Six
I am whisked away to a modified Victorian boarding school to recuperate, but also to settle my debt. The cost of the vat-grown spare parts and repurposed ligaments are steep, but acceptable. The fact that I have to pay 70% market value for the Spanish paraglider is a bitter pill to swallow, though. There’s even a 2% surcharge for “excessive use of strychnine”. How dare they.
Everything is creaky here – I do my best not to break decorum, but with these century-old buildings that's virtually impossible. Wooden floorboards, wooden paneling, intricate and delicate furniture that seems to moan and complain if you so much as look at it. The floors are cold, the halls vast and empty. Not bad, not bad at all, were it not for all that creaking.
My time is carefully divided: a measure of eurythmy in the garden (under the supervision of the head cleric) is followed by five sessions in the dumbwaiter. That slight amount of time between floors is something I treasure: the smell of nineteenth century mahogany, the remaining varnish coming off in tiny, dark flakes. I rub a digit slowly against the blackened brass of a handle, for the sensory information if nothing else.
At night, we harvest fruit in the backyard, black, oddly shaped fruit that is roasted in the boiler room. The skin is tough, but enough heat makes it warp and split in tiny explosions of darkened pulp and barren seeds.
The cleric informs me he can't get warm and moves closer and closer to the fire. The closer he gets, the smaller he becomes until he comfortably can be added to the flames.
At some point not long after, I’m loaded onto a truck and taken to the nearest transit.