What Tomorrow May Bring

by Tony Bertauski

  Investors were already leaving. Mr. Jones stood with his hands around the bars. His expression was silent and sympathetic. Sid was growling and pacing inside his cell. But Danny couldn’t break the grip the cold hand of fear had on him. He just wasn’t going to do it. He just wanted to close his eyes and disappear. He wished this would all go away, that he could somehow escape his body and go somewhere nice and warm and safe.

  “Hey.” Zin was pulling his shirt over his head in the cell next to him. “Listen, you got to do this. I know it’s all weird, but it’s no big deal. It’s like showering in the gym. I can tell you, nothing happens.”

  “Then why do we have to do it?”

  Zin shrugged while he stepped out of his shorts. “To make the first part more uncomfortable, I guess. To humiliate us, to make us want the needle. I don’t give two craps either way. All I know is that we got to get this thing going or it’s going to suck being here even longer.”

  Zin folded his shorts and shirt into a stack and placed his flip-flops on top. His Investor gave him a nod and left.

  “Danny Boy,” Mr. Jones said. “You should understand that in life, there is joy and there is suffering. Your work includes everything. The Haystack is designed to allow you to experience suffering safely, to learn to let go of your physical body so that you may experience another level of your existence. But I can’t make you, Danny Boy. I can’t make you do it. You’ll have to do it on your own.” Mr. Jones held out his hands. “You’ll have to walk naked alone.”

  Others had joined Sid in the taunting. Danny could see there was no way to escape. And the others had been through it and they didn’t seem to mind. Zin, too.

  Danny’s shirt came off, first. The cold air pulled his skin tight and his nipples were like BBs. He was shaking when he took off his shorts. Despite Sid screaming to go faster, he took his time getting his shoes off.

  His underwear was last.

  He took a long shaky breath before pulling them down. Unlike Sid and Zin, he didn’t have much hair downstairs. What little he did have was bright red and barely covered his boyhood that looked more like a mushroom cap.

  He threw the clothes at Mr. Jones’ feet and cupped his hands over his genitalia.

  “I’ll need you to fold the clothes, Danny Boy.” Mr. Jones didn’t stoop to pick them up. “It’s our attention to every moment of our life that matters. To make room for this very moment, to allow it to unfold. To care for life. Now, please, hand me your clothes properly.”

  Danny squatted down and did his best to put his clothes in order like Zin had done. Mr. Jones didn’t seem completely pleased with the quality of his stack, but he nodded and stepped back. He nodded again and without another word, exited the Haystack.

  The wrath of the others didn’t stop. Danny backed up until he pressed against the bars, wishing it was dark enough to hide him. He kept his hands over his privates. The room had become loud with anger, vibrating inside Danny’s head. Even Zin had his hands on the bars, shouting obscenities until finally one Investor was followed by another until they were all gone.

  Sid tried to shake the solid bars on his cage, shouting, “Come on! Come on, already! LET’S GO!”

  It seemed to go on forever. Danny’s shoulder blades had numbed on the cold steel when a loud clank erupted from the ceiling. Everyone cheered as the dim light began to fade. Shutters inside the skylights were turning. What little light was available disappeared.

  Danny shivered in the dark.

  “Danny Boy?” Zin called.

  “Yeah?”

  “Welcome to the Haystack.”

  8

  Danny moved to the center of the cell. It was so dark that it didn’t matter where he stood, no one would see him. The worst part was the concrete, slick and cold. Danny began to pace to keep warm.

  “Save your strength.”

  There was a lump in the darkness to Danny’s right. Slowly, the details of the room began to return with grainy, gray detail and fuzzy edges. The lump was Zin, sitting in the center of his cell with his knees pulled against his chest and his arms wrapped around his shins.

  “You want to protect your core, Danny Boy,” Zin said. “Do whatever you can to conserve your body heat. Walking around is only going to waste it. It might feel good now but you’ll pay for it later.”

  “Why are they doing this, Zin?”

  “Sit down and do what I told you,” he snapped. “And use your legs to keep your balls from touching the floor. You don’t want those getting cold.”

  He didn’t have to worry about his scrotum touching anything. It had shriveled up like a mummified prune. The floor felt like a glacier. He stopped rocking back and forth before Zin snapped at him again, but he couldn’t control the shivering.

  “You good?” Zin asked. “Now, get into a breathing rhythm. Slowly, take in a breath and let it exhale on its own. In.” Zin sucked air through his nostrils, loudly. “Out,” he said, letting it leak out. He did it again, and again.

  Danny followed his example. The chattering continued, but he felt less scattered. A little more settled. The fear that was strangling his insides had subsided to mild warmth. The muscles that were bunched around his shoulders released.

  In.

  Out.

  He continued.

  The room was mostly silent. Some of the others were talking. There was subtle laughter. Someone was whimpering.

  “Here’s the deal,” Zin finally said. “We come here every two weeks, get naked and wait for the needle.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll find out. After this round, we’ll screw around for two weeks like we’ve been doing until the next one. You get the picture.”

  “How long do we do this?”

  “Don’t ask that question. Just count your breath, that’s all you need to know.”

  Laughter crackled through the room. Someone said to shut the hell up, then added, “God, I hate this freaking part.”

  Danny went back to breathing like Zin. It wasn’t helping, he was getting colder. But there wasn’t much choice. Danny could make out more details, could see that Zin was sitting with his back straight and legs folded beneath him, his hands in his lap. His chest rose and fell.

  Danny didn’t know who was in the cell on the other side, but he was standing and shrouded in darkness. He hadn’t uttered a word.

  Across the aisle, Parker had not moved. He stood in his cell hunched over. He looked disconnected already. He didn’t seem to care whether it was hot or cold, whether he suffered or not. Like some spirit from another world.

  The seconds stitched together and became minutes. Zin told him when to get up and walk around, when to rub some feeling back into his buttocks, and when to sit still and breathe. Danny was still shivering. There were moments when he swallowed the knot in his throat that threatened to break out sobs.

  Danny lost count of how many times he and Zin walked, how many times he rubbed the feeling back into his buns, and how many breaths he’d counted. But he would remember for the rest of his life the sound the fan made when it engaged.

  It started with a buzz. The long blades began to crawl in a circle. After one rotation, they picked up speed and the breeze came down with a slow helicopter sound.

  Wop-wop-wop-wop-wop.

  Then came the hiss of the sprinklers. A fine mist swirled in the current and settled on the floor and everything else.

  “I won’t talk after this, Danny Boy, no offense,” Zin said. “This is where the real work begins. Just remember when the needle drops, push your tongue against the roof of your mouth.”

  “Why?”

  Zin began to pace. “Or else you’ll bite it off.”

  And that’s when the lump in Danny’s throat broke. He tried to smother the sobs but failed. No one said anything.

  No one laughed.

  The fan would stop. So would the mist.

  Then start again.

  Danny stopped the breathing exercise. He hadn’t done it since the fa
n began. He was curled up on his side with his legs drawn up to his chest. He had cried out all his tears. His stomach ached.

  He found strength watching Zin. He sat so still. He was getting up more often and walking back and forth with a steady, measured pace; his hands folded over his stomach. His head was slightly bowed.

  And on and on, it went.

  On and on, it went.

  There were large patches of forgetting.

  Danny wasn’t sure if he’d fallen asleep or just blanked out. The floor had begun to grind into his hip and his neck hurt from lying down. He started to walk like Zin but didn’t talk to him. It was just back and forth, back and forth.

  The guy in the other cell turned out to be Reed. Danny only guessed from the long hair. He faced the other direction. He didn’t fidget. Didn’t much move. He just remained steady.

  The fan finished another cycle of turning and they were in for a short reprieve. The following silence was interrupted by shuffling and a cough or a moan. Droplets of water condensed on the bars until they fell with a heavy drip.

  But there was a new sound.

  Above Danny’s cell, a tiny mechanized motor turned.

  The atmosphere changed. A heavy pause, like a collective breath.

  Everyone stared up.

  Danny saw a black box fastened in the center of the barred ceiling of his cell. Something was moving inside it. He didn’t see the tiny door open, but heard the wire and straps fall out.

  A jubilant roar shook the room.

  The others were on their feet, calling to each other. There was laughter. They all reached up.

  Zin stopped pacing. He paused for one final breath before reaching for the black box and pulling down a gaggle of straps and wire. He sat down and pulled the line from the box until there was plenty of slack on the floor. Then he took the straps and fastened them over his head like some sort of wrestling gear, but instead of ear protection there was a single knob that centered over the middle of his forehead. He didn’t look at Danny, only took a deep breath and lay on his back.

  His body convulsed once, his back arching off the floor for a long moment.

  Then it went limp.

  Everyone was in the same position. It was suddenly silent. No labored breathing. No groans or whimpers. Just complete silence.

  He reached for the mess dangling from his cell. His joints ached. The straps were cold leather; the wire a thick cable. The knob was hard. He was reluctant, despite the agony. There was a needle inside the knob, he knew it had to be. It would plunge into the hole.

  The thought was as cold as the floor.

  He sat down, unable to put it on. But when the fan began to whir, Danny was in motion. His body moved on its own. He couldn’t stand the cold, wet air anymore. Not when everyone around him was so peaceful. He just wanted out.

  Away from this body.

  The strap fit snugly around his head. He pulled extra cable from above until it pooled at his side. He shifted the knob over his forehead. If there were any tears left, Danny might have squeezed out a few. Instead, he just squeezed his eyes shut.

  The knob began to squirm like flagellating lips, like the bottom of a snail. It numbed the skin beneath the knob. A cold fire spread into his forehead, like a river of icy water gushing inside his brain. His bladder released; a warm puddle grew between his legs. It was embarrassing, but he didn’t care.

  He just wanted out.

  The cell walls shifted. The one next to him got smaller. Reed had turned around, staring down at him.

  Then came the needle.

  9

  Danny tasted steel.

  The needle plunged into the frontal lobe. The pain was minimal, but his body thrashed on the concrete, scraping his elbows and cutting the back of his head.

  All Danny felt was the dull blunt force of metal and the crunching sound of the hole reopening. He no longer felt the cold floor or the frigid mist blowing over his naked body or the warm blood seeping from the back of his head. He was in another type of darkness.

  Bodiless. Sightless.

  Somewhere else.

  Once he’d ridden a three-story water slide. He flung himself into the dark tube and plunged into the unknown where turns tossed him left and right and the water surged over his head. His stomach twisted with fear and excitement until he was shot out the bottom of the ride.

  He remembered that. The whole thing.

  The memory seeped into his mind from somewhere in the dark.

  Danny was on another sort of ride that caused his stomach – if he still had a stomach – to buck and he was thrown through a series of twisting turns. But this ride swirled up and down and side to side, and it kept going and going. Until, finally, he fell through the bottom into a soft pit that was still black. Still nowhere.

  There was a sense of floating. It was amniotic, thick and fluid. He tried to shout but had no lips, no throat. He was just somewhere, and that somewhere was better than his flesh.

  He was seven years old. He slept in tee-pees and ran through icy streams and shot arrows and threw knives. He didn’t change his underwear once. It was the best week of his life.

  That was summer camp. He remembered! The memory was whole again. It was him.

  A small man with a badge on his belt put his hand on Danny’s shoulder and walked him up wide concrete steps that led to big wooden doors.

  He had done something seriously wrong. He and some friends got caught writing computer code and hacking into websites. They did it as a goof, didn’t think they’d get caught. And if they did, they were only seven or eight years old at the time. What were they going to do, put them in prison? They were kids. But the men and women waiting for Danny inside the wooden doors wore FBI t-shirts.

  The needle was bringing back his memories. He felt more like himself.

  There were sounds. It was distant, as if coming through a long pipe stuffed with towels. At first, it didn’t sound like much, but then it took form. It sounded more like… laughter. The kind that comes from a playground.

  He tried to swim towards it, but he was just floating, just listening. But it got louder. Words were popping up, now and then. They seemed to be running past him.

  “Danny Boy!” It was right in front of him, just on the other side of the darkness. On the other side… of… his eyelids?

  “I knew it,” the voice said. “He ain’t worth crap and in the middle of the field. Someone get him out of the way!”

  There were footsteps. More voices. Some very far away, others going past him. Someone was nearby, out of breath from running.

  “This is Danny Boy.”

  Zin! He’s right there, just out of reach.

  “That’s him?” There was a girl with him. A girl. Colors swirled in the dark when Danny had the thought. “I thought you said he was some big deal,” she said. “He’s barely old enough to be here.”

  “Yeah, well you never saw him in the game room. The kid’s some kind of prodigy with the computer sticks in his hands. I mean, there are kids on the island that have been here longer than me that aren’t half as good as Danny Boy.”

  “Video games?” She sighed. “Seriously, who cares, Zin?”

  “You want to help me move him, Sandy?”

  The darkness shifted. Danny had a sense of the ground below him, the open sky above. Zin hooked his arms under Danny’s armpits and Sandy took his feet. He felt the jostling of their footsteps. The breeze whistled past him and the grass was soft on his cheek when they put him down.

  “Zin!” Sid called. “Don’t get lost, I want you at the sundial when it hits noon, you got it?”

  “Aye—aye, Capitan!”

  “You’re not really going to play that game again, are you?” the girl said.

  “Naaaaaw.”

  “Seriously, Zin. We don’t know how many rounds we have together and you’re going to waste time gaming?”

  And they went back and forth. Danny imagined the wry smile on Zin’s face, what he usually looked like wh
en he lied right in your face but still made you laugh. The image looked so clear and vivid, like he was looking right at it. Then he heard someone laugh.

  Zin and Sandy were quiet. There was laughter again, and this time he felt it.

  It was him.

  “Danny Boy! Holy crap, did I tell you this kid was a winner, Sandy?”

  Zin was very close, his voice soft but loud.

  “Open your eyes, kid. Get here, man. Get all the way inside?”

  Danny didn’t know how to open his eyes. It was like telling a quadriplegic to move his legs when he didn’t even know where they were. But then he felt pressure from the outside and recognized his face. There were hands on him. Once he knew where his cheeks were, he followed the pattern to his eyes.

  They opened with a crunch, like years of sleep were crusted on his eyelids. There were blurs of color. A few blinks and smudges merged into a face. Zin was inches away, a big smile warping his lips.

  “Danny Boy, you did it, man. You went fully lucid on your first round. How about that?” Zin looked back at Sandy. “Did I tell you? Who goes lucid on the first round? No one does, that’s who. No one except Danny Boy. Freaking all the way inside on his first round.”

  Danny felt a smile on the inside, but he was still completely numb. His eyelids were already too heavy to keep open. Zin lightly slapped him.

  “Not yet, don’t go to sleep yet.”

  “Let him go down, Zinny,” Sandy said. “He’s not going to be able to move and I want to spend some time with you. The clock is ticking.”

  “I know, baby. I know. I just want to keep him lucid as long as possible. That will make the next round a lot easier.”

  Zin reached under Danny and propped him against a wall so that he was looking across a green field. He blinked and thought he was dreaming. He was sitting against the dormitory looking at the Yard and it didn’t look a whole lot different.

  “You see that, Danny Boy? We’re inside the needle, somewhere between your mind and the Haystack’s network. The needle is sunk inside your brain right now, boy. It’s realigning your synapses so the computers can link directly with your frontal lobe. You’re about as useful as a bowl of pudding, but you can see, Danny Boy. You can see, and the next time you’ll be moving around. Next time, you’ll be able to do this.”