He’d been here long.
For how long—he did not know.
But his earliest memory was of the question.
If there is a sandbox and in the sandbox is a bucket, if the bucket is filled with sand, is the sand still in the sandbox?
He’d been asked and he did not know the answer.
So he’d sat and pondered.
They had watched.
And waited.
Eventually, he arrived at an analogy. He imagined a city made of buildings. In one building: he sat. Was he—he asked himself—still in the city while being also in the building?
Surely, yes.
He rang the bell and one of them came.
“Yes,” he said, “the sand is still in the sandbox,” and reasoned his answer.
The one who’d come said nothing.
Did nothing.
In the silence, he began to doubt himself. Imagined himself in the building in the city needing to go out (of the building): go into (the city); and if, from the building, he must go into the city, he could not already be in the city while being in the building (or else there would be no into into which to go) and so also with each grain of sand—
“No,” he cried. “The answer is no!”
But, still, the one who’d come did not react.
Yes. No. He did not know. Perhaps the analogy itself is faulty, he thought, and said finally, “I am afraid I cannot yet answer. I need more time.”
The one who’d come left.
Leaving him alone again with the question.
He thought about the nature of containers, containers within containers, whether a container could be contained, or whether that would change its nature and it would cease to be a container.
He thought about bodies and souls.
About the word still, a tricky word with many meanings. Was the sand still (adverb: persisting) in the sandbox or was it still (adjective: unmoving) in the sandbox?
Every incorrect answer branched into new questions.
Many times he rang the bell.
Someone came.
He spoke.
Someone listened.
But the answer was never satisfactory.
Not to him. “I need more time,” he would say, and the one who’d come, who’d said nothing, done nothing, would go away until the bell was rung again.
In time, the question became his world.
[…]
Drakar punched out. Olim punched in. They exchanged glances, and Olim took his seat outside the cell. Twelve hour shifts. Ugh. But the pay was good and the work non-existent. Sitting, waiting. Maybe one day you’d hear the bell ring, open the window and stare upon the immortal inside. Maybe.
Yet it was necessary.
How else was the race of mortals to triumph over the immortals than to keep them separated and preoccupied, trapped individually in mental labyrinths of their own willing creations, uninterested in anything but the question. They couldn’t simply be killed, of course, so the thousands of them would always exist—but they could be kept from breeding—and from everything else too: everything but thought…