Chapter Fifteen
Once the five inmates were up and moving, it did not take long for them to make social arrangements.
Rob and John stuck together, while Matt tended to be an antagonistically dependent sort of loner.
Matt would approach each person as a tentative partner, but whether it was pride, or an inability to construct a social bond, he inevitably pushed himself away once more due to his brash comments and elitist attitudes.
Al tended to be generally disliked, but he did his best to work toward supporting himself. When he had extra time, he would do things to benefit the collective, but as with the blankets on the first night, he did not advertise his assistance.
The only one who seemed to notice Al's innocuous acts of kindness was Harry, who also operated on a solo basis.
When it came down to foraging in the forest for food, collecting and chopping firewood, and cooking for themselves, Harry went about his chores as though there were no-one else around.
Others watched, learned, and did not offer gratitude and after completing two tours in Iraq, Harry Pinchan didn't need it.
***
Harry had been celebrating his tour with a New York City bar crawl. Everywhere he turned, it was, “Thank you for your service,” or, “don't know what to do with yourself now, huh?”
Mostly, Harry had ignored these comments, but it got to him after a while and he had almost got into a fight over it.
Some old guy started spouting his thoughts on patriotism and the legitimacy of the war. Harry finally spoke his mind.
“I don't care for your opinions. I didn't ask you. Whether or not the war is legitimate doesn't change the fact that my friends are back there dying, or coming home with enough emotional baggage to backlog a TSA screening for hours.”
“That'll be their firearms and concealed weapon permits,” the man responded, “The emotional baggage only weighs in once they get to the psychiatrists office at the VA.”
“I'll drink to that,” Al offered the stranger a good-natured laugh.
“Not sure you should mix alcohol with those prescriptions,” said the old man.
“I figure if bullets and bombs didn't get me, then a neurochemical cocktail shouldn't pose too much of a threat – besides, alcohol takes the edge off.”
“Live and let live,” responded the man.
With that the man left, and Harry stayed until closing time. The bartender had set a glass down on the counter nearby while he had fallen asleep.
Al suddenly woke looking around wildly. Once he registered where he was, his breathing slowed, and he ordered a bottle of beer for the walk home.
The bartender took the five from his hand, and placed the cool beer on the bar for him to drink - provided that he didn’t drink it there, and told the cops he had bought it at a liquor store.
Harry waved the bartender off and creaked his way across the stained hardwood floor, toward the parking lot outside.
As he edged outside and looked around, he eyed some figures fighting amongst themselves in a corner of the parking lot.
The lighting was dim, but he recognized from sight, and the sound, that there were two males and one female.
The two men were holding the woman down, and raping her.
Before he knew what was happening, he had closed in on the trio, knocked off the man on top of the girl, crushing his esophagus with a single strike from his boot.
The rapist's accomplice then called out to the bartender, who was outside collecting the welcome mat before locking up for the night.
The bartender witness Harry crack the beer bottle he had just purchased over the head of the remaining male, while the girl screamed and ran away.
The cops showed up while Harry was arguing with the bartender and arrested Harry for murder, assault, and public drunkenness.
Comments drifted toward him whilst in the back of the police car about training killers and letting them run the streets like dogs.
The rapist's accomplice spoke against Harry in court, telling some sob story about how this drunken, loose cannon, Vet came over and went postal on his friend, and himself.
His face was still scarred from where the bottle had gouged his skin.
“They ought to put him down, for what he did to my friend.” the accomplice claimed, after he testified.
When the girl came to the stand, Harry thought, “Ah, this will all be sorted out now,” but the friend had threatened the girl and her sister, telling them that if they talked, he would kill both of them.
The girl came to the stand, claimed they were minding their own business, and then were assaulted by this crazy Veteran. Harry was crestfallen.
“After all the shit I did in Iraq maybe I do deserve to be 'put down',” Harry thought as the jury was coming to their conclusions.
The Judge determined that Harry was guilty on all accounts, and would be sentenced to death.
Harry, like each of the five selected for the experiment, was certain he was going to die. He figured that God, or Fate was simply playing him a hand, and that he deserved it for the actions he had committed in his life.
He was impassive when it was announced that he would be pardoned from death row.
Stoically, he accepted life in reflection of his own actions as though it were the equivalent to being put to death for murder. After all, intentions are not what truly matters in life - Harry had learned that much.
Only after arrival in the digital plane, did Harry begin to feel more positively about his life.
In this way Harry proved an anomaly amongst the other members of the experiment; most feeling increasingly uncomfortable as time went on.
John, who was more technologically cultured than the others, remarked that fourth-dimensional space was similar to playing an online role-playing game. He claimed that from a distance, everything appeared to be real, but when he got up close to each environmental component, including other people, his perceptions became distorted, and reality took on an impressionistic, almost cartoony appearance.
Others observed a sense of wavering that occurred; as though the boundaries of objects were not as defined as they should be. Sensory input was also distorted. Touch was either uncomfortably smooth, so that even touching the surface caused shivers to go up the person's spine, or almost comically rough, like an exaggerated cat tongue. Smells and tastes were often too sharp, or too bland to be taken really seriously.
Not all of the experience was comical, or misrepresentative of reality.
It had not been five days when Rob had managed to brew some wine out of the rice and ginger that was offered to them in the larder. With a basic recipe, and some preparation, he managed to extract several cups of wine. Naturally, he consumed all of the wine himself, and then went about his day as though none would be the wiser.
He then went about cutting wood, with the use of an axe, trying to vent some of his anger. His aim slipped, and he brought the blade down at an acute angle toward the wood. When the blade struck at the wood, it bounced and gashed him across the calf.
The alcohol in his system caused his thinned blood to pour out over his leg, soaking into his sock.
Al found Rob fussing over rags, wet with blood. A simple first aid wrap had been sufficient to quell the bleeding, but the incident worked to reinforce the reality of their increasingly dissociative experience within fourth dimensional space.