Another pause.

"Let's begin. You do not need to speak, although your eyes must remain open except to blink normally. You can disregard this instruction, but doing so will commence your death by injection after thirty seconds. You can choose this fate, if you wish, but since no pain awaits you in any event, you may as well follow this course to its conclusion."

Sobol regarded Mosely with an appraising look. "You are beginning to master your fear. That's good. Make yourself ready." A pause of several seconds. "And we begin…"

The right-hand screen dimmed and Sobol dissolved into blackness. A single word appeared in large white letters:

FAMILY

After a few seconds it was followed by several more in turn:

RELIGION, VIOLENCE, SEX, LOVE, LAW, FREEDOM, HOPE, HONESTY, RESPONSIBILITY, HONOR, DEATH.

The screen went black again. Then the word FAMILY reappeared. It lingered on-screen, like a searchlight stabbing out for him in the darkness.

Mosely couldn't help but recall his son. His lost son. Mosely's recollections from his own childhood flooded in-growing up without a father. Alone. Guilt flowed through him. Self-loathing. Deep colors ebbed and flowed over the image of his brain. It no doubt signified strong emotion. Sobol was onto him already.

Mosely blinked a couple of times beneath the goggles. He could close his eyes forever and let the Demerol flow into his veins. He had more control over his destiny now than he had had in a long time. He had an exit door. A strangely reassuring one. He opened his eyes.

Then the film began.

A quick succession of video scenes. People talking with each other, hugging, greeting one another. A man picking up a child and laughing. Parents hugging. An elderly couple walking arm in arm. A child graduating. The pride of the parents. A child in sorrow. Sickness. An elderly man flatlining in a hospital bed to the pitiful shrieks of his wife. An angry father shouting at his children. A mother raising the back of her hand over a terrified child in a bedroom doorway.

It surprised Mosely that the most painful scenes were scores of videos on children. Interacting with their parents, screaming, playing, hugging, crying, laughing. Innocence abandoned. Innocence in peril. In fear.

Mosely found himself weeping silently behind the goggles, the tears rolling down his cheeks. He imagined his own son, alone in the world. And his own responsibility for this. A son who would never know family, thanks to Mosely's selfish stupidity. He almost closed his eyes forever and let the Demerol take him. He felt broken beyond repair-but the voices of children brought him back time and again. Those innocent faces that did not yet know cruelty. And the scenes kept coming for hours. There was now a special focus on children, as if Sobol had found Mosely's weak spot and was rubbing salt into the wound to see just how painful it was. Before long, images of abandoned children were all that were shown. Waiflike children walking forlorn and frightened on fearsome city streets. Mosely was a sobbing wreck. "Stop! Please stop!"

Soon the screen went black again, and the word RELIGION came up briefly. It lingered for only a few moments before it was replaced with the word VIOLENCE.

Sobol's mental searchlight was stabbing out for him again. Mosely could see the colors lapping in waves over the image of his brain.

The screen went black, and the films came up again.

The video showed a man tied into a chair in a drab cell. He was gagged. His eyes were wild with fear as a bearish man holding a machete entered the room. The bearish man proceeded to shout in what sounded like Russian. He raised the machete, and Mosely couldn't restrain himself from closing his eyes as the sound of steel slicing into flesh came through the headphones in perfect digital stereo. Muffled screams followed.

Mosely fluttered his eyes open and revulsion filled his throat with bile. It was a vision from hell, larger than life and twice as loud. The bearish man was hacking his victim to death-one limb at a time. It was not faked. Of that Mosely had no doubt. A deep depression came over him as he watched. It was beyond revulsion. The fact that such a thing could be suffered to exist. That a film could be made of it. It said more than he ever wanted to know about the depravity loose in the world. A slow boiling anger came over him. Was that man butchered just for this goddamned film? Fuck you, Sobol! Fuck you! Go ahead, read my mind, asshole! Mosely kept shutting his eyes momentarily as the machete came down. Two chops to sever the right arm at the socket. One for the left arm, as the torso fell forward over the legs…

He couldn't face it anymore. Mosely was breathing rapidly. The sounds were horrible. He couldn't escape them. Then just as suddenly they stopped.

Mosely opened his eyes to blackness.

What followed was a seemingly endless procession of violent scenarios-some more disturbing than others. In one, a man beat a woman bloody, when suddenly another man rushed in to attack the first-while the injured woman fled. Then there were scenes of men fighting each other-with fists, then knives, then guns. Then children fighting. Then adults attacking children. Women attacking women. There were street fights, ritualized duels, senseless accidents, electrocutions. Then sadomasochistic brutality. Erotically charged violence. Followed close on by violence against animals. It all looked entirely too real. The languages of the people in the films were mostly foreign, but the images had the raw, uncut look of a digital video shot as it happened.

Mosely's emotions ranged all over the map and frequently conflicted. He found himself tensing with righteous anger, then becoming aroused, then repulsed, and everything in between. Subtle differences in the interaction of those on-screen brought about shocking differences in his feelings even regarding similar events.

He couldn't guess how many hours had gone by. He felt as though he'd spent a tour of duty on the front lines. His mind was bursting with horrific images, and he was nearing the limit of his endurance for violence. As the hours crept by, the themes kept changing, but slowly, imperceptibly. Previous themes sometimes returned. Families changed to images of faraway places and cultures, then images of poverty, then of wealth, then of weddings, then of funerals. Cars crashing together in intersections-apparently from fixed traffic cameras. A nonstop procession of highway carnage and death. People committing suicide in protest, burning themselves alive. Then people dying in accidents while doing adventurous things like rock climbing or BASE jumping. More shots of adventurous people succeeding-accomplishing great feats. Then people trekking through wild lands, climbing high mountain-tops. Then of historical events-from moon landings to Khrushchev blustering. Malcolm X faded into Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mosely was emotionally and physically exhausted. And still it went on.

It was like being dragged over an emotional washboard. Mosely wound up feeling virtually every emotion of which humans are capable-not once but hundreds of times. He was long past his breaking point-not that he even noticed he'd passed it.

The images continued. An unknowable number of hours, and still the images continued. Mosely's mouth was parched, and he strained to stay alert. The images kept coming.

But one concept had begun to form in Mosely's mind. Like a rock slowly revealed as a wind blew away surrounding sand, Mosely was starting to see himself. With all his built-up emotional defenses long since worn away, simple truths had begun to emerge. Even he knew their meaning: he was angry at his wasted life. He felt deep feelings of loss that he had no family as a child, and that he had not provided one for his son-wherever he was now. Also Mosely had a desperate desire to belong. To matter. To stand for something besides himself. He was the perennial outsider looking in on the fellowship of others.