The Eternal Prisoner (Unfinished)

“Prisoner E-X-X-8-2-4-6-0, meal time,” a robotic voice announced. It is neither male nor female. Human interaction is forbidden in this room, even the illusion of it. 

The speaker is mounted to the ceiling in the corner of the room. Aside from mealtime announcements, it always plays the same static white noise. Two pipes run out of the bottom of the speaker. One wide and made out of transparent plastic, more of a tube, delivers the food. This meal is the same as the last. An odorless, tasteless brown bar, its texture smooth and soft, so much so that a bite sinks straight through—a bar designed to be as sensationless as possible. Coupled with the tube is a thin metal pipe, painted as white as everything else in the room, that delivers a short burst of water when the prisoner puts his mouth to it. 

He sits on an elevated platform extending out from the walls in the room's opposite corner. The announcement breaks his gaze, drawing an unenthusiastic look as the bar drops to the bottom of the tube. It sits in the opening for him to take, but today he is neither hungry nor thirsty.

The platform has a thin mat on top of it, forming what could be called a bed, though, compared to the floor, it hardly makes a difference in sleep quality, so he never thinks of it as such. It follows a common theme of the room’s elements being too patronizing to be considered a convenience. The room is constantly illuminated by lighting strips outlining the ceiling. To get what an average person may call a good night's sleep, the prisoner sleeps fetally under the platform, facing the wall, hands over ears. The darkness and silence he finds under that platform give him a taste of the escape he desires in a room without windows or doors. His true desire is to disappear into a 

The only indication that time is flowing comes from the meals being delivered in regular intervals, three times a day. Presumably, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He is his third meal of the day, dinner. Every day after his meal, whether he accepts it or not, he crawls under the platform to his escape. Tomorrow he will be awakened by his breakfast announcement, at the start of which he will be reminded of how many days he has been in the box. It will be his one hundred and forty-six thousandth day, His four-century anniversary. 

“Good Morning, Prisoner E-X-X-8-2-4-6-0…” 

The prisoner is awakened by the announcement. His hand has fallen from his ear, allowing the notification to register loud and clear. He opens his eyes with no intention of reacting. 

“Congratulations! Today starts the fifth century of your eternal sentence. Meal time” 

He hears the sound of the bar shooting through the tub and the thud of it landing in the opening, the bar from yesterday likely gone.

The room and the prisoner are reset every day after the third meal. Every day, without fail, he falls asleep shortly after the meal’s delivery. In his 400 years of isolation, he has done many desperate things, but when he wakes, any leftover bars are removed, any damages done to the room are repaired, and any acts of self-harm are healed.

He once allowed his body to wither into almost nothing, avoiding food or drink. But all it did was left him in years of pain. He believes his keepers allowed him to learn the lesson of pain and immortality the hard way. Now he never goes too long without either, and after laying awake under his platform, eventually, to his annoyance, the prisoner became thirsty. He is preparing to crawl out when he feels an object lodged between two of his fingers.

The prisoner lay frozen beside his usually calm and stable heart, now pounding, for some time. There is nothing new in this prison. He had experienced every physical feeling and sensation allowed within this room so that the slightest change could make a huge impact. Whatever was in his hands was a form of hope for him. His first thought was that it undoubtedly had to be some sort of message. However, his keepers could have also made their first mistake while handling his body under whatever spell or chemically induced coma he was under. Maybe it was a trick. Perhaps they moved on and graduated from their passive-aggressive torture and are now moving on to a more direct approach. Whatever it could be, he had to take a look.

He slowly slid his hand toward his face. There was nothing to see from the back, though he felt its presence. He lifted his hand, rotating it to discover a small folded piece of paper sticking out slightly between his index and middle finger. He jumped, hitting his head on the platform. The emotions he had felt in his room were few to none. So much so that he did not understand what he was feeling or how dangerous it was.

The prisoner opened his fingers, releasing the paper from one hand and catching it with the other, and slowly unfolded it. The words were tiny and neatly packed. Rather than spaces, they were separated by lines. It took the prisoner a bit to make out the message since some words were left out, likely to fit in all the essential information.

always|watchn|not|under|bed

want|out|remember|who|u|r

sagittarius|immortal|question

eat|this|wit|meal|n|water

Once he memorized the message, he placed it in his mouth and hurried out from under the platform to the meal area. He was so focused on the message that he didn't realize that his second meal had been dispensed. It didn’t matter. He started to force them both down as he sometimes would when he did not want to bother taking his time. Eating was something to do, even if it was basically just chewing air. When he realized he needed to chew the paper, he chomped down as hard and fast as possible. The feeling of something solid in his mouth added more excitement to a day already overwhelmingly stimulating to his deprived existence. He washed it all down with a few bursts of water and hurried back under the bed to think.

He went over the message line by line in his head. For the first line, the message was clear enough. “They/we are always watching.” He had assumed as much but not under the bed seemed like an odd oversight. Though he couldn’t help but panic a little, thinking about his previous actions and the questions his surveillants may be asking about his erratic behavior. His actions were not the norm, even if he had not eaten his last five meals.

The next line was also simple, and interpreting the first two words brought him some hope. “Do you want out?” He assumed it to be asking. With the answer clearly yes, he continued. “Remember who you are.” It's been a long time since he thought about himself or cared to do so, nor does he know what crime he has committed to be imprisoned. He has long forgotten. He lay there for some time trying to remember, but rather than dwelling on it at the moment, he continued to the final line, which he did not understand fully. Sagittarius immortal question? Question Sagittarious? Question immortal? What could it mean? Sagittarius sounded familiar, but nothing came to mind. 

The third meal announcement roled without the prisoner’s attention, and shortly after, he fell asleep. He awoke the next day to his typical day, with no messages and lying exactly as he remembered. He greatly feared that he may have just imagined the previous day, but still, he mulled over the clues while acting out his role as a prisoner in a trance-like state.