"Do you have to keep me in a box - could you just - I don't know - chain me to the wall and give me some pencil and paper to occupy myself, you must have other things to do with your time - sentences to carry out, places to go, appearing objects to collect and trade for new music recordings, I don't know, whatever you do, why does it have to be a box?"

"People run away if I don't keep them in boxes," the voice says reasonably.

"How would I get out if you chained me to the wall and locked the door? Even if I chewed my leg off - and I don't think I could, I'm a wimp - I couldn't break down the door."

"It's happened before," says the voice. "That's why the box. Nobody's ever gotten out of the box."

"I did everything by magic when I was alive. I am almost completely useless without it and it's all gone now. I honestly cannot think of a single way to get out of here if the door was locked and I had at least one ankle chained to the wall. And if I got out you could find me. You made me put down my sentence papers, I didn't have any chance to fake them, they've got my res code on them."

"I don't want to," says the voice. "And if you're not in a box while I'm gone, you might look at me when I come back."

"You can obviously control my eyelids through a door, you did it when you let me out of the bathroom."

"That's not how it works," says the voice.

"Tell me how it works, then, I'm pretty smart, maybe I'll come up with something that will let you be sure you can keep me where you want me that's more comfortable than what you're doing now."

"While I have control on you, I can control you from as far away as I want. But if I let go, to get it again I have to get close again. And it's not safe to go out with my control tied up."

"Rig something so I'm stuck looking at a wall or the floor and can't turn my head all the way around and won't be able to look at you when you come in," suggests Shell Bell. "Or just make it a larger box. With a light."

"...Maybe," the voice says reluctantly.

"All I need is to be able to write and read what I write and I'll be much better company," pleads Shell Bell.

"We'll see," says the voice.

"Things," the voice says vaguely. "Nothing too bad. Not like what you'd get from most torturers."

The voice goes quiet.