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Stories from the Verse
Versers Versus Versers
Chapter 55: Takano 9
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Chapter 54: Kondor 163
Tommy was not exactly thrown into the cell, but was pushed with enough force that she stumbled and landed on her knees. The arresting officer laughed as he closed the bars on the cell. He left; she was alone.
Again she thought to check her cell phone for signal, but again it showed nothing. This did not surprise her; after all, everything she had seen suggested she was living in the dark ages before the Internet. She again powered down the device and put it away. She sat on the bench and stretched out her legs. She wasn’t wasting the batteries on her devices just to tell time, so she didn’t know how long it was before another uniformed man entered the space beyond the bars of her cell. At this point she realized that there was only the one cell, and so she was in something like a secure interrogation room. She looked up at the man, and said, “Hello.” He gave her a puzzled look, and said something in Japanese. She smirked and shrugged. “I’m sorry. Like I told the other guy, I don’t speak enough Japanese to write a birthday greeting. English? American?” He scowled and left the room. Tommy looked around. There wasn’t much to see. The only window was high enough that she wouldn’t be able to see anything but sky through it from any angle, unless there happened to be tall buildings or airplanes outside, neither of which would be worth seeing anyway. The lack of bathroom facilities persuaded her that this was only an interrogation room, or a holding cell for brief detainments. They did not expect to keep anyone, including her, here for long. She wondered what she had done. Perhaps there was something offensive about the clothes she was wearing. Perhaps she was being held for loitering or vagrancy, for failing to give an adequate account of herself. Did they ask her for her passport, or for identification? She didn’t know enough Japanese to begin to guess what they had asked her. It didn’t really matter, though, because on the one hand they wouldn’t know what she was saying if she answered anyway, and on the other hand the only identification she had with her was her bus card which had arrived in the mail yesterday--well, maybe several days ago now, the day before the dream began--and a prepaid Visa® to buy school supplies and lunches. She continued waiting for what seemed a very long time, and eventually someone else entered the outer area. He closed the door, sat at the small table, straightened some papers and set them in front of him, folded his hand atop the table, and looking directly at her spoke. “They tell me you do not answer Japanese, but seem to be speaking English. Are they correct?”There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with ten other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #338: Verser Missteps. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
