Love & Reason: A Dialogue
THE HORNS OF A PRISONER'S DILEMMA — PART II
Ed. Note: The first installment of this two-part series appeared in our September issue.
Andrew Rand, dressed in a neon orange jumpsuit, sits on a metal bench in the center of an eight-foot-by-eight-foot holding cell. The walls of the cell are constructed from ten-gauge wire woven into two-inch-by-one-inch rectangle mesh. The cell sits in the center of a concrete room measuring twenty feet by twenty feet. A small window is situated on the west wall. Sunlight slants through the bars of the window and checkers the concrete floor.
A door, invisible to the naked eye, opens in the center of the wall opposite the window. A dwarf, with a green fedora cocked on his head, enters the room. It is Piccolino, the detective who convinced Rand to confess to a felony — a crime for which Piccolino had arrested Rand and his lover, Seiko Singer. The dwarf flips a switch on the wall and two tubes of fluorescent light flicker above the holding cell. He shuts the door and approaches the prisoner.
Piccolino: Good to see you.
Rand (staring at the floor): I got nothing to say.
Piccolino: How long’s it been?
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