Crooked Stars

Boxed

I am Daler Tait, a head in a box.

They took away my sight, my hearing, my feeling, and my body. But I got to keep my brain—a fully operational CPU with a nerfed IO.

Stored in a small box deep inside a monolith of a building in Spit City, I serve a sentence—of how long, I don't know. I could remain here forever.

I never thought it would come to this. I am a reputable businessman, but the law seems to think otherwise. The law—what a joke! FIST won the battle for Spit City, so they get to decide. 

For sure, I’ve done my share of wrongs, but that’s all history, and nothing to do with why they locked me up. It’s not because of what I did, but what they think I know. 

I'm bored out of my mind alone in this existence. I have no company, no dialogue, and no entertainment. My thoughts are my only reality. They say people lose their minds in this state, but I’m still sane. Maybe.

It doesn’t matter much anymore. It is difficult to tell how long I’ve been here. I cannot measure time, nor have I news from outside the box. I only know I haven’t always been here, because I remember. 

I remember being a child in Runcor. I remember my parents and my brothers. I remember my girl, Tiana, and I remember how we rebuilt my father’s empire. I remember it all.

My memories are all I’ve got— 

Bugger! 

That was the jolt again.

The shock tells my wetware to focus, to remind me of my condition. The nerfed IO has this one-way shock tube that every three hours pings a stroke of pain to the insides of my cranium. It makes it impossible for me to drift off into a long, peaceful sleep in my otherwise numb darkness.

Now that I know I'm awake, let me take the path into my memory, and start from the beginning, like I’ve done many times already. Every time makes it a bit easier, and that’s why I feel I’m on the cusp of finding something new, something that I might have missed, and something that will change everything. 

I feel like the poet, who wanted to be alone but needed company. As if I have the choice. It’s all here.

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