INTERLUDE
Shadow Gale kept on gesturing over the course of three hours, and by the time she finally got the armor to bring her a TV, she came to a realization: There was no outlet in this room.
It was extremely difficult to express “extension cord” with gestures. Soba, climbing rope, piano wire, a game controller, a LAN cable, a sickle and chain, a rope with a hook, a snake toy, nylon string, a chain of sausages, plastic tape, bandages, and various other long objects were presented to her and then taken away. Wondering just how much stuff they had here, and also why they couldn’t come up with an extension cord when they had this much stuff, Shadow Gale’s shoulders slumped, until thirty minutes later, she finally realized: She shouldn’t have told the armor to bring her a long thing but rather that she couldn’t use the TV like this.
While pointing at the TV, Shadow Gale used both her arms to make a big X mark. That caused the armor to bring in a tool set of various types of screwdrivers, and since that was actually something Shadow Gale did think she’d need, she kept that, and next she pointed to the plug on the TV, then to the whole interior of the room, trying to emphasize, “There’s no electricity.”
And now, finally, an extension cord came. Apparently, one wasn’t enough; the armor had to connect a whole string of them to make it this far, adding cord B to cord A, both of which she’d ripped open plastic wrapping to pull out, further adding that to a cord outside of the room, sticking a door stopper in so that the cord wouldn’t be crushed by the heavy metal door, and finally, the TV was plugged in. Thinking of the long path to reach this point, tears sprang to Shadow Gale’s eyes.
“Thank you… Honestly, thank you so much.” Shadow Gale bent at the waist to bow deeply, and the armor put her left hand to her own waist, doing a little wave with her right hand in front of her face. It seemed she was saying, “Don’t worry about it.”
And perhaps that was true enough. Shadow Gale was trying to take advantage of their kindness in order to escape. It wasn’t as if she felt no pangs of conscience. But they had been the ones to start this. You didn’t need to hold back with someone who would do something like kidnap you and lock you up. Patricia would surely have commended her for this. Maybe Pfle would, too. Though privately Shadow Gale had rather complicated feelings about receiving commendation from the latter.
First, she turned the main power on, and then with the remote control the armor had given her, she turned on the power. Light ran along the fifteen-inch-squared screen, and next, from the speakers came a grating noise and static—
“Huh?”
She changed the channel. All that showed on every channel was static. What was happening? Shadow Gale ran up to the TV, smacked the top, smacked the side, hitting slightly harder with each strike. Still the TV screen showed nothing. Shadow Gale realized something as she hit it: This TV was cube-shaped. It wasn’t a flat-panel LCD screen. It was a CRT—in other words, it couldn’t receive digital terrestrial broadcasting.
Feeling on the verge of collapse, Shadow Gale propped herself up on the TV. Compared with a flat screen TV, the CRT was exceptionally stable. It could even support Shadow Gale’s weight, which was heavier than when she was in human form.
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