2

He is awake. He hears the beating inside his chest and knows it to be his heart. Already, the dream begins to fade.

All living men have heartbeats. I am a man. Therefore, I am living.

He recognizes the voice within him as the source of his answers in his dream. He is confused to find himself now in control.

The logic of thought calms him and he opens his eyes. The familiar white light fills his periphery but now he knows he is not in the void, as he feels something on his back pulling him from behind.

Logic again considers his problem with his bank of knowledge and he deduces that it is his weight, and he is lying down. He pushes his arms up and they are blocked by the wall of white.

He feels the smooth concave surface surrounding him and he forces his arms outward. After a quick hiss the white glass gives way and to his left a beam of intense light grows wider as the cover of his bed opens away. The air outside is cold. He sits up, stiff and weak.

He is in a white room, with three other white glass cylinders, each taking up a separate corner of the room, each one identical, matching what he assumes his cylinder would look like, had he not opened it from within. On one wall is a window into another identical room.

Curious to look through the window, he takes his first unprecedented step off of the bed, and as he grants his legs the duty of supporting his weight, his knee gives way and he falls onto the cold sterile floor.

A feeling he recognizes as pain shoots through his elbow as it strikes the floor, and he cries out, alarmed by his voice and how meek it sounds. He lies on the sterile white floor, ashamed and angry.

Curiosity and boredom overcome, and the frail body manages to pull itself upright again. Disoriented, he looks around for the wall with the window and as he finds it, he is startled to notice the man, naked, in the other room, leaning on an opened cylinder, staring at him, looking nearly as frightened.

The man is frail looking, but it is not a frailness that comes with age. He resembles more a young man who is very malnourished, perhaps even starved.

“Wh-wh-“ he stutters, a fearful attempt to communicate. He lifts his arm and the naked man synchronizes his movement with his own.

He squints his eyes in puzzlement, and the other man does the same. Testing this, he touches his chest, and the man responds accordingly.

I move my arm. He moves his arm. I am a man. He is a man. He is…me?

A few more tests of movement with the man in the other room and he deduces that it is safe to approach. He walks towards the mirror, with weak and uncertain steps, and the two men make contact. He glides his finger along the glass, his untrusting eyes never leaving the eyes of his reflection.

He is me.