The Annihilation of Foreverland

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