I kept my eyes on the frozen 8:57 clock. When my stomach hurt as much as I could stand, I collapsed flat out, closing my eyes so I wouldn’t be tempted to count the bumps on the ceiling. How long had I been in here? No wrinkles yet—in fact, I seemed to look younger. Having spun off the treadmill of tick tock, I couldn’t even take a guess. Back on planet Earth, time seemed an incontestable reality: measured, estimated, swallowed up, drawn out. But in the pink room with the broken clock and the window that looked out on a meta-landscape of white, time was a flimsy nothing. From the moment the heavy door shut behind me, or no, wait, from the moment I went whizzing down the slide in the dark, the ticker-tape continuum bent, and life in a bedroom bubble began. And it was a good thing I didn’t feel hungry, since room service had not appeared at the door. Nor did I have to pee, a fact I also counted as a major blessing. When I thought about food, the coconut curries I ate every workday, or the three bars of bittersweet chocolate I went through once a month, it was with a sensation of fond nostalgia and sharp sadness, but it did not evoke any physical longing in me.
