1– The Dark Room

The last time Knight saw anyone was in his prison cell in July 2012. A man named Shadow had delivered his last meal: bacon-wrapped filet mignon, mashed potatoes loaded with butter and sour cream, mushrooms, and peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream for dessert. He savored each bite while watching Michael Phelps win his twenty-second medal in the London Olympics.

This was hours before he was injected with the potassium chloride solution that should have put him to sleep forever, but here he was, now sitting at a table in a dark room feeling like he'd awoken from a three-hour nap.

There was a teenage boy across the table, horn-rimmed glasses, a mountain of brown hair, and soft brown eyes.

"So…" said Knight.

"So," said the boy. "You should first know that my name is Fin, and I'm not real. I'm a hologram. Here, touch my arm."

Knight passed his hand through the boy's arm. Was this a dream?

"You're not dreaming. G specifically chose my likeness to deliver you this news. There were notes from your psychologist that said you read the entire Harry Potter series one week before your planned execution. He noted your intense connection with JK Rowling's character. G believes this news will be more palatable coming from someone who looks like me."

Knight barely comprehended what was said, except for the words planned execution. They hung in his mind for a moment, which didn't seem to be working very quickly. "What is G?" He looked around the room, looked for anything that might indicate this was some kind of weird dream or the afterlife, but everything was pitch black except for the hologram. He reasoned that it had to be a dream—he clearly remembered his execution, the cold syringe pricking his vein, drifting off into a peaceful sleep while five people watched from behind the observation glass.

"I'll explain about G later. For now, all you need to know is they are the one, true government in our society. The only one."

Knight noticed the forcefulness with which Fin said one, true government.

"The year is 2137," Fin continued. "In 2012, you were selected to be a part of a genetic experiment."

Knight rubbed his eyes. "Twenty-one, thirty-seven. How is that possible? That would put me—"

"Into your mid-one hundreds. It's possible because you were never lethally injected. You were given a powerful sleeping agent, taken into an underground bunker, and cryogenically frozen."

Knight laughed. This was getting ridiculous. "Cryogenically frozen like Walt Disney? Like someone on Star Wars or something dorky like that? I know I was on death row, but is that even legal without my consent?"

The hologram maintained a deadpan expression. "There is no evidence to substantiate the rumor about Mr. Disney. However, you are correct. Being cryogenically frozen without permission, even for death row inmates, is no longer legal. Although it was allowed from 1999 to 2020 in special circumstances."

Knight stood from the table. "Okay, if it really is the year you say, that means everyone I know is dead. My brother, my sister, all of my friends…" Knight looked off for a moment.

"G has calculated that there is a strong probability, above sixty percent in fact, that you did not kill her. This is why G is taking a chance on you. What I'm about to offer is a chance at redemption, to prove to the world your strong probability of innocence and—"

Knight rolled his eyes. "Redemption? Prove my strong probability of innocence? Everyone I know is dead." He took a few steps around the room. For whatever reason, his eyes weren't adjusting to the darkness, and he absently wondered if this was intentional. "Listen, I'm guessing this is my afterlife. Can't you just go back to Hogwarts or Narnia or wherever it is you came from, and we can call this a day?"

"Before you reject G's proposal, we would like you to know that you here hand-picked for a moment like this. You have an IQ of 125 and have scored in the top one percent on every standardized test you've ever taken, including the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, and—"

"I know what I scored."

"It's not only your intelligence. G is most impressed with your athletic resume as well. You qualified for the Olympic swim team but got sick at the Trials and never got your chance to compete."

Knight didn't want to take a walk down that memory lane. He was supposed to swim four different events in that meet. After swimming one, he dropped out altogether, completely crushed by the flu.

"And it's a little known fact," Fin continued, "that you nearly made the winter Olympics in the biathlon. Your shooting was near perfect. Your cross-country skiing, however, was seriously flawed."

"Hmm. Flawed." Knight looked down at the table and laughed. "I injured my knee one month before the Trials in a snowmobile accident. I never told anyone."

Fin's eyes widened at the mention of this information. "Never mind your probable indiscretion. You remain a perfect candidate for the second version of the program. The most convincing quality for G is that you grew up without parents from an early age." Fin said this without any hint of empathy in his voice.

Knight mostly ignored the last statement about his parents, though it struck him as a bit strange. "What program are you talking about exactly? And second version?" He looked at him as if he'd just been challenged. "I wasn't good enough for the first version?"

"No you were not. There were ten others ahead of you."

Knight raised his eyebrows and briefly smirked. "I'm still not sure you're real, and I doubt I'll be interested in whatever program it is you're talking about." He looked directly at the hologram and tried to measure its reaction.

The hologram flickered, and Fin's eyes widened and went strangely blank for a moment as if he were lost in thought. "Before we proceed with a real lethal injection, G would like to add one more piece of information."

Knight sat back down at the table. "Wow, that didn't take much. It's kind of an all or nothing proposal isn't it?"

"We believe we have new information about who might have killed Rouge and why."

Silence suddenly filled the room.

Knight's heart began pounding at the mere mention of her name. Rouge. It's not even her real name, he thought. How did he know that name?

When they had just started dating, she surprised him by dyeing her hair bright red for his state swim meet as a show of support (red and white were his school colors). Rouge, was the first thing that popped into his head when she walked up to him after a race. It was shortly followed by, She did that for me.

From the moment he called her Rouge, she jokingly pouted and fussed about it but really loved it. It was his name for her, and it was just right, the way a white, silvery snow on Christmas Eve night was right.

"Before you make any decision, G would like you to watch this two-minute video. I assure you, this is all very real. If it helps, imagine the wonderment I felt when G told me I would look like a boy wizard today. It was tough for me to believe."

Knight laughed. "But you're not real."

"People like me are a lot more real in 2137 than you'd imagine."

What does that mean? he wondered.

"A lot has changed since the year 2012. Things are a bit chaotic at the moment in our colony, and we need your services urgently tonight. Now for the video." Fin transformed into a 3-D picture of an American flag with nine stars ruffling in the wind. The words VIDEO LOADING hung in the air.