Chapter 5: The Cells

 

The rules were simple.

Face the telescreen at all times. Hands visible, never in pockets, never
behind the back. No sleeping during designated waking hours. No speaking
unless spoken to. No sudden movements. No covering the face. No closing
the eyes for longer than a natural blink.

Arthur learned these rules quickly. The telescreens taught them.

"6079 Holt, A.," the voice said---flat, mechanical, neither male nor
female. "Hands."

Arthur moved his hands from his lap to his knees, palms up. The skin of
his palms was pale in the white light, the lines visible like maps of
places he had never been.

"6079 Holt, A. Face forward."

Arthur turned his head toward the telescreen on the wall in front of
him. Big Brother's face filled the screen, the eyes seeming to track
his movement.

"6079 Holt, A. Eyes open."

Arthur opened his eyes wider, fighting the exhaustion that pulled at
them like weights. His eyelids felt lined with sand.

The voice came at random intervals---sometimes minutes apart, sometimes
hours. There was no pattern Arthur could discern, no rhythm he could
anticipate. The corrections came when they came, and each one reminded
him that he was being watched, always watched, that every movement of
his body was observed and judged.

The lights never went out. The light came from the walls
themselves---the glittering white porcelain that surrounded him, glowing
with a cold radiance that had no source and cast no shadows. It was the
same light at what might have been noon and what might have been
midnight. It was the same light when Arthur's body screamed for sleep
and when he jerked awake from the brief moments of unconsciousness he
could not prevent.

"6079 Holt, A. No sleeping."

The voice was patient. The voice was always patient. It did not raise
its volume or change its tone. It simply corrected, and Arthur obeyed,
because there was nothing else to do.

#

On what might have been the second day---though it was impossible to
know---Arthur became aware of the other prisoners.

He could not see them. The cell had no windows, and the door remained
closed except when guards came to deliver meals or escort him to the
lavatory. But he could hear them.

Footsteps in the corridor, sometimes quick, sometimes shuffling. The
soft click of doors opening and closing. Voices---not words, just the
murmur of sound that indicated human presence somewhere beyond the
walls. The squeak of wheels, perhaps a cart being pushed. And sometimes,
when the building was quiet, other sounds.

Screaming.

The screams came from far away, muffled by distance and the thickness of
the walls. They might have been on another floor, or in another wing, or
in some part of the Ministry that existed only in the imagination of
those who heard. But they were real. Arthur was certain of that. The
screams were real, and they went on for a very long time, rising and
falling in pitch, and then they stopped, and the silence that followed
was worse than the screaming had been.

Arthur sat on his bench and listened. His hands were on his knees, palms
up. His face was toward the telescreen. His eyes were open.

The rules. The rules were everything. The rules were the only structure
that remained.

#

Meals came three times a day---or what Arthur assumed was three times a
day, though without clocks or windows, the assumption was purely a
matter of faith. The food was the same each time: a bowl of thin soup, a
piece of bread, water in a metal cup. The soup was lukewarm and tasted
of nothing but salt and the ghost of vegetables that might once have
been carrots. The bread was stale, hard at the edges, softening only
slightly when dipped in the soup. The water had a faint metallic tang
that coated his tongue and lingered for hours afterward.

Arthur ate everything. He understood, without being told, that the meals
were a privilege that could be revoked. He understood that his
compliance was being measured by how completely he consumed what was
given to him, by how quickly he returned the empty tray to the slot in
the door.

The tray was collected through the slot. A hand appeared---gloved,
impersonal, the fingers thick and blunt---and the tray disappeared, and
the slot closed with a soft click, and Arthur was alone again.

Alone with the light. Alone with the telescreen. Alone with the rules.

"6079 Holt, A. Stand."

Arthur stood. His knees popped softly, stiff from sitting.

"6079 Holt, A. Walk to the door."

Arthur walked to the door. The floor was cold through the thin fabric of
his uniform shoes. Eight steps. He had counted them.

"6079 Holt, A. Return to the bench."

Arthur returned to the bench. Eight steps back.

The exercises came at random, like the corrections. Stand. Sit. Walk.
Turn. Face the wall. Face the telescreen. Raise your arms. Lower your
arms. The commands served no purpose that Arthur could discern---they
were simply assertions of control, reminders that his body was no longer
his own.

He obeyed. He always obeyed. Obedience was automatic now, a reflex that
had been trained into him over years of living under the telescreen's
gaze. The difference was that now the training was explicit. Now the
commands came in words rather than implications.

The result was the same. Arthur did as he was told.

#

On what might have been the third day, the guards came for him.

They did not speak. They opened the door and gestured, and Arthur stood
and walked into the corridor. The corridor was the same as it had been
when they brought him in---white walls, white floor, white ceiling, the
light coming from everywhere and nowhere. His shoes made no sound on the
polished surface. Arthur could not tell if he was retracing his steps or
moving through a completely different part of the building.

They walked for a long time. The corridor turned, branched, merged with
other corridors. They passed doors---identical white doors, closed,
giving no indication of what lay behind them. Some had numbers stenciled
on them in small black figures. Others were blank. They passed
telescreens mounted at regular intervals, Big Brother's face gazing
down with benevolent patience, the same face repeated endlessly,
watching from every angle.

Finally, they stopped. A door opened, and Arthur was guided into a room.

It was not the interrogation room. It was larger, with rows of benches
bolted to the floor, and on the benches sat other prisoners.

Arthur was placed at the end of a row. The guards withdrew. The door
closed.

For the first time since his arrest, Arthur was in the presence of other
people.

#

There were perhaps twenty of them. Men and women, young and old, all
wearing the same gray uniform Arthur wore, all marked with numbers
instead of names. They sat in silence, facing forward, hands on knees,
eyes open. The rules applied here too. The rules applied everywhere.

Arthur studied them from the corners of his eyes, not daring to turn his
head. The man beside him was perhaps sixty, with thin gray hair and a
face that had collapsed into itself, the skin hanging loose from the
bones beneath as if something essential had been removed. His hands
trembled slightly where they rested on his knees, a continuous fine
vibration he seemed unable to control. The woman across the aisle was
younger---thirty, perhaps---with dark hair cropped short and bruises on
her forearms in the shape of fingers, yellowing at the edges, that
suggested she had been here longer than Arthur.

No one spoke. No one moved. They sat in perfect stillness, performing
the compliance that was expected of them, while the telescreen hummed
overhead and Big Brother watched.

Arthur did not know why they had been brought here. Perhaps it was for
processing---some administrative procedure that required them to be
gathered in one place. Perhaps it was a test---a way of observing how
prisoners behaved when they were near each other, watching for signs of
communication or solidarity.

Perhaps it was simply to remind them that they were not alone. That
others had been taken, would be taken, that the machinery of the
Ministry was vast and thorough and never stopped.

A door opened at the front of the room. A man entered---not O'Brien,
but someone younger, with a clipboard and the brisk efficiency of a
bureaucrat. His shoes clicked against the floor as he walked to the
front, each step precise and measured.

"When your number is called," he said, "you will stand and follow the
guard. You will not speak. You will not look at other prisoners. You
will proceed directly to the designated location."

He consulted his clipboard.

"6088 Rutherford, E."

A woman three rows ahead stood. A guard appeared at her elbow. She
walked to the door and through it, and the door closed behind her, and
she was gone.

The bureaucrat waited. Perhaps a minute passed. The telescreen hummed.
Someone in the back of the room coughed once and then was silent.

"6112 Aaronson, J."

A man stood. The same procedure. The same disappearance.

Arthur sat and watched from the corners of his eyes. The numbers were
called at irregular intervals---sometimes two in quick succession,
sometimes with long pauses between. There was no pattern. There was
never a pattern.

"6079 Holt, A."

Arthur stood. A guard appeared. He walked to the door.

The corridor waited on the other side---white and endless, leading
somewhere he could not see.

(Cont.)