Arkady, a prisoner, sometime in the future (leuler; Status, non-responsive)

Quick intro: hey! I'm leuler. I've written a couple of chapters here and there on the site, but I've never really found something I've really wanted to continue with until now. This is an incredibly great idea, and it fits so many things, so I'd like to add a bit of an unconventional route.

This route will be rather vanilla when it comes to fetishes, except for some group sex type things that will come many chapters in the future, but that's the idea of this entire story, isn't it?

Chapter length will be a little shorter than this one, but may stray long at times. I'll try to keep almost everything above 3 pages on the google doc I use to write, but there may be an occasional vanished into the clouds chapter.

It will also feature some rather experimental writing; I'd appreciate any input I can get on this new style.

Thanks for the read!

They told him that he was born in the Inside. They told him Mother and Father were bad people, and he’d been taken away from them for his safety. They said that Mother and Father had plotted to overthrow the One. They told him he would die on the inside.

Bullshit.

I am Arkady, last name unknown, child of Mother and Father, name unknown. I am eighteen years old. I live in the Inside. I will not die in the Inside.

Yet why leave, when he was given all he wanted in the world but the world itself? He had the latest technology, three meals a day (not good, but still better than the vast majority of the Outside), even companionship in the guards. Sure, they weren’t human, but it was pretty hard to tell the difference these days.

“Hey, shithead.”

“Morning, Arkady. The food is excellent today, don’t do that hunger strike shit you tried on us a bit back.”

It was incredible that the robots could even be sarcastic. They should ban that or something, it’s annoying being talked back to by an inanimate object.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Seriously, get some food, or I’ll -feed you.”

Flipping him, no, it off, he leaves his small room and heads to the mess, a large room with soaring ceilings. He always chooses the rightmost table, as far away from the robots as possible. They weren’t mean to him, they were just… unsettling. Inhuman.

There was already food at his seat, as there was every meal, every day. The same thing, a grey-white-yellow sludge with a couple of flavoring packets nearby, their contents ready to be dumped ignominiously and sloshed half-heartedly into the whatever-it-was.

He knows Mother and Father were here, somewhere. One of the guards had told him (he’d never seen her, no, it again). He hasn’t seen them though. They were the real prisoners after all. Couldn’t be giving them the same privileges he had.

Spending his formative years in captivity had definitely given him a bit of Stockholm Syndrome. He curses his parents for doing whatever they did that displeased the One. After all, the One was the reason he has a better life than most in the Outside, and his parents were the reason why he’d never see the One, never even see his face on one of the holographic projections scattered throughout the outside that he’d learned about from his books, the endless stacks of books presented to him weekly, written by real people, real Outsiders.

They’re good to him, he thinks. But he still needs to leave.

Minutes pass. Arkady sits there. He’s trapped in that endless loop of thinking, then thinking about thinking, then thinking about thinking about thinking, levels and levels, immobile, staring off into the space enclosed by four brutalist, but not unpretty, concrete walls, steel girders visible on the sides.

He snaps out of it, shovels the rest of the sludge into his mouth, and leaves, his thin arms holding up the empty bowl, his eyes flicking around the room, observing. Eighteen years of captivity had not dulled his senses, it had enhanced them.

He walks back to his room and continues reading an old play by a man named Beckett. Irish, according to the foreword, though that word meant nothing to him. Endgame, it was called. Fin de Partie. It was a chess word. Arkady knew chess. He played it once upon a time. Then he finally beat one of the guards and they stopped going easy on him and he stopped paying attention and he stopped playing and he forgot.

Four people in Endgame. Four things in my life. Mother Father me guards. Am I Clov or Hamm? Do I leave or die? I die. It’s not fair, but I die, blind. Everyone else leaves me behind. No, I leave everyone else behind. I leave the Inside. I enter the Outside. And then I checkmate? No I don’t checkmate I resign the One has been good to me the One has been good to me.

But I still want to leave.

An hour passed. He was done. It was a good play. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He saw the next book in the stack. Another play. Albert’s Bridge. Tom Stoppard. This one was Czech. What is Czech? I will learn Outside will I? yes all mysteries are resolved outside.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about Endgame. His mind drifted back.

Who wins?

Two hours passed. Twelve noon. Lunch. Same as breakfast, but with “different” (the same, but with different words on them) flavorings.

The same. Everything is the same the same the same the same. What have I done? I have lived eighteen years what have I done?

He gets up and walks to the mess. He sits down at the rightmost table. The same table. The same everything.

There was already food at his seat, as there was every meal, every day. The same thing, a grey-white-yellow sludge with a couple of flavoring packets nearby, their contents ready to be dumped ignominiously and sloshed half-heartedly into the whatever-it-was.

Minutes pass. Arkady sits there. He’s trapped in that endless loop of thinking, then thinking about thinking, then thinking about thinking about thinking, levels and levels, immobile, staring off into the space enclosed by four brutalist, but not unpretty, concrete walls, steel girders visible on the sides.

He snaps out of it, shovels the rest of the sludge into his mouth, and leaves, his thin arms holding up the empty bowl, his eyes flicking around the room, observing. Eighteen years of captivity had not dulled his senses, it had enhanced them.

He walks back to his room and continues reading an old play by a man named Stoppard. Czech, according to the foreword, though that word meant nothing to him. Albert’s Bridge, it was called.

He finishes Albert’s Bridge. The book doesn’t only have Albert’s Bridge in it. It has four other Stoppard plays. Some he doesn’t get. He doesn’t get If You’re Glad, I’ll Be Frank. He does, however, get Artist Descending a Staircase. It reminds him of a book he read a bit back. Godel, Escher, Bach. “Crab Canon.” It was nice and symmetric. He thought it was ingenious. Back then he wanted to be like Hofstadter. He wanted to play with words until they became mathematical, then make them words again. He doesn’t want to anymore.

He finishes the book of Stoppard plays. He likes Stoppard. Maybe he’ll ask the guard who brings him the books to bring him more.

He’s got more time before dinner. He skips halfway down the stack of books. The books here are different. He reads more. He does not remember what he reads.

He gets up and walks to the mess. He sits down at the rightmost table. The same table. The same everything.

His eyes do not flit around the room anymore. He stares straight. He does not pause and think. He eats quickly, robotically.

He leaves. He’s on his phone now, playing some mindless app-game-thing, incognizant of everything around him. He isn’t going to read anymore. Can’t read anymore.

Puts phone down. Falls asleep.