It should have worked. After the move back from California, he had taken months to make that place a fortress where he could feel safe. The entry doors and windows had been fitted with discrete laser emitters in the jams. Tripping the silent alarm should have spread an array of lasers across all points of entry and exit, turning them into light powered meat slicers. Strobe lights, quietly located in every room would tell him if the grounds were violated, yet those hadnt been activated. The cable hadnt been put into use, and frankly he was a little relieved. That security idea came to him in a dream and he quickly implemented it.

At a height of four feet in the two main rooms of the house, he had carefully laid a thin cable into the drywall by first making a slit with a utility knife and then covering it with joint compound. The cable ran under the drywall to a closet between the rooms where he had carefully threaded the cables together. It was then wound to a large pulley directly connected to a powerful electric motor.

Back in each room was a hidden switch that would activate the powerful motor and rip the cable from the wall, lethally separating everything in the room to a four-foot height. In the living room he had fashioned the switch to be one of the twenty buttons on the remote that no one ever uses, and in the large den it was a simple switch on the bottom of the desk. If someone ever got in he always thought he could get to the floor before hitting either of the panic buttons to avoid the fate of his intruders. Ever since the day he finished the installation he was always scared of dropping the remote or having the dog get under the desk. Little chance it would have of catching him anyways, he was mostly below the windows when inside the house.

And the dog, how could he forget the dog! He noticed his memory was a little fuzzy and suddenly couldnt recall what he had done that morning. The last he knew, the dog was sprawled out on the carpet of the living room. That was the dogs favorite spot and it was a comforting feeling to see him so peaceful. He was a young Rotti with big feet and sharp hearing, the perfect defense. His big feet webbed out in the soft dirt around the house and would give anyone the impression of a full size watchdog. His hearing sometimes picked up the shutting of nearby car doors, which put both of them in a panic, but it was worth it. The sight of that dark eyed angered dog always gave him back the feeling of control. That dog was just about the lowest tech system in the house and yet it seemed to give him the most comfort.

What is his name? Im looking right at him, what the hell is his name? he whispered in the dark.

Somethings wrong, he said. He did seem to remember misplacing things the day before. First his new shirt he had bought and never even wore. And then the hat his brother let him wear. His brother Jake was going to be pissed, that was his favorite hat and wore it all the time. And how does someone loose a toothbrush? Every night like clockwork, Gable brushed his teeth, and always tossed the toothbrush back in a cup by the sink. Now as he moved forward in his head, a complete blank awaited him for the mornings events.

I must be going crazy, he thought to himself. Its the paranoia finally catching up with me. None of that really mattered now. Now it was cold and dark. He felt the steel all around him and his claustrophobia and nervousness started to take hold. It felt like hed been buried alive, no air to breathe, no light to define his surroundings. He frantically felt the floor for signs of a seam or anything recognizable as being man-made.

His eyes were wide now, ready to accept any scrap of light, but there was none coming to them. The sounds of his movements gave him the feeling of a large room.

It must be at least 20 feet across in here, he said to himself. As he slowly crawled forward on the metal floor, he held his arm out for fear of colliding with a ledge or a wall in the dark. Reaching a wall, he felt something familiar. It was a bead of weld, which he followed upward with his fingers. He knew what weld felt like and that it was probably made by human hands. This seemed to calm his breathing slightly.

Many questions began racing through his head. How did he get to this place? What was this container he was in? Who brought him here? Why him? The Why question he knew for sure. That was about the only thing he knew for sure.