Order of Magnitude

LXV. Full Circle

     The prisoner paced back and forth in his cell. An eighth of an inch was all that separated him from freedom.

     He stared out the glass tank. The bedroom outside was much different than the view he'd had from his last tank. Here, the colors were bright—red and blue—as opposed to the sterile white and grey of the lab. Pennants and posters hung from the wall, and the hard wood floor had clothes scattered around it. On the bed, a boy lay asleep—the same boy who trapped him in the Burger World parking lot.

     The tank itself was different too. Instead of a wide-open space, the walls were closer together and soil filled the bottom. A small water dish sat in the corner, contaminated with dirt. Six parves huddled around it, their clothes stolen or abandoned. He pounded his fist on the glass.

     "Unbelievable," he muttered.

     "Don't bang on the glass," a naked parve said from behind him. "Timothy doesn't like it when you bang on the glass."

     "Who cares what Timothy likes?" Jacques said. He rammed his shoulder into the glass.

     "He'll punish us!" the parve said. "You keep it up, he'll punish us."

     Jacques turned around and shot him a look, then turned back to the glass. "Let him punish us. I'll be out of here soon enough."

     "That's what every new parve says."

     "None of those new parves were me," he slammed his shoulder against the wall of his prison. "I'm the leader of the biggest group of parves in the world. They'll get me out of here."

     The naked man grunted and walked away.

     Jacques leaned against the glass. They'd rescued him before, they could do it again. And the last group was smaller: Turner, Miller, Scarlet, Thom, yes even little Thom, Travis, Jean. He sighed. The names he'd listed had either been killed or had tried to kill him. He didn't expect them to mount a rescue.

     They weren't SubTerrans, he told himself. My group will come for me. Asa knows the tunnels better than anyone...

     He stopped mid-thought. Asa was dead too.

     Jacques punched the glass again. Nobody would come for him. Nobody cared anymore. Carlisle and his army of cowards had seen to that. Frustration boiled over and he pounded against the walls as hard as he could, screaming like a lunatic. A trapped lunatic.

     The young boy sat up and stared at the tank. The naked parves behind him ran around, burying themselves in the loose soil. The world shook as the giant walked toward them, a look of consternation on his massive face.

     "No pounding on the glass!" the child said. "I've told you all a million times, no pounding on the glass!"

     He lifted the tank off the dresser it rested on and shook it vigorously. Parves flew everywhere, some landing on top of one another, others slamming against the dirt. Jacques slammed against the glass then hurtled toward the other wall. Dirt showered him and the water dish spilled its contents before crushing one of the naked parves. The ordeal lasted a few seconds, but to Jacques it stretched on forever.

     It stopped in an instant. The boy frowned, then curled back up in his bed. Jacques stood and wiped dirt out of his hair. His eyebrow started to bleed from where he hit the glass. The rest of the parves crawled out of their final landing places, looking the same as he felt. The man under the water dish writhed around, the bones of his legs poking through his skin.

     "I told you not to tap the glass," the parve from earlier said.

     Jacques nodded, then sat down and stared out the glass. The humans still walked freely outside. Nothing had changed. Nothing ever would. The world went on as it always did, and he had a front-row seat from inside his glass prison.

     It was his first day inside the tank.

     It was the last home that Jacques would ever know.