Prison

Something wasn’t right. He clocked into his job as he usually did, mentally preparing himself for the long and arduous shift ahead at the warehouse, but something about this day seemed familiar, like it had happened before. He quickly brushed off this feeling; after all, most days were the same: wake up at an ungodly hour, drive a long commute on autopilot, work on mindless tasks for the next ten hours, return home exhausted with only a couple of hours to zone out before bed, rinse and repeat. After clocking in, he went to his locker, changed into his uniform, and went to work on the floor.

In what felt like an instant he was back in front of his locker for his break time. This was odd; did he really not remember what happened during the last few hours? He vaguely recalled the all-staff meeting where management announced everyone’s hours would be cut - the rumors that they would start automating everything turned out to be true - so he probably couldn’t think straight through the anxiety of not being able to pay his rent.

The whole day was a blur, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right; he couldn’t even remember how he got here. Through the fog of his memory, he recalled his floor supervisor doing a walk around during the shift with a small, black notebook, writing notes. For some reason, that seemed out of place. Maybe he was making notes of whose hours should be cut? Or worse, of who they should fire next? The thought of getting fired made him feel sick, but he was determined to find out the contents of that notebook.

He opened his locker to get his lunch and found a thick manila envelope, not addressed to anyone. Confused, he opened the envelope and found a stack of money. As if by instinct, he moved closer to his locker to block its contents and quickly assessed his surroundings. The staff locker room was completely empty, oddly enough. Who put this in here? He proceeded to count the money...twenty-thousand dollars!

“You should take it, and leave this place.”

Gasping as he spun around, he found a co-worker. She looked very familiar, but she also seemed out of place.

“Didn’t you talk about buying an RV and going off into the mountains to leave this all behind?” she continued, “Nothing is keeping you here. You deserve to be happy.”

She did have a point; he felt such a sense of peace in the outdoors. The few times of his life he felt truly happy were always away from the city; his fondest memories were of the time he spent with his grandmother in her modest mountain cabin where she taught him how to fish and forage, where they spent hours walking in the forest while she patiently answered his childish questions about bugs, and where they’d spend nights looking up at the stars while she told him the stories of their ancestors. She was the one person who accepted and loved him unconditionally, and now all he could think of was how he wasn’t allowed to say goodbye as she died alone in a hospital bed from a disease that consumed her. How did his life come to this?

Tears welled up and a knot formed in his throat as feelings of helplessness and rage washed over him. At that moment the floor supervisor entered the room, writing in the small black notebook. With a look of panic on her face, his co-worker moved in front of him to block his line of sight to the floor supervisor.

“Jon, you don’t have to revisit this; you can take the money and go to the cabin.” The floor supervisor moved closer, continuing to write in the notebook.

‘Revisit?’ Jon thought, confused.

“Jon, listen to me, you do not need to relive the incident, and the notebook will not help you get through this.” She was now wearing glasses and a lab coat rather than the warehouse uniform.

What was this place? Something inside of him snapped and he felt a floodgate in his being about to break loose. “What is he writing? WHO ARE YOU??” Jon yelled as he pushed her away and lunged at the floor supervisor.

“Don’t open that notebook!” she cried.

Tumbling to the floor, he grabbed the notebook and pried it open…

...and he was sitting in his fifth grade classroom as the recess bell rang. He stayed behind pretending to finish up his work, waiting for everyone to leave for the playground. After the sounds of his classmates’ chatter and squeals slowly faded away, he stepped out onto the empty hallway and sat down on the floor, hugging his knees and dropping his head into his folded arms, waiting for recess to be over. He wished he had his science fiction books with him to read so he could immerse himself in far away galaxies, but he didn’t want to give his bullies more reasons to pick on him. His home life wasn’t that great either, but at least he could lock himself in his room, put on earphones to drown out the shouting and fighting, and escape into his books.

“Hey loser!”

Jon lifted his head, his bullies surrounding him. “Leave me alone.”

“Leave me alone,” they repeated in a mocking voice, laughing. Before he could get up and run, two of them grabbed him by each arm and dragged his flailing body, shoving him into a locker.

“Let me out, let me out!!” Jon screamed, trying to move in the confined space and becoming increasingly panicked and short of breath, feeling as if the walls of the locker were becoming smaller and tighter while the bullies continued laughing and shaking the locker.

Suddenly, the door of the locker flies open and Jon spills out, along with his backpack and books.

‘This isn’t what happened’, Jon thought. A teacher is standing over him, one hand holding the locker door and the other hand reaching out to him as she crouches down to his level to help him up. She looks very familiar; was it Miss Hersch? He couldn’t remember what subject she taught.

She couldn’t quite remember how she got there either, but she knew she had to get Jon out of there. “Jon, you don’t have to be here. Come with me, we can go to the cabin.”

Tears are streaming down his face as he feels the sting of his scraped knees and bruises. “NO!” He reaches towards the black notebook that slipped out of his backpack…

...and he is marching through the desert, sweating under his uniform and forty pounds of gear. It was only 0600 hours and already the temperature was in the low 90s. His unit is entering a village known for insurgents; the day before another unit drove one of their vehicles over a land mine and lost two of their troops. Jon felt a sense of foreboding. As his unit neared the village, his commander split them up into pairs and they used hand signals to surround a suspect building. As he and his partner moved into position by an entry point, a loud boom of a detonation nearby shook the ground and Jon dropped to his stomach as bullets started flying through the air. He looked towards his partner, who was yelling something that he couldn’t hear over the ringing of his ears, until his partner signalled towards the entry point. They both entered, seeking cover from the fire.

Quickly assessing whether either of them sustained injuries, they continued into the building to complete their mission. All of a sudden, another explosion shakes the ground and his partner is wounded from flying shrapnel. Jon drops his gear and quickly goes to his partner’s side to assist him with his injury.

“Let me help you,” his partner says, shuddering in pain.

“Wait, what?” Jon responds, confused as he frantically searched through his back for material to dress his wound.

With short and labored breaths, his partner says “you don’t have to continue reliving this moment. Do not go into the next room, just take my hand and come with me.”

Jon stands up and looks towards the next room. “But you told me to continue the mission,” he says, stumbling towards the room.

“Please Jon, don’t go in there. Don’t open the notebook, you’re imprisoning yourself.”

Jon turns towards the next room and sees the black notebook on a small table and a bawling child amidst the rubble, holding the hand of an elderly woman who seems unresponsive. She reminded him of his grandmother. He quickly reaches towards the black notebook as his partner is yelling “Please Jon, come back…”

“Dr. Hersch, how many fingers am I holding up?”

The beeping of the heart monitors, the sterile smell of hospitals and the colors of the balloons and flower arrangements on her bedside table overwhelmed her senses as she came around. It was all coming back to her. “How long have I been out? Do we have Jon back?”

Her lab assistant let out a sigh of relief as a nurse checked her vitals. “We’re so glad to have you back Dr. Hersch! We thought we lost you.” Dr. Hersch looked around at her hospital surroundings, bewildered. “You were in a coma for a month. Let me call the lab director over, he’ll be glad you’re back, we were all so worried” she said, as she pulled out her phone.

“What about Jon?”

“Easy there, Dr. Hersch,” the nurse murmured.

Her lab assistant’s face fell. “I’m afraid we couldn’t reach him; he’s still in a deep coma. It’s too dangerous to send someone for him; we almost lost you in his Afghanistan memory. According to the system, he is somewhere within his own mind, under multiple unpredictable loops.”

“How long was I with him before I went into a coma?”

“Five minutes.”

Dr. Hersch shuddered. “Our treatment was so promising during the initial trials, but they were inconsequential memories. It seems the technology becomes unstable within the memories of immense trauma.”

The lab director walked into the room accompanied by a general, a smile beaming on his face. “Dr. Hersch, welcome back! We’re so glad our star researcher is back from the depths of hell!”

His enthusiasm was disconcerting. “I appreciate the concern, but the treatment failed. We lost a patient, and I assume the defense contract as well,” she said, glancing over at the general.

“On the contrary, Dr. Hersch, we were quite impressed with the results and we want to bring it to scale,” stated the general.

Dr. Hersch was taken aback. “With all due respect, this technology is too dangerous, and the treatment did not improve the patient’s condition, it made the PTSD worse” her voice started to crack, “and I almost forgot who I was in there.” She paused, taking a deep breath, “most importantly, the patient is suffering in a prison of his own mind.”

“You’re right, Dr. Hersch, the technology is still in its nascent stages for treatment of mental health issues for our troops. However, at the Defense department we’re realigning our priorities, and we have found that this technology is useful for other.... highly classified, matters.” Dr. Hersch’s mouth dropped, stunned.

“But don’t worry yourself over the details, Dr. Hersch,” the lab director piped in, “you must be overwhelmed, but we already have a team working on scaling this up. For now, you should focus on recovery. We’ll let the medical team come over and check you out, so you can go on a well deserved R&R.” Before Dr. Hersch could respond, he and the general walked out, along with her lab assistant.

With everyone gone from the room, Dr. Hersch could still hear the ringing in her ears. She turned towards the bedside table and in horror, saw between the flower arrangements a small black notebook.