The Dream Hotel

The script at the beginning of the book challenges the reader to consider how often they ask rhetorically why tragedies are not prevented when there were long-standing signs. The narrator asks if people would prevent crime and tragedy if it were as easy as signing a terms-of-service agreement,

Sara Hussein wakes up in Madison, a “retention center” holding women suspected of committing future crimes. She goes to the hallway, trying to project little personality for the cameras. Madison, a former public elementary school, was sold to a corporation called Safe-X and repurposed into a prison, though nobody calls it one. Rather, the women being “detained” are called “retainees, residents, enrollees, and sometimes program participants” (4). Hinton, an unpleasant but attractive guard who performs the morning check, rolls through, finding an illegal flashlight in one woman’s bunk. He scans Sara’s neuroprosthetic to assure she hasn’t tampered with it and gathers the data from her dreams. It is Sara’s 38th birthday.

Sara and her roommate get ready for the day, demonstrating they’ve been in retention for a while; new prisoners try to go back to sleep. Sara no longer marks time by days but by milestones, typically related to visits from her husband, Elias, and young twin children, Mona and Mohsin.