Isaiah Tanenbaum
August, 1998
Isaiah looked around his cell. Nothing had changed. Well, his lip had nearly stopped bleeding. And he could almost feel the right side of his face, where the boot of the guard had come crashing down upon him. Actually, now that he reflected on it, they weren't treating him that bad, compared to what they had done at first. Maybe I just got used to it, he thought. But it was more than that. It was almost as if they were tired of torturing him… but that couldn't be! Maybe they -
He was interrupted from his reverie by the clank clank clank of the cell door sliding open. A huge man with a heavy-set jaw marched in, very military-like. He opened his mouth into a nearly perfect square. In a loud and pointed voice, he simply stated: "Tanenbaum! Room 101!"
Isaiah paled as he realized what had been happening. He had heard of this terrible room. He knew what had happened to the people taken there. They never returned. Never. But of course now it all makes sense! His mind exclaimed amidst the panic. They were fattening me up for the kill. They had been easing up on me in preparation for the final blow!
He seemed to float out of his body. Isaiah looked down from above as he saw someone, who couldn't possibly be him, gripping onto the side of the bench as two guards tried to pull him away. Shameful way for someone to act, he told the person, who only was screaming and yelling. Suddenly a third sentry pulled out a truncheon and whacked the screaming, clawing animal out of its senses. Everything went black.
* * * He awoke in complete darkness, very disoriented. There was no way to tell even which way was up in the MiniLuv. But somehow something told him that this room was at the very top. It was something about the air pressure… but also something else. Somehow he had known all along that this would be where he would make his last stand. At the top of London. Only from here could he fly above all the madness and into the waiting arms of…. of something…., or fall. Fall sickeningly and terribly, ever faster, faster, faster, faster, faster until he hit the bottom at a speed so great, he would certainly go right through the earth and end up in Eastasia.
As he gradually came out of his sleepy state, he heard a distant buzzing, as if a tree were being cut down at a great rate. He recognized the sound…. it was not a tree…. but he still coudn't place it…. he concentrated on the sound. And then…. just when he was ready to dismiss it as something he had conjured up from his imagination, he knew what is was. And then he knew. He knew everything he had not understood up until that moment. He knew what was in Room 101. He knew what it was that made everyone so afraid. And he knew that he was terrified out of his mind.
A voice pierced the darkness. "Isaiah!" it called.
"What?" came the reply, barely more than an inaudible screech.
"Isaiah! Do you think you have rehabilitated yourself?"
Not knowing what to respond, he blurted what he hoped they would want to hear. "Yes! I love the Party! I love Big Brother! Two + two = five! Oceania is at war with Eurasia, they've always been at war wi - "
His jabbering was cut off by the voice again, tinny as though from through some speaker. "You liar!" it accused, not fooled by his prattle. "You think you can fool the Party? You, you pitiful little child! I only hope that you see the error of your ways!" The voice faded abruptly on the last word, as though its owner had bent over away from his microphone to pick something he had dropped. And it was then that he knew that he had made a mistake. Perhaps the biggest of all mistakes. For as the voice disappeared, a lone spotlight clicked on. It shone across the room to the source of the strange sound, which he had identified.
A glass box, no larger than a chair in height and width, stood glaring in the harsh light. The voice returned, confirming his worst fears. "Bees. Not just normal honeybees, or even bumblebees or wasps. Killer bees. We had to bring them all the way up from the frontier especially for you. Look closer."
He found himself obeying silently. Upon closer inspection, he could see the box was divided into two parts. One half held the bees, angrily buzzing around. They ran into the glass walls, only to get angrier and flap their wings faster and turn and fly into another wall. It was filled with them. He could barely see any empty space at all in that half. The second half was separated from the first by means of a glass wall. As if by merely looking at it had activated some sort of mechanism, that wall shattered into a million tiny pieces, exploding with incredible violence all over the inside of the box. The bees found this incredibly threatening and buzzed into the rest of the box, angrier than ever before. They ran into the second and final wall and turned just as they had before.
The voice resumed. "Terrible creatures," it intoned dryly, as if making a report for some newspaper article. "Just a whiff of your breath is enough to send them into a fury. And most unfortunately for you, their name is well deserved. Just a few stings are enough to send you into a coma, a few more to kill you entirely. You have ten seconds before the second and final door is blown to pieces and they come rushing out, ready to sting anything that moves or breathes."
"What do you want me to do?!" he screamed in panic and anger. "This isn't fair! All the other times you - "
"9 seconds remain."
"But what do you want me to say?!" he shouted at the air, unsure as to whom he should direct his cries. "I'll confess anything! I'll do anything! WHATEVER YOU WANT! JUST PLEASE DON'T LET THEM AT ME!!"
"You still have 7 seconds. You know what you need to do."
That last comment put him off guard for a second. But the panic was too great, the instinct for survival too overwhelming, and he coudn't think about the meaning of that cryptic sentence. In a daze he dropped to the floor, covering his face with his arms. Not knowing any way he could possibly protect himself from the bees he was sure that would strike him any moment from the outside, or the terror that was striking him now.
And everything suddenly slowed down. The voice calling out seconds began to deepen in pitch and faded away until it was only barely there, grumbling incoherently. And Isaiah saw himself, just as he had seen himself in the cell, and looked down at that pathetic creature twitching in fear, looking more like a shadow than a person in the harshly angled light. And now he knew the answer. The answer to it all. Even more overreaching than his earlier revelation. Why Room 101 was the worst and final punishment. Why they were doing this. He understood, and yet he hated the idea at the same time. He did not understand how he understood, but knew that he did. Yet did not. And he knew they were doing this for his own good. Except that he was not he. Isaiah did not exist as Isaiah had known himself. Isaiah as he knew himself to be never had existed, yet had and was something from which to move as rapidly as possible. And he knew that he would not die. He knew that this would not be the end of his corporeal existence. For he knew the one and only way to stop it.
And he saw Isaiah, still lying on the floor, and watched as he yelled out, again and again. "DO IT TO HER! NOT ME! ANYTHING! DO IT TO ZOE!"
And Isaiah died. And the room spun, and he at last found that he was inside of himself, Tanenbaum I. 0797, lying on the ground. And the voice was saying something, but it was as though it were another language. And he heard an incredibly loud click, and knew that the bees would never find themselves stinging him to death. And then he, Tanenbaum I 0797, promptly lost consciousness.