Chapter Text
It had been headed in a direction like this for some time; the writing had long since been on the slumside walls. Anyone with eyes to see it, ears to hear it, hell, even a nose to smell the weight on the wind; this had been a long time coming. In a way, it came as no surprise then to those who suffered the worst. Well, perhaps it was “surprising,” but one could hardly call it wholly unwelcome. If anything, it was like a miracle. Deus Ex Inani ; a god from the void of an ever expanding and impossibly massive universe. But the Affini were not gods. They assured mankind as much, all with the same chipper earnestness that had marked the words of their very first transmissions received by humanity:
“With boundless love, we, of the Affini Compact, welcome you into our care, most adorable sophonts!”
It was uncanny, really, their certainty and affability. But none among the elite smiled. None save perhaps Klaudie Drahomír. They, who had been counted among the unfathomably wealthy, among the ruling caste, among the bourgeois, seemed unique in their loathing of the system which benefited them and their ilk most. As CEO of Starlight Investments , or Hvězda Papír , in the old country tongue of the corporation’s dynastic founders, Klaudie could see the whole of the Accord’s terrible truths. From the dizzying heights of their ivory tower, built on the backs of uncounted billions used and abused, there was no denying the shape and character of the Accord: A corpse, shambling and shuffling; an animus of necro-capital.
Indeed, they had accepted this truth early into their life, and of a more traditional relation with regard to their gender. They were a young adult of twenty one years, the heir apparent to their mother’s empire within the empire, a girl, soon to be something else, raised from birth to slip effortlessly into the role of regent and viceroy; the year was 2530 CE by the Terran Calendar.
The Chalawan System had become a hotbed of dissent and unrest; orbital habitats around the resource rich, twin planets of Chalawan II and III had become ungovernable, and a contingency of corporate military officers stationed aboard these closely connected stations had joined in the revolt. It was a workers uprising; the miners, processors, and logistical staff of the Chalawan Mining Cooperative LLC, a subsidiary of Starlight Investments , had suffered long enough under the boot of their corporate masters. The conditions planetside were untenable; accidents on the job were the norm, and any who survived the tenure of their binding, several years long contract found their bodies more broken than their pockets were heavy. And of course, the company had always advertised its venture as a “daring but fulfilling mission” to uplift the poorest from their most dire of straits. Statistically speaking, it was a death sentence.
Of course, Klaudie’s mother, one Anežka Drahomír, took to this rebellion with nothing but cold contempt, and explosive outrage. She was as iron fisted as she was wickedly intelligent, but more importantly, she was very well connected. As an Oligarch among Oligarchs, a recent quadrillionaire, Anežka had the might of legions behind her policy, and her policy towards rebellion was nothing short of pure intolerance.
Klaudie had to wonder then: Did the revolting workers look out from the windows of their seized orbital habitants? Did they gaze up from the sunroofs of the occupied processing plants and manufacturies on that volcanic rock? Did they watch in silent terror as the great and terrible visage of the Accord’s Suppression and Security fleet as it entered orbit over Chalawan II and III? Were their faces ones of dread, knowing the end was near, and that they would die violently? Did they match the expressive nihilism which characterized the faces of those same social elites who condemned them to death when the Affini Armada first arrived in Terran space? Did any of them smile, as Klaudie did?
They doubted it…. Or… well, now that they thought back to that dreadful time, Klaudie had to wonder: What if one of them did? Why would they?
Surely the workers and soldiers in revolt had to know they would suffer one of three fates: Death, imprisonment and slavery of such a cruel nature that they would work themselves death, and torture so extreme and extensive that it would be followed shortly after by death. Hardly a hopeful hand of cards to be dealt. Yet still, perhaps one of them did smile.
And perhaps they were just as delusional for it as Klaudie was to smile at the arrival of the Affini.
The CEO of forty three years pondered the questions again regardless as they took a drag from an authentically rolled cigar, the sound of their leather seat creaking disturbed the silence of the room as they shifted in place. One hand upon their cheek tapped slowly, yet with an undeniable impatience, while the other held aloft the burning smokeable between their right index and pointer fingers. Pulling it at last from their lips, Klaudie let loose a gentle, almost silent puff of wispy smoke, adding to the already tobacco ridden air of the secluded penthouse they now found themself in.
No light graced the interior, save the natural polluting rays from the corporate elysium immediately below and outside of the tower Klaudie had resigned to, and the industrial sprawl further beyond, stretching into dismal, iron horizons in all directions. These lights did little to illuminate the far and away sanctum that Klaudie found themself in, less than even the moon, who’s reflected lumens were almost always choked out by great clouds of smog and acidic rain. Klaudie preferred it that way as of late. But then again, they were starting to forget what ‘as of late’ even meant.
A lapse in thought, a forsaken, silent moment of witlessness and surrender, preceded the banal inclination to check one’s tablet. It was twenty minutes past ten p.m. on June 7th by the Terran-Earth Calendar. The year was 2552, just one year after the arrival of the Affini in Accord space. And yet the project Klaudie set in motion twenty four years ago, both in their heart and mind as well as in the material world, remained well behind schedule, all while time had become something humanity could no longer afford, despite having been given so much of it.
Oh, the wasted years. Klaudie felt sick conceptualizing it, dwelling on it; millenia passed, and to what good end had it all been for? The question lingered well, as it always did, when Klaudie’s eyes drifted from the forward facing window of the penthouse toward the tall yet simply constructed bookshelves; an entire wall of them. Indeed, Klaudie had sought answers to the matter in all places, across all cultures from which any written work or knowledge could be saved. It was the one true privilege of their immense wealth and status that they actually valued.
They studied “the canon,” of course, both western and eastern. Socrates, Plato, Lombard, Erasmus, Descarte, and so on from the west. Just as well, Klaudie had taken to The Vedas, to Vasishtha, Aruni, Aksapada and Siddhartha; further east still, the students of Confucius and Laozi alike. The ancients and olden thinkers had done little for their hungering heart.
Their eyes scanned further still, going row by row in the dim darkness of their elite yet sparse chamber, knowing by heart the arrangement of philosophies by school of thought alone, such was Klaudie’s familiarity with their own organizational work.
The triumvirate faiths of The God of Abraham had kindled little hope in their; under neither cross nor star nor crescent did they find relief or purpose. And the less worldly, more particular faiths too failed to pull strong upon the businessperson’s heartstrings.
Then came the philosophies of secularism, of the state, of real and ideal politik. The socialists brought with them hope, yes; their successes in history had always inspired Klaudie. Being of a Czech family, there is no small part the Red Army plays in the chain of consequences which permits Klaudie’s ancestors to survive the second world war, and for Klaudie themself to then exist. And the progressives writ large, the liberation movements of all human peoples, explorers and icons in the realm of identity, they too had inspired just as much as they challenged the staleness of the old.
But the adherents of capital, the slaves to their own importance, the cowardly and the deluded and the wicked alike, they brought with them to battle a fury that has never since been matched; a psychotic sort which saw the skies of old Earth burn with nuclear fire for the crime of challenging the powers that be. And it was with this obsession with victory, this unerring, dogged commitment to power at any cost, that saw mankind “united” under the Accord.
Ironic then, as it has always been to Klaudie, that they could know such truths as self-evident as one who benefits so severely from that sorry history, from the dominion of capital. Further ironic still that it would be a force which is obsessed with love and the good keeping of all peoples that would put an end to human history as they knew it. One thing was certain to Klaudie still; no, make it two.
One: Humanity had spent its time poorly, because it had extended subjecthood to only the chosen and “elite” few while the masses languished that were to become objects all.
Two: The fires of historical potential would burn forever, so long as one free and independent thought lingered to fill immensity.
But who was Klaudie kidding, really? The future… was so bright. So unbelievably wondrous. The Affini were promising and seemed very poised to deliver on the wildest dreams of mankind, both in the individual-specific, and in the broad-universal. But in that same turn, the future of the species had been decided; human novelty had been smothered in the cradle of the Accord’s infantile empire, both by the gendarmes of those same masters who benefited and abided by the tradition of their ruling forebears, and by an enemy whom represents pure anathema to all those aforementioned traditions.
Well. Almost pure.
Klaudie sighed. Their eyes slowly shut as they took one more drag from the still burning cigar before smothering it in a tray beside them, their other hand idly scratching the nape of their neck. Then came the buzzing, and all else went still, Klaudie’s eyes opened wide. Fear, tension; a sharp pain in the chest and just behind the spine. Oh how it ached . Klaudie felt faint for a moment, but they were a person of surprisingly strong constitution for all the dreariness and brooding they got up to. Maybe that was just the testosterone at work though, further deadening an already dying emotional affect; not like current affairs were helping. The buzzing continued.
Focus now!
Their own voice hissed in between their ears. A sharp motion saw Klaudie rise, taking up with them the tablet that had been pinging from an incoming call; the caller was unidentified. It was not a civilian means of communication in use.
Standing before the diagonal cut of faint lunar-metro-light, dividing the room unevenly as if Klaudie was now faced with the justice of the Jacobins in Paris’ Place de la Nation, they resolved themself with an unsteady exhalation. One swiping motion of their right hand, now free of the cigar they had left to idly burn in the ashtray beside their seat, accepted the incoming call.
“Hello?” Why they bothered greeting with uncertainty was beyond them. Klaudie knew who it was.
“Klaudie—” If not by the bristling thrum of the caller’s voice, then by the pangs of pain and yearning evoked by those same syllables. “— Are you alone?” Even as the caller too asked pointless questions which they already knew the answers to.
“Yes.” But a word unspoken between these two was a prayer unanswered. “Yes I’m alone.” Though perhaps those inclined to faith should hope more often than not to go unheard. “Do you have it? All of what I asked for?”
“I do.” For it was the fruit forbidden which opened, and then shut forever, the gates to dream of paradise. “I am unsuspected—” And reality was a cruel and uncaring mistress “— For now.” Where intelligence planned, the universe laughed. But the punch lines weren’t always so quick to come. “The crudeness of the Cosmic Navy is oddly working to our benefit.” Both Klaudie and their pinned-for-caller could only hope that the anticipation for the hit wouldn’t kill them before the hit itself. “Disintegration of the chain of command has lead to… a more chaotic rout than expected.” Since at least then they might just be able to turn it aside and soften the blow on something sturdier than their faces. “And the local battlegroups —” Another pause, a short, rhythmic clicking, like chittering thorns and staccato from pine needles. “— They’ve already —”
“Given up?” Klaudie took one half step forward, their heeled left foot crossing the boundary between light and dark. Silence, followed by a song-sigh, as the wind passes fall leaves in autumn legato, was their answer. “Surely it’s not over. It can’t have been this so—”
“It can, and it very well may have been! ” The voice of Klaudie’s distant yet ever close companion and killer boomed, such that the meager Terran audio-systems of Klaudie’s tablet could not properly transmit the wholeness of the caller’s intoned affect, leaving it sounding oddly less distorted than it would have in the flesh and flora. Again, there was an uneasy quiet. “.... I am sorry, moje jiřina. ” It was only after the apology that Klaudie had realized the cessation of their own breathing.
“I-It’s fine.” They lied. Both knew that it wasn’t. “But are you certain? I mean well and truly certain?” Klaudie took to the southern end of the room, headed left parallel to the great glass vista they had been idly staring out of.
“... No.” The clouds of smog and acrid, accumulating rain clouds had begun to drift, giving way to the rare sight of stars in the Siberian sky. “But it does not bode well. Not for you, and not for me.” Trained eyes could spot and separate the lights of celestial bodies from the scintillant shine of artifice; orbital stations, docked void-craft clusters, and satellite swarms. “Projections suggest complete and total pacification within ⧪̶↠̴̨͔͒↸̷̘̃⥢̸̫̘̋⤮̵̭͐͜〽̸̺͛͆〃̴̗̪̇—”
“In a mode of time I can actually understand, please .” Klaudie actually managed to muster something approaching frustration there.
While their caller had to hold their mimicked tongue. “... One to two Terran Stellar Revolutions.” Both from toying with Klaudie over asking so ‘politely,’ knowing it was inappropriate, and frankly upsetting to think in such a way right now, but also from insulting the vulgarity of Terran time scales and measurement modules.
“We call them years.”
“Inadequate.” The caller chidded with a twig-snapping sound. “Imprecise.” So much for withholding insults.
Klaudie scoffed softly, their eyes looking to the tablet as if the receiver could sense their insulted stare. “As if you didn’t just give me an estimate .”
A stuttering sforzando squeaks out in annoyance. “An-An EST-imate well informed by much more reliable experience.” Klaudie moved to the north end of the room now, in a steady pace back and forth. “Nevermind it: The compilers, the Telemetron Array, the —”
Klaudie interrupted their co-conspirator before they could utter the name of that thing that was pronounced like how a migraine felt. “Yes, good. Where do you have all of this? How far are you?”
Further than either would like. “Maintaining stable orbit of Terra’s moon.” But still too close for either’s comfort.
Klaudie looked to the moon regardless, as if it was calling to them. “And you’re undetected?”
“Naturally.” The tone on the other end, for the first time in this conversation, came off… calmly; almost pleasant like. Almost. “Now what will you have of me, moje jiřina?” How two words could consistently elicit such an automatic and almost instinctual neurological response, the sharp tingling up Klaudie’s spine, was beyond the Oligarch, and part of them really didn’t want to know to begin with.
“Standby for a data package.” Partially because they were afraid of the truth, and partially because it pained them both how much they craved it. “I’m transmitting the exact coordinates to you now.” Now at the lonesome and simple desk that served as Klaudie’s workstation complete with an inbuilt computing system. The surface of it was smooth, almost plastic like, though it was indeed made of wood, but it was otherwise cluttered with papers and forms and files that had long since lost meaning to Klaudie; long before the Affini arrived even.
Among them was a tome of eye-catching nature, the peripheral sight of it gave pause to Klaudie’s clacking fingers against the keyboard. It was an ancient copy of an Old Earth work of classical literature, one of the first modern novels even: Miguel de Cerventes’ seminal Work, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha , or, more commonly, Don Quixote , as this version features both the first and second volumes combined into one text. Yes, as much as Klaudie was a rabid devourer of philosophy, their first love had always been novel reading, and to this day, Don Quixote had been something of a favorite of theirs. The musical reproduction of Man of La Mancha that their father had taken them to see nearly thirty years ago during one of their mandated weekends spent together played a big part in that.
Already Klaudie could hear the tunes of the show’s most iconic songs beginning again in their head, as fresh as they’d heard them as a young girl; as some androgynous-thing to-be. It was… comforting. Uniquely so. One of few things left in the universe that seemed to elicit any strong emotional response in the last of the Drahomírs. Yes… yes they could perhaps drift off to sleep like this. Drift away, and let their eyes close on this world with all its complexity and contradiction and lay a-tangle amidst the vines of their — !
“Klaudie…?” The wintery whisper of their heart-thorn uttering aloud in accent the name to which a mind not quite all Klaudie’s own anymore belonged snapped to attention the still-as-a-statue sophont.
A caught breath, a furious bat of blinking. Klaudie exhaled forcefully. “What?” They asked as if interrupted, agitated at the fact they had been indeed… yet ashamed all the same to have been distracted at all. In that manner especially.
“.... Nothing.” A musically flourishing, if tonally somber dismissal sounded from the tablet.
Klaudie shook their head and focused once again at the task at hand. Clearing the desk with a frustrated sweep of their left arm, knocking much clutter to the floor, Cervantes’ novel included, the work resumed. A discreet channel was opened, the encrypted files were further secured by redundant code-obscuring measures and spoofing protocols; the package would hide in plain sight, one missive among a million sent every hour without consequence or concern.
At the press of a final button to confirm its delivery, invisible waves carried aloft from corporate spire to satellite swarm the secreted cache of curious conspiracy, and from there the digital connective membrane that facilitated the meeting of lovers-crossed safely from afar ensured the package’s arrival on the onboard computer of whatever vessel the caller might be piloting. It took all of thirty seconds for the terminal to confirm the completion of the process, yet for both parties it seemed to stretch on for longer, such was their shared anxieties.
“.... Here.” The voice over the tablet hummed harmonically; was that a sigh of relief, a rumble of satisfaction, or some other inscrutable alien expression? “I have it.”
“Open it. Make sure the data is intact and follow my instructions to the letter. We can’t afford any mistakes here.”
“Were I not so inclined to be so helpful, I might complain.” Somehow, what was thoughtfully conceived of as jest came out with scorn.
“And were I able to do this myself — “ Returned in kind with all due indignation.
“That’s not what I meant.” A hurried rustling of reeds.
“This part was your idea, you know.” Klaudie pressed the ultimately pointless attack.
“ Ever - BLOOM, we do not have TIME for this!” There was that sforzando striking back again; always with anger, with unease and uncertainty. “Now be patient ! I must FO-cus….”
Whether driven by superconscious direction, subconscious manipulation, or just plain old anger, Klaudie threw up their hands, leaving the desk with the tablet and terminal to go and relight the cigar they’d gotten half way through. Two flicks of their mother’s old lighter saw a flame catch and smolder the held tip of the rolled tobacco. One long drag let the Drahomír heir clear their head of the voice that was-yet-wasn’t theirs; the urge and surge of servility suppressed, thankfully, by the longer-lived addiction to smoking. In the distance, their heart-thorn could be heard uttering in a truly alien language some sort of curse or explicative, followed by a long and welcome silence by both parties.
Klaudie cleared their head and simmered down just as well as their caller did; it was the latter who spoke first. “.... A black—site? ” The term came out like a series of miss-pressed keys on a fortepiano. “What is this?”
“A place that only a handful of people know about,” The Oligarch projected their answer from facing away from their desk across the room, summoning their ‘quarterly meeting’ voice. “Soon to be a handful fewer.” Databank purges had already begun. Select C.O.S.M.I.C. (Covert Operation, Subterfuge, Manipulation, Information and Secrecy) servers located in bunkers deep underneath the long melted permafrost of southern Greenland would be experiencing rampant data corruption right about…. Yes, the sudden buzzing of a silent alarm on Klaudie’s tablet marked the time. A favor kept and spent in crisis is a favor well used.
For all their earlier grimness about how their project may have been behind schedule, this addendum to the plan was making good on time. “But that’s irrelevant. I’m sure the pacification fleets will discover it eventually.”
“It does appear to be well hidden….” The rings of Saturn were quite the natural bit of camouflage.
“That matters more for us than it does you.” Klaudie pointedly corrected. “What’s important is that the Compact doesn’t suspect a successful getaway.” One last drag of smoke to singe the lungs saw Klaudie finally calm once more… if a bit dour once again.
“And how exactly will they arrive at any other conclusion?” Had they a brow to be seen raising, the motion would be mimicked.
“Simple:” Klaudie returned their gaze toward the open sky, past the moon and the ships in orbit to where Saturn would likely hang were it visible to a naked eye. “The last ones out will shut off the lights.”
Music was once an unheard of thing in the halls of Clandestine Penal Facility designation S — 19.2 — VC; if all was “well” in the Accord, it would still be that way. The only music one would know would be that of the delusion, the hallucination, and the imagined rhythm of otherwise coincidental series of noises. From the marching cadence of passing guards accented by the clanking jangle of chained inmates to the dripping of errant moisture collecting on the ceilings of every cell. And yet music did ring out, in all its middling glory; Burnes had convinced the requisitions officer to give him a guitar, and to everyone’s slow and painful realization, he wasn’t that good with it.
The odd feeling of humidity and wetness certainly contributed to that; who wants to experience mediocre music when they’re hardly comfortable stewing in their own sweat? Perhaps this was by design though; the warden was a crafty one you see, a real expert at work. For despite this being a completely temperature controlled environment, the warden had devised a method by which he could ensure endless discomfort at a constant of twenty two degrees celsius.
Indeed, no outside humidity had been introduced into the cell blocks, and yet the nature of the prisoners’ labors from which they rested, with their bodies all cooped up in tight spaces, ensured the illusion of a greater heat present in the cell block. And now the music. Stars, if Burnes could only string together five chords without screwing one up, it might actually be tolerable. Surely he had to know; the warden. Truly, if there was anything to commend the master of this errant hell in space for, it was his commitment to the science of mild displeasure.
To an outsider of the system, and perhaps even the Accord, this might sound like a strange charge to lay at one’s feet; that they be the master of a ‘hell’ who’s suffering is a constant, middling matter. But therein lies the genius at work: Torment at its most delicious peaks was bound to leave a human worthless in short order; it could not be suffered long. But inconvenience? Annoyance? Common displeasure? These were wrongs that could be wracked up in the billions against every individual prisoner with almost no risk of encouraging self destructive behavior, or otherwise hastening their liquidation.
And this was imperative, you see, for what good is a prisoner who does not work for their meals? And what dog could be struck with the stick over, and over, and over again without mustering the fury to bite back? And of the carrot? The prisoners of S — 19.2 — VC, otherwise called “The Brink,” had not seen such a thing since their commitment to this rock. It’s not that the Accord saw no value in rewarding good behavior, even among its most fiercely oppressed, but that the warden understood the promise of another day to be a carrot unto itself.
Put a man through hell every day, and eventually, he shall choose not to wake, but put him through his paces, make him dig only an inch a day, and he will not realize that the hole was being made for him; not until it was too late, of course. But perhaps this was a poor metaphor. The digging of holes for graves was such a banal and unproductive task, and the transgressions committed by those exiled to The Brink demanded more serious reparations; their toil would mean something, if not to them, then to the empire, the Accord.
Alas, such lofty and heady conceptualizations of suffering within the concentrationary universe had been put aside for a year now. Ever since first contact had been made with the Affini, and the war began in earnest, the warden has been strangely… permissive. This wasn’t to give him any undue credit for kindness; the man was a genius, but that was a word he likely could not, or simply would not spell. It was a matter of “pragmatism,” as he put it in one of his many, many addresses to those wretches who found themselves here; Liào Yuánling remembered his words well:
“I have been the warden of this fine establishment for more than twenty years! And even I must confess that a happy worker is a more productive worker…. But don’t you dare take this state of exception for granted! The ends have always justified the means; just be glad that for once the means are in your favor.”
She remembered every speech of his, the warden. Yuánling found him oddly fascinating, in the way one might find a particularly large spider fascinating; welcome in its seemly mystique until it’s far too close for comfort. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of her now six year tenure on The Brink, the very walls of this station may as well be an extension of him; each column and block of concrete a strand in his web, every prisoner caught a fly. The saving grace in tolerating this fact was the warden’s prudence; a wise hunter knows patience. The spider could not gorge itself on flies, no matter how successful it was at catching them. It was always the smarter move to simply eat what one needed to last, to savor its digestion before beginning again.
Now it would seem that their jailor and killer had eaten well enough for a long time to come, or perhaps the spider sensed a long winter coming and had chosen to ‘go without’ in the more temperate months leading to that terrible season. The state of exception that demanded his cooperation, the war, news about it was scarce. Yuánling imagined it was scarce in any useful or truthful sense as a free woman of the Accord, but in here she couldn’t even get the lies; just vagueries, surface level insights, the most basic of implications.
Was it a rebellion? No, Yuánling had crossed that option off of her short and shrinking list of hypotheses after the second month of laxed restrictions. A rebellion would mean a surplus of incarcerated labor ready to be put to work, and the warden, while increasing their hours per day spent toiling, had eased their burdens in other ways; provided better foodstuffs than the most bland and basic of nutri-bricks. This wasn’t the behavior of a man amidst a revolt, not unless it was the Rinans who’d taken up arms; the poor, adorable little things were so fragile that typically weren’t worth taking as permanent prisoners, and it was by the logic of capital that the Accord’s wheels turned.
And it couldn’t have been a Rinan revolt, because then the handful of Rinans who had been consigned to The Brink would have never heard the end of it. The warden would make it clear to every human present aboard the station, guard and prisoner alike. There would be demonstrations; public executions of the Rinan prisoners. Perhaps it would sound “out of character” for the otherwise ‘reserved’ and plodding torment that the warden favored, but it would not be done to brutalize the Rinans, but to encourage the humans. Centuries passed, and the base hatred of the other had still yet to have been rid from the rotting corpus of human society, only it was the hatred of the “xeno” that was now in vogue, rather than the more common prejudices of sex, gender, ‘race,’ ethnicity, sexuality, and so on. All of those bigotries remained of course, and they were no less harmful nor invasive, Yuánling could attest to that very well. But the hatred for the Rinans… it was of a unique sort.
At last, humans of every color and creed could rally against something they all could factually agree on being “inhuman.” And indeed, the Rinans were inhuman… but inhumane ? Hardly. If anything, the great cultural divides that existed between humanity and the Rinans only highlighted those many things which humanity shared in great common with their squirrely, stellar neighbors. Yuánling herself was quite fond of their curiosity; their ingenuity. The cultures of their planet, as diverse and deep as the cultures of Terra, shared in them a most important relation to the art of creation; the applied sciences and maths. Maybe Yuánling was just biased, given her career as a practical and conceptual voidcraft engineer, and her love of small, adorable, fuzzy things.
“Would it be rude to call them that…?” She pondered audibly within her own mind as she stared at the parchment. “To their face? Definitely.” It had to be patronizing, no? But of course, context was everything. “Maybe if you knew them well enough.” Really, it was just like thinking of how one might compliment another person . Maybe that’s why it had been so easy to justify the conquest of the Rinans; they weren’t so obviously ‘people’ in the eyes of a society so drunk on chauvinism as to make the fascists of Old Terra blush. And just like old prejudices, this new one was often easily defeated by merely talking to them; the Rinans that is. Yuánling had the privilege of knowing several prior to her imprisonment, and while there were twelve or so of their number here, they had been wholly deprived of their translators, and Yuánling had tried and failed several times to learn even basic sign language. Her brain just wasn’t built for that.
What was she talking about again?
The imprisoned engineer blinked. Time had gotten away from her again, along with her focus, as it often did. She shook her head, recentering her wanderlust ridden mind. “Not a rebellion.” Yuánling exhaled through her nose as she firmly scratched out the first option on the list with her worn pen; one of the newer luxuries they were afforded to keep since the start of this “state of exception” last year. “Another coup?” She read the second with her mind’s mouth, preferring often to speak to herself in ways where none could hear her. “No. Corporate wars don’t happen like that anymore. If it happened at all, we’d never hear about it even if we were out there….” It was much easier than speaking aloud, for one. “.... Right? It’d be too messy to go loud with it. Way too messy. It’s possible, but there’s no way that it—” And secondly, it provoked no untoward attention from those around her.
Krhrhrhrhrhkk!
Though that didn’t stop the outside world from spoiling her focus regardless.
Yuánling snapped her head up and over her left shoulder, having snuggly sat herself facing toward the back left corner of her cell. She saw nothing but the opened way of her automated cell doors, and the top floor of the panopticon that centered the cell block.
The P.A. system cracked to life with mild feedback, as always.
“Two minutes. You have two minutes before the second work shift. Two minutes.”
“Wǒ cào….” The cursing thought absentmindedly escaped Yuánling’s lips.
“You figure anything yet?” The deep voice of her cellmate, a man by the name of Rodney Brooks, came from somewhere on the top bunk. Yuánling looked to see him laid out as he had been when they got off of their first shift eighteen minutes ago; his standard issue footwear poking off the edge was all she could see to confirm that fact. “Well?”
“Mmmm….” Yuánling regarded her notebook again, deciding to cross out the second item on the list. “No.” Again she paused. “Not yet.”
“Welp — ” Rodney took off from the top bunk with an athletic spring to his step, landing cleanly and with ease. despite the years and the toil, he remained spry as he had been when he was young. “ — Same as usual then.” He was short, stocky, well muscled; built like a bear, with almost enough hair to match. Were it not for the less than ideal rations provided to him, he’d have the gut of one too, but the warden’s laxness this year had seen him gain some of that healthy fat back. “What were you trying to figure this time anyway?” He spoke with a southern American drawl, though that country had long since ceased to exist in the Old Terran sense; the accent carried through the centuries though.
“...I — ”
“You don’t gotta if you don’t wanna.” Words spoken while Rodney checked himself in the mirror, wiping the lingering sweat and dew from his brow and full beard.
“ — No, no, I do, just — ” Yuánling had to stop herself by force. She hated when this happened. When her focus was cut off all of a sudden. It often disoriented her more than it should, especially since it’d been years since she’d been on any medication to aid in her focus. One breath, then two; easy now. “ — I’m just worried, I think.” She wasn’t even sure if she was, she just had to complete the thought, so she said what first came to mind as she stood.
“What? You ? Worried? Pshhh.” Rodney was always terrible at hiding his smile. “It really must be Tuesday then.”
Yuánling blinked. “It’s Wednesday.”
Rodney didn’t bother turning his head as he washed up. “A joke, Yu.”
“Ah.” That too happened often, with or without the meds.
Smirking all the while, as if it were a permanent feature of his face, despite the dreary hell they found themselves within, Rodney finished touching up his appearance. In the reflection he could see in himself the face of what should be a free man, perhaps past his prime, but not by much. His skin was dark and rich with a youth that had been sold to, and subsequently stolen by the Chalawan Mining Cooperative in specific, and the Accord in general. His hair, both what little topped his slightly balding head, and that about his chin and face, was coarse, prone to curling, and darker still, with wispy strands of the reaper’s frost creeping up. Rodney had picked away at those signs of aging as best he could, but he knew it was ultimately a losing battle with time.
But a life of work and healthy mindfulness had paid off, even if it had seldom been his intention when it came to the work; he just decided to take the good with the bad and call it a draw. Maybe the nutri-bricks tasted like shit. Maybe the labor was hard and unpaid. Maybe he was but a fleshy automaton piloted by an inscrutable essence located somewhere within the space between his neurotransmitters, trapped in a prison for the Accord’s political dissidents and particularly loathed criminals, as it spun in orbit about Saturn; one rock among many trillions in its rings. But he wasn’t dead, physically, spiritually, mentally, or emotionally; they hadn’t beaten him. Not yet. And as long as that was true… well, he supposed it could be worse. Such was the nature of his seemingly implacable optimism. “What about the baby?”
Yuánling shook her head. “If we keep this pace — “ Her speaking interrupted by the grunt of effort elicited from stretching her younger, yet more ache-prone bones. “ — They’ll have to bring in the electricians and software teams within… a week? Maybe three at most?” She was tall, about a foot taller than Rodney, but she was like a sunflower; slim, slender, beautiful, though maybe not vibrant. More ill than anything. “But that’s only if the hull is airtight; it has to be perfect.”
“Mm.” Rodney stepped from the mirror, satisfied as usual with the body of the man he’d become. “Where’s that leave us?” Another upside of all the hard labor: It allowed him to forge for himself a hard body. That and the testosterone he’d been fortunate enough to start early. “I know they ain’t about to let us relax while the specialists do their thing.” Luckier still that he had convinced the warden early into his twenty two year and running stay on The Brink that continuing his HRT would increase his productive capabilities. Rodney knew of course it wasn’t his good arguments or any logic of productivity that had the warden agreeing with him; the bastard simply had to respect the kid's gumption.
Yuánling, for her part, lacked that courage, even now after six years into her “ten year” sentence; ten years de jure, liable for life de facto. “You think they’d care if we fried ourselves wiring her up?” She asked as she went in front of the mirror and sink.
“No — ” Rodney chuckled. “But I do think they’d care if we fucked it up. Mistakes with that sorta shit cost a lot of money; especially with the computers and all.” Stretching his toned if work-battered arms as other inmates began to file and shamble past the duo’s open cell, headed towards the dock-station, he looked over his shoulder. “I’d think of all the people here you’d agree with me.”
“And I, of all the people here, know exactly just how much dumb labor goes into the work of ship building.” Yuánling’s comeback started dry but gained some pep to its step about half way through her facial examination and hair-fixing. “There’s going to be a lot of wire to be carried, a lot of insulation to install, and even more wiring after that.” It only took a few seconds for her mask to reform itself when the time had come to be among others, but it was an effort that taxed her nonetheless, small and inconsequential as it seemed from the outside. “And did I mention the wiring?” Now she could feign a more allistic understanding of humor; or was it that she always understood it, just not so much when others did it?
Shaking his head, Rodney left the doorway of the cell as Burnes, the off-tune guitar player and long time friend of his, passed by. The two went back as far as Chalawan, as did a good many others sentenced to The Brink. “Well, we’ll see you suit-side.” The former let a hand hang as a wave while the latter simply nodded to Yuánling in passing.
Yuánling turned from the mirror to nod back, unsure exactly of what the gesture meant emotionally to Burnes, given Yuánling barely knew the man, even after all this time. “Maybe he just thinks you’re ‘one of the boys.’” One of the Chalawan boys, to be precise. “I mean, no, he definitely doesn’t. They all know each other.” Looking back to the mirror to wash off her face and fix up her short, yet unkempt hair, Yuánling fell back down the rabbit hole of her wandering mind. “Buuuut… maybe I’m ‘cool’ enough to be one of them?” And so the mild annoyances of the world slipped away, if only for a few moments. “I dunno. I didn’t even do anything worth this fucking rock.”
“One minute. You have one minute before the second work shift. One minute.”
The iron stoicism of the prison guard manning the P.A. system shocked Yuánling back to reality again. Although it wouldn’t last, it did get her to actually go about cleaning herself up, as her body had seemingly forgotten with her mind so quickly wandering onto other topics.
When all was said and done about twenty seconds later, Yuánling lifted her head up from her lukewarm-wet hands to give herself one last lookover. She looked like shit, but nothing was new there. Her sickly pallor, the frizziness in her otherwise straight and jet black hair, the bags under her eyes; it wasn’t any different on the inside of the prison system than it was on the outside. Her skin, which should be a hale and light brown, had always been drowned out, especially around the face, and wherever the veins were closer to the surface, like the hands, wrists, feet, knees, and so on. Yuánling’s parents always blamed that frail look and feel of hers on the inscrutable illness of her youth, but Yuánling knew it to be a result of exposure to heavily polluted water from her homeworld of Haishen.
There was little time to reminisce on those days, not that Yuánling wanted to, really; her mind was racing with so many more important things. The status of their “baby” and the exact reason for the season; this eerie “state of exception.” She thought to herself as usual, aloud within yet silent without. “It has to be a war of some kind.” Her mind bounced back to the earlier topic of its fixation as she left the cell in a hurried walk down the gangway of the high floor where her cell was found. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be putting so much effort into accelerating the timetable on this ‘prototype’ of theirs.” As one of the last to leave the great chamber, Yuánling glanced back to peer at the panopticon tower in all its domineering stoicism. “Whatever it is — ” Why she looked back she did not know. “ — It’s the most serious shit has ever gotten since I got thrown in here.” But worry stalked her like a hungry scavenger, who’s looming presence Yuánling felt from every unwatched angle.
She entered through the four meters wide and three meters tall gate, one of parted vault-doors, and did not look back again.