ZONE 23

I don’t normally mention my literary work here on Substack, because (a) I assume that most of you are here for the political satire and commentary, rather than to hear about my experimental stage-plays and weird fiction, and (b) I’m really bad about promoting my literary work, as in I usually forget to do it.

Every once in a while, though, I’ll remember to do it. This is one of those times.

I’m not going to promote my stage-plays, because, well, nobody reads stage-plays, except for other playwrights and theater people. I’m going to promote my satirical dystopian sci-fiction novel, which I published back in 2017.

I have been jokingly apologizing for publishing this novel since the roll-out of the New Normal in 2020, often noting “I didn’t think they would use it as a blueprint.” Although it didn’t predict the New Normal exactly, if you’ve read the book, or the blurb above, the major themes will probably ring a bell.

It’s not a book for everyone. None of my literary work is. I think literature can and should be a bit more ambitious and demanding than what we read on the Internet every day. I’m kind of old-fashioned that way.

Also, it contains a lot of graphic sex and violence, and all manner of other horrible human behavior, and foul language, and other elements that certain readers might find offensive. So, if that kind of material puts you off, you’ll want to skip this one.

Take it from “Marge,” who posted this review on Amazon a few years ago …

“This is the worst book I have read in my 73 years! If the author removed the overabundance of f words…might be one hundred pages shorter…there is nothing positive I can say about this book … it is perverse, full of sadomasochistic sex …violence, no regard for human life, murder, and everything vile that one could find in life..all in one book! The best use of this book would be to use it as kindling to start a fire…it is so depraved..I have to wonder if it was written under the influence of drugs…save your money..and spare your mind and soul of this evil…One star was too generous, but was my only option.”

There are also a lot of good reviews there. Here’s part of one from “Chelscey” …

“Zone 23 is, quite frankly, unlike any other dystopian novel I have ever read. Written as a satirical version of utopia, this novel follows two, well, mostly two, people who are having their eyes opened, their thoughts expanded, and are seeing the world for what it truly is—maybe—for the first time in their lives, or at least a very long time. We follow Taylor who lives out in the Zone, outcast from society as he is deemed undesirable (more on that in a minute) and Valentina, who just so desperately wants to be Normal and to have a Normal baby and to live her Normal life—there is a reason for the caps. The narrative voice of this novel is just wonderful and, really, that’s what you’d read this book for: Hopkins satirical narration. Because otherwise the plot of this book is pretty simplistic and wouldn’t necessitate the 500 pages it takes to complete this story. However, this is an EXTREMELY good read, albeit a difficult one.”

Anyway, if you feeling like giving it a go, you can purchase a copy from most online booksellers, e.g., Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, etc., or order it from your local bookstore, assuming you still have a local bookstore.

If you have already read it — which a surprisingly large number of people have — or, if you read it now after my little promotional post, and like it, please help me out and tell a friend. I don’t have a corporate publicity machine behind this book. Good word-of-mouth has been my advertising strategy. That’s been working well, so far.

Here’s a sample chapter — one that isn’t too “difficult,” I don’t think — introducing Valentina, one of the two protagonists. And don’t worry. It’s rated PG … well, except for a wee bit of profanity, but no more than you already get in some of my columns.

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Valentina

Meanwhile, twenty-three kilometers away, in a world of comfort and infinite abundance, which Taylor Byrd had never seen, except of course on the screen of a Viewer, Valentina Briggs was sitting quietly, doing nothing, trying to detach. Her half-closed eyes were focused on a patch of wall where there was nothing to see. She sat there, fixedly, kneeling on the floor, her buttocks resting on her upturned feet, hands forming an oval in her lap, thumbs ever so lightly touching, trying her best to think of not thinking.

Thoughts were racing through her mind.

It felt like her head was full of hamsters ... soft, fat, fuzzy little hamsters, running in place inside one of those wheels, running and running, then stopping for a moment ... then running and running, then stopping again ... then running and running for all they were worth, and then stopping again and looking confused, like the poor little things just could not fathom why they could never seem to get to wherever hamsters were always trying to go.

Valentina observed and acknowledged the running in place of the cognitive hamsters without judgment and allowed them to run. She did not attempt to prevent their running, or impatiently wait for them to finish running, or pray that the One would stop them running, or judge them, or herself, at all. Instead she concentrated on her breathing ... in through one nostril, out through the other, then in through that one, and out through the other ... and sat there silently staring at nothing, and tried again to think of not thinking.

The more she tried to think of not thinking, the more aware she became of how the thoughts she was trying to think of not thinking were multiplying within her mind. A lot of these thoughts were not even thoughts. They were more like random furry blobs of meaningless proto-cognitive matter, the only conceivable purpose of which was to make it impossible for her to detach, and stare at nothing, and think of not thinking.

The air-conditioning was on some setting designed to simulate frostbite conditions. It had been on this setting for several hours. The tips of her fingers were turning blue. Her hands were numb. Her feet were freezing. Her paraspinal muscles were spasming. Her frontal and maxillary sinuses ached. She could see her breath. Her teeth were chattering.

Valentina observed and acknowledged her chattering teeth and throbbing sinuses, the pain in her upper thoracic region, and the cold-induced paresthesia in her fingers, and she stared at the wall, where there was nothing to see, and tried once again to think of not thinking.

Everything was happening for a reason ... a reason beyond our understanding. She, Valentina Constance Briggs, notwithstanding her present circumstances, was still a single grain of sand on the endless beach where time met space, an indestructible, eternal part of the infinite, interwoven fabric of the spaceless, timeless, oneness of the One ...

The oneness of the unnameable One ...

The multiplicitous oneness of the One ...

The loving, compassionate oneness of the One ...

Valentina spoke the words, repeating the mantra on her breaths, as she had for most of her forty-one years, but they did not produce that peaceful feeling of complete surrender, and she could not detach. She sat there, on the floor, on her knees, her teeth chattering, staring at a wall, sensing that, all right, whatever had happened, however it was that she had ended up here (which she'd recently remembered, but had once more forgotten), she would never be feeling that peaceful feeling of total surrender ever again.

How long had it been since she'd felt it? Weeks? Months? She wasn't sure. She had taken it for granted, at some point, hadn't she? At some point in her former life? Yes. She had. She remembered that clearly. It had always been there, easily available, inexhaustible, or so it seemed. Nothing changed, and everything changed, once you detached. The world didn't change. What happened was, you had lost your perspective, and once you detached you got it back. If you felt afraid, confused, or sad, or angry, or any other negative feelings, it didn’t take those feelings away, but once you'd said your mantra and detached, you saw that they were only feelings, and the feelings had less to do with you somehow, and you were able to acknowledge them and let them go ... because you didn't have to feel those kinds of feelings, those negative, self-destructive feelings, those confusing, frightening, resentful feelings, and if you did ... well, that was your choice.

Yes. It was all coming back to her now ... again. She seemed to keep losing it and finding it. Everything happened for a reason. Everything always the result of a choice. You learned it as a child, this simple axiom, as you started down the Path of Responsibility. Later, you saw it bear itself out. The schools you attended, how you did, what you studied, the clothes you wore, who you married, your sexual preference, the corporation for which you worked, the house you lived in, the state of your health ... everything always the result of a choice.

Everything happened for a reason, and if you couldn’t see the reason, that only meant that you couldn’t see it, and you probably had some detaching to do. Remove the beam that is in your eye and the speck in the other's eye disappears. Anger is nothing but projected fear. Freedom grants us the freedom to choose but not the freedom not to choose ...

Valentina got up off her knees and stood up and shouted at the video camera that was mounted to the ceiling in the corner of the room.

"My fingers are turning blue in here, asshole!"

The video camera panned up with her and auto-focused on her new position. The PA beeped. A voice addressed her.

"This is Barry. How can I help you?"

"You can turn the fucking temperature up! I'm losing sensation in my fucking extremities!"

Valentina was a healthcare professional, so she knew how to talk to people like Barry. The profanity, however, was unfamiliar. She didn't know why she was talking like that.

"Oh, my, that doesn't sound good. I'll see if we can't adjust the thermostat. Oh, and your transport is being arranged. Should be just another few minutes."

Valentina took a deep breath and clapped and rubbed her hands together. She hopped and sort of danced around the room, to try to improve her circulation. The video camera panned and tilted, monitoring her every movement, the little red light on its housing blinking.

"Was there anything else at the moment, Ms. Briggs?"

There wasn’t anything else at the moment, so Barry switched off and left her alone to hop and dance around and clap, and do this kind of pursed-lip breathing thing. All of which, added to the state of her hair, which looked like maybe she had had it styled by someone with tremors who was totally blind, made her resemble a demented person, which, of course, technically, was what she was.

She was wearing the standard in-patient ensemble ... faux satin, lemon chiffon pajamas, matching grip-sole, ankle-length socks, and a plastic bracelet around her wrist with her name and a number, which she couldn't get off. She'd been in this room for several hours, seven or eight at least, she guessed, her sense was over the course of a night, but, the truth was, she had no idea. The room was a windowless holding cell, upholstered in pink, indestructible Naugahyde. There was some kind of rubbery padding behind it. The video camera and an intercom speaker were mounted out of reach in the corner of the ceiling.

Barry had advised her at regular intervals that her transport would be just another few minutes. He sounded like one of those teenage waiters you got at Giggles or the Salad Consortium who were always so happy to be your servers and tell you all about all the awesome specials. Valentina imagined Barry sitting at a console in the nurses station, watching her dance around and clap, talking, seemingly to no one at all, but in actuality talking to his girlfriend on a Strauss-Chen Industries Cranio-Implant. The SCI 227.8 was probably out of Barry’s price range, so Barry would be wearing a 226, which wasn't all that different from the 227s, except for a few superfluous features. Barry was likely still in school. Valentina put him in his mid-to-late thirties, which meant that he was Variant-Positive, and on some form of pharmatherapy, probably Zanoflaxithorinol H, or one of the earlier versions thereof. Something like seventy to eighty percent of the Variant-Positive population was on some version of Zanoflaxithorinol. The rest were on some other stabilizing agent, Lamictotegratol, Oxcarzenadrine, Olanzatriperidone, or one of the others. Barry was definitely on Zanoflaxithorinol. He spoke in that indefatigably cheery, slightly superior tone of voice, the hallmark of Zanoflaxithorinol patients. It made you sound, not totally obnoxious, but like you were privy to some secret wisdom you wished you could share with the others who weren't, but you knew, if you tried, they just wouldn't understand.

Valentina tried to remember how she had sounded when she'd sounded like that. She knew she must have sounded like Barry, and her husband, Kyle, and Susan Foster, but she couldn't play it back in her mind now ... her voice, in that supercilious tone. It wasn't as pronounced as that of the Clears, whose condescension was of a whole other order, but it was close, and it was causing her to grind her teeth, and to painfully clench her masseter muscles. She hated it now, that tone of voice. When exactly had she come to hate it? Hate ... hatred. That was the word ... it must have been, for what she was feeling. She imagined Barry with a sucking chest wound, flopping around on the floor like a fish, panicking, trying to cry out for help, but not being able to make a sound. The mental image of it made her sick. And yet she couldn't seem to erase it. What kind of monster was she becoming that imagined people with sucking chest wounds?

The day before, or whenever it was, before they transferred her into the waiting room, she had lain awake in four-point restraints and imagined gouging the tips of her fingers deep into Doctor Hesbani's neck, closing her hand around his laryngeal prominence, and ripping it clean out of his body.

Doctor Hesbani had been kneading her abdomen in different places with his first two fingers. He'd asked her whether it hurt ... there. And there. And what about there ... and there? Yes, it hurt. There and there. Valentina hurt all over. Doctor Hesbani nodded and smiled, like he'd just performed a magic trick, which he was waiting for Valentina to acknowledge. He looked like a giant badger or something. Valentina wanted to rip his throat out.

This part had happened in the S.I.C.U., or what they'd told her was the S.I.C.U. It didn't feel like an S.I.C.U. Then again, she was heavily sedated. She figured she'd been there about a week, or ten days maybe, or maybe longer. She'd woken up out of a dreamless nothing. Doctor Hesbani was hovering over her.

"Hello, Ms. Briggs. I am Doctor Hesbani."

It sounded like he was shouting, or singing. Droplets of mustard clung to his whiskers, which grew untended from below his eyes to the top of fleshy laryngeal prominence.

"You are in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. We have managed to stop your internal bleeding. You are experiencing some severe discomfort. We are giving you palliative care for this."

Valentina remembered thinking whatever they were giving her wasn't working. She felt like she was trying to defecate something the size and shape of a toaster. She couldn't remember where she was, or why she was there, or what was happening. She opened her mouth to try to ask, but a pulsating pain that started in her bowels radiated through her entire body, and paralyzed her, and she must have passed out.

The next time she woke it was much the same ... excruciating pain, fog of sedation, a few confused thoughts, then unconsciousness. That's the way it went for a while, exactly how long she could not say.

Then, one day, whenever it was, she had woken up, still in the restraints, and the Hadley Security Consultants were standing there. They were standing on either side of her bed, far enough up toward her head so that she had to turn from side to side to see the face of the one who was speaking.

"How are you feeling today, Ms. Briggs?" The one on the left, the man, asked her.

She rotated her head toward him, painfully.

"My name is Winston. This is Alicia. We're here to help arrange your transition."

Both of the Consultants had perfect skin, smiles full of flawless, bright white teeth. The whites of their eyes were utterly bloodless, the irises milky, infant blue.

"The doctors tell us you're recovering well ..." Valentina rolled her head to the right. "... which means it's time to start getting you ready." Alicia smiled like a flight attendant who really needs you to return to your seat.

Valentina, though no longer in agony, was weak, and still rather heavily sedated. She fought to get her mind to focus, but she didn't know what to focus it on. She scanned the room as best she could. She was looking for something. She didn't know what. The S.I.C.U. room, or whatever it was, was painted this horrible Creamsicle orange, like the color of a ten-minute tan gone wrong. The visitors chair was stacked with sheets. The shelf on the wall above it was empty, except for a plastic water pitcher. There weren't any flowers or cards or anything. Apparently no one had been to see her.

"We've got some release forms we need you to sign. But first let's just confirm your vitals." Winston read out her name, address, her husband's name, her place of employment, her Login IDs, and bank account numbers, each of which Valentina confirmed.

Winston and Alicia were definitely Clears. Both of them were in their mid-to-late twenties. They looked like A-list fashion models and spoke like Human Resources people.

"OK, good," Winston said. "Once your doctors have approved your release, you'll be moved to an interim transfer facility. Your ID bracelet is being prepared. You'll receive your bracelet at the transfer facility. Your old ID card, and all your other cards, have been deactivated and are no longer valid."

"The ID bracelet is just for transit," Alicia interjected cheerfully. You won't have to wear it indefinitely or anything."

"Your network logins and corresponding passwords," Winston continued, causing Valentina to jerk her head back over to the left again, "have been deactivated and are no longer valid."

"You'll be issued one mid-sized bag of clothing, hygiene articles, and other personal items."

"Personal funds in any bank accounts bearing your name, and your name alone, have been transferred into an escrow account for disposition at a later date."

"Normally, any such personal funds are used to offset the costs of your transport and housing during the quarantine period."

"Personal funds in any and all bank accounts bearing both your and your husband's names are heretofore deemed the property of your husband, and no claims or liens shall be set against them."

Valentina was turning her head from side to side as fast as she could as Winston and Alicia took turns spitting this verbal boilerplate back and forth at her. She felt like she was going to pass out. Fortunately, just as she started to do that, Alicia stepped up and began undoing the fur-lined plastic safety restraint that was pinning her wrist to the aluminum bed frame, which for some presumably legal reason Winston felt he needed to narrate.

"Alicia is undoing your right-hand restraint."

Valentina nodded gratefully. She smiled. It just seemed like the thing to do. Alicia reached over, took hold of her wrist, lifted it up and out of the restraint, and pushed a plastic inkless pen the size of toothpick between her fingers. She held out a tablet with a screen at the top and an isolated capture pad at the bottom. The screen was displaying what looked like a contract. The print was way too small to read.

"This is just a standard acknowledgment form. You, the Patient, hereby acknowledge your non-responsiveness to pharmatherapy, and freely elect to enter quarantine, effective as of your date of transfer. If you would just sign right here, Ms. Briggs."

Valentina signed the pad. Alicia smiled her Clarion smile, warm, yet unmistakably superior. Then she clicked the tablet, producing another form that Valentina could not read.

"You hereby acknowledge that, in your present condition, you pose a danger to yourself and others, and hereby agree to remain in quarantine until such time as a medical doctor determines you no longer pose such a danger."

Valentina signed. Alicia clicked.

"You hereby indemnify, and forever release, the Hadley Corporation of Menomonie, Wisconsin, and all its affiliates, subsidiaries and assigns, in respect to all claims of damage or injury arising from your treatment and quarantine period."

Valentina signed. Alicia clicked.

Valentina Constance Briggs, if one didn't count the last five months, had led a perfectly normal life. She'd enjoyed a perfectly normal childhood, had attended perfectly normal schools, and had blossomed into a perfectly normal if somewhat striking and buxom young woman with burnt orange hair and dark green eyes, which she got from her mother's side of the family. After university, she'd interned a bit, gone back and got her PhD, started her career, dated a while, and then met her future husband and married him. They'd honeymooned up on Hudson Bay, a popular, overcrowded resort for moderate- to fairly-abundant couples. Valentina's husband, Kyle Bentley-Briggs (he'd taken her name, she hadn't his) was the G-Wave Industries Associate Adjunct Semi-Permanent Assistant Professor of Info-Entertainment Content at the Bloomberg Virtual Community College of Communications and Informatics. It wasn't Oxford or Yale or anything, but it wasn't anything to sneeze at either. They lived in a three-bed, two-bath condo at 3258 Marigold Lane in the Pewter Palisades Private Community, whose accent color was Persian green. Valentina, until a few months back, had worked in the Histopathology Department of the Breckenridge (Senior) Medical Clinic, a high-end, mostly geriatric outfit that made a killing on phenomenally expensive cancer screenings and advanced cancer treatments for the affluent 100+ demographic, and was part of the Hadley Medical Group. She and Kyle were very happy. They owed about thirteen million on the house and ate out two or three times a week, usually on Pewter Palisades' Main Street, often with Bill and Susan Foster, who lived next door on Marigold Lane and had a time-share in the Arctic Circle. In addition to the more or less standard package of company-sponsored retirement vehicles, they maintained a diversified, if rather conservative, portfolio of primarily blue chip stocks, the usual mix of pharmaceuticals, Security, insurance, bioengineering, financial services and global redevelopment. Although quite young, being both in their forties, the trajectory of their lives was clear. Kyle, whose IQ was 101, or 103, depending on the test, but who compensated for his average intelligence with a natural gift for networking and politics, was a rising star at BVCC, and was already being aggressively headhunted by global educational and marketing firms, who were always on the lookout for bright, young talent. Valentina, although less ambitious, certainly enjoyed her work at the Clinic, which she planned to resume in some capacity, probably in her early seventies, once the children both she and Kyle wanted had reached the age of independence. They'd agreed on three, two boys and a girl, and had chosen a palette of traits for each of them, accentuating personal characteristics while preserving both filial and intra-sibling similarity. This was to be the year they started. The next six years would be the childbirth years, which would be followed by twenty to twenty-five years of childcare, education, and so on. Their youngest boy, Marlough, they thought, would be off to college at the age of twenty. Valentina would be in her prime ... sixty-eight, or seventy maybe, and would still have a good thirty years ahead of her to pursue her histopathological career. Assuming their investment strategies were sound, and Kyle's career remained on track, they'd be able to cover the children's education, healthcare and other basic needs, maintain a comfortable standard of living, prudently setting some funds aside to cover the routine joint replacements and organ transplants that everyone got, early-retire at ninety-seven, and move to a Flex-Care Seniors Community somewhere north of the 50th Parallel ... or, at least, that had been the plan.

"You hereby consent to indefinite forfeiture, and hereby forfeit, and waive any claim to, any and all rights, entitlements and benefits accruing to Variant-Positive Persons as defined in the Cooperative Security Agreement, U.T.S. §1067, Paragraph 1 of the Global Civil Code."

Valentina signed the pad. Alicia lifted the tablet away, tucked it up into her armpit, and refastened the restraint around Valentina's wrist.

"Thank you for your cooperation," Winston said, examining his necktie. "Sorry to bother you with all this paperwork ... but, you understand, it has to be done."

Alicia had finished redoing the restraint, and now she appeared to be standing there staring fixedly into space ... at nothing. Her breathing had slowed. Her eyes were open, but her brain was in some meditative state, or semi-sleep state, or hibernation mode. She looked like a totally different person, or a perfect simulation of the person she was.

Winston glanced at his expensive wristwatch, and that seemed to bring Alicia out of it. Valentina felt their energy changing. She didn't quite understand what was happening, or wasn't happening but she thought was happening, but whatever was or wasn't happening, obviously this session was coming to an end.

Valentina was glad it was. She was feeling tired, extremely tired, and confused, and her lower abdomen hurt, and she needed a nap before Kyle came to visit ... she wanted to be awake for that.

"Do you have any questions for us, Ms. Briggs?" Alicia asked, smiling professionally. She seemed to be back to the first Alicia.

Valentina thought for a moment.

"When will I be going home?" she asked.

Alicia stared at her for several seconds.

"By home you mean to Pewter Palisades?"

Valentina nodded. That's what she meant.

Alicia and Winston looked at each other, the way that Clears so often did, like they couldn't believe how stupid you were but they didn't want to say that and hurt your feelings.

"I'm afraid you're not going home, Ms. Briggs. I'm sorry. We thought you understood ... "

Alicia's eyes were oozing compassion. The Clears could just turn it on like that ... like flipping a switch, that total compassion, an unbelievably creepy attribute that, once upon a time, centuries back, only enlightened sages had possessed. It was like they were looking right into your heart, and could feel the sadness, or pain, or fear, or whatever feeling you were currently feeling, and wished more than anything, at least in that moment, that they had the power to make you stop feeling it. The creepiest thing about it was, it wasn't fake. It was utterly genuine. So much so that you felt ashamed for even considering the chance that it wasn't. You knew their hearts were just breaking for you (in some deeply profound and impersonal way) as they stood there staring into your insides, wishing they could give you their gift ... the knowledge, the peace, of total detachment, but knowing, of course, that they never could, and that that, too, was all part of the plan.

Valentina looked up into Alicia's beaming, compassionate eyes. She wanted to cry, but she didn't know why. Alicia gently placed her hand on Valentina's forehead and let it rest there, as if she were going to check her temperature. She smiled a beatific smile.

"Don't you remember how you got here, Ms. Briggs?" Alicia asked, in a childlike voice.

"No," Valentina answered, trembling. She was telling the truth. She didn't remember. Then ... maybe, she was starting to remember ... which OK, she realized almost immediately, she really did not want to be doing. It wasn't that she remembered details. It was more just this horrible, helpless feeling that rose up inside her like a wave of nausea, as if everything solid had begun to dissolve, like the simulated world of a defective Immersion ...

Winston took a few steps back.

"Are you sure you don’t remember, Ms. Briggs?"

Alicia’s hand was warm, dry, radiating heat into her forehead. Her hand wasn't moving and yet it seemed, to Valentina, whose eyes had now closed, and who felt like her head and neck were paralyzed, as if its energy were entering her brain, tingling, stinging, pinpoint streams of microscopic electric needles, stabbing precisely into her synapses, redirecting their electrical processes ... and now she was flying through a shopping district where the streets were all coated with raspberry syrup, flying the way you do in dreams, so not really flying, more like floating, two or three meters above the ground, flanked by rows of faceless faces, featureless, eerily fetal masks ... flying past signs too fast to read them, gliding toward the massive screen of a video billboard running an ad for some new procedure where the doctors replaced your internal organs with synthetic linguine ... she flew right at and through the screen, and now she was in some dream environment that vaguely reminded her of Paul & Pomona, the upscale chain where she normally shopped for things like tablecloths and kitchen accessories, except that all the Sales Assistants were these gulping, brainless goldfish people with bulging eyes and goldfish mouths, some of whom were amputees with sickeningly suppurating surgical wounds that were dangling fiber-optic ganglia, and these Sales Assistants had formed a circle around this screaming naked woman, who was down on her knees in the middle in the circle, and whose body was smeared with raspberry syrup ... and now, like it sometimes happens in dreams, Valentina became this woman, and pushed one hand into her abdomen, right through her skin like a Hindu fakir, and pulled it out and held something out for the mutilated Sales Assistants to see and ...

A deafening buzzer, like the one you heard when you had got an answer wrong on Quandary, sounded ... she was back in the padded pink room. The video camera swiveled toward her. The PA crackled. A voice, not Barry's, a colder, more professional voice, definitely Security, addressed her now.

"Step back from the door, Ms. Briggs."

Valentina froze in place, every muscle in her body contracting. The lights in the room appeared to be brightening. She couldn't remember what she'd just been thinking.

"Step back from the door, Ms. Briggs."

Whatever time and place this was was not where she was supposed to be. Something that had not happened had happened.

"Move to the wall. Face the wall. Place your hands against the wall."

Valentina assumed the position.

"Do not remove your hands from the wall."

She thought she'd dreamed but really what she'd dreamed had been the place she was, and this had always been the dream, which someone else she was was dreaming ... which didn't make sense ... unless ... maybe ...

The deadbolts in the door clacked open.

"Face the wall."

The oneness of the ...

"Do not attempt to turn your head."

The multiplicitous ...

"Do not move."

The loving compassionate oneness of the ...

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