Chapter Twenty -Two
There were differing opinions as to the motivation behind the attacks but all agreed the deaths appeared to be in proportion to, or related to the offence previously committed.
Initially in the case of Matt, they thought perhaps he had just gone mad, but with the advent of the police officer, they began to suspect that there was more to Matt's dismemberment than meets the eye.
Al attempted to figure out the killer's modus operandi, but he only had two incidents on which to base his conjectures.
Apart from the thread that appeared to link the methods of death with the crimes initially committed, the only other thing Al had to go off of were the numbers of the days of the week when the attacks took place.
It happened to be that both events took place on days where both the week, and the day of that week were prime numbers. There was no certainty to Al's numerological approach to interpreting when the next strike would be, but neither Rob, nor Harry had proposed anything better.
Al felt confident enough to share his theory, and claimed that the next attack would take place in two days (day seven, of week five), or nearly two weeks after that (day three of week seven).
The next two days were tense, and productivity amongst the three remaining prisoners was reduced dramatically.
Neither Al, nor Harry ate much food; both of them largely in a state of meditative introspection. They munched on their stores; they did not speak much and spent the next 48 hours of anxiety in relative silence.
Having run out of alcohol, Rob was reverting to the near gluttonous consumption of food. He would eat until he was stuffed, and then pass out.
In consequence, he spent much of his time between his bed and the pantry
Rob realized that the wardens were doing nothing, and as far as he was aware, had not shown any indication that they had even witnessed the events.
He racked his brain thinking of the gigantic monitor he had scene back in the lab, and could not come to terms with the fact that with all their extensive surveillance equipment, Detention Technologies was not able to figure out they were being killed off.
The more he considered the matter, the more he suspected that they actually orchestrated the attacks.
Al and Harry had followed similar trials of thought, except they concluded that Dr Meredith was not actually aware of what was taking place within the camp.
Harry did not feel as though Dr. Meredith had any motive to kill them off. He was also suspicious about the abrupt dissipation of the police officer during the incident at the lake.
If the police officer had been solid, then it would have seemed that there was another physical entity within the camp, but the willful dissipation seemed to imply a manipulation within the digital foundations of the prison.
If the officer could willfully dissipate, then what other aspects of reality might prove just as malleable?
To Al, it seemed likely that whatever had been committing these acts of retributive violence was native to the fourth-dimensional space, which was why it was able to violate the apparent laws of physics set in place to govern their digitized existence.