She counted the bars each morning. Seventeen vertical. Nine horizontal. The old man in the next cell had been counting for decades and his numbers were different every time he spoke them. Forty-three. Eighteen. Two hundred and seven.
The woman who brought the gruel wore a uniform made of paper money. Bills stitched together with thread spun from receipts. When she walked the corridors the sound was like autumn leaves or distant applause.
They pay me in cages, she said to the man through the slot. Build one, earn one.
What do you do with them? he asked.
Live in them, she said. What else?
The old man had begun eating his cell. Mortar first, then the bricks themselves. His teeth were gone but his gums had hardened into something like stone. The guards brought him bigger cells as he consumed the smaller ones. A system of promotion through consumption.
In the yard they played a game where they pretended to be free. The rules were simple. Stand very still. Breathe quietly. Think of nothing. The winner was whoever could do this longest without screaming.
She won most days.
The warden was a child who had never been outside. Born in the administrative wing, raised on policy manuals and profit reports. His cradle had been a filing cabinet. His toys were miniature cells with miniature prisoners who performed miniature crimes.
The man asked the woman in the money dress why they didn't simply leave.
The doors aren't locked, she said.
Then why?
She gestured at the walls, the bars, the concrete yard where nothing grew.
This is what outside looks like now, she said. We built it everywhere.
The old man had eaten through to the next cell where he found another version of himself, younger but still ancient, still counting bars that multiplied as he counted them. The two old men regarded each other with the familiarity of mirrors.
Which one of us is real? asked the first.
Both, said the second. Neither.
They began to eat each other.
The child warden announced over the loudspeaker that the prison had been sold to itself in a transaction that generated tremendous profit while changing nothing. The building would now house the same prisoners who would also serve as guards who would also function as administrators in a system of perfect efficiency.
She asked the man if he remembered his crime.
I built this place, he said.
That's not a crime, she said.
It is now, he said.
In the distance, beyond the walls that were not walls, in the world that was not world, other prisoners in other cells were building more cages for the prisoners they would become when the building was complete.
The woman in the money dress unlocked her own cell and stepped inside.