Work Text:
There was an old form of imprisonment, back home on Ring before the discovery of the Eye. It was to submerge a diving bell deep within the swamp waters of the seaside and use the rising gases as a way to force a timer on a prisoner to confess before they asphyxiate. It has its detractors, who think the swamp gas results in hallucination and misplaced confessions that are not true, but it never is something that the supporters ever mention. A prisoner is chained inside, body attached to the inside of the bell and a large window showing the outside. If the prisoner were to give in and confess, they must tear off an antler and show it in the window for others to see and indicate to raise the bell. This way, a prisoner cannot use the chance to get clean air. They’ve only got two chances to indicate that they give in and must use them wisely or risk being left down there forever even if they wanted to confess.
The antler in a circular porthole became a symbol of surrender, of knowledge once hidden that is now revealed. The one or no-antlered head is one that instantly inspires suspicion. Even retroactive pictures of the individual will have an antler removed, to preserve their guiltiness across all depictions. Freedom comes with a price that will be paid forever.
This bell isn’t airtight. This bell isn’t submerged in a swamp bed. The prisoner will not suffocate or succumb to hallucinatory gases. Their fate is far, far worse.
The prisoner had already used one antler so far in a desperate bid to get out. In those moments of wakefulness, locked in the sarcophagus, they had desperately torn at their own antler in hopes that it would express itself in their virtual avatar. It was a relief to see it removed and sitting at the floor of the dream prison when they had closed their eyes against the desperate all encompassing hunger, but that relief was lost when the watchers outside of the prison saw the antler, saw the clear signal, and turned away. They would renounce the Eye entirely if it meant that they could breathe fresh air again, didn’t have to fear the moment that they no longer felt hunger and knew they were trapped forever in the dream.
The prison wouldn’t lift. There would be no surrender permitted. Even dying would be forbidden, a digital user cannot blow out their own flame for reasons esoteric and unknown and likely very clearly coded in for situations such as this.
Will it be a relief once the somatic torture of a body bereft of sustenance and hydration finally ends? Or will it be all the worse for what final coffin nail it represents? For how once the body is gone and the mind captured, any tiny chance of escape will forever be kept out of reach by utterly unforgiving jailers?
There was a glass of water left to forever refill in the dream world. Was it a taunt or a mercy? There was a board game set out and ready for use between challenger and opponent. A dig at their isolation, or an unintentional detail left behind during the hasty building of this part of the simulation?
Perhaps the jailers simply were that cruel. After all, they had put so much so quickly towards creating a new part of the beautiful simulation, tainting that snapshot of Ring with a ruthless representation of forms of incarceration long thought to have been left behind in the enlightened pursuit of the Eye.
Wake. Feel the dig of bedstraps against ribs that have lost all their fat. Feel the hunger that drowns and devours and screams for acknowledgement. Scrape desperate gouges into the wood of the coffin with claws that have long become bloody nubs. Feel the dried blood on their face crackle whenever they yelled for someone, anyone, to take mercy.
Sleep. Stare into the dark ceiling of the cage that is more than simply the walls surrounding them. Wonder at how badly they will respond when they actually die. Will they simply crumble before the face of eternity?
Wake. Feel how dry the mouth is, how much the tiny gasps of air are louder than any grand concert ever was before in their exhausted ears. How much their feet hurt in the tiny floorspace left to stand in the coffin. How little their strength comes to them to even attempt to push at the lid anymore.
Sleep. Do not remember closing eyes, but knowing that they must be sleeping for how the body’s pains recede into a background ache. Will that be what dying feels like? The aching continuing to recede into a grey mist, a feeling that will fade and never come back again?
Wake. Renew attempting to break open the coffin. If they could just get out then they could escape into the water, they could drink and eat, they could pretend that they were still trapped so that the coffin wouldn’t be rebuilt but know that they are free. They just had to keep going, they swear they can feel the metal through the wood now in some parts, if they can only get that far then they can try to break through. They just need the strength.
Sleep. When did they start sleeping? Continue tearing at the walls, even as they are harder than any wood should ever be, even as the terrain as coded in as indestructible.
Wake. Are they awake? They might still be sleeping, the room was so quiet and they felt so lightheaded and they might just float up through the top windows into the false sky and meet Ringparent themselves at this rate. They needed to continue scraping at the walls, it was all that they had left and they didn't have the time to rest but... their eyes are so tired...
Sleep. Wake? Sleep. No, they were awake. It was hard to tell at this point when their head hurt so much, when they couldn't even remember what water was supposed to feel like they were so dried out. The hunger was all encompassing and chewed a hole in their chest, but the thirst simply sucked them dry of anything that they could consider 'themself' by this point. It wasn't fair. None of this was fair. They were the only one who saw the hypocrisy to lock away something that had driven all of them so far, to feel like there would be no chance to meet any other strange being at the edge of the universe like this. Wouldn't it have been worth it if they had encountered something else while out here? Wouldn't it have made the journey retroactively worth something? Anything?
W - no. They cannot tell anymore. It was hard to remember what being alive was supposed to feel like, when they must be spending so much time asleep at this point. Every dream moves seamlessly from one to the other and they cannot determine a difference between the nightmares and the waking world. At least the simulation is quiet. At least the simulation is unchanging. At least the cage is cool and dark and they can rest without fear in it.
Was it like this just before the prisoners died in the old days too? A fear, a terror that overrode everything as they tried to tear away from the chains and dive into the water to escape, which faded as the air grew murkier and darker and left them confused and uncertain of their own fate? Was it like this, the hallucinations choking away the last moments of lucidity before death so they couldn't even figure out when the threshold was crossed?
Because they knew it would be crossed. Eventually. One day the lantern would light and never go out again. One day the eyes of a withered and dying body will close for the last time and leave the mind to whisk away into infinity forever.
They'll have plenty of time to marvel at the horror of that statement soon. They'll have the rest of the time left in the universe as a whole. With nobody coming to answer the call of the Eye after them, it's not like there will be anything to cut their solitude short.
Perhaps one day in the future one of the others will be willing to come in and give them a chance to atone. Perhaps one day they'll get the opportunity to hold up that antler they broke off and have it acknowledged. Perhaps eternity won't be that bad if they asked forgiveness for their choices. Maybe by that point they will actually even feel sorry for them.
But they doubt it.
At least with how confusing and hard it was to open their eyes in the darkness, how hard it was to think through the haze of thirst, they won't feel a thing when they pass. They're already too weak to remember to even lift their hands to claw at the lid now. Every time they return to lucidity in the simulation they wonder why they didn't even consider adding another score to the wood. But then they wake and the thought is lost beneath the foggy dreamlike nothingness of surviving past the expiration date.
It's coming. It is inevitable. The clock is ticking down, they know it.
It's coming.
It's ...