In a world of comfort and infinite abundance, Valentina Briggs was sitting quietly, doing nothing, trying to detach. Her half-closed eyes were focused on a patch of wall where there was nothing to see. She sat there, fixedly, kneeling on the floor, her buttocks resting on her upturned feet, hands forming an oval in her lap, thumbs ever so lightly touching, trying her best to think of not thinking.
 
Thoughts were racing through her mind.
 
It felt like her head was full of hamsters ... soft, fat, fuzzy little hamsters, running in place inside one of those wheels, running and running, then stopping for a moment ... then running and running, then stopping again ... then running and running for all they were worth, and then stopping again and looking confused, like the poor little things just could not fathom why they could never seem to get to wherever hamsters were always trying to go.
 
Valentina observed and acknowledged the running in place of the cognitive hamsters without judgment and allowed them to run. She did not attempt to prevent their running, or impatiently wait for them to finish running, or pray that the One would stop them running, or judge them, or herself, at all. Instead she concentrated on her breathing ... in through one nostril, out through the other, then in through that one, and out through the other ... and sat there silently staring at nothing, and tried again to think of not thinking.
 
The more she tried to think of not thinking, the more aware she became of how the thoughts she was trying to think of not thinking were multiplying within her mind. A lot of these thoughts were not even thoughts. They were more like random furry blobs of meaningless proto-cognitive matter, the only conceivable purpose of which was to make it impossible for her to detach, and stare at nothing, and think of not thinking.
 
The air-conditioning was on some setting designed to simulate frostbite conditions. It had been on this setting for several hours. The tips of her fingers were turning blue. Her hands were numb. Her feet were freezing. Her paraspinal muscles were spasming. Her frontal and maxillary sinuses ached. She could see her breath. Her teeth were chattering.
 
Valentina observed and acknowledged her chattering teeth and throbbing sinuses, the pain in her upper thoracic region, and the cold-induced paresthesia in her fingers, and she stared at the wall, where there was nothing to see, and tried once again to think of not thinking.
 
Everything was happening for a reason ... a reason beyond our understanding. She, Valentina Constance Briggs, notwithstanding her present circumstances, was still a single grain of sand on the endless beach where time met space, an indestructible, eternal part of the infinite, interwoven fabric of the spaceless, timeless, oneness of the One ...
 
The oneness of the unnameable One ...
 
The multiplicitous oneness of the One ...
 
The loving, compassionate oneness of the One ...
 
Valentina spoke the words, repeating the mantra on her breaths, as she had for most of her forty-one years, but they did not produce that peaceful feeling of complete surrender, and she could not detach. She sat there, on the floor, on her knees, her teeth chattering, staring at a wall, sensing that, all right, whatever had happened, however it was that she had ended up here (which she'd recently remembered, but had once more forgotten), she would never be feeling that peaceful feeling of total surrender ever again.
 
How long had it been since she'd felt it? Weeks? Months? She wasn't sure. She had taken it for granted, at some point, hadn't she? At some point in her former life? Yes. She had. She remembered that clearly. It had always been there, easily available, inexhaustible, or so it seemed. Nothing changed, and everything changed, once you detached. The world didn't change. What happened was, you had lost your perspective, and once you detached you got it back. If you felt afraid, confused, or sad, or angry, or any other negative feelings, it didn’t take those feelings away, but once you'd said your mantra and detached, you saw that they were only feelings, and the feelings had less to do with you somehow, and you were able to acknowledge them and let them go ... because you didn't have to feel those kinds of feelings, those negative, self-destructive feelings, those confusing, frightening, resentful feelings, and if you did ... well, that was your choice.
 
Yes. It was all coming back to her now ... again. She seemed to keep losing it and finding it. Everything happened for a reason. Everything always the result of a choice. You learned it as a child, this simple axiom, as you started down the Path of Responsibility. Later, you saw it bear itself out. The schools you attended, how you did, what you studied, the clothes you wore, who you married, your sexual preference, the corporation for which you worked, the house you lived in, the state of your health ... everything always the result of a choice.
 
Everything happened for a reason, and if you couldn’t see the reason, that only meant that you couldn’t see it, and you probably had some detaching to do. Remove the beam that is in your eye and the speck in the other's eye disappears. Anger is nothing but projected fear. Freedom grants us the freedom to choose but not the freedom not to choose ...
 
Valentina got up off her knees and stood up and shouted at the video camera that was mounted to the ceiling in the corner of the room.
 
"My fingers are turning blue in here, asshole!"
 
The video camera panned up with her and auto-focused on her new position. The PA beeped. A voice addressed her.
 
"This is Barry. How can I help you?"
 
"You can turn the fucking temperature up! I'm losing sensation in my fucking extremities!"
 
Valentina was a healthcare professional, so she knew how to talk to people like Barry. The profanity, however, was unfamiliar. She didn't know why she was talking like that.
 
"Oh, my, that doesn't sound good. I'll see if we can't adjust the thermostat. Oh, and your transport is being arranged. Should be just another few minutes."
 
Valentina took a deep breath and clapped and rubbed her hands together. She hopped and sort of danced around the room, to try to improve her circulation. The video camera panned and tilted, monitoring her every movement, the little red light on its housing blinking.
 
"Was there anything else at the moment, Ms. Briggs?"
 
There wasn’t anything else at the moment, so Barry switched off and left her alone to hop and dance around and clap, and do this kind of pursed-lip breathing thing. All of which, added to the state of her hair, which looked like maybe she had had it styled by someone with tremors who was totally blind, made her resemble a demented person, which, of course, technically, was what she was.
 
She was wearing the standard in-patient ensemble ... faux satin, lemon chiffon pajamas, matching grip-sole, ankle-length socks, and a plastic bracelet around her wrist with her name and a number, which she couldn't get off. She'd been in this room for several hours, seven or eight at least, she guessed, her sense was over the course of a night, but, the truth was, she had no idea. The room was a windowless holding cell, upholstered in pink, indestructible Naugahyde. There was some kind of rubbery padding behind it. The video camera and an intercom speaker were mounted out of reach in the corner of the ceiling.
 
Barry had advised her at regular intervals that her transport would be just another few minutes. He sounded like one of those teenage waiters you got at Giggles or the Salad Consortium who were always so happy to be your servers and tell you all about all the awesome specials. Valentina imagined Barry sitting at a console in the nurses station, watching her dance around and clap, talking, seemingly to no one at all, but in actuality talking to his girlfriend on a Strauss-Chen Industries Cranio-Implant. The SCI 227.8 was probably out of Barry’s price range, so Barry would be wearing a 226, which wasn't all that different from the 227s, except for a few superfluous features. Barry was likely still in school. Valentina put him in his mid-to-late thirties, which meant that he was Variant-Positive, and on some form of pharmatherapy, probably Zanoflaxithorinol H, or one of the earlier versions thereof. Something like seventy to eighty percent of the Variant-Positive population was on some version of Zanoflaxithorinol. The rest were on some other stabilizing agent, Lamictotegratol, Oxcarzenadrine, Olanzatriperidone, or one of the others. Barry was definitely on Zanoflaxithorinol. He spoke in that indefatigably cheery, slightly superior tone of voice, the hallmark of Zanoflaxithorinol patients. It made you sound, not totally obnoxious, but like you were privy to some secret wisdom you wished you could share with the others who weren't, but you knew, if you tried, they just wouldn't understand.
 
Valentina tried to remember how she had sounded when she'd sounded like that. She knew she must have sounded like Barry, and her husband, Kyle, and Susan Foster, but she couldn't play it back in her mind now ... her voice, in that supercilious tone. It wasn't as pronounced as that of the Clears, whose condescension was of a whole other order, but it was close, and it was causing her to grind her teeth, and to painfully clench her masseter muscles. She hated it now, that tone of voice. When exactly had she come to hate it? Hate ... hatred. That was the word ... it must have been, for what she was feeling. She imagined Barry with a sucking chest wound, flopping around on the floor like a fish, panicking, trying to cry out for help, but not being able to make a sound. The mental image of it made her sick. And yet she couldn't seem to erase it. What kind of monster was she becoming that imagined people with sucking chest wounds?
 
The day before, or whenever it was, before they transferred her into the waiting room, she had lain awake in four-point restraints and imagined gouging the tips of her fingers deep into Doctor Hesbani's neck, closing her hand around his laryngeal prominence, and ripping it clean out of his body.
 
Doctor Hesbani had been kneading her abdomen in different places with his first two fingers. He'd asked her whether it hurt ... there. And there. And what about there ... and there? Yes, it hurt. There and there. Valentina hurt all over. Doctor Hesbani nodded and smiled, like he'd just performed a magic trick, which he was waiting for Valentina to acknowledge. He looked like a giant badger or something. Valentina wanted to rip his throat out.
 
This part had happened in the S.I.C.U., or what they'd told her was the S.I.C.U. It didn't feel like an S.I.C.U. Then again, she was heavily sedated. She figured she'd been there about a week, or ten days maybe, or maybe longer. She'd woken up out of a dreamless nothing. Doctor Hesbani was hovering over her.
 
"Hello, Ms. Briggs. I am Doctor Hesbani."
 
It sounded like he was shouting, or singing. Droplets of mustard clung to his whiskers, which grew untended from below his eyes to the top of fleshy laryngeal prominence.
 
"You are in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. We have managed to stop your internal bleeding. You are experiencing some severe discomfort. We are giving you palliative care for this."
 
Valentina remembered thinking whatever they were giving her wasn't working. She felt like she was trying to defecate something the size and shape of a toaster. She couldn't remember where she was, or why she was there, or what was happening. She opened her mouth to try to ask, but a pulsating pain that started in her bowels radiated through her entire body, and paralyzed her, and she must have passed out.
 
The next time she woke it was much the same ... excruciating pain, fog of sedation, a few confused thoughts, then unconsciousness. That's the way it went for a while, exactly how long she could not say.
 
Then, one day, whenever it was, she had woken up, still in the restraints, and the Hadley Security Consultants were standing there. They were standing on either side of her bed, far enough up toward her head so that she had to turn from side to side to see the face of the one who was speaking.
 
"How are you feeling today, Ms. Briggs?" The one on the left, the man, asked her.
 
She rotated her head toward him, painfully.
 
"My name is Winston. This is Alicia. We're here to help arrange your transition."
 
Both of the Consultants had perfect skin, smiles full of flawless, bright white teeth. The whites of their eyes were utterly bloodless, the irises milky, infant blue.
 
"The doctors tell us you're recovering well ..." Valentina rolled her head to the right. "... which means it's time to start getting you ready." Alicia smiled like a flight attendant who really needs you to return to your seat.
 
Valentina, though no longer in agony, was weak, and still rather heavily sedated. She fought to get her mind to focus, but she didn't know what to focus it on. She scanned the room as best she could. She was looking for something. She didn't know what. The S.I.C.U. room, or whatever it was, was painted this horrible Creamsicle orange, like the color of a ten-minute tan gone wrong. The visitors chair was stacked with sheets. The shelf on the wall above it was empty, except for a plastic water pitcher. There weren't any flowers or cards or anything. Apparently no one had been to see her.
 
"We've got some release forms we need you to sign. But first let's just confirm your vitals." Winston read out her name, address, her husband's name, her place of employment, her Login IDs, and bank account numbers, each of which Valentina confirmed.
 
Winston and Alicia were definitely Clears. Both of them were in their mid-to-late twenties. They looked like A-list fashion models and spoke like Human Resources people.
 
"OK, good," Winston said. "Once your doctors have approved your release, you'll be moved to an interim transfer facility. Your ID bracelet is being prepared. You'll receive your bracelet at the transfer facility. Your old ID card, and all your other cards, have been deactivated and are no longer valid."
 
"The ID bracelet is just for transit," Alicia interjected cheerfully. You won't have to wear it indefinitely or anything."
 
"Your network logins and corresponding passwords," Winston continued, causing Valentina to jerk her head back over to the left again, "have been deactivated and are no longer valid."
 
"You'll be issued one mid-sized bag of clothing, hygiene articles, and other personal items."
 
"Personal funds in any bank accounts bearing your name, and your name alone, have been transferred into an escrow account for disposition at a later date."
 
"Normally, any such personal funds are used to offset the costs of your transport and housing during the quarantine period."
 
"Personal funds in any and all bank accounts bearing both your and your husband's names are heretofore deemed the property of your husband, and no claims or liens shall be set against them."
 
Valentina was turning her head from side to side as fast as she could as Winston and Alicia took turns spitting this verbal boilerplate back and forth at her. She felt like she was going to pass out. Fortunately, just as she started to do that, Alicia stepped up and began undoing the fur-lined plastic safety restraint that was pinning her wrist to the aluminum bed frame, which for some presumably legal reason Winston felt he needed to narrate.
 
"Alicia is undoing your right-hand restraint."
 
Valentina nodded gratefully. She smiled. It just seemed like the thing to do. Alicia reached over, took hold of her wrist, lifted it up and out of the restraint, and pushed a plastic inkless pen the size of toothpick between her fingers. She held out a tablet with a screen at the top and an isolated capture pad at the bottom. The screen was displaying what looked like a contract. The print was way too small to read.
 
"This is just a standard acknowledgment form. You, the Patient, hereby acknowledge your non-responsiveness to pharmatherapy, and freely elect to enter quarantine, effective as of your date of transfer. If you would just sign right here, Ms. Briggs."
 
Valentina signed the pad. Alicia smiled her Clarion smile, warm, yet unmistakably superior. Then she clicked the tablet, producing another form that Valentina could not read.
 
"You hereby acknowledge that, in your present condition, you pose a danger to yourself and others, and hereby agree to remain in quarantine until such time as a medical doctor determines you no longer pose such a danger."
 
Valentina signed. Alicia clicked.
 
"You hereby indemnify, and forever release, the Hadley Corporation of Menomonie, Wisconsin, and all its affiliates, subsidiaries and assigns, in respect to all claims of damage or injury arising from your treatment and quarantine period."
 
Valentina signed. Alicia clicked.
 
 
© CJ Hopkins 2025
 
This is an excerpt from the novel Zone 23 by CJ Hopkins, Arcade Publishing 2025.