You Shall Know Them by Their Pitchforks

‘Our memories from before do not add up. Some of us remember a wasteland, others recall green countryside and thriving towns. Ahktar remembers that he served as president of an obscure banana republic, and we were all taken here after he was deposed in a coup, but even the Medical Examiner admits that Ahktar is quite insane. For my part, I have vague recollections of an institutional building – a government office or university department (this is why I describe myself as an educated man), its many corridors not unlike those of the Facility. But I am more often haunted by a garden. In this memory I stand looking down a stretch of lawn to a copse. There is a summerhouse half-buried in rhododendrons. The dusk smells heady and sweet. I am happy there. I feel that if I could just turn, I would see people. But I cannot. They remain at my back, faceless ghosts.’

— Timothy Granville, ‘You Shall Know Them by Their Pitchforks’