The web's first magazine devoted to stories about life in giant artificial structures created by forces beyond human comprehension

Simon Says

by Terence Kuch

My Keeper spies on me. Every inch of wall, of ceiling has its microlens and microphone, shutter-eyes shutting, popping, clicking like a thousand angry bugs.

My Keeper spies on me. Before I was here, if there was such a time, he must have drilled the little holes to fit the lenses, implanted the tiny corks so that each shutter-cork pops, lens looks, cork slaps-to again -- all so short a time it traps, every instant, my pose.

What does Keeper do with all these views, these sounds collected by his mindful machines from this prison cell, his private theatre? Surely these other-eyes, other-ears transmit the gist of me to the capital, to our Leader, so his happy-humming mechanical mind may ponder what its eyes and ears have told, compare each new sight, new sound with all the older sights and sounds.

And so I tread the boards again, hold my head and arms just so again, that other-eyes see nothing new and other-ears hear nothing new, and other-mind thinks ‘nothing new today’: Keeper shall not have news of me this day.

TELL THEM WHAT TIME THE LIGHTS GO OFF.

Each night at eleven the lights go off in my cell. Maybe days go by before the lights go off, maybe only hours. But each night the lights go off at eleven because when they go off, I say ‘eleven.’ Therefore: each night at eleven the lights go off. Keeper can’t spy on me by sight, not after ‘eleven.’ The shutter-corks are silent, lenses dark. But microphones grope the night attentive to my every mutter, every gasp.

TELL THEM WHAT TIME THE LIGHTS COME ON AGAIN.

Each morning at ‘seven’ the lights come on again. Busy corks resume their popping, lenses look. The bright of hard bare bulbs comes all so instantly that sometimes when it’s light I think it may never have been dark. -- But at seven it’s light again. I use the official bucket for my hoarded waste.

TELL THEM ABOUT YOUR CELL; GO INTO DETAIL ABOUT THE COLOR SCHEME.

Have I told you about my cell, its color scheme, my bed? The grand four-poster, the silk sheets, the colorful cheery quilt, perhaps a bedspread too? The color of the blankets, the shade of dinge the sheets have acquired, those long-time intimate friends of mine?

But no, there is no bed. Just the cell, its door. I need to say there is a door (although it never opens) before I tell about the smaller door within the door, the little door that slams opens faithfully to let Keeper serve my higher needs: food in, shit out. And yes: everything here is brown. That’s the color scheme. At least by now everything is brown. I like to think that when I was first sent here, temporarily for my own protection as they say, at least one small, beautiful thing was white -- but memory fails.

TELL THEM ABOUT THE CUISINE. CONFIRM THAT WE ARE TREATING YOU WELL.

My Keeper spies on me when the little door in the middle of the cell door opens and in slides firstfood on its tray (two slices of mortified bread, a cup of sweetish brownish fluid that may have passed through more than one digestive system on its way to me.)

There is an eye behind the tray, Keeper’s eye peering in as if he cannot gain sight enough from all his lenses, sound enough from microphones, but keens his senses to hear and see through lying air, tell his many-windowed other-mind to integrate this one more sight, this one more sound.

When the remains of firstfood pass the other way, and I pass my bucket also the other way, there’s Keeper’s eye unblinking once again, its chance to see what I do, I, who long since have nothing to do but think of Keeper’s eye and what it sees, what his clicked and gestured other-mind has made of me among its other data-bits.

TELL THEM ABOUT SECONDFOOD!

Now it just occurred to me that I should tell you about secondfood. At ‘six,’ my secondfood tray (which is also lastfood for the day) comes in through the little door, and once more, once more the bucket, one more time. There is no middlefood, maybe for Keeper there is middlefood, a stream of steaming meat still screaming from the butcher’s hand he may jab at viciously as it goes by, swallow down whole at a time.

Is it always the same tray?

IF YOU INSIST, YOU MAY DISCUSS THE ONTOLOGY OF THE TRAY, BUT BRIEFLY, PLEASE.

The tray is just large enough to hold a prisoner’s severed face, but all it holds for me is firstfood I described already (bread, brownish fluid) and secondfood, just the same bread, brownish fluid. Is it always the same tray? It looks the same, but who knows?

There were probably thousands of these things stamped out in some factory in the capital by captured rebels or prisoners of war. My tray has tiny dings in it, and the tray that comes twice a day has tiny dings in it, too, maybe the same dings, but I’m not sure.

Sometimes Keeper doesn’t clean my tray very well and then I see dark dried traces of firstfood underlying second, or secondfood under first. The crusty residue is empirically consistent with the food before; but if there are others of the kept, they may get the same bread and brownish fluid I do, and so the residues would be the same and what I have is some other kept one’s residue, not my own.

Other parts of my worklife call for careful analysis as well. For instance, is it always the same shit-bucket?

PLEASE DO NOT EXPATIATE UPON THE SHIT-BUCKET;
INSTEAD, O DO MENTION OUR GRAND PATRIOTIC FESTIVAL.

Oh, yes: National Day. Once a year -- as far as I can tell -- my food comes festooned with banners and devices, shredded colored plastic glued to toothpick ends. It seems the nation is celebrating, and so my food is celebrating, too. I get a special uniform, and a few shreds of bunting are pushed in through the little door on the end of a stick. A pot of glue shows up on my tray (its label says ‘GLUE: DON’T EAT!’); Keeper wiggles the stick around, gestures at the walls. The meaning is clear: I am to put on the special uniform, glue the bunting to the walls, celebrate in wild abandon. The lenses and corks are busy on National Day. For the microphones, I shout ‘Huzzah!’ ‘Huzzah’ must be said, even though I have never heard anyone in my life shout ‘Huzzah!’ I put the bunting up and push my ordinary uniform out the little door in the door, for what purpose I don’t know because next day it comes back as filthy as before.

Once I ate some of the glue; it wasn’t bad, but the next day an empty stick poked in and wiggled around and I got no more bread or brownish fluid until I pushed the bunting back through the little door, and, Keeper’s eye watching, cleaned the glue off my walls even more thoroughly than usual.

Another year I got a small stain on the special uniform and exactly a year later exactly the same special uniform returned, with exactly the same stain. From year to year I add a few stains, some accidentally and some on purpose, and so the special uniform and my daily uniform asymptotically converge to putrid filth and National Day doesn’t seem so festive any more. What’s one stain more or less on my daily uniform, as stained and ragged as it is? But each new stain on my special uniform is a special stain.

Why celebrate? I remember a Leader; I remember a war. Perhaps my Leader met another in war and won. Or perhaps every National Day nothing happens except that Leader remembers an earlier day when he remembered a war, and won. Or lost.

So that’s how I celebrate National Day every year. It’s not much, but it’s a life.

REVEAL THAT YOU ARE BEGINNING TO FIGURE IT OUT.

But already I’ve given too much away. What can I know of a Leader, a war, an outside world? All I know is cell, bucket, tray. Keeper behind the door. His eye, his glaring glancing eye. Once a year, bright plastic, special uniform, glue. If there’s anything else I’m free to invent it, no, obliged.

Maybe something is wrong with the world and Leader has picked me, just me, to re-inscribe it free of assumption. Maybe I’m creating the world now, and Keeper’s electronic mind-machines spy on me to see what the world is like today, tell Leader all is well: the kept one is still spinning his yarns. Am I supposed to invent a world out of stir-crazed fancies? But if not, why do they spy on me?

Perhaps I’m the cell, part of some giant organism, inputting garbage and outputting shit, something the giant organism absorbs in pursuit of its own pathetic and futile purposes. Or  maybe I’m a trap: some rebel terrorists all beardy-sincere have heard of my plight and will get in touch with me, unwittingly reveal their innermost plot to have me create the world their way: no more Keepers, no more glue, no more war.

TELL THEM ABOUT THE SECRET NOTE. I’M ESPECIALLY PROUD OF THE SECRET NOTE.

But all this is prologue: the tray, the bucket, the busy lenses, lights-off that plunge me into night. Later I may tell you about the sounds, depending on instructions I am given. But no point bothering and you wouldn’t be interested if it hadn’t been for the Secret Note -- that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Maybe it’s too late already and you’ll never get to the Secret Note because you tuned out when the shit-bucket first appeared, or when I used it, or left in disgust when I sent it back.

However, here it is: One day I found a note hidden between the slices of firstfood bread, on top the hardening residue of brownish fluid from someone’s meal. I felt it without quite seeing it and thrust it into the pocket of my uniform so quickly I was sure that Keeper’s mechanical eyes, ears didn’t see or hear. I didn’t dare look at the note, or even pat my pocket except just very quickly to smooth it down so it didn’t lump. I couldn’t let other-mind catch me reading My Note, nor the lenses see I had it.

That night, in the dark, I retrieved My Note from my pocket very slowly, being careful not to rustle it so the microphones, those eyes of the night, wouldn’t hear. No, I mask the crinkling and unfolding sounds with mutters and gasps. And then I felt it: about a hand-width across, one side slick, the other soft with five faint ridges a finger-width apart.

I stared at the paper in the darkness, holding it just far enough away so I could focus on the writing I knew must be there if there were light, staring through darkness at words in air.

Maybe it was just trash, I thought, a wrapper from a can of the brownish swill they feed me, nothing for me, just an accident it got into my bread. I felt it again. It must be a wrapper. Yes.

That was then.

I have night-read My Note a hundred times now, being very careful, holding it by edge, protecting it from sweat and brownish fluid. I gingerly touch its smooth side, its soft side with fingertips wiped vigorously on the least-filthy part of my uniform. I try to feel where graphite may have impressed the paper, where pen may have gouged.

What does My Note say? I know what might as well be said: messages of hope, exhortations to hang in there baby, the revolution is coming and Leader’s time is short, or maybe Keeper is in on it and plans to be the next Leader and start the next war, or, worst of all possible words, ‘Help, all of us look to you; you have the freedom of your cell and man we envy you to death.’

I’m sure the slick side is printed, perhaps in dark green and crudely, as if from a country whose highest industrial expression, aside from crushing debt, is blurred printing, ridges on soft side dried glue holding label to can, slick side proudly proclaiming ‘SUBLIME APEX BRAND BROWNISH FLUID,’ or maybe ‘nonpareil,’ something from the colonizers’ tongue. And then in small print the admission that even the locals don’t dare drink the stuff, they put it in cans that undersell other cans of shit from other unimaginably poor and dying places. But the soft side? Why not use it for a desperate note? What stationery more innocent than the underside of a label from a can of brownish fluid? What might it say?

Perhaps there’s a theatre in the capital where I play to standing-room audiences and the box-office photo-gallery shows glossy stills of me. Critics write about my expressiveness, the director’s cunning, that bold auteur, his style subtly capturing my inner trope. One of these critics has laminated his remarks beside the stills, essential opinions of my space, form, meaning -- whatever ‘meaning’ is. Collectors pay for these stills, too much for a flat image when they could have had me whole for some extra bread, a bonus cup of brownish bilge.

DON’T CHANGE THE SUBJECT. YOU READ THE SECRET NOTE, DIDN’T YOU?

I’ve decided to tell you about how I read the Secret Note. It happened like this: 

One day the world changed, just for a few seconds. Eating and drinking firstfood as I was that day, dipping bread into brownish fluid and shoving it down past my tasters, when sudden, sudden, the quiet overtook my ears and I pressed in terror against the far wall, clawing behind me comforting stone. Silence. Shutter-corks still, bulbs flicker and dim. Perhaps a mishap, the celebrated electrical worker celebrated being ‘electrical worker of the month’ too much, fell asleep at the switch face-first on the contacts, fried face. Or perhaps the rebels have bombed a power plant.

Whatever: Now’s my chance! I jerk My Note from the pocket of my uniform and read it eagerly, eye scanning quickly, knowing any instant corks will once again begin to pop and show me guilty, rip my stills off the wall, our sweet wept-for kept-one is a traitor! And here is the evidence, now I knew it all along, the famous critic says in laminated words along the wall, and so hurry hurry I read my note: ‘SUBLIME APEX BRAND BROWNISH FLUID’.

But over otherside, softside, these words: ‘We are coming. Help on way. Firstfood National Day hand out bucket -- crouch -- cover head!’ and a signature, rebel or Keeper or Leader I can’t make out, maybe rebel practicing his powername, the signatures look so much the same. I tuck the note away an instant before the power resumes.

Eagerly I await the day. Light and dark. Bread and brownish fluid. Bulbs off and on and off. I the kept one try not to fidget, but even in theatres of the capital some change is remarked: shutter-corks wear out in days not weeks, the director is praised for the dynamics of his pace, God Save the Trope, the shifting solids and harmonious spaces, meaningfulness (careful!) now all the more revealed. So the critic says; what say you all?

Sometimes the bulbs dim as if another power plant has been hit. One bulb burns out and is not replaced. The quality of my bread is even less exquisite than before; gnatflesh count is on the rise.

But now the day, at last: National Day dawns to the death of a second bulb, going out with a flash that makes the corks chitter and chatter, lenses stop down hard. The small door opens, the pot of glue comes through, the waving stick, shreds of plastic bunting, my special uniform (yes, with its special stains). I push my ordinary uniform out through the little door, TOO LATE, TOO LATE I remember the Secret Note I left in the pocket. Now Keeper will know; a messenger from the theatre will run breathlessly heaving breath and report the rebels’ plot.

Firstfood comes in on its tray. Specially to celebrate this day, the bread has something of its old consistency, but in my excitement I cannot eat or drink. I hand out the tray. Then I fill the bucket and raise it to the little door as I hear breathless voices, running steps, shouting shouts. Quick! Dodging sideways I fall to the floor cover my head with my hands as lifting up and shaking comes, a thunderous noise. I am thrown against the cellside in time to see the bucket flying toward the back, shit smashed brown against the wall.

THAT WAS VERY GOOD! EXCELLENT! AND NOW YOU MAY RENOUNCE THE DOOR.

Voices, loud then dim like distance. The little door in the door of my cell creeps open, no Keeper’s eye behind. My tray is back, now coming through the little door; and on it, one white rose.

Then all is still. The small door stays open. Cautiously, I push my head through, look around. Corridor, one long corridor gradually bending so its fate is lost against its darkening curve. I move my eyes. Keeper not in sight. I lower my shoulder to the little door and reach my right arm through, groping around the outside of the larger door. Perhaps there is a latch to spring, a pin to raise from its hasp.

At this point in a theatre of the capital, connoisseurs wait breathlessly for my brave return to the far end of my cell after my emotion-laden renunciation of the door. I find meaning at last in bucket, tray, the annual bunting. I wait for order to be restored, rebels caught and gutted with suitable ceremony.

I SAID, YOU WILL RENOUNCE THE DOOR!

But not this day!; micro-mind’s plot will end another way. My groping hand finds the hasp of the cell door; I lift up the pin, push. The door doesn’t move. I push again. No movement. I shove. I back up and kick. I back up farther and run at the door, hitting it painfully with my shoulder. At last it gives a few inches. Now, I have leverage on the door and I push and shove it, just enough for me to slip through to the corridor.

It’s quiet again, last echoes of the door ajarred absorbed in dust. I move cautiously along the corridor wall.

In a theatre of the capital, the audience appreciates the artistic daring that sends the kept one down among the aisles, among the ushers who have however seen this play before and know to duck and disappear around the corridor’s bend just before I get there, leaving only what I hear in the dimness: rustle of playbills, shuffling of feet, a muffled cough. And now I see these, too: Keepers; Eyes.


Terence Kuch has published fiction and poetry in markets such as Commonweal, New York magazine, North American Review, Thema, Timber Creek Review, and Washington Post Book World. He has studied fiction and drama writing at the Writers Center, Bethesda, Maryland, and has participated in the Mid-American Review Summer Fiction Workshop.