His Cell
He had lived here for 15 years, and I had wondered what had caused him to commit the atrocities that bore his name. It was a dark, damp closet of a bedroom he lived in. As I entered the room, I could hear the constant whine of the generator next door and the monotonous hum of the eternally open monorail station above. The door was made of cold, burglar-proof steel. When I opened the door, the automatic floor lights flickered on, and then died. The floor was made of rough concrete material that seemed to have been taken from the walls of the generator next door. It was the stuff designed to stop radiation and survive longer than the sun.
The room smelled of molten steel, the air filled with metal, all of it seeming to have drifted in through the ventilation system. I sat down in his coffin-shaped bed made of cheap metal and first-run memory foam. The coffin was fit only for a robot who did not care how well he slept. It seemed to groan under my weight, but it held better than his bookshelf had. The bookshelf had become a book graveyard, with his many hand written notes on his studies of holographics mixed in between his various books on relativity and string theory, all strewn on the floor at one end of the shelf after it had rusted through. A monorail passed overhead, shaking the bed, giving no peace. Above the bookshelf was an old security camera dripping with rust, aimed perpetually at his bed. A small slit in the top of the wall was the excuse for a window, and I could see that through it a loop of the night sky as seen from earth was displayed, the only friendly object in the room.
A small metal dish once used for eating food was upside down on the floor covered in brown growth. It smelled of metal too, although a slightly friendlier metal. One wall had been covered in a large hand-made drawing of the space station with cryptic symbols scrawled across and overflowing onto the surrounding wall. His computer case had been partially melted on the bottom from overuse, with an interrupted message burned on the screen crying for help. A monorail rumbled overhead, shaking the room, giving no peace. A circle in the floor had been worn down from pacing constantly, waiting for something.
A curtain made of metallic silk was drawn across a small cubby hole, so I pushed it aside. His toilet was a large metal vase filled with water that smelled suspiciously clean, and topped off with a small lid. Above stood a lone light, about as colorful as the brushed steel surrounding it. The sink was like that of an airplane, small, bland, and loud. There was a lack of personality to the bathroom, no soap, no medicine, no toothbrush, no smell of deodorizer, only the hum of the ventilation system constantly providing fresh oxygen.
From the back, the curtain was transparent, and looking through it, I could see the room like he did for hours upon a time, sitting on the toilet, the only chair in his room, feeling the distant rumble of an oncoming monorail, the sink rattling, giving no peace, no place to escape it. I stood up, and pushed aside the curtain, exited, and looked back, seeing the metallic silk again, and looking to the front, the security camera. No escape, no rest, no peace.
The cell was a miserable excuse for a bedroom, and I hoped he had not realized so, for he would do best to become insane instead of living there, smelling it, feeling it, and breathing it. I walked out the door and it sealed behind me with a loud hiss. I pulled off my anti-oxidation suit, and ran, realizing that if I stayed, I, too, could become like him. A monorail rumbled overhead, shaking his world, giving no peace.
