Subject 11

2

They each had to take six different pills every morning. These pills were already portioned out and sealed in a white envelope, and these envelopes came down a thick PVC pipe that pierced through the ceiling, to drop into a plastic bucket. Every morning they would find ten envelopes in the bucket, each with a number printed on it in pencil. Ten paper lunch bags, stapled shut, would also drop into the bucket every morning. Inside the lunch bags were an apple, a banana, and a cereal bar with raspberry filling. The lunch bags had numbers penciled on them, too. They could drink all the water they wanted from a sink in this room, though the water tasted faintly of fluoride and rust.

5 opened her lunch bag and complained, “My cereal bar is smooshed.”

“My apple is dented,” 6 noted.

“My vitamin is broken,” 2 observed.

“What makes you think that’s a vitamin?” asked 10.

4 shifted the tall white bucket to one side, knelt down on the floor and tried peering up through the end of the PVC pipe affixed to the wall with metal bands. “Too dark,” he reported. He removed his eye from the hole and positioned his mouth beneath it instead. “Hallooo!” he called.

The others were already beginning to seat themselves around a long table with metal legs and a Formica top with a speckled granite design. There were five chairs to either side, with metal frames and torn vinyl seats showing the spongy padding inside. The rustling and tearing of envelopes and lunch bags. 8 balled up his lunch bag and tossed it toward the plastic bucket as if launching a basketball at a hoop. It bounced off the rim. “Ohh!” he exclaimed.

“Why even write our numbers on the envelopes?” 9 groused, lining up her pills in a neat row before her. “We all get exactly the same stuff.”

“Looks that way,” 10 replied. “But we don’t know that’s true.”

9 lifted her gaze to stare across at him. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“We don’t even know if they do something to the food,” 7 said, but she then took a large crunching bite out of her apple.

They had already filled their ten plastic tumblers with water from the oversized metal sink jutting from one wall of the nearly empty chamber — which was long and wide, with a high ceiling of exposed metal beams and joists, walls tiled with white glazed bricks, and huge windows comprised of many small panes, most filmed over as if with cataracts. The ten of them had quickly developed their own system for ensuring that they all swallowed the six pills, as mandated by their initial instructions. First the five people on one side of the table swallowed pill after pill, one at a time, observed by the person seated directly opposite. Then it was the turn of the five people on the other side of the table.

There was one large yellow-brown tablet that looked like a vitamin. 1 had commented that it tasted like a vitamin, too, and made her urine yellow like the vitamins she took every day at home. There was one very small white pill. There was a two-piece gel capsule that looked like an antibiotic, half red and half white. There was a slightly smaller time release capsule, half green and half white. And there were two identical one-piece gel capsules of a very attractive green color; 1 had said they looked like bath oil beads.

3 started choking; the yellow-brown tablet, the biggest of the pills, had stuck in her throat. To her right, 4 pushed at 3’s hand to urge her to drink more water. On 3’s left, 2 began thumping her on the back. With a deep retch, 3 coughed the pill back into her hand, her eyes tearing. The pill’s coating was already dissolving, staining her palm yellow. Hoarsely, she said, “Fuck,” but she immediately popped the tablet into her mouth again, tossed back her head and took more gulping swallows of water. This time she got the pill down successfully.

“You okay?” asked 2, rubbing her back with a large hand.

“I hate swallowing pills,” she told him. “Next time I should break that one in half.”

“I wish I’d given you my vitamin,” 2 said. “It was broken.”

It had been their own idea to seat themselves in numerical order at every meal, but their numbers had already been designated for them at the beginning. They had been very firmly instructed not to reveal their true names.

They had no cell phones, no wristwatches, and there were no clocks on the walls. They only knew from the changing of day to night and night to day, outside the derelict building’s windows, that this was their third breakfast together.

9 and 10 had been conversing in one of the building’s many long corridors, the paint on its walls extensively flaking off like the decomposing skin of a great creature, but they stopped when they heard a rhythmic clapping sound, growing louder as it approached. The clapping became accompanied by huffing animal-like pants. They stepped back, to opposite sides of the corridor, to let 4 dart between them. They turned to watch him as he continued jogging off down the hallway, until he took a corner and the slapping of his sneakers receded.

“Do you think one of us isn’t really a subject, but one of the testers observing us up close?” 9 asked 10.

“Maybe only one of us is the subject,” 10 said, “and the rest of us are all testers.”

9 looked at 10 with a new kind of wariness, and slowly replied, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

One wall of the corridor was lined with a row of barred windows, and 10 leaned close to the nearest of them. A corner of the window was broken, and glass fragments ground against each other under his sneakers. Through the dirty panes he scanned the building’s grounds, overgrown with tall leeched grass, rampant weeds like great clumps of steel wool, autumn leaves that drifted and swirled in chilly gusts he could feel through the gap in the glass. Other buildings to the sides and across the way appeared to be part of this complex, but were they distinct structures or all one connected, sprawling mass? It only being the third day, and without having explored too extensively, he hadn’t formed a map of the layout in his mind.

“These bars are new,” 10 stated. “Look at them. The paint is shiny… it isn’t chipped. They’re not rusted. I’m sure they’re new.”

“I don’t know — why go through all the trouble of putting bars on so many windows? Maybe this was a prison, or a crazy hospital.”

“There are no cells that I’ve seen, for a prison. And no hospital beds for a hospital.”

“The place is stripped to a shell,” 9 persisted. “There could have been beds.”

“There aren’t a lot of small rooms like you’d expect to see in any kind of hospital. Just big rooms, mostly.”

“The big rooms could have been open wards. What do you think this place was?”

“I don’t know. Factory of some kind, I’d guess.”

“A factory with bars on the windows?”

“That’s what I’m saying; they added the bars for our experiment.”

“Come on — they couldn’t find a place that already had bars on the windows, or a smaller place at least if they needed to do that? And anyway, why bars? We’re volunteers, not prisoners.”

10 turned from the window to face her again. “So far, we aren’t,” he said, as if to tease her. But if he meant to playfully make her nervous, he kept a straight face about it.

9 shivered, and rubbed her arms against the breeze wafting in through the corridor’s long row of partially shattered windows. Glancing at the window 10 had just peered through, she complained, “God, it’s cold in here. And what’s with the fall leaves out there? It’s still summer.”

2 and 3 explored another corridor, built from cinderblock. There were no windows here, but fluorescent lights overhead provided illumination. This unhealthy glow made the glossy white paint of the walls glisten wetly, but the paint was in fact webbed with cracks and blistered.

As they walked side by side, 3 was so tiny she didn’t even come to 2’s shoulder. He was tall, thick-bodied, with a neat gelled haircut, his beefy face clean-shaven but with shaded jowls. He wore white hospital scrubs. They all did. The petite and gamine-faced 3 had mid-length, coal black hair and caramel skin.

Glancing down at her as they strolled, 2 grinned and said, “So what nationality are you?”

“You can’t ask me that.”

“What? Oh no, nobody said we couldn’t talk about personal stuff, as long as we don’t give our names, addresses, details like that. I’m sure they want us to chitchat so they can see how we interact. After all, look what the experiment is about. ‘Social integration,’ Dr. Onsay said.”

“Do you think there are cameras?”

“Oh,” 2 said, flicking his eyes this way and that, “I’m sure of it.” His gaze returned to his companion. “So what nationality are you? Filipino? Thai?”

“Irish.”

“Irish. Riiight. Me, I’m an Eskimo.”

“You look Italian. You look like an Italian cop. Or a mafia guy.”

“Hoo-boy,” 2 chuckled. “You see right through me, huh? Truth is I’m a cop but I moonlight as a mafia guy on weekends. No, seriously, do you want me to tell you what I do?”

“I’m sure that’s against the rules.”

“Whatever. How ‘bout telling me how old you are, at least? I’m thirty-four.”

“I’m thirty-eight.”

“What?” He stopped in his tracks. “Get out! Come on, now.”

She beamed bright teeth, pleased by his reaction. “It’s true. Maybe I look young to you because I’m small.”

“Well it isn’t just that — it’s your face, everything. You’re so cute, you look twenty-something. I can’t believe you’re older than me.”

“I am.”

“Do you have kids?”

“You mean, am I married?” Looking away from him but still smiling knowingly, 3 resumed walking.

“Well…”

“Divorced. One kid: Tania. She’s with my husband right now, so I can do this. How about you?”

“Same and same. Divorced, but mine’s a son — Nathan — and he’s with his mom.” 2 wagged a finger at her. “Hey, if you’re divorced you can’t call your ex your husband.”

3 shrugged. “Habit.”

“Is he the same nationality as you?”

“White, like you.”

“So he’s a mafia guy, too?”

“An Eskimo mafia guy.”

“Oh! They’re badass. One wrong move, you wake up with a seal’s head at the foot of your bed.”

In the confessional, on the ground floor and just off the great room that served as their banquet hall, 5 had decided to get her daily monologue out of the way. Outside, 7 waited her turn, after which they had agreed to widen their exploration of the facility together. As 5 explained to the mural she faced: “I think that’s part of the experiment; you’re waiting to see which of us will be timid or lazy and stick close to our quarters, and which of us will be more daring or curious and want to explore. Maybe you want to see if we’ll follow an instinct to find a way to escape, even though we’re not prisoners.”

5 pivoted in the padded office chair, from one side to the other, surveying the explosive splashes of black and white graffiti, like an entire galaxy of stars all gone supernova at the same time, spattering their glowing fire and dark matter in every direction. As she did so she continued speaking. “It’s natural that we’re pairing off. I’m sure you want to see how that breaks down. Of course some guys and girls are bonding. Me and 7 hit it off right away. Maybe she’s not interested in finding a boyfriend, even a temporary one… same as me.

“I already have my Seth. He works with me in the pharmaceutical company I mentioned in my interview. I have more vacation time than he does, so I figured why not do this, and get paid for it by you and my company at the same time, huh?

“I miss him already. I hope he’s missing me. Sometimes… well, sometimes I get the feeling he wouldn’t miss me if I just upped and disappeared. But that’s a story for another day. Or a bunch of days.

“Anyway,” 5 said, waving away her digression, “the pattern here is obvious, especially when we sit down to eat. I’m 5 and female, and 7 is female. So sure enough, 1, 3 and 9 are female, and 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 are male. Does that mean women are always perceived as odd? Heh. I’m sure it’s just an arbitrary way to do it.

“No one is very young, and nobody’s old. I’d say 7 is the youngest; she told me she’s twenty. 10 looks the oldest. He hasn’t said, but I’d say he’s at least forty.

“Do I win a prize for my observations? Does that make me a star guinea pig? If you want to reward me, how about some bottled water? The water from the sink is gross. I can’t believe we have to drink that. Aren’t you afraid we might get sick from old chemicals or whatever that might be in the system?

“Speaking of chemicals — like I say, I work for a pharmaceutical company, in the R & D department.” She smiled. “I don’t know what these meds are that you’ve got us taking every morning, whether they’re the basis of the test or just something in support of the test, but…” she wagged a scolding finger in the air “…I can tell you, if this is a drug trial it’s not the way the FDA would want to see it done.”

5 rose from the chair and stretched, deciding she’d given them enough for today, and itching to get to exploring with 7. Before she opened the door, looking up at the blank ceiling as if an eye might be peeking through a crack in the plaster, she said, “And maybe there’s something funny in the water that you want us to drink.”

She put her hand on the doorknob, but as an afterthought turned back to address the room again in a low, confidential voice. “Actually, I get the vibe that 7 might be a lesbian, or at least bisexual, but that’s okay. I’m not prejudiced, and I don’t feel threatened — I’m secure in who I am.”

“Well, will you look at this,” said 2, as he and 3 turned into a corridor they hadn’t encountered before.

He had the impression they had passed out of one building in the complex and into another, older section — maybe the original body from which the other had sprouted over time. The walls of this corridor were composed of bare ruddy brick, not plaster or cinderblock, and the windows lining one wall were narrow like those of a castle tower, arched at the tops. They apparently didn’t require bars, being made up of small panes set in a metal web, like the huge windows in the banquet hall. The floor here was of wood, having lost its sheen of varnish, the boards squeaking under their weight. The ceiling of wooden beams and exposed pipes was festooned with sooty cobwebs.

But more striking than the red brick and worn wooden floorboards was the mural that entirely filled the wall opposite to the one lined with windows. Like the mural in the confessional, the paint had not encroached on the floor or ceiling, though it covered every inch of the bricks along this length of wall. It was identical in style to the graffiti mural in the confessional. Riotous splashes of black and white formed a background for a crazy interplay of tagging. Skeletal scribbles and jagged scrawls like mutant fish bones, or else bloated balloon words like amorphous bulging amebas. Taken as a whole, the mural oddly called to mind for 2 an apocalyptic landscape, the tagging like rolls of concertina wire overlapping shattered fences and exploded ruins burnt to cinders.

Like clouds trawling across the sky, or the blotted ink of a Rorschach test, 2 imagined you could read what you wanted into the mural. Focusing more on its particulars, rather than the whole, he felt he recognized some of these odd symbols from the confessional’s walls.

“I don’t know if this stuff was done by kids who broke in here over the years,” he said to 3, “or if it’s some kind of intentional decoration, put here by the owners.”

“It can’t be too old, because it smells fresh,” 3 said. “All I know is it’s ugly — like that Jackson Pollock shit.”

“I was thinking more like Picasso’s Guernica,” 2 said. “On acid.” He scrutinized the mural some more, and muttered as if only speaking to himself, “It’s almost cosmic. It sort of looks like the Big Bang. The start of creation.”