I don't know what I was expecting, but I remember the experience being a bit of a letdown. The place looked like a Hampton Inn, so there was no reason not to expect that it should feel like one.
Christ, how long had I been in that bed? Felt like months.
Oh..., very funny. Shut up: we'll listen to you run your mouth when you get the talking stick.
It was a hell of a good set. SPEC SERV had really done their homework. They had nailed the sights, sounds and smells of the hotel. For all I knew, I could have been in the real deal.
As far as I could tell, they hadn't missed a trick. The plastic-wrapped plastic cups, the one-cup coffee maker that made fresh, but disgusting, coffee, the ads for the pizza chain and the local delivery service that probably brought a traveler whatever and whoever was on his on-the-road-wicked-wish-list.
There was a Bible in the nightstand and stale batteries in the TV remote.
In the bathroom, there were three identical bottles with three different labels on them. They were square and not much wider than a sugar cube. Each contained an equal measure of the same, sketchy, pass-for-white liquid. One was marked "moisturizer," the next "shampoo" and the third "conditioner."
The clothes were a bit of a surprise.
Under the TV was a dresser full of clothes and, in the closet, were a variety of pants and a handful of dress shirts.
That was weird.
Yes, that was the weird part. And, you know what, Mr. Smartass, weirder still was the fact that they fit: they were my size. I hadn't expected that.
It meant that whatever was going to happen next, they wanted me to dress for it.
I was going to be leaving the room, going back up the funnel.
The clothes may have not been to my taste, but they were by my favorite designer: Opportunity.
I did the best I could to wash the hospital off of me and, in the process, used most of two bottles of the shampoo-moisturizer-conditioner.
I dressed as quickly as I could and then tried to figure out my next move.
I figured they would come and get me when they were ready.
I tried out a number of different poses trying to find one that conveyed the proper level of indifference.
I propped myself up on the bed first leaving it unmade and then again after I had made it.
I set myself up at the cafe table that served as a desk and then in the easy chair that served as comfortable.
Each was unsatisfying. All were uncomfortable.
I ended up perched on the end of the bed like I was waiting for a school bus.
Every so often, I would look over my shoulder to check the bedside clock radio.
The first hour passed at a geological rate and the ones that came after were even slower.
What the hell?
What were they waiting for?
I was sitting for such a long time that I actually had to convince myself that it was okay to use the restroom, or to look out the window, as though, if I did either of those things, I might miss my hosts and thus have wasted all of this time I had invested in waiting.
Would it be okay if I turned on the TV?
Did I think they would mind?
I became obsessed with the etiquette of my situation and concerned I might offend the people who were holding me.
Absurd on the face of it and yet very real.
And the longer I sat there, the worse it got.
And it was not like I could change my mind, because what if they wanted me thinking this way?
It was mirrors reflecting on mirrors, monitors playing back the live feed from the video cameras pointed at them.
Breaking the loop was simple, actually doing it was hard.
All I had to do was anything else and yet it was all I could do to do anything else.
I reached for the remote.
And, as if to signal the gravity of my error, the heating unit under the window that had been manufacturing frigid air since I was first delivered into the room suddenly went silent.
I changed something and something changed.
As I sat there attributing some meaning to what had just happened, I could hear mysterious pops and creaks coming from inside the heating unit and from behind the walls that surrounded me.
It was like an HVAC Greek chorus seeming to comment on my expression of free will and daring me to push another button.
Hoping to restore order, I pointed the remote at the TV like a phaser and killed the program like it was an expendable redshirt.
As soon as I had done that, I regretted it.
I tossed the remote as far away from myself as I could, as though it had suddenly become radioactive.
I went back to perching on the end of the bed.
And there it was: I was thinking like a prisoner.
I would have to watch that.
Letting your guard down is like getting pregnant: it only takes a moment and your circumstances are forever changed. Being on guard is completely binary: you are, or you aren't and that's what captors and cat burglars depend on.
It's a game of patience and whoever has the most, wins.
I'd lost mine and all I could do now was hope they hadn't noticed.
And of course they would have noticed, but how would they respond?
I could wait and see, or I could give them something else to think about.
I forced myself to calm down. I had to think like a jailer.
I thought of all those times we got people to give up their deepest and their darkest; how we would trick people into telling us what no amount of interrogation would have ever produced.
When you're going to be interrogated, you very quickly recognize that not talking is the only thing that is keeping you alive. You talk and the pain stops, but so too does your heart.
We would spend lots of time and money to make a mark feel as though they were free so that their information would seem less valuable. Instead of looking for a pain threshold, we would lead a mark to show us where their pride lived and we would play that.
If they were proud of the fact that that they had beaten their jailer then we would celebrate that, make them the hero of the revolution, or whatever their given circumstances were.
They had successfully withstood the efforts of counter-revolutionary extremists and earned the everlasting love of the people.
We would routinely act as the transportation company assigned to get the mark from where they had been held to the welcoming bosom of the motherland.
We would present ourselves as apolitical, as consumed by our own affairs.
Such a simple ruse and yet so powerful.
Time and again, people would give us precisely what we told them we did not want because we were the opposite of interrogators.
It's the espionage equivalent of being told not to think about pink elephants.
And that's how they were playing me, had to be.
Why would they choose this scenario? This hotel?
I looked at the door.
It didn't look like a security door....
And then I knew, without being told, that it wasn't.
If they were trying to get something from me, locking me in the room was exactly the wrong way to get it.
So, I stood up, crossed the room, and opened the door.
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