When I woke, I thought I was still in my cell. The room was dark, and as I sat up I became confused, sensing something vaguely unfamiliar about my surroundings. I stumbled out of bed—its height was not the same as the bunk in my cell—and bumped into a wall where one shouldn’t have been. Yet some unconscious part of me apparently realized where I was, for my hand reached out involuntarily to the correct place on the wall and brought up dim lights. I saw I was in my own quarters, and finally remembered my release.I sat in a chair, surveying my quarters, trying to decide what to do, what to think, struggling against the urge to return to bed and go back to sleep. My rooms were so quiet and lifeless, as if the inorganic matter which composed the furniture and all of my few possessions had dropped into an even lower level of existence while I was gone, and now needed to be resurrected to its former state. The same for me, I thought.I should have been elated to be free of my cell, but I was strangely depressed, and did not understand why.
