excerpt from "INITIAL TO CONSENT"

... Alone in her apartment later, Amy quieted her mind with her white noise machine and her deep breathing exercises. While she’d broken her own rule and poured herself a glass of wine before she even started, she did her best to take only a few small sips between the sets of deep breaths.

When she’d finished, she stood up, picked up the glass and walked out onto the small balcony of her 18th floor studio. She loved this view of the city at night. Despite her apartment being only a few times as large as her office on campus, Amy loved her private space. Its modest size, sound-proof walls and exceptionally secure door made it one of the few places she felt truly safe. The considerable height from the street level together with the building’s robust security system and staff also bolstered her sense of safety.

And yet, some of my colleagues’ research perpetuates the undeniable reality that no one is ever actually safe, she mused. This truth haunted her often. She thought of her office on campus, its locking door a secondary contingency beyond the sealed doors of the faculty suite. Still Amy could never fully relax there. 

And then there was the wall, the wall purportedly constructed primarily for the safety of everyone outside of it. Never having needed or requested a higher security clearance, Amy, much like her students, knew only what she heard from rumors about it: that supposedly it was far more than a physical barrier and contained highly advanced surveillance and tactical component;, that some professors who chose to move their research inside it perished within its boundary, the university covering up their deaths for long periods of times with claims that they’d chosen to take “internal sabbaticals.”... Read More