Attitude

Captives are held by enigmatic guardians who permit and even encourage the construction of escape devices, yet always frustrate them at the last moment. A shipboard physician awakens weightless in a copper-hued, six-sided cell and finds his sleeping bag dusted as if exposed to vacuum, implying removal from his cruiser. Drifting through a corridor lacking a fixed up or down, with ladders and locked grilles, he struggles to recover memory and to deduce how consciousness was taken. The narrative emphasizes careful observation, puzzling physical orientation, and a methodical attempt to understand a baffling system of control.