and he couldn’t delve into it too deeply, because there was a mental wall

preventing him from doing so. He could scale many walls, yet not that one. But

there was something there. Something he would have done differently if he was

still who he had once been.

 

But he no longer was that man. Not even close. And the fragment would never be

more than that. They hadn’t told him that part, of course. Why would they? He

apparently had no reason to know in a strict “need to know” world.

 

He removed his hand and with it any hope that things one day could be different

for him.

 

He slept in his car on a side street of a town he was passing through.

 

Two days later he was eight hundred miles closer to his destination. By now a

bench warrant had certainly been issued for his arrest for his failure to show

up for his parole meeting. Perhaps they had found the tossed materials in the

trash can by the bus stop.

 

That evidenced his clear intent to never, ever perform any of the duties imposed

on him in return for his having been released from prison ahead of time.

 

He actually felt that ten years of his life locked up in a cage was payment

enough.