"Let's see... What haven't we heard in a while?" There was a long 
pause of deliberation, and then: "You met on guard duty. 
Containment cell E-3024. She was new; terrified. You could hear her 
shaking in her oversized gear. So you spoke to her, tried to placate 
her concerns, to assuage her fears. You were never good at that 
sort of thing, and at the Foundation you always kept your distance 
from new recruits, but talking to her just came natural. You 
introduced yourself and steered the conversation away from 
whatever was lurking behind that door. And for whatever reason you 
found yourself talking about your past, about the good parts, back 
when you were living in Boston. Time spent at Fenway, not caring 
that your team lost because on that day you were in the company of 
friends, with a cold beer in your hand and money in your pocket, and 
that was worth more than any baseball game. You told her about the 
time you went to the Omni Theater and got motion sickness after 
eating too much astronaut ice cream from the gift shop..." 


Mitchell closed his eyes and recalled the events as the tale 
unfolded. The way it was phrased wasn't like a friend sharing an 
amusing anecdote, improvising the words as they went along. It was 
instead as if they were being read aloud from a book, carefully 
ruminated and crafted. Which of course they were, in a way — 
Mitchell had probably heard this particular story a dozen times. He 
imagined Boston, from the muddy current of the Charles to the 
stone-paved streets of the Freedom Trail. He glanced upward at 
Faneuil Hall and its discordant weather-vane; he watched as the 
wealthy exited their brownstones in Back Bay to waste money on 
Newbury Street and at Saks Fifth Avenue; cold air shocked his 
sinuses while the college students, bundled in black Northface 
jackets and even blacker tights, departed home for the winter 
semester break. 


"... At the end of your shift, she thanked you for being sweet and 
kind. You'd been so absorbed in the conversation, it wasn't until she 
removed her helmet that you realized you hadn't even seen her 
face. It was in that instant — one of those endangered, perfect 
instances that seem to freeze time but are never quite long enough 


— that you knew everything had changed..." 


Despite the colorful narration this was harder to imagine. It was as if 
Mitchell had no reference or context to frame the images. He 
peeked at the photograph for visual aid and screwed his eyes back 
shut. The tableau stabilized, the woman's features sharpened into 
focus: a lopsided grin partially-obscured by a helmeted mask. The 
mask sat too low on her face and she was constantly angling her 
chin upward to see beneath the brim. 


And then her face was lost again, sinking into the black watery 
depths of his memory. 


"Will she ever come back?" he asked. "The memories, | mean." 
"Probably not," came the answer above, not unkindly. 


Mitchell ran the ball of his thumb along the underside of his ring 
finger, just before it met the palm. He craved his wedding ring, could 
still feel its squeeze, burning and itching like a phantom limb. 


"You still mean to go through with it, then?" 
"Yes," replied Mitchell. 
"When?" 


"Soon as | get my chance." 
1 


Reveille was at 0530 for the D-Class assigned to first shift. Mitchell 
yawned and climbed out of bed. Instead of a military bugle, Reveille 
here was an electronic tune piped through the intercom system. 
When it finished the lock buzzed and he swung the door open. 


If he missed the buzzer's thirty second window the door would 
automatically lock again, and stay that way for the next four hours, 
or until a prisoner functionary came to check on him. 


He exited the room and lined his feet along the yellow band that 
circled the block. Out of habit, Mitchell softly hummed To the Colors. 


After roll call he wandered into the locker room. The showers 
weren't communal; instead they were small tiled alcoves replete with 
curtain. 


Ten minutes later, wearing fresh blue coveralls, Mitchell filed into the 
mess hall. 


One thing he had to give the Foundation: the food was actually 
pretty damn good. A lot better than the Army, or any prison Mitchell 
had been invited to attend. The eggs weren't artificial and were 
cooked to order. Likewise the bread was fresh and came with real 
butter and jam. Today he was indulging in an omelet with sides of 
hashbrowns and bacon, along with a bagel, heavy on the cream 
cheese. It came with as much juice and coffee he could drink in the 
next fifteen minutes. 


He supposed it was a morale thing. Same with the showers. It was 
the small amenities that made life bearable. It always helped to have 
a good meal in you before marching off to guard the gates of hell. 


Mitchell spent the next ten hours hunched over a terminal in a tiered, 
darkened room that resembled NASA's mission control. He watched 
a bank of CCTV monitors recording a half-flooded basement. 
Figures, vaguely human in their design, glided under the waves; 
occasionally auroras blossomed beneath the surface as 
bioluminescent spines and tentacles flared. Barnacles spackled the 
cellar steps like psoriasis, and weeds climbed the cinderblock walls 
and support beams. 


A grid in the corner of one screen took atmospheric measurements 
of the basement: currently it read 1042 bars of pressure anda 
temperature of 5 degrees Celsius. 


It was monotonous, stressful work. The potential for failure was 
death, and the Foundation made certain Mitchell never forgot it. He 
suspected they were salting his water with — among other things — 
some form of methamphetamine to maintain focus and performance 
standards. By the end of the shift his eyes would feel like 
sandpaper, and some mornings his jaw ached from grinding his 
teeth. 


At 1600 Mitchell clocked out. 


He made a short detour to the commissary for a snack before 
heading to the courtyard. For whatever reason he had a large 
account balance at the commissary, and so he also paid for the 
other D-Class standing in line behind him. 


A broad expanse equal in area to four football fields, on one side the 
courtyard was enclosed by a thirty-foot wall topped with razor-wire 
and motion sensors, and on the remaining sides by the Foundation 
compound and two of its containment wings. There was an Olympic- 
sized swimming pool (drained for the season), an outdoor gym, a 
basketball court and a baseball diamond. A clay track ran along the 
inside of the perimeter. 


Mitchell completed six laps around the track, which roughly totaled 
two miles. Blood pumping, he moved on to the gym and used the 
free weights for sets of curls and presses. He wanted to burn off any 
excess energy leftover from the laced stimulant. By the time his 
second game of pick-up basketball was ending the Mess Call 
broadcasted and all the D-Class queued for supper in the cafeteria. 


2 


"Tell me a story about her," Mitchell said as he sat on the edge of 
his bunk. The room was ink-black. It had rained earlier, and the 
lingering clouds smothered any moonlight. 


"Which one?" came the ritual response from above. 
"You pick." 


"Let's see... Ah, I've got it. | actually officiated your wedding. Read 
from a bible and everything. Both the ceremony and the reception 
were held in the break room on the second floor, in the Safe 
Reliquary section. You know the place? Anyway, you exchanged 
rings..." 


In the darkness, Mitchell practiced making knots behind his back, 
tying a ribbon of silk around a wooden dowel he'd fleeced from the 
textile workshop. He counted off how long it took to make each knot, 


and tested its strength and how long it took to unravel. Then he 
switched hands and repeated the process. 


"...she loved Carly Simon, and we played some of her songs off the 
break room computer. You even let me dance with the bride when 
Nobody Does it Better came on. God, she was beautiful. All dolled 
up — not that she needed it — hair done and wearing lipstick. There 
was champagne, courtesy of the same dealer who got you the rings, 
and cake scrounged from the kitchen. I'd brought along some sheets 
and blankets from the supply closet, and around midnight | left, 
locked you two inside for some alone time. | was working nights as a 
janitor back then, so | had the keys..." 


Mitchell flushed with anger reminiscing on what he'd lost. No, 
correction: not lost, sto/en. It wasn't like he misplaced the fucking 
thing. He was rendered impotent in the shadow of the Foundation's 
thoroughness, their complete and exacting control — not only had 
they separated him from his wife physically, but they'd scrubbed his 
brain clean of her memory. It was, at least from Mitchell's 
perspective, as if they'd never even met. 


Did something still exist, had it ever really existed, if it was no longer 
remembered? 


His ears and face grew hot, the tidal pulse of his heart surged, and 
his fingers slipped on the next knot. He tossed the ribbon and dowel 
aside. 


"You remembering any of this?” 


"Just fragments,” sighed Mitchell. He was reduced to experiencing 
his own past through other people's accounts. 


"Does it help? Me telling stories." 


"You know it does." Mitchell lay back and closed his eyes; he 
concentrated on breathing and tried to calm his heartbeat. It was 
true, the stories were like keys unlocking his past, but progress was 
frustratingly slow, and even after all these months all he had were 
nascent snapshots. The collective sum was disjointed and inchoate. 
If his marriage was a movie, for every frame of film there were a 


hundred more that were missing, and the third reel had been 
completely destroyed in a celluloid fire. 


"Was there anybody else at the wedding?" he asked. 
"What?" 
"Besides you, | mean. Was there anybody else? Other guests..." 


The voice floated down from the top bunk. "No." Then, as if sensing 
further explanation was required: "It was hard enough just sneaking 
the two of you in." 


"Yeah, | get it. But other people knew about us, right?" 


"To be honest, | don't really know. | didn't tell anybody, and | know 
you just told me and Jordan, but he was grabbed around the same 
time as you, 'cept he never came back. | assume she must've told 
somebody over in the female block, her cellmate, a friend, someone, 
but | don't know who that might have been. None of the women ever 
tried to contact you?" 


Mitchell shook his head. "No one's approached me." He had hoped 
someone else might know something. That he might hear something 
new, or even something old but from a different point of view, and 
that would be the missing keystone to bring it all together. 


As they drifted off to sleep they completed the final exchange of the 
nocturnal ceremony. 


"You still mean to go through with it, then?" 
"Yes," replied Mitchell. 
"When?" 


"Soon as | get my chance." 
3 


Life at the facility consisted of a never-ending series of protocols and 
procedures. It was ossified to the point that even Mitchell's routines 


had subroutines. His entire existence was like a cruel matryoshka 
nesting doll of boredom set inside tediousness. 


0530: Reveille. 


There was an odd dichotomy within the Foundation — their mission 
statement was the procurement and subsequent containment of 
anomalous objects and organisms, but in order to complete this 
objective they were forced to recruit expendable D-Class personnel 
from the world's prison population, commuting the sentences of 
inmates who were eligible and acceptant of the assignment. 


This in turn necessitated the Foundation to function as an auxiliary 
penitentiary, without the societal goals of punishment, justice, or 
rehabilitation. It did offer and encourage extracurricular activities for 
the D-Class, from higher-education courses mainly taught by 
members of the Research staff, to sewing clubs and AA meetings. 
But Mitchell suspected this was all a smokescreen to appease and 
mollify the convicts, much like the upgraded food and showers. It 
was the illusion of a future outside of these walls that kept them 
docile. Freedom — or the possibility of freedom — was dangled in 
front of them like a carrot in front of a draft-mule. Several times a 
year the site would make a show of a D-Class that had been 
pardoned, but it was always after the fact, when they were 
supposedly far-away, living under a new identity with a comfortable 
pension. They'd parade postcards and a farewell letter addressed to 
no one in particular, and the director would mutter an announcement 
regarding their bravery and dedication. 


It was all bullshit, all opiates for the masses. Mitchell saw through it. 
The retired D-Class was actually rotting in a pauper's grave or 
slowly being digested in the belly of a cosmic squid. It probably 
wasn't even the site director talking over the intercom. 


0600: First shift starts. 


As the custodial care of convicts was a byproduct of the 
Foundation's goals, there was a fundamental paradigm shift in 
discipline in comparison to most penitentiaries. There was an 
average of only one correctional officer per two hundred inmates 
(and most sites didn't even house two hundred D-Class personnel). 


Their limited capacity was supplemented by prisoner functionaries, 
or "kapos", D-Class that acted on the authority of COs in exchange 
for various perks and benefits. 


Felons were selected based on multiple variables, including 
notoriety, behavioral tests, and criminal history. A high-profile case 
would be ignored. Likewise an unrepentant, schizophrenic child- 
murderer wouldn't be considered an eligible candidate for the 
program. Most D-Class were from the U.S., as it had the largest 
prison population, housing approximately twenty-two percent of the 
world's convicts, and a majority were non-violent offenders from 
states with minimum sentencing laws drafted during the Reagan era 
in a misguided response to the crack cocaine epidemic. In second 
place was China — they executed approximately twenty-five 
hundred citizens each year. 


As a D-Class within the Foundation, minor offenses, such as 
consensual inner-class relationships or possession of tobacco, were 
often overlooked. At worst an infraction was accrued. A total of three 
infractions within a six month period resulted in the loss of privileges, 
from access to the yard and commissary to block detention outside 
of scheduled shifts. It was also common to tack on additional 
custodial details, like garbage removal and scrubbing lavatories. 


The quality of life and (relative) freedom of the D-Class was a 
double-edged blade. 


Although officially the Foundation denied punitive Keter-assignment 
and testing, reality spoke differently. D-Class charged with serious 
offenses such as rape or assault against staff, including other D- 
Class, were quickly removed from circulation and rarely seen again. 
For this simple reason the D-Class operated with very little 
oversight. There was the inevitable black market which supplied 
anything from a pack of dice to pornography (or champagne and 
wedding rings), but that was the extent of the illicit activity. If a D- 
Class was ever caught with a shiv during a surprise block 
inspection, or found guilty of insubordination in a containment 
scenario, they weren't sent for an all-expenses paid trip to solitary 
confinement. There was no second chance, no new trial, no meeting 
with a lawyer or appeal to the governor for clemency. 


It was an incredibly effective motivator. 
1200: Lunch. 


There were rumors of other sites where the D-Class were 
unceremoniously executed at the end of each month. Also that they 
were all surgically implanted with a micro-explosive that could be 
activated remotely, or even automatically if they crossed certain 
invisible barriers. They were the sort of lies the Foundation covertly 
encouraged, and just plausible enough to sow doubt.