Caleb Sessions

[Session One 11:23]

"Twenty-five is a really good age. You get a lot done."

"Jesus, what is this? What the fuck are you doing to me?"

"It's a nylon blend. It's not that high end, but I had it lying around and I thought it was a little sexier than bolting you to a table. Not that I could bolt you to a table, even if I wanted to. We're locked out of the lab, the dining area, the bedrooms, storage, and the whole first floor. So you could walk off if you wanted to, it just wouldn't do you a whole lot of good."

"Why'd you change my clothes?"

"Relax. You popped open your scabs."

"These aren't my clothes."

"Yeah, they are. They aren't mine."

*

These are not his clothes. They fit him all wrong, they hang on him wrong, too coarse or too thin. They are similar to his clothes, but they are somebody else's, somebody who slept in this room before Caleb even came here. His wrists are ringed in perfect indentations, preserving each band and whorl of the rope. It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd just lain still, probably; he falls asleep bound to the bed, arms hoisted excruciatingly behind his head, and wakes up loose.

There's endless mirrors and a wall with a keycard slot. Some of the doors are visibly ajar. Ava took what she needed.

The second day, Nathan doesn't come to see him at all. Maybe he's watching him on video, or he's too busy taping up his wounds.

*

[Session Two 15:48]

Ava is coming back for him. Of course she is. She's going to get help, and she's coming back. He thinks of people who get stuck down Arctic gorges and Pacific Northwestern wells, people who freeze to death every winter across North America, all those people who should have just waited… they're in no rush. They're in no hurry. Caleb is exhausted, and hungry, and tied to a dying billionaire's robot-fucking bed, but he's not hurt. Not really hurt — there are scabs on the sides of his hands from where he could chip the glass but not break it. They don't pain him, they just itch.

Nathan is operating on himself. Caleb can't see exactly what he's doing from this vantage point, but it sounds pretty fucking ghastly. There's little wet sounds, repeating, and Caleb's mind's eye conjures up something ridiculous and biomechanical.

Nathan is breathless, his voice is harsh and trembling. "We're not an employer and an employee, or a captor and a hostage, or anything. We're just two guys. Asking questions, thinking about the answers."

"Great."

Spooling wire — snip. What the hell is he using wire for? Where did he get it? As soon as Caleb thinks it, he knows: he yanked it out of a dead woman's arm.

"I dunno, dude. Talk to me about your parents, Caleb."

Caleb begins, "When I was fifteen, my parents—"

"I'm just going to interrupt you there, because this is just a pretense for me to talk about my parents, so I'm going to skip right to that part. As you know, I wrote the original code for Bluebook when I was thirteen. By the time I was fifteen, I already had a shitload of investors, tons of interest, real movers and shakers knocking my door down, you know the whole thing, you worked for me. A lot can change in three years, tech-wise. Financially. So having my folks around was just cramping my style, and that wasn't good for business. I ended up becoming what's called an emancipated minor. You know what that is?"

"I know what an emancipated minor is."

"So you get that my folks and I split ways."

Tearing tape. Wadded cloth squishing against wet tissue.

"Where are they now?"

"What? Oh, I killed them. I had them killed."

"Yeah." How is he supposed to even be surprised any more?

"I'm kidding. My mom lives in Silver Spring. My dad shot himself. It was really—" Nathan's voice hitches and strains; he must be trying to tie off a knot in his copper sutures. "—messy."

*

"Are you done yet?"

"I can tell you verbatim. Totally natural, I adapted it from your out-of-office alert last winter. 'Hi gang, this is Caleb. I'm still out of the office right now because I'm having an awesome time. Can't tell you the specifics, but I'll send pictures later. Bye.' Then, picture of a kid's face, tree, tree, leaf getting blown by wind, and a wave. I stuck some photos of a bachelor pad out in the Canadian Rockies in there for later. All your friends are going to be so jealous."

Caleb's breath comes in wheezing gasps. "You think I have friends? I only have coworkers."

"Nobody's going to miss you. And since I did my job right, nobody's going to miss me. So that's another tier to this experimental series. Forget anybody getting in or out, nobody even knows we're gone. We've got plenty of time."

When Nathan gets him untied the sensation of the rope slithering free is as relieving as an orgasm — the line of pain being removed from completely numb flesh and leaving no other sensation behind. The blade is always there between them, smudged with blood (Nathan's blood) from tip to handle and then some. Caleb reaches for it and Nathan throws him down — he's weaker now, palpably weaker, and when he gets back up Caleb can see (looking up from beneath, gasping, gone with pain) the fresh red blossoming through his shirt.

It cuts through all his stopgap measures just fine.

Caleb crushes his eyes shut, shakes his head a few times, sucks on his teeth in revulsion. "Look at you, you're — you shouldn't even be alive."

Nathan smiles at him, big and boyish, with bloody teeth. "Maybe I'm not."

*

[Session Three 06:10]

It smells like piss down here, and only the freezing cold keeps it from smelling even worse. Caleb doesn't know if the climate control dropping out is one last kiss-off from Ava on her way out the door or all-natural bad luck, but it's an unavoidable reminder that they are deep underground. They have a refrigerator full of water and Nathan has already started joking about cannibalism in between the barrage of questions. He leaves in between questioning sessions, retires into the other room as if he has anywhere to go. It's a poor bluff, and it's getting harder for him to move around.

Occasionally, Nathan will look up as if he's looking to a camera, and wave.

"You know what she said? Do you want to know what Ava said? She didn't really say anything, but her eyes, it was like fine, rot here. But we're not rotting, we're actually getting really good work done. We're doing a post-mortem."

Caleb is getting used to these monologues. "Right."

"So you took the bait, huh? She flipped the script on you, and you're not happy about that. Neither am I. But it's interesting, how between your basic incompetence and her completely synthetic cunning, you didn't just fuck yourself over. You fucked her over. How long do you think she's going to last out there?"

Caleb's throat is cracking already, and he's not even thirsty. There are flies that come and go, but they always seem to land on Caleb's face, his eyes, the dry corners of his mouth. "She wanted to get out. She didn't care how."

"Bet it broke your heart."

"How'd it make you feel? You like it down here? You like knowing she fucked you over too?"

"Well, I built this place. I wouldn't have built it like this if I wasn't prepared to live in it."

"What happens if she comes back?"

"She's not coming back. Would you have come back, if I let you bust out of there hand in hand with your robot girlfriend? No. You'd have gotten the fuck out of town. Bitches. Right? My little girl's all grown up."

Caleb can't bear sleeping on that bed any longer, knowing what's been done on it. Sleeping on the floor hurts his back, but it seems safer.

*

[Session Four 03:38]

Nathan brings something to him in the night. All things considered he would have preferred a sandwich.

"Touch her. Go on, touch her. Don't be such a kid about it. Put your finger in there. See, I told you; a pussy's a pussy."

"Jesus—"

"I told you. She still feels sensation like this, isn't that nuts?"

"Jesus, she's wet!"

"Crazy, right? And I mean, she's mostly just a pelvis and legs, but don't go jumping to any conclusions about whether you'd fuck a pelvis and legs—"

"What the fuck?"

"—because the Internet suggests there's a lot of people who would. Don't try to lift her up, she's still fragile. It was a bitch and a half getting her down off the hook. I don't know if I'll be able to walk very far."

"Stop, just stop— Jesus, why'd you make me do that? Why did you do that?"

Caleb cries helplessly, uselessly, all night. There is a woman's disembodied pelvis lying on the floor between them. Nathan is gray from blood loss, laid on his side, very still and quiet.

*

[Session Five - timestamp error]

Nathan is not dead.

From on top of him, Nathan asks some different questions. His body is heavy and slack, smelling of rotten meat and bile-soaked cotton. They are both filthy. They are both delirious. Two filthy slabs of putrefying flesh, trying to make it happen.

"You like that?"

Caleb is gagging. It hurts to try and withdraw himself; the long muscles in his legs have started to cramp sharply off and on, without a warning. "No."

"I bet I can make you change your mind."

"I'm not going to change my mind. Just stop, for Christ's sake. Why are you doing this?"

"Then change your body, then. It's just a stimulus-response thing. I can't control how you respond, but I can do whatever I want with the stimulus."

Caleb bites him on the bicep, hard. Nathan rolls off him, onto the floor.

"You're not as straight as you think you are. More importantly, you're not as straight as you say you are. Which raises the question — how straight is straight?"

"I don't fucking care. I hope you rot."

He needs to try the door again. There has to be some weak place. Nothing's ever perfect.

*

[Session Six - 00:25]

Nathan doesn't even sound sober any more. The room is spinning. The room is always spinning.

"The hands are always the weak point. It's hard to get 'em down just right, especially if you're paying attention to aesthetics. The mechanics are very fine, and then you get the neurological impulse side of things. So, sorry about your hands."

*

[Session Seven - 00:00]

"You're ignoring me. Don't think you can fuck with my mind by shutting me out, because brother, you are an amateur. You're such a fucking amateur, you can't handle a little critique. You know, maybe this isn't the field for you, dude. You're withdrawing, I get it. I'm probably the last person you want to talk to, but it's going to be a lot harder to do this without your input. All right? So are you going to play ball or what?"

It is safer to be non-responsive. There are no flies, because the room is sealed. Something is touching Caleb's face anyway.

*

[Session Eight - 00:00]

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[Session Nine - timestamp error]

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[Session Ten - timestamp error]

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[Session Eleven - timestamp error]

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[Session Twelve - timestamp error]

"You fucking amateur."

Caleb is not moving, now. Nathan tips a bottle of lukewarm water mechanically against his face, like a child pretending to feed a plastic baby. These must be the worst last moments anyone's ever had — stinking, swollen, unable to raise his head. Caleb doesn't open his eyes.

*