The Transcriber Part 2

The Transcriber Part 2

What had seemed like ten seconds to him was indeed very much longer. He was no longer in the same room he had been in for – well he wasn’t sure how long. But he also did not know how he got there. The room was of the same size, there was an exact replica of the desk, the book and the paper, even the chair, but on a closer inspection, the red cushion was gone. Instead, there as an additional object on the desk. It was a pen, placed perpendicular to the book and pointing to the pad of paper. He walked over to the desk and sat down on the chair. It was not until he was seated that he realised that he could now walk quite ably, as if his muscles had just developed between his blackouts. After testing out his newfound strength and admiring his physique through a series of vigorous flexes, he turned his attention to the object still shrouded in mystery. The book.

He opened it to the first page, hoping that miraculously he would somehow be able to understand everything printed there just like he had suddenly acquired the ability to move competently. But he was not yet proficient at the art of wishful thinking either, and the words on the page remained illegible to his innocent eyes. Flicking through the various pages led to no epiphany, and so Josef was forced once again to shut the book with a resounding and disgruntled thud.

He then turned to the newest addition to his dull and uneventful abode – the pen. Fascinatingly, he knew exactly what it was, and exactly what it did. However, having no artistic bone in his body and no extensive knowledge of language made it exceedingly difficult for him to utilize the instrument to its fullest potential. Furthermore, he was puzzled as to why the pen had only appeared just now, and not in his previous handlings of the mysterious tome. And so he pondered over these questions for the rest of this state of consciousness, elapsing without coming to any real conclusion over the matter whatsoever.

The next time wakefulness beckoned, it was as if Josef had had a thought placed into his head by some unknown deity. He had a renewed sense of purpose, perhaps for the very first time, and accompanied with a sagacity never yet experienced, he channeled his self-confidence into leaping out of his bed and hurtling toward the desk, and arriving at the chair in the shortest time ever. His subconsciousness had connected the dots – the presence and very orientation of the pen – it was as clear as, well the walls really for what else did he have to compare such a metaphorical concept to? But let us not complicate matters (that will come later) because that would detract from the significance of this new development. Josef Karringer realised what he had to do. He opened the book to its first page, picked up the pen, placed a sheet of paper in front of him and began to copy the writing on the page…

In all his time in the green room, Josef Karringer had missed one vital component. It wasn’t his fault, necessarily. His eyes had never been trained to scrutinise minute details and observe carefully hidden objects. Embedded in the uppermost right corner of the ceiling was a diminutive green dot, the signature of a particular type of audiovisual recording device, unnoticeable to most people who didn’t know to look for it, and most definitely unnoticeable to Josef Karringer. The camera had been activated ever since Josef had been in the green room, and had for the entirety of his time there (and for many, many days to come) streaming his actions to a particular computer located not too far away from his cell.

At this very moment that Josef had began to slowly but adamantly transcribe the letters from the book to a sheet of paper, the observer on the other end alerted his supervisor, who having received the news, convened a meeting with some other mysterious individuals whom neither Josef or we have met yet. The meeting was brief but the consensus was clear. It was a good sign that Josef had began to write. It meant that everything was going according to plan.