Blankness. No horizon, no walls, no glare and no shadow, no sound except the soft padding of his own slippered feet against the slightly resilient floor. Neither heat nor cold. Like a vast white womb the prison enclosed THX, huge yet suffocating.
On he walked.
It might have been hours or days, his only clock was the growling pain of his empty stomach.
When he got too tired to move, he lay down and slept. When he awoke, he started moving again. Once, far off in the distance, he thought he saw a cluster of modules and people standing nearby. But it wavered out of sight as he walked; he couldn’t find it again.
Maybe it’s my own cluster, with SEN and PTO and the others, he thought. Maybe I’ve been walking in a circle.
There was no way to tell. As closely as he could, he kept to a straight line. Even when he lay down, he tried to make certain that he kept his body pointed in the direction in which he was moving. But usually he was sprawled in a completely different posture when he woke up again.
The hunger was getting bad. THX felt a constant, burning ache in his middle. His legs were getting fluttery. And he was seeing things.
Off in the corner of his eye, strange lights nickered at him. When he turned to look directly at them, the lights disappeared.
Does hunger cause hallucinations? he wondered.
Then the voice of OMM came to him from out of the nowhere: “Blessings on you. Even here, in the realm of confessed and condemned felons, I am with you. Do not try to evade your fate. Rest. Surrender your will to the necessities of reality. I will provide. Rest and sleep. Sleep.”
The taped voice was supposed to be hypnotic, but hot anger kept THX going.
“You let this happen to me,” he shouted into the nothingness. “I was your faithful follower and you led me into this. You let them do this to me. And to her.”
OMM’s taped voice serenely ignored his words. “Even here, in the realm… Rest… Surrender… Rest and sleep.”
When he finally did sleep, his dreams were filled with OMM’s voice, but now it was a fierce demanding voice telling him:
“Thou hast sinned greatly and must suffer for it. The masses will not rest until you have payed for your sins.”
And he saw himself back at his job in the assembly bay, standing on aching rubbery legs, hands trembling as he worked the remote manipulators. But inside the assembly area, on the other side of the leaded window, there was not a robot. LUH lay there, her body open and shining metal organs gleaming in the overhead lights. And THX saw that he wasn’t assembling her, he was taking her apart.
He awoke screaming.
At his feet were four brown food cubes. His scream choked off as he stared at them. He reached out and touched them. They were real.
“Even here, I provide,” said OMM’s lofty voice.
Why? he wondered as he slowly picked up one of the cubes. Why feed a condemned man, a man they’re going to kill?
The answer came easily. “Because they want my body to be in good health when they kill me. They want my organs.”
The food was at his lips when he told himself that truth. Far off in the distance, he saw the blinking lights again. This tune they remained even when he stared right at them. Blinking red and blue lights, going on and off in sequence, like a signal.
His stomach was wrenching, his mouth dry and caked. He held the food cubes before his face, a brown gritty lump that contained nourishment without taste.
No, he told himself. Starve yourself. Let your body shrivel and die. Don’t give them what they want.
But his body answered, “If they can bring you food, they can make you eat it. Don’t be a fool. Eat now, or they’ll make you eat later. They’re not going to let a valuable collection of organs destroy its usefulness to them.”
Be strong, he said. Don’t give in to them. Even if they can overpower you, don’t go along with them. Fight!
But it was a losing argument. He held the food cube in his shaking hands for a few moments longer, then took a bite of it, then wolfed down all four of them.
The blinking signal lights disappeared.
Slowly, his stomach rumbling with unaccustomed fullness, he got to his feet and resumed walking.
No voices now, no lights. But far off in the distance he saw something—a dark blob that grew and took shape, a human shape, a man, approaching him.
THX quickened his pace. The man was heading straight for him, tall and purposeful. Then THX saw that it was a chrome robot.
But not a police robot. The same size and model, but this one wore the pastel green uniform of Mercicontrol.
THX stopped as the robot came up to him.
“Don’t you think you’ve gone far enough?” asked a human voice from the robot’s mouth grill.
“No. I want to get out.”
“There is no way for you. Why don’t you let me lead you back to your compound?” The robot extended one gloved hand.
THX backed away. “I’m going to find a way out. I’m not going to stay here and wait for you to kill me.”
“Kill you?”
“Consume me… it’s the same thing.”
If a robot could look confused, this one would have.
“Who are you? Identify yourself.”
THX glared at the robot’s impassive face and said nothing.
“Wait… wait…” the human voice said. “I have your picture file… you’re a felon. How did you get into the hospital area?”
“Hospital area?”
“You’re trespassing. Felon 1138, prefix THX. You belong back in the prison area. You’re trespassing!”
THX laughed. “Then arrest me.”
“Don’t move. I’m calling the police. They’ll pick you up and return you to your proper area.”
Still laughing, THX started to walk past the robot.
“I said don’t move! You’re not allowed here…”
Shaking his head, THX answered, “You’re crazy—why should I wait here for the police?”
The robot started walking with him. “Very well, I’ll just have to keep you in sight until the police arrive. You can’t get away, you know.”
Shrugging, THX asked, “This is a hospital area? Where are the patients?”
“Can’t you see…” the voice hesitated. “Oh, of course not, the food conditioning. Well, the patients are here. Most of them in cryosleepers, in stasis.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Two police robots are heading toward us. They’ll have you in custody in a few minutes.”
THX looked around. In every direction, nothing but white nothingness.
“Don’t be alarmed,” the robot said. “The police won’t hurt you if you don’t resist.”
“No, they’ll just take me out one time to be consumed.”
The voice from the robot said, “Well, if it’s any consolation, that’s what happens to everybody here.”
Puzzled, THX said, “You told me this was a hospital.”
“Yes,” the voice explained pleasantly, “we take in the people who are incurably ill and put them into cryogenic stasis. If we can cure them, we do. If we decide they can’t be cured, then we consume them for their organs. Sooner or later, everyone who comes here is consumed. It’s economically efficient.”
The police robots came into view. THX said, “Everybody is consumed.”
“Yes,” the Mercicontrol robot said. “So don’t feel bad about it. We all have to go sooner or later.”
“Thanks,” said THX as the police robots came up and silently stood before him.
They walked him in an amazingly short time back to a point where he could just barely make out a dark fleck in the middle of the white nothingness.
One of the police robots pointed to it. “That is your area. Go to it and stay there until sent for. This is your final warning.”
THX felt an urge to spit at them, but he did nothing. The robots stood there and watched as he walked toward the modules.
After a long time walking he could make out the flat bed modules and the standing, gesticulating people. One of them—the boy, perhaps—climbed up on a bed and began waving to him.
THX walked steadily. Their voices began drifting toward him:
“I can just barely see him…”
“He’s free! Can’t you see, he’s free!”
“No. I think he’s coming back.”
“I don’t see anything… I can’t see him at all. I think he’s been destroyed.”
“I can see him. He’s coming back. There.”
Finally he was close enough for even old PTO to see him. “Fool!” the old man called out “Completely reckless behavior. I’m not responsible.”
Finally he was close enough for a few of them to run out to him.
“What stopped you?”
“How cold was it?”
THX said nothing, simply kept walking. SEN was standing by the edge of the nearest bed, legs straddled like an emperor surveying his domain.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me talk to him. I know how to handle these things.”
THX walked right past him, toward his own bed.
PTO eyed him narrowly, “You have nothing to fear… you’re safe again.”
DWY went to SEN and clutched at his arm. “Ask him about the air. He sounds out of breath.”
SEN nodded and went to THX’s bed. Sitting beside him, SEN said, “We have to face the facts… you know? We have come down to practical reality. I’m a practical man. Forget the personal side of things.”
Hovering behind SEN, DWY nodded eagerly. THX, bone-tired, so tired his hunger had gone, wordlessly stretched out on the bed.
“I think he’s deficient,” DWY snapped.
Annoyed, SEN snapped back, “Why don’t you go find something else to do?”
“Why doesn’t he speak? Can’t he hear?” DWY edged away from the bed. “I don’t think he knows.”
THX closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But he felt SEN still sitting alongside him. He heard PTO droning a history lesson at CAM. His legs ached, his head was buzzing.
“I want to help you,” SEN said, so low it was almost a whisper. “You can help me. Here, take some food.”
THX looked at him. SEN was holding out one of the food cubes that he had been hoarding. THX frowned at him.
“You understand,” SEN went on, “we’re all in this together. You want to leave. You’re not like the rest of them. What did you see out there?”
THX turned his head away.
“As soon as you give me a detailed description of the barrier, I can begin delegating responsibility. I’ll see to it that we all get out of here safely.”
The barrier, THX thought. The only barrier is your own blindness. Then LUH’s face filled his memory and he added bitterly, And mine.
Suddenly there was a loud yell, scuffling, shouting and cursing. THX looked over his shoulder and saw DWY and CAM fighting on the floor near the bed where TWA lay. They banged into the bed, jarring TWA so hard that he nearly fell on top of them. Swearing angrily, he swung his legs down over them, stood up, and pulled the boy away from DWY.
“He took my food!” CAM yelled, struggling to get past TWA. “He stole it!”
DWY was holding a single brown cube. It was cracked and its edges rubbed raw. Crumbs from it were scattered on the floor around them.
TWA turned toward DWY. “Well?” he asked, menacingly, as he released his hold on CAM.
“I… I thought it was mine,” DWY said lamely. “I couldn’t tell.”
SEN shook his head and said to THX, “Look at them… it’s pitiful. They’ve even begun to go into my module and look for things. My things. It’s all for them anyway… it’s all for their own good… After all my saving… starving…” He shook his head like a disappointed savior.
With a loud sigh, he added, “You can’t really blame them, though, can you? But we’ve got to find something to give them motivation. Mold them into a working team.”
Words, THX thought. Meaningless, stupid words. He just talks to hear himself sound important.
“Information is the key,” SEN was saying to him. “We must concentrate on gaining information. You’re with me now, I know. I have a contract.”
Amazingly, he took a piece of paper from the pocket of his blouse. “Here.” He proffered it to THX. “All it says is that you’re with me. We can only make it together. We must convince the others.”
THX wanted to laugh at him, but he was too serious to laugh at.
SEN’s hand, holding the paper toward THX, was trembling. Abruptly, he took the paper back, stuffed it in his pocket again.
“Well,” he said, with a forced smile, “later then.”