No Escape From the Dark

The judge brought her gavel down on the bench and said, “I’ve consulted with Jurii, and he has made the decision that you will be sentenced to twenty days in the sensory deprivation tank.”

From the defendant box, Clair took the sentence in. In theory, it was a light sentence-just twenty days in the sensory deprivation tank and then she would be free. However, she knew it was not that simple. Jurii, which was just a subroutine of mAIor, the AI that governed City, had a habit of sentencing undesirable humans to twenty days in the sensory deprivation tank, and few left the tank unscathed, a reality that Clair was familiar with. Three years before, her friend Victoria’s older brother Albert served a twenty-day sentence in the sensory deprivation tank, and he had lived in City Mental Asylum ever since. Plus, even if she could re-integrate into society afterwards, she would always have this sentence on her record, making her just a slightly lesser citizen of City in the algorithms of mAIor. Was her life over now? She was only nineteen, much too young to lack a future.

She was led out of the courtroom and into a lift, which brought her down into the basement of City Hall, where they led her into a room lined with two neat rows of sensory deprivation tanks, looking like big coffins. They stripped her naked and guided her into a vacant tank. She was fitted with personal flotation devices to prevent her from drowning in the water when she fell asleep-not that that was likely to happen in the epsom salt-infused water, but the flotation devices eliminated that risk entirely-, a drinking straw connected to a line running drinking water into the tank-there was no eating in the tank, only water-and a catheter to collect her urine. Once she had been set up, they closed the lid over her.

In the sensory deprivation tank, Clair was left alone with her thoughts, and she could reflect on the circumstances that led her to being sentenced to the sensory deprivation tank in the first place. It had all started sometime during her first year at City University. She was there to study engineering, so naturally she had taken a lot of engineering classes, in which she learned all about modern technology. They lived in a golden age in which technology had been perfected, or so she had been told. She asked her professors, “What is the point of the engineering profession if technology has already been perfected?”, but never got a straight answer; the professors only chastised her for asking questions that good citizens of City never asked. She had also taken a class about the history of City during her first year at City University, as all students were required to do, during which she learned about the ‘triumph of City’. She asked if anything bad happened in the history of City, but that was apparently not a question that good citizens of City ever asked, either. Eventually, her professors staged an intervention for her and asked her to stop asking questions, but she refused to stop asking questions. Thus, when she returned to City University for her second year of study, she was arrested and put on trial, leading to her floating in the sensory deprivation tank.

Floating in the dark, she lost track of time and space. How long had she been in the tank? Was she even still in a tank, or was she floating in a void? Even the difference between being awake and being asleep had lost all meaning. All she knew was that if she really was still in the water, there should be fish in the water. She looked down and, sure enough, she could make out the outline of fish, slightly darker than the already black water.

At some point, she left the sensory deprivation tank and went to the restaurant on the top floor of Sundial, the tall tower at the centre of City. It was not actually a sundial, although everyone called it that; the tower mostly consisted of a battery that collected and stored energy beamed from space, but there were also some floors of it with offices and a restaurant on the top floor. She stood near the big picture-windows in the restaurant and looked out. From this vantage point, one could see all of City, and beyond its limits, out into the wasteland that had once been nature. What really was beyond City? Clair had always wondered about the outside world, but that was yet another question that good citizens of City didn’t ask. Few citizens of City ever ventured outside, mostly scientists and space engineers who had the good social standing that Clair would never have, professionals who could navigate the unspoken rules of being a good citizen of City that she had never figured out. As she looked out the window, she heard a voice say, “Hi, Clair”. It was Victoria, whom she had come to Sundial to meet up with.

In the restaurant, Victoria ate a slice of cake, Clair drank a milkshake, and they had a conversation. At the end of the conversation, Victoria confessed to Clair, “I love you.”

Clair said, “I love you, too” and they kissed passionately.

Victoria asked, “My place?”

Clair said, “Yes, your place” and they went to Victoria’s place for a night of passion. As the days passed, Clair and Victoria developed a relationship, doing all the things that lovers do.

At some point, Clair heard a radio come on and the announcement, “You will be released from the sensory deprivation tank today.”

Clair said, “huh?” but suddenly, she was floating in the dark again. She realized that everything that had happened since she entered the sensory deprivation tank, including her entire relationship with Victoria, had been a dream, a hallucination, generated by her subconsciousness like the generative AI that was a distant ancestor of mAIor.

The lid of the sensory deprivation tank opened and they pulled her out of the water and out into the room, where they gave her big, fluffy towels to dry herself. Her skin was dry from twenty days of soaking in epsom salts, her ability to balance had weakened after twenty days of floating, and every bone in her body was visible after twenty days without eating. Once she had dried off, they gave her her clothes back. She put them back on, and then they sat her down and force-fed her soya milk, the first stage of her refeeding. Once she got the soya milk down, she would be allowed to go home.

That evening at home, Clair’s parents hosted a welcome-home dinner for her, and all her relatives came to the family home. Everybody ate a big dinner, except for Clair who only ate a small bowl of applesauce because that was the stage she was at in her refeeding. Although the dinner was in her honour, Clair’s relatives didn’t speak to her much because all their attention was on her cousin Ruth, who was studying engineering at City University. Ruth talked all about her classes, and relatives asked her questions about what she was doing. At some point, Uncle Hugo turned to Clair and asked, “Are you jealous of Ruth, going to City University this semester?”

Clair said, “Yes.”

Clair’s dad, who was sitting next to her, turned to her, said, “It’s ok; you’ll be back at university next semester” and turned back to face Ruth.

A few days later, the students at City University had the day off of classes, so Clair arranged to meet with Victoria, who was a student, in the restaurant on the top floor of Sundial. They sat down at a table, and Clair looked at Victoria’s face, thinking about how Victoria saw them as just friends, but Clair knew she wanted more after the hallucination in the sensory deprivation tank. She opened her mouth to approach the subject, but Victoria spoke first, saying, “It’s good to see you doing ok after your time in the sensory deprivation tank. What was it like in there?”

Clair thought of an answer, but Victoria said, “It’s ok, you don’t need to answer that question.” She then started talking about what was going on at City University.

As they were about to leave the restaurant and go their separate ways, Clair said, “Wait, I’d like to ask you something.”

Victoria said, “Yes?”

Clair said, “I value our friendship, but I love you. Will you be my girlfriend?”

Victoria hesitated, then said, “I love you, too, but I’m not looking for a relationship right now.”

“You want to focus on your career or something?”

“It’s more than that, but yes, I do want to focus on my career. Which means that we can never get together even if I ever do want a relationship.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be good for my career, to be with someone who has a criminal record.”

Over the next few weeks, Clair stayed at home and thought about her life. Why should she return to City University for the next semester like she was supposed to? What was the point of the engineering profession, anyway? Did she even have a chance at a good career now that she had a criminal record? Why couldn’t she figure out the unspoken rules of being a good citizen of City like Victoria and Ruth and everyone else?

Finally, she said out loud, to anyone who would hear her, “What is the best way to live when your wish for death exceeds your will to live?”

Clair went to City Hall and requested that they take her to the room with the sensory deprivation tanks. They took her into the room, where she approached an empty sensory deprivation tank. She took off her clothes and fitted herself with a flotation device, drinking straw and catheter even though she had little use for such things. She closed the coffin lid over herself and floated in the sensory deprivation tank as if in the waters of the womb.