3. Fiction- "Hope"

There is a white rectangular room, inside which there are some objects- one bed, one table, one big metallic machine. This room has neither doors nor windows. It is built in one defined area, sized as an average prison cell, and is surrounded by four white cement walls which stand under a very low ceiling.
In front of the four walls lie the different objects- In front of one wall the bed is placed, in front of another stands the table, on one wall the metallic machine is fixed and on another, the air conditioning system of the room. The air conditioning system consists of a mechanism of three cogwheels of different sizes, above them a small electric bell, and underneath them two holes, of four and six centimeter in diameter. Behind the three cogwheels is a very big mirror.
Inside this white rectangular room lives a man.

No one knows how he had arrived there, or for how long he is living in the room and he does not know to answer the exact same questions. We know, though, that he lives alone for many years in filth and dirt, and all about his daily routine.
The daily routine of the man is simple and mechanical.
Each morning the electric bell rings from the direction of the air conditioning system.
He wakes up and leaves the bed, dresses in the same old clothes and opens the lid of the system.
In the small hole he discovers an empty bottle of glass and inside the big one he finds one piece of bread inside a wooden bowl.
Every undefined number of days a small piece of meat is found next to the bread.
(The meat appears usually every five days, but sometimes every seven, ten, even fifteen days, or suddenly in surprisingly three days in a row).
After eating his single meal, the man is ready for the daily work.
He takes from the machine a pile of empty inlaid papers which he finds in the paper tray, and a mechanical pen, which is attached by a string to the machine.
His job is to fill each of the one thousand twenty four squares that are in each page with a thin metallic plating which is created by the mechanical pen.
The number of the arriving pages is constant (two hundred eighty one pages, which decreased within the years to two hundred thirteen) and provides the man an average seven hours of continuous work.
After finishing working, the man puts the completed papers and the mechanical pen inside the machine and waits with the bottle near its faucet.
The machine is the largest object of the room, and is capturing most of the wall which is in front of the bed.
In its center there is a round red button, which is above the paper hole and below one simple bulb. In the right side of the machine there is a charging hole in which the mechanical pen is recharging. When it stays out of its base, the bulb is lit in yellow.
When the man finishes his duties and puts the papers inside the paper hole, the bulb is lit in green, the machine takes the pages, and water begins to flow from the faucet for a random period of time, which lasts from twenty to fifty four seconds.
The man, who is used to this procedure, is filling the bottle and drinks while the water is still running, in order to fill the bottle as much as possible within the limited time.
Usually he succeeds to fill one half to three quarters of the bottle, but sometimes even less than that.
After drinking to saturation he makes his needs inside the wooden bowl, puts it down together with the bottle of glass in the appropriate holes and closes the air conditioning lid. If he did put the bottle and the bowl correctly, after closing the lid the bell rings another time, allowing him to go to sleep.
He lies down on the bed, puts away his clothes and falls asleep the next moment.
The next day this ritual returns almost exactly- a bell in the morning, bread inside an empty wooden bowl, two hundred and thirteen pages to fill, an empty bottle- and so as in the next day, the next week and the next month afterwards.
In the nights, however, the man acts in a complete freedom.

As one might guess, in the night the man dreams on the possibility of going out from the room, as impossible as it might look, and on what expects for him outside (his limited imagination allowed him only to think about another kind of room, bigger, inside which he will get one piece of meat every day and an unlimited amount of water). In his dreams he makes the machine to work instead of him, and tries to understand how it works.
In one of his early dreams he imagined that he succeeded to find an exit from the room behind the air conditioning system. In other dream, he broke the machine through the paper hole, and discovered a way out. Needless to say that the man had tried everything he could in order to discover more about his whereabouts, and had tried hundreds of thousands of times to understand the mysteries of the air conditioning system and breaking the metallic machine.
After he became desperate from all these useless attempts, he had begun to fall into a long mystical period, where he treated the machine and the air conditioning system with god-like powers.
During this long period, the man believed that the machine determines his own fate, and gives him “charities” (meat) and “punishments” (five days or more without meat) according to his behavior and his actions towards it.
He had begun sacrificing parts of his daily food, by putting pieces of meat inside the holes of the air conditioning system, until he had almost died from hunger.
In the “feasts of the holy meat”, as he called the days where he got the small and moldy piece of uncooked dry meat, he danced around the machine with the full bottle of water, sprinkles drops of water on the floor and beats himself to bleeding, in hope that the god of the machine gives him the rare grace of another “feast” tomorrow.
In case of a “punishment” that came after the “feast”, the man believed that he didn’t hit himself with enough devotion, and therefore he used to beat himself even harder during the normal days, in order to please the god from his rage.

In one day of “feast”, while thank-dancing to the god of the machine, the man stumbled with his leg and all the water which was inside the bottle has spilled on the floor. The man, who sacrificed to the machine most of his food for two days in a row and was tired and exhausted, understood that because his stupidity and he his lack of carefulness he will not get any food tomorrow. In a moment of despair he held the empty bottle and tried to shake the machine, hoping for a miracle to come and give the faucet more water today.
While shaking the machine, the bottle slipped from his hands and broke on the floor.
Frightened and scared, the man didn’t know what to do, and was walking back and forth around the little room. It was not possible to put the glass together again, and the man understood in horror that he faces a serious life danger.
Trembling, he crawled to the floor, examining the glass pieces from close.
Then, with a sudden burst of anger, he threw the biggest piece of glass into the cogwheel system.
The cogwheels stopped from working, and the bell rang again. The man fixed to his place in amazement and in awe. Suddenly, the mirror which was in front of him opened.
An extended hand has appeared from the emptiness.
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There is a white elliptic room, inside which there are some objects- one mat, one fireplace, one big metallic machine. This room has neither doors nor windows. It is built in one dense defined area, which covers a rectangular structure that occupies most of the space of the room.
In front of the four walls of the inner construction lie the different objects- In front of one wall lies the mat, in front another the fireplace, in one wall the metallic machine is built and on another, the air conditioning system of the room. The air conditioning system consists of a mechanism of three cogwheels of different sizes, above them a small electric bell, and underneath them two holes, of four and six centimeter in diameter. Behind the three cogwheels there is a very big mirror.
Inside this white elliptic room lives a man.

No one knows how he arrived there, or for how long he is living in the room and he does not know to answer the exact same questions. We know, however, that he lives alone for many years in an intolerable filth and stench, and all about his daily routine.
The daily routine of the man is simple and mechanical.
Each morning the electric bell rings from the direction of the air conditioning system.
He wakes up and leaves the dirty mat, completely naked and clothes-less, and goes to open the lid of the air conditioning system.
Inside the small hole he discovers a bottle of glass with some water (it is usually half full) and inside the big one he finds a wooden bowl, full of semen and excrement.
Every undefined number of days, small pieces of bread is found inside the bowl of semen. (They appear usually every five days, but sometimes every seven, ten, and even fifteen days, or suddenly in a surprising three days row).
After drinking the little amount of his daily water, the man is ready for his work.
He takes from the machine a pile of inlaid papers covered by thin metallic plating which appears in the paper tray, and a mechanical pocketknife, which is attached by string to the machine.
His job is to peel, using the pocketknife, the metallic plating from each of the one thousand twenty four squares that are in each page. This job is very hard and requires a great deal of concentration, in order not to tear the pages and not to get cut, both of which happen very rarely due to his high skill and dexterity.
The number of the arriving pages is constant (two hundred eighty one pages, which decreased within the years to two hundred thirteen) and provides the man an average nine hours of continuous work.
After finishing working, the man lays the empty papers and the mechanical pocketknife inside the machine and waits in patience near the little oven which is inside it.
The machine is the largest object of the room, and almost blocking the way of passing in her side (actually, the moving options in the room are already very limited because the inner construction occupies most of the space of the room, and so the man needs to tighten his hands in order to move around the different places).
In its center there is a round red button, which is above the paper hole and below one simple bulb. In the right side of the machine there is a hole in which the mechanical pocketknife is sharpened. When it stays out of its base, the bulb is lit in yellow.
When the man finishes his duties and puts the papers inside the paper hole, the bulb is lit in green, the machine takes the pages, and bread is being baked after five seconds in the little oven, which is underneath the bulb.
The number of slices that are being baked is not constant. Usually, only one slice is made, but sometimes (every three days, more or less), the oven makes two slices or very rarely, three slices of bread (the man recalls only three or four times in all of his lifetime). Because the man must save one slice to the air conditioning system (he learned, very fast, that if he doesn’t he will not get water in the next day), he lives from the single slice of bread which he got in the “double bread” days, which he divides into small pieces and saves it to the next days, and from the small pieces that are sometimes arriving inside the bowl of semen and excrement. Also, when he feels in his bones lack of calcium, he peels using the mechanical pocketknife one of the walls in the room and eats the cement with great desire.
After eating he makes his needs inside the same wooden bowl, and goes to throw all of its content to the ever-working fireplace (when, in the rare event of tearing a page, he used to throw it to the fire as well).
Finally, he opens the lid of the air conditioning system, and puts the empty wooden bowl together with the empty bottle of glass inside the appropriate holes and closes the air conditioning lid. If he did put the bottle and the bowl correctly, after closing the lid the bell rings another time, allowing him to go to sleep.
He lies down on the bed, completely naked, and falls asleep the next moment.
In the nights, however, the man acts in more freedom.

As one might guess, in the night the man dreams of better life than the one he has (his limited imagination allowed him only to think about another kind of room, bigger, in which he can pass without borders, and inside which he will get one slice of bread every day and a full bottle of water). In his dreams he makes the machine to work instead of him, and tries to understand how it works.
In his dreams, as well as in reality, he tries numerous times to put an end to his life using the pocketknife and the ever-burning fire, but always stopped because of an unexplainable gleam of hope, that tomorrow he will find the yearned salvation, which will give him appropriate daily food and drink and will brake the horrible mechanism in which his stays.
Because of this unexplainable hope, he had begun to fall into a long mystical period, where he treated the machine and the air conditioning system with god powers.
In this long period, the man believed that the machine determines his own fate, and gives him “charities” (slices of bread) and “punishments” (little amount of water) according to his behavior and his actions towards it.
He had begun making thanks ceremonies for the god of the machine in the “feasts”.
In the “feasts of the holy bread”, he danced around the machine in devotion, injures himself with the pocketknife, and even cuts small pieces of his flesh which he used to sacrifices to the air conditioning system, in hope that the god of the machine will be content, and will give him the rare grace of another “feast” tomorrow.
In case of a “punishment” that came after the “feast”, the man believed that he didn’t cut himself enough generously, and therefore he used to cut himself even more during the normal days, until he could not suffer any longer and had to wait some days to heal his poor flesh.
In one of the eternal days in which the bell has rung, the man woke up and asked himself, like in every morning- Will today the bottle of water be full?