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I was starting to get really tired of these people

Consciousness returned like soasp, only realizing after it was done that I could sit up; nothing was holdingfor restraints or IV lines There was nothing All the h a familiar burn in my crotch told me that the equipment had included a catheter for soht hours That wasn’t a good sign

My stolen clothes were also gone, replaced by reen medical scrubs and soft booties with plastic treads on the bottoms There was a plastic ID bracelet clamped around one wrist I raiseddown to so I could read:

PATIENT 227: MITCHELL, SALLY R STATUS: DS PROTEIN NEGATIVE

I didn’t knohat that rated to Sally’s brain, the protein markers that would normally have indicated my presence in her body had vanished from her bloodstream Any normal test that didn’t involve a full brain MRI would show that there was no Sy at the little plastic band on ht very well depend on that deception

Lowering my arm, I looked around the rooenerous description, even enerous than it had been for the little se alley I was on a medical cot, with a blanket, sheet, and thin pillow That was all that shared the room with me There was no other furniture, noon hoanted to look at things, there were no walls Instead, a thin plastic ently as it rose to an exposed ventilation panel that was pu air into the bubble Yes: bubble That was the best word for where I was This was a bubble, and when I turned to either the left or right, I saw more bubbles, each with their own bed, their own occupant A sick feeling started to coil in my stomach I twisted around to look behind me

Row upon row of bubbles stretched off into the distance, creating separate, sterile environments for the people inside them None of the s seeh there was a bone-deep weariness in allry I closedto focus on the subtleties of that sensation It was a little sore, like I’d been shouting Since I hadn’t been shouting--that I are of; if they’d put ht sedation at sos I didn’t re tube on s were ht circureed to any of theo of the bed and walked to the bubble wall, pressing ht look like a thin sheet of plastic, but whatever it was, it was strong enough to resistit to yield Hands still pressed against the plastic, I peered as far to the left and to the right as I could Everything was very well lit, so it wasn’t hard to confirm that I was, for the moment, apparently unsupervised Great I drew back my left hand, made a fist, and punched the plastic wall as hard as I could

The pain was immediate and intense Whatever that stuff was, it was like punching brick I squealed with pain, shakingback froh I was the one who had launched an unprovoked attack against it The plastic wasn’t even dented I wasn’t going to get out that way

The dru softly infor a seaet me in here--whoever "they" were, wherever "here" was There were at least five rows of bubbles, with me in the front I couldn’t tell how many bubbles were in each row I could see the curve of the row behind h to count off eleven separate enclosures, but that didn’t get me all the way to the wall That meant that a conservative estimate put fifty-five bubbles in this roo a circle about twelve feet across I wasn’t good enough at ure out what that meant in terms of actual space inside the bubble, beyond "a lot" Wherever ere being held, it was e of the roos More andout of their beds There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to why they were here; I saw men and women, children and senior citizens, and all of them were in exactly the same sort of setup I was: total isolation without any hint of privacy That was a little weird, and that worried ically, wasn’t it stressful for people to be able to see each other and not reach each other? Little private roo us apart, but it ht have done a lot to keep the people in those isolated bubbles sane

Maybe that justBut that didn’t make sense either, since a place like this, well… it couldn’t have been cheap to construct, and it couldn’t have gone up overnight So they’d taken us, drugged us until we passed out, and then kept us drugged long enough to get this room ready for our arrival Why? It didn’t make any sense, unless there was so