Beneath the jagged-toothed skyline of Mortarville, institutional hallways extend infinitely beneath glowing fluorescent lights. A boy looks to a gorilla for a would-be mother, and a malevolent wig rises from the dead to torment its murderer. Tuna casserole and macaroni and cheese nourish the masses while mysterious Men in White or Men in Black keep the order.

Grant Bailie's latest novel, Mortarville, is not your zooming-spaceship science fiction.

The story swirls quietly around a test- tube baby with a remarkable memory. John Smith can recall snapshots of his gestation and birth, as well as the violent demise of his fathers, the "two god-like mad scientists" who produced him. They succumbed to an angry mob of clergymen and environmentalists while their creation buoyed about in an aquarium filled with orange goo, which was somehow spared. Upon discovery by the government, the glass womb with its developing infant was quietly rushed off to a shady island laboratory for the rest of the pseudo-pregnancy and subsequent birth.

"I was released from the tank through a giant spigot," says John in the chapter "I Am Invented." "Then down a silver slide that brought me splattering against a metal tray like a cafeteria omelet."

Countless tests determine that John has no special powers, attributes or intelligence. Nonetheless, he is sent to a prison-like institution nicknamed "The Subterranean Island of Dr. Moreau," where science's ill-begotten abominations can be properly dealt with.

There, John is strapped to a table and forced to watch himself being raised by a milquetoast suburban mother and father. The experience lulls John like a chronic dosage of Soma. And the child - born so remarkably - emerges remarkably passive.

Bailie, an Elyria native and two-time novelist, knows a thing or two about lock-down. In 2003, he participated in "Novel: A Living Installation at Flux Factory Inc." in New York. The project landed Bailie in a self-contained habitat for 30 days where he was to produce a novel. There were public viewing hours when visitors could peek at the novelist at work. Other than nightly meals with other participants, Bailie was a boy in a bubble with the sole task of spawning a novel. Ironically, Mortarville had been conceived and its first drafts brought to term long before Bailie stepped into that literary fish tank.

"I wrote Mortarville before I went to Flux Factory," says Bailie, almost thankfully. "I didn't want to write some self-referential novel about a guy in a box while I was a guy in a box," he says of his quirky stint in New York.

The second half of Mortarville chronicles John's adulthood, much of which is spent in the underbelly of Mortarville where he works as a security supervisor for a downtown mall. "It's kind of a repetition of his earlier life," says Bailie, "an echo of what he's already lived through." The mall looks suspiciously like Tower City, where Bailie works as "security site manager" in an underground office that is situated beneath Huron Road. "There are elements of autobiography in the book," admits Bailie, adding that Mortarville is a "distressed, pre-post-apocalyptic" version of Cleveland. "I didn't want anything shiny," he adds.

Riots rage throughout the forefront and background of the book, offering a flaming contrast to John's passive continuum. The riot sequences were fueled in no small part by Bailie's own experience in Seattle in 1999 when the World Trade Organization protests shook the streets. He was working as a nighttime security guard and supervisor for Bank of America. "We were considered a target," says Bailie. "I could actually smell the tear gas at times."

Bailie will be kicking off a book tour with a reading and signing at Mac's Backs this week. Subsequent stops include Chicago, New York, Boston, Seattle and the famed City Lights Books in San Francisco.

Mortarville is part science fiction, part magical realism and part literary fiction. The writing is subtle and evocative. The story calls to mind Burgess's A Clockwork Orange on one page and Dickens' David Copperfield on the next. When asked about the impetus behind Mortarville, Bailie is sheepish, but he eventually complies.

"I wanted to write a story that examines the invention of identity," he says. If that is the reference against which the reader should judge Mortarville, the book will surely be a successful delivery.

Mortarville, By Grant Bailie: Ig Publishing, January 2008, 253 pp., trade paper, $14.95.

Reading and signing: 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, Mac's Backs, 1820 Coventry Rd., 216-321-BOOK, macsbacks.com.