The gleaming snow on the top of Mount Washington...
Multicolored coral in the Cayman Islands...
The decaying the Colosseum, covered in tourists...
My brothers and I as babies in the bath...
A giant sequoia of Yosemite towering to touch the bright sky...
The bare back of a nude woman...
A screen displaying a picture of a mountain in New Mexico...
A screen showing a video of a cartoon from the 1990s...
A screen with a window on a blue background...
They pulled him from the device, flinging him to the cold pavement, wrists slapping painfully, but prevent a worse collision.
“We are going to drag every image from your memory, no matter how much you resist us.”
He looked up at his tormentors from his crumpled position on the rough floor. With unfocused eyes he searched their faces for a recognizable sign.
He spoke, and they had to lean forward to hear it, so he said again, “Do I know you?”
The lights flickered in the dark room. He saw their faces imprinted as negatives on his retina, before he was plunged into blackness.
...
“What do you see?”
My father changing to enter the public pool...
A political prisoner, unjustly imprisoned, succumbing to death by a hunger strike...
Bombs falling on young and aged women as they shelter helpless children...
Brilliant Indian Paintbrush on the plains of Colorado...
The Statue of Liberty illuminated by the moon, as fog drifts across the harbor...
The frozen smiling face of Mickey Mouse at Disneyland....
A screen displaying news of government spying on its citizens...
A screen showing an obituary with the smiling face of a beloved...
A screen with an order to buy a D Z Strad...
He felt something crawling across his skin, like a dozen small spiders, and trying to leap forward, found himself restrained. The sensation vanished, and again he saw the jeering faces of his captors. He cried aloud as the closest stabbed his wrist with a thin needle, leaving it quivering in his skin.
“We will get what we want, you know that don't you!”
They looked away from his upturned face, for they refused to entertain thoughts of pity.
“How can I know whether you are seeking for knowledge, when I don't know what was, is, or will be?”
A shiver started in his temple, and it passed across his body, carrying an iciness upon its crest. Unable to hold up his arm, he dropped it to his side, and his body and mind fell with it.
...
“What do you see?”
Wounds oozing purplish, red puss from end of a whip...
The stars shining above, illuminating the all encompassing cosmos, far beyond the artificial lights of mortal men...
An ancient bookstore, creaking with the feet of customers, pursuing their pleasure...
He stood in London watching the Thames stretch into the gloom of where the sky rested against the sea...
Fluttering wings of a teal hummingbird beating in comparison with the beating wings of the quetzal...
The spilling of filth, rust red, orange tinged, chunk filled slime, discharged from the mass produced factories of humanity...
A screen displaying the despairing dark of the Tomb of Giants...
A screen showing a picture of a robin on a branch, blanketed with snow...
A screen with these words on it, “What do you see?”...
...
His head reeled, but with eyelids fluttering he surveyed his torturers, as they approached lazily, unprepared.
With desperate energy he pushed against his chair arms, propelling himself at his torturers, scattering them like bowling pin.
Scrabbling against the wall he found a crude door and shoved it aside, stumbling into a barely lit hallway.
His feet slapped loudly against the dirty tile as his lungs screamed in protest.
Doors swung open, and disheveled heads gazed bemusedly at him as he passed by, with the heavy tread of pursuing feet echoed behind him.
He reached a door, that he knew must be the exit, and he stood a second focusing on the outside.
He knew he had to focus on what he wanted.
He knew he had to focus on his safety.
He knew he had to focus on escaping.
He pushed open the yielding door and saw the sunlight.
At first it was only a screen of sunlight, beginning at the threshold of the door. The more he stared at it, the more it became like the real thing. Behind him he heard men running. With a deep breath, and a calmness of concentration, he stepped into the screen, passing through it. The men reached the door and they cowered.
“You can't do that,” they shrieked. “Don't you understand this is an illusion!”
Feet from them, beyond the curtain, he remained untouchable, now surrounded by the light. He knew what they meant, but he knew something else, and that was that they didn't understand. They couldn't bring him back.
And as the men watched, it seemed that their captive had stepped through their artificial sun, and ventured off into lands beyond, into the real thing.
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