I pulled into the strip mall parking lot, and my implant disengaged, bringing me out of autopilot. Probably for the best that my conscious mind hadn’t made the forty-minute drive. As I reengaged, so did the adrenaline, as if the surprising, alarming phone had just ended.

The awning over the door was green, faded to yellow. West Allis Conscious Shelter. The kind of place I had always ignored, as if that could save me from ending up here someday.

Deep breaths. When I heard Theo was in there, I knew I had to come. Even if I hadn’t heard from him in years.

Verne, the woman who called me, met me at the door and led me inside. The cinder-block corridor of plexiglass-fronted cells was unnervingly quiet, but each cell was occupied. In one, the patient walked repeatedly into a wall. In another, their fingers writhed in the air, typing at a keyboard perhaps. Another seemed to stir a pot that wasn’t there.

Maybe on a subconscious level, I thought coming to Theo’s aid this time would be like busting him out of jail after the protest, or holding his hand at the clinic. As if I could swoop in and make everything right. This series of tableaus dispelled that. I didn’t want to see him like this, but it was too late to back out now. If Verne had called me, it had to mean she hadn’t reached anyone else.

Theo was in the last cell on the right. He had a bowl cut, like I remembered. His facial hair had finally grown in. He wore a stained, scuffed suit that hung off bony shoulders.

“Holy…no…” I muttered under my breath at the sight.

“They were probably on autopilot for a few days before anyone found them,” Verne said.

“Him,” I said. “As of seven years ago, anyway.”

“I got some food and water into him, and a fuel pill for his implant.”

As we watched him through the plexiglass, Theo kept moving around the cell, in some elaborate pattern. Like a bee guiding its hive to a flower.

“He must be exhausted,” I said.

“I’ll give him a little sedative too. Just wanted you to get a good look first. The only way he gets out of this loop is if he can finish doing what he told his implant to do,” Verne said. “I take it you weren’t there when it happened?”

“No, I haven’t seen him in years.”

“But he had your number in his wallet.”

I blinked, surprised. “I guess so.”

“Alright then, tell me what he was into back then.” There was a glint in her eye. A drive.

“We used to hang out a lot in college,” I said.

“Uh huh,” Verne said, smirking. I blushed. How I felt was so obvious to her; had it been obvious to Theo? I’d always wondered.

“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “I met him before he was openly trans, and I had just parted ways with my Bible study group. We were both figuring out who we were going to be. I remember watching direct-to-video action movies, listening to Italian folk music, drinking soju together…” The memories were surprisingly hard to distill. “I don’t know what he’d be doing now. Certainly not this.”

“People often use autopilot to get through something they don’t exactly want to do,” Verne said. She laid a hand on my arm. “Keep pulling on that thread. I’ll be right back.”

She ducked into a supply closet, and I heard a clatter as she pulled boxes off the shelves. She brought out exercise equipment, video game floor pads, an oversized piano mat. One by one, we tried sliding these under Theo’s feet as he moved around the cell. Nothing fit; the props only made him stumble.

I could feel the pressure of exhaustion and frustration behind my eyes, and noticed the time, well past midnight already.

“No luck yet, but we’ll figure it out, you wait and see,” she said, but it sounded rehearsed, unsmiling.

On my way out, I walked back down the corridor of dimly lit cells, past all the other patients, and I tried not to take those words as an impossible promise.