splashes of black and white formed a background for a crazy interplay of tagging. Skeletal scribbles and jagged scrawls like mutant fish bones, or else bloated balloon words like amorphous bulging amebas. Taken as a whole, the mural oddly called to mind for 2 an apocalyptic landscape, the tagging like rolls of concertina wire overlapping shattered fences and exploded ruins burnt to cinders.

Like clouds trawling across the sky, or the blotted ink of a Rorschach test, 2 imagined you could read what you wanted into the mural. Focusing more on its particulars, rather than the whole, he felt he recognized some of these odd symbols from the confessional’s walls.

“I don’t know if this stuff was done by kids who broke in here over the years,” he said to 3, “or if it’s some kind of intentional decoration, put here by the owners.”

“It can’t be too old, because it smells fresh,” 3 said. “All I know is it’s ugly — like that Jackson Pollock shit.”

“I was thinking more like Picasso’s Guernica ,” 2 said. “On acid.” He scrutinized the mural some more, and muttered as if only speaking to himself, “It’s almost cosmic. It sort of looks like the Big Bang. The start of creation.”

On the fourth day, during their second of three daily meals, 2 said to the group, “This is getting to be cruel and unusual punishment. I didn’t figure we’d have to go without coffee. I’m a big-time coffee addict, and I’m getting withdrawal headaches.”