Kim Hunter - The Official Report on Human Activity

He sang loud enough to be heard through the breathing mask. The sound surprised everyone. The older man woke up. He even chuckled to himself. He tried to imagine why anyone would sing about pounding a nail, something he recalled from his youth seeing his grandfather do, or maybe it had been an uncle.

The old man’s lightened mood calmed the Prisoner even as the song dredged up the ever present anger that he struggled with in order to keep production levels high. He knew full well what the song was about. He had talked to old prisoners who had been part of an experiment, a return to breaking rocks, actually recycling cement. The guards had been so entertained by the novelty that they’d bet on which inmate would pass out first in the process of hammering virtually nonstop. There had been all sorts of injuries, with the men blind from sweat and disoriented from exhaustion.

The Prisoner decided to let everyone off early, or perhaps the singing made the time go by quickly. Who could know?

Nat was still singing when the cell went transparent. As the stations were folded, the other men became aware of the man Nat replaced. The man was trembling, but not as he had been when gripped by the sickness. His eyes were open. Flecks of white spit jumped from his lips as he struggled to speak.

“That’s, that’s that crying, hoodoo music,” he finally managed. “You trying to kill somebody!”

With that, the man scrambled to his feet. Lying on the floor, he had seemed a good size, but standing, he appeared huge. Everyone was so surprised to see him rise that they were unprepared for his amazingly quick lunge at Nat. His hands were like a sandpaper vice around Nat’s neck. The air rushed from Nat’s throat in a second. The other men were awake but tired and, even working together, could not pry the man’s hands from Nat’s neck. The Prisoner summoned guards, but Nat had passed out by the time they arrived.

Nat awoke in what he would later learn was the detention facility, the prison within the prison, the place where altercations or rebellions would land you. With its opaque walls, it was more like a regular room than the cells. In the cells, you had to look down through the layers and layers of glass to see anything as opaque as the walls in this room.

Besides the opaqueness, the humidity was noticeably higher in this place than it had been in the cell. The floor and lower parts of the wall were moist to the touch. The ceiling dripped in places. He heard thunder and what had to be rain just before he fell back into unconsciousness.

When Nat awoke again, it was to the sputtering and sparks of a huge flat screen that had been jerry-rigged into the moist, dripping ceiling. The puddles on the floor distracted him from the sparks until coughing erupted from the screen, and then a voice.

“Just wanted you to know—”

There was a jagged flash of electricity between the screen and the raggedy hole that been cut to put the screen into the ceiling. Nat tried to rouse himself to find a dry place on the floor.

The voice in the screen was speaking, but not to him.

“…and if he dies in there, it won’t do us any good whatsoever. What’s the difference?”

With those words, the screen and the entire room went black. It became harder to find dry spots on the floor. Water seeped into his shoes, no matter where he stood. The thunder was close enough to rattle what he’d thought were very solid walls and shake more water from the ceiling. Short bursts of noise leapt from his throat out of his control as he sloshed from one corner to another. He walked along every inch of wall and floor to somehow find a place where the water was not rising. There was no such place, and when the water reached his thighs, even the noises in his throat died.

Soon, the water was high enough for him to float and then just high enough for him to touch the ceiling. He could try to pry the screen from the ceiling to see if the hole into which it had been so sloppily placed actually led anywhere. Even the fear of possibly electrocuting himself meant nothing in the face of certain drowning. He had to feel in the dark and quickly. He wished he’d had the presence of mind to get naked before the water had gotten so high. His heavy, wet shoes and clothing felt like animals working to drag him under. His arms quickly became tired as he paddled to stay afloat when he wasn’t flailing about, feeling for the screen in the ceiling. Water slopped into his eyes, nose, and mouth.

Feeling around the ceiling, he grabbed something hot to the touch, the prong-shaped object. He couldn’t hold on. His limbs stiffened. There was water in his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. He was gulping water and it was becoming harder to reach for the ceiling. He realized it was because the water was suddenly receding. He choked on a mouthful of water and hoped his strength would last until his feet could touch the floor. As he began to fade there were voices, snatches of words.

“Slower”

“No… Warden… death… scandal.”

He was happy that the room they placed him in was overheated since they’d taken his wet clothes and given him a thin blanket to wrap himself in. A guard dressed in a uniform Nat hadn’t seen before brought him dry clothes.

In what he assumed was the Warden’s office, he suddenly felt the urge to stand even though his legs shook with nerves and weakness. He’d had no sense of time in the black room where he nearly drowned and had come close to electrocution. How long had he been paddling, treading water, reaching for the screen? There was some soreness in his right shoulder from grasping to try to pry it loose, and numbness in his hand that might have come from the blood draining out of it as he had been holding it up, or was it from the electrical shock?

There was rumbling outside, above. He didn’t want to think about thunder.

The person he presumed was the Warden walked in flanked by two armored guards. Nat had heard about guards modified with armor. They even showered inside the shells that had become extensions of their virtually impenetrable skin. He decided to sit down. The three men continued to walk to the Warden’s desk area. Their steps sounded sharp but did not echo. The room had been conditioned, no surprise there.

The Warden went behind his desk and produced, with a touch, the smallest, sleekest printer Nat had ever seen. It was perhaps four feet wide and no more than a foot tall, clearly specialized, very quiet. But there was a smell. In a moment, it produced the most magnificent, seemingly wooden guitar Nat had ever seen. It was all he could do not to reach for it.

The Warden smiled at Nat’s obvious desire. Nat stood, staring at the guitar, as one of the guards walked it over to him. It was cold to the touch, smooth, almost to the point of being soft and perfectly tuned.

The rooms where Nat played for the Warden and his guests were strangely conditioned. Sometimes, they were quiet and comfortable. Sometimes, there were voices of people who were not present. Sometimes, all the other people in the room were white. Sometimes the Warden was one of maybe two white people in the room.

When Nat wasn’t performing, he slept in a part of the prison he’d never so much as knew existed. He had his own room. But he spent most of the time in the common area trying to talk to people, though he got the feeling talking was discouraged.

The rooms were regular rooms with opaque walls. But the light in them seemed like sunlight and it was impossible to tell from which direction it came. The tables and chairs were a mishmash of materials and styles. The inmates had developed gangs and cliques. Nat was one of the few who had no clique. He felt vulnerable, naked.

He tried to talk to a man with a very strange looking stringed instrument. The man had grooves in his cheeks that had been intentionally placed there. His instrument was a big round gourd that had been sliced in half so it had a flat surface. There was one big pole sticking out of it with taut strings and two smaller poles. The man would sit the big gourd on the ground between his legs, place his fingers on the two small poles, and pluck the strings with his thumbs. It produced the most melodic and harp-like sound.