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images were flashed all around her and it seemed as though they were real, and as if she could go wherever she wished in the world or beyond the world even. There were many different destinations, which William called ‘shows,’ which could be called up at the press of a button. Sarah did not much like the machine; it made her uncomfortable on an animal level, so she avoided it.
    The house was filled with the buzzing of a thousand little devices. Everything seemed to be controlled by what William called computers. The doors opened and shut if one approached, sliding walls she did not trust. What if it were to decide to close on her when she was but partway through? She spent her first weeks in captivity learning to trust that the myriad devices bore her no ill will. They had no will at all. There was no life to them. They were but mindless automatons with less sense even than a mayfly, though the feats they performed were complex.
    Zziiipppppp… Swooooossshh…
    Zziiipppppp… Swooooossshh…
    Zziiipppppp… Swooooossshh…
    “Sarah, what are you doing?”
    William came upon her sitting in front of her bedroom door, pressing the control panel open and closed, open and closed, open and…
    “Stop that, please,” he said, moving her hand away from the sensor. “What are you trying to do?”
    “I’m trying to see if it will get tired.”
    “It’s made not to get tired, though I imagine it could burn out if you did that to it all day and all night.”
    “And then what would happen?”
    “It would stop working.”
    “It would die.”
    “I suppose, in a manner of speaking, but it could be fixed.”
    “Nothing lives and nothing dies in this city,” she said morosely.
    “People live here. You live here.”
    “I’m just waiting to escape.”
    William’s expression drew grim. He did not like it when she intimated that she would escape. He thought the wonders of hot baths and sliding doors and things that went ‘bing’ in the night would be enough to satisfy her. He was wrong. She yearned for the sky, for the breeze and the little creatures that filled every niche of the world. The city was dead, filled with nothing but people. Not so much as a sparrow flew in the sky. Everything was sterile. The air was absent of bloom or pollen and carried no scent or spore. She hated it. These people did not live, they existed in a technological twilight. William had spent time in the wilds. He knew the beauty of the place, which made the fact he’d ripped her out of it all the more unforgivable.
    “Well, while you’re waiting for an opportunity to do that, I got you something.” He handed her something dense and rectangular. She gave it a suspicious glance, then picked it up. It was made of many leaves all bound together. A quick taste revealed that it was not edible.
    “What’s this?”
    “It’s a book. Those markings on the pages inside? They represent words. When you know what they mean, you’ll hear the author’s words in your own mind, in your own voice.”
    “More technological trickery.”
    “A very basic technology,” he said. “Some wild tribes mark images on rock walls, warning of possible dangers, or places where game thrive. This is the natural extension of that. When you learn what the symbols mean, you’ll be able to decode the meanings of not just this book, but all the writing in the city, and to create your own.”
    “I have no need of this, because I will not live in this city longer than it takes for me to find a breach in the wall.”
    William put his hands on his hips, seeming to grow larger with dark, handsome menace. The scars on his face could make him look quite fearsome, then she remembered that he was only trying to get her to ‘read’ and she stopped worrying.
    “You have need of it, because I say you do,” he said firmly. “You will begin your studies this day.”
    “I will not.”
    He sighed and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Why must everything be a battle with