I shrieked in protest, but to no avail. Hissandra just laughed and scampered away, leaving me locked in my prison, alone.
For the first hour, I just waited, hoping that Maria would return and open my cell.
When she didn't return, my worries intensified. Would other scientists find me? Or would they be too busy with other projects to check a presumably empty set of cells?
And would I want them to find me? Granted, I learned a lot and ate well, but it wasn't freedom. I'd essentially be their guinea pig. And if nobody knew I was there...
It seemed I'd have to figure out a method of escape on my own, or end up like the woman in The Cask of Amontillado, entombed in a little chamber until death took me.
I actually tried.
The windows, highly resistant to attack, could not be clawed, beaten or even melted with acid. The blade attached to my arm cut scratches into the surface, but like dragging a nail across a piece of quartz or a diamond, it would take forever to make a dent in it. I briefly wondered if Craig actually had figured out how to build a null entropy field.
The metal portion proved to be no less difficult, as the bolts on the locking mechanism could not be seen through the crack in the door, but rather fastened inside the `sleeve' of the door somewhere, leaving me to guess on the location. I would have to tear open most of the frame to figure out the schematic.
I did the only thing I could think to do: Spit acid on the metal around the door and wait for it to either eat its way to the bolts or create me an exit hole.
I suppose all this activity, and the cameras, caught the attention of someone, for as a second layer of steel melted beneath a layer of metal I'd melted previously, a short grumpy looking older woman waddled into the room.
A labcoated scientist. The name tag read Erin Abernathy.
The stocky, heavily jowled woman marched up to my door, silently staring at me, eyes heavy lidded like she'd seen Ss'sik'chtokiwij all the time.
She stepped out of the prison for ten minutes, returning with a dark skinned bog mummy of a woman. Judging by the lack of lab coat, fine clothing and well trimmed hair, she appeared to be the woman's superior.
The thick limbed one ran fingers through her gray streaked brunette hair, scratched a spot near her ponytail. "I'm just trying to figure out what we should be doing this, being that it's Shattuck and Siegler's project. I'd take care of it myself, but I've got too many projects to juggle as it is."
The skeletal woman stared at me. I found her arrogant air and stern countenance was intimidating, even to me. "And you said it's been trying to break out?"
"It definitely looks like it. It's been testing the security glass, and now it's trying to melt away the door locks."
The two stared at me some more.
I waved back. "Hi."
Neither of them said anything in response.
"Do you know about Roger and Craig?"
They frowned, but didn't speak.
"Just to let you know, they're not coming back. It wasn't my fault."
Nothing. It was like I hadn't talked at all.
After a long pause, the skin on Bog Mummy's face pulled back further on her skeletal features. "Erin, I want you to take care of the thing. Feed it, make sure it doesn't get out. Check the computers and see what they're doing with it, and try to get it back on a schedule."
"I don't have any time, Jeanette. I've got a workflow to maintain on eleven other projects you've given me."
"Well then delegate the work to someone else."
"They've got their own projects. I can't just—"
"Figure something out. We have a valuable creature that needs to be fed, restrained, and subjected to...whatever testing they have scheduled for it."
Erin swore softly under her breath, but Jeanette just slapped her on the back. "It's not that difficult. Just pretend like you're taking care of a dog."
"Right. And if I step in the cage, he'll slash my throat with that giant switchblade thing."
"We'll...work on that. No one says you have to open the door just yet."
Erin muttered another curse.
The two left the room for an hour.
Worried that Hissandra would harm Maria, I resumed by attempts at burning a hole in the wall, hoping I could escape and come to her rescue before something terrible happened.
I realized the humans could see everything I was doing, but I thought I'd be back outside before they could figure out a solution to the problem.
By the time I found the edge of the door (and not the locking mechanism), Call came rushing into the prison, armed with a cattleprod and an electric leash.
I tried to fight back with the weapon, but Call nimbly dodged the attacks and shocked me. The involuntary spasming and relaxation of my body caused my weapon to fall off, and they, of course, confiscated it.
After jolting me to the point of drooling, the android dragged me to the corner of the cell. I had officially become property again.
S.O.L. FUBAR. Roger's colorful things to say when things went wrong.
`Screwed.' Possibly `fucked,' though both expressions had sexual connotations not appropriate to the situation, and sort of depressed me as I remembered (impostor) Mr. Shattuck's lessons about the subject.
Hissandra ran loose, Maria remained in mortal peril, and I could do nothing about it.
I prayed, read a few epistles, idly flipped through Coming Of Age In Mississippi, I even tried practicing the harmonica. Oddly appropriate, considering my current circumstances.
Like reading the novel, my musical instrument had been one of Roger's experiments. He made some joke about how prisoners had natural harmony, then showed me a performance by someone named Mik Jagged, a chieftain of the musical tribe `Rollingston.' I'm not positive, but I believe this clan derived its name from the empty tomb on Easter Sunday. Roger did inform me that this `Mik' was a man of great faith.
I searched for information on escape artists and Harry Houdini on the little computer, but the system blocked me.
I attempted to imitate the lock picking I'd seen on an episode of Remington Steele, poking at my collar with my claws and sewing instruments, but couldn't figure out the release mechanism.
I couldn't sustain attention on anything, or sleep. I just lay on the floor, worrying about Maria.
I spent hours in that cell.
Alone. By myself.
Ms. Abernathy stopped by to shove a bowl of dog food through the door slot, then I found myself alone again.
Roger and Craig wouldn't do something like that, their aim always to maximize the use of experiment time, to learn everything they could about me.
I ate the dog food, and it filled my stomach with no ill effects. Nothing to drink, though. Not sure they properly understood my biology.
I read and I slept.
Ms. Abernathy awoke me with another bowl of dog food, then, after Call affixed probes to my probe sockets, the woman stood outside the door, reading aloud from a tablet computer.
She slowly pronounced each item with deliberate care. "Red. White. Yellow. Bicycle. Orange. Vest. Iowa. Dakota. Yolo. Blue. Pakistani. Jesus. Detroit. Caravaggio. Americana. Pretzel. Purple. White. Petry. Purple. Pink. Blue."
Ms. Abernathy frowned at the screen. "Bullshit."
That's all the interaction I had for the next twenty four hours.
Well, unless you count Call entering my cell to confiscate my sewing kit or drop in a bowl of water an interaction.
The loss of that kit made me angry, angrier than I had been about the loss of the blade weapon, but I could do nothing about it. The android brandished her cattleprod the moment I made any sudden move, and then she was gone.
They never removed the probes.
Robbed of the craft I found solace in for so long, I made do with electronic sketches on my little computer, saving them in a folder Roger labeled `Outsider Art'. After venting with a little picture of me crying over the loss of the sewing kit, I did little drawings of friends, Rebecca, Roger and Doug and Sarah. Not terribly impressive works of art, but they weren't stick figures.
I also drew a picture of me standing between a group of humans and Grandma in the processing station, putting little word bubbles in the humans' mouth that said, "Out of the way! This is our machine!"
Grandma's word bubble said, "I like killing humans," and mine: "No no no. Stop." I didn't know if anyone would ever look at these doodles, but I could only hope that they would.
On the next day, with my meal, I got read the following: "Lima. Cockroach. Yellow...Yellow. Paris. Dubuque. Limousine. Blue...Blue. Indigo. Poultry. Penis. Orange. Purple. White...White. Yellow. Pandemic. Aborigine. Genitalia. Raspberry. Pink. Manila."
Abernathy never explained what this was all about. She just read from her little script and went away. I could only guess it had something to do with tracing neuron paths or something, perhaps how one thought connects to the other.
That was it for the day. No small talk, no movies, nothing. I had to make do with what I had in the cell.
No one confiscated the tablet computer. I wasn't sure who, but someone had put the device back in my cell after it had been taken last time. And so I listened to music for awhile. The King of Crimson, They Could Be Giants, Pink Floyd's Relics. Reel Big Fish. Roger had highlighted these as his personal favorites. I doubted Ms. Abernathy would extend me that same courtesy.
At an odd hour of the day, the woman seated herself on Sarah's cot in the other cell, silently `vaping' as she stared at me. I attempted communication, but she did nothing except take another drag and puff smoke.
"Have you seen others of my kind?" I asked, afraid to make a direct reference to Maria.
Ms. Abernathy gave me a half shake of her head, like she hadn't meant to answer my question, but had done so anyway.
"Is Rebecca Jorden alive?"
Erin looked like she'd just smelled something foul.
I sighed. "Your people are in danger. The atmosphere processing station needs to be evacuated. It's not safe."
No reply. She just stomped out.
I spent more hours in isolation.
Upon the morrow of the next day, I got subjected to a new test, one which, at long last, involved some form of interaction.
"This is a test of your memory," Ms. Abernathy read. "I will read to you a list of eight items, and I want you to repeat them back to me, in order. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
She read the items. "Marshmallow. Linus. Bikini. Seven. Might. Tree. Desert. Orange."
I repeated every word back to her in order.
No good job. No thank you. Just a grunt as she stomped away.
I watched a few episodes of a depressing comedy program entitled Good Times, then tried a video game Sarah told me about, experimenting with moving the little creatures around and making them talk to each other. The title: Gardenialand. A quest game where all the characters were animals. It caught my attention for an hour or so, but I eventually tired of it.
I suppose night fell, for the color outside the window turned from blue to black, but with the constant rain, I couldn't tell for sure.
As I lay glumly on the floor, lamenting the loss of friends, conversations and entertaining diversions, I suddenly notice my computer humming to life.
`My peace I give to you,' the light flashed in Morse code. `Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.'
I communicated by tapping my claw. `Maria?'
`Yes. It's me. Hold on. I'm going to mod your computer.'
`What's a mod?'
She didn't reply.
I hoped and prayed it to be the real Maria and not some fiendish act of deception.
Of course, I doubted anyone would be clever enough to capture the subtle nuances of her character. A Ss'sik'chtokiwij would never quote the bible like that, and a human wouldn't know the alien things she referenced. Furthermore, neither would have a motive for such a trick.
Second worry: What if Sarah's ghost haunted me? I had seen too many programs on similar subjects. Or perhaps I had gone crazy, which also fit the character of those programs.
The screen showed a smirking Martian face and an endlessly circling broken green ring. A readout on the bottom said it had 299 of five hundred updates left to install. I had nothing better to do than watch the numbers.
`Thank God you're alive,' I tapped. `I was worried. I thought for sure Hissandra would kill you. Did she attack you?'
`It's complicated. I'd like to explain by video chat.'
`What about your body? Is it still where we left it?'
`That's complicated too.'
There was a long pause.
200 updates left to install.
`Sarah?' I tapped. `I mean, Maria?'
Another pause.
Her next message: `Is it sinful to eat a dead human if you didn't kill them?'
I didn't like how that sounded.