From "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing" by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck.

Setting: Colorado's ultramodern Supermax prison. This is the Yale Law of prisons — it's selective, competitive, and if you want to make even the first cut of applicants, you'd better have dynamite LSATs and a strong undergraduate transcript. Students study in a Socratic environment with some of the finest legal minds in the country, assembling the sort of knowledge base and contacts required for a top-flight political or judicial career. There is anal rape.

It's lights-out time in the toughest wing of the prison, known by inmates as the "Superduper Max" block. Only the toughest of the tough bunk up here. There are no four-poster beds or CD alarm clocks in these cells. There are no espresso machines, or cherrywood barbeque pavillions. These men are caged like animals, and the prison sushi is utilitarian, at best.

Yousef: Hey, McVeigh!

McVeigh: Yeah, Yousef?

Yousef: Was it just me, or was the tekka-maki even worse tonight than it usually is?

McVeigh: It was AWFUL. You know, it's almost cruel that they serve it in the first place. It just makes me think back to this one place in Berkeley where they have those $1 salmon nigiri rolls that just melt in your mouth...

Yousef: Wait, are you talking about Sushi Banzai on Camelia Street?

McVeigh: Yeah, that place is frickin' awesome!

Yousef: Super damn awesome!

[both of them laugh]

Felipe: Hey, could y'all please shut up for a bit? I'm a tryin' to sleep.

Yousef [in exaggerated Southern drawl]: "Could y'all please shut up?"

[more laughter from McVeigh and Yousef]

Kaczynski: Hey, if you guys are staying up, could I ask you a serious question?

Felipe: You're not gonna ask us what kind of tree we'd like to be, again, are you? 'Cause I done had it with that fiddle-faddle.

Kaczynski: No, seriously. Listen. Do any of you ever have any great, unattainable dreams? You know, the kind of dreams that keep you up at night?

Felipe: Naw.

Yousef: No, not that I can think of. Not unless you count playing football for the Bears.

Kaczynski: Okay - I'm going to have draw people out. Let me share my vision. I see a forest. Do you see it?

McVeigh: I see it. I can smell the willow trees.

Kaczynski: Within the forest, I would make art. Not just small bits of art, but big, big, important art. Towering oaks would be the centerpieces of installation pieces that stretch for acres. The ground would be my canvas. Squirrels would be my paint.

Yousef: Do you mean you'd flatten squirrels and use them as pigment?

Kaczynski: No, no. I just meant that they'd serve as a key visual element.

Yousef: So, you wouldn't consider crushing squirrels.

Kaczynski: No.

Yousef: I still like it.

Kaczynski: Thanks. And people could walk through the art, which is all constructed from living parts of nature, and carefully arranged underbrush. And they couldn't bid on it, or buy it, because it belongs to no one. It would be art as a repudiation of "art as commodity"!

McVeigh: Wouldn't the government technically own the forest?

Kaczynski: Yeah, but as we live in a representitive democracy, I think it's fair to say we all sort of share the forest.

McVeigh: Good point.

Felipe: That's beautiful, Ted. Can I share my idea?

Kaczynski: We're here for you.

Felipe: Thanks. I've always been told I got a pretty good voice...

Yousef: It's like lamb on couscous.

Felipe: Thanks. So, I have this dream of makin' up a new kinda song. I'm imagining myself layerin' vocal effects, combinin' Mexican folk music with hip-hop elements and the power of straight-up Swiss yodeling. And the power of the song would all be directed at the complexity of life on the street. D'ya get me? There'd be all these different narrators, all of whom would be me, and they'd be having a talk about life on the street.

Kaczynski: That's fascinating.

Felipe: Yeah, all the naratives would be overlapping, but different. You know, like one aspect of the track could be all about sensible footwear, as opposed to designer footwear. And there could be something on the importance of personal grooming. And another could be about, you know, whatever store's got the best lottery tickets. You know, like the winning tickets and stuff.

Yousef: Yeah, isn't that weird?

Felipe: There's always that one particular bodega. But you know, there'd be light-hearted stuff, too. Okay, enough about my reinvention of vocalized music as we know it. How about you, Yousef?

Yousef: Man, I dunno. I've been having some ideas about doing some collage work. You know, mosaic stuff.

Felipe: That's cool.

Yousef: Yeah, but for religious reasons I feel compelled to stick with non-respresentational geometric patterns. But what if the mosaic was composed exclusively in black and white, and patterns followed a binary to ASCII code, where black tiles served as zeros, and white tiles served as ones? Then you could have observors grab a custom-built scanner and "translate" this massive mono-color mosaic into some sort of really profound statement or something.

Kaczynski: Whoa! What would it say?

Yousef: I dunno. That's the thing. I'm thinking it could be stuff like "Invest with Goldman Sachs." Or, you know, "Mountain Dew is a very extreme beverage."

Felipe: I dunno, man. What does that mean?

Yousef: I dunno either. But I figure it would keep art critics distracted for at least a year or two, during which I could crank these damn things out for $50,000 a pop. Anyway, Tim - you got something to share?

McVeigh: Mine's a little weird.

Kaczynski: You've got to follow your dreams, man. Share it.

McVeigh: Allright. I see where you're all coming from. But it's one thing to create something artistic and then step back into your soft, confused human shell. My dream is... well, my dream is a vision of independence. My dream is to build myself into a perfectly balanced, perfectly focused implement of human will. I would break world records.

Yousef: Wow.

Felipe: Yeah, wow. That's really pretty awesome.

McVeigh: No, that's still pretty vague. Here's what I'm talking about: I'm talking about doing sit-ups while standing on my head. Shattering pilsner steins with my mind. Becoming so incredibly clear-headed and mentally focused that I can sit through entire episodes of DAG.

Kaczynski: Didn't DAG get cancelled?

McVeigh: Yeah, but you get my point. Entire episodes of Larry King Live, then.

Yousef: Damn, dude.

Over the months to follow, the men are as good as their words, and stick to their dreams. Kaczynski puts together a piece on the prison exercise grounds called "Nature. I summon you!", made entirely from gravel and bent grass. Felipe's mix tapes become MP3s and collect a viable fan base. Yousef's mosaics become hot on the Web. McVeigh breaks a record for listening to Shania Twain albums.

The press listens. NPR does a sympathetic bit about rehabilitation through art. Harper's runs a profile, followed by The New York Times Magazine. Eventually, presidential pardons arrive, and the four are set free to pursue the careers of their dreams.

Concerts and exhibitions follow. Kaczynski is spotted in a tux, escorting Parker Posey to the Oscars. McVeigh becomes a Republican and wins a House seat in Wyoming. Yousef applies for and receives a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Felipe relapses and builds a sprawling, violent criminal empire that stretches from Oregon to Florida.

And at the 10-year reunion, all of them dress up in "prison" bathrobes, lock themselves in McVeigh's plush bathroom, eat some take-out sushi and joke about the way art set them free.

Felipe: You know what though - I'm thinkin' art may just be bullshit. That was my experience.

Kaczynski: Yeah, if attending galley openings has taught me anything, it's exactly that.

McVeigh: So what is "real"? I mean, if it's not art, what the heck is it?

[There is an audible, tangible pause]

Yousef: Anyone up for blowing up something big and federal?