by Lydia Hope
“What about prison? Have you seen a lot of migrant criminals?” Uncle Drexel asked Gemma.
“Nothing outside the norm. We had some new gang members brought in the other day, but that’s hardly unusual. By the way, I was transferred to a different ward. With aliens.”
Gemma’s statement stunned her relatives. For a short uncomfortable moment, they gaped at her in profound shock.
Aunt Herise was the first to recover. “Aliens! Gemma, why? Is it a punishment?”
“No, Aunt Herise, nothing like that! They change staff up now and then to where they need more people. I don’t get to choose what floor to clean.”
“Is it dangerous?” Uncle Drexel asked.
Gemma thought about it before answering. “No more so than on the human wards. The prisoners are locked up in cells. Guards are around. And I carry a taser when working.” She smiled a little. “It’s safer on the inside than walking home at night.”
Leena, who was busily stuffing her face with fresh bread, sniffed with disdain. “What nonsense! No one who’s born in the City is afraid to walk home at night. I ain’t.”
Drexel patted Leena on the arm. “Now, now, sweetheart. Everyone needs to keep their eyes open, especially now, what with the migrants. We live in dangerous times.”
Aunt Herise sighed deeply, and Gemma knew she was once again going to lament her niece’s lack of a decent profession.
“Goodness, Gemma, if only you had the sense to select a better occupation when you had the opportunity. Dancer! Who needs them? You could've been a nurse, and worked at the hospital instead of cleaning toilets at the prison.”
“I know, Aunt Herise,” Gemma patiently replied. “But my life in The Islands was very different. I got by with being a dancer back then.” She didn’t just get by; she had worked hard to be noticed as one of the best performers. A young rising star, she was beginning to make a name for herself.
Herise went on, “I simply can’t understand why any woman would want to go into dancing knowing she’d be out of work at the first sign of wrinkles. And with no other skills? Nurse’s training would have served you better even on The Islands. Why, with your daddy’s money you could've gone on to be a doctor, like your old flame Zeke. He, at least, had some sense.”
At hearing his name, Gemma’s heart gave a painful squeeze.
“You’re right. But we can’t turn back time. I hope Zeke is making progress on Meeus. The training he received on The Islands is very marketable.”
Her aunt and uncle shared a look between them. Drexel cleared his throat. “You aren’t still waiting to hear from him, are you?”
“I am. He will be sending for me once he is settled on Meeus and employed. We need money for my passage, you know that. Things take time.”
Herise chuckled without humor. “Gemma, you’re naïve if you think that. Mark my words, he forgot all about you by now and is living away his new cushy life.”
“No, he didn’t forget. I know Zeke. I trust him. He’s very responsible.” Gemma had to stop and take a deep breath to calm down.
They had had this argument before. Aside from being responsible and caring, Zeke and she loved each other deeply and were forever linked together through the shared tragedy of losing their homes and families and having to start all over. But she wasn’t going there with Herise and Drexel, both cynical in the extreme, only to have her feelings ridiculed.
Ravi saved her from another rebuttal by asking, “Do aliens carry diseases?”
Aunt Herise looked stricken - obviously, the thought hadn’t occurred to her. “Gosh, I sure hope not. Do you know, Gemma? Did they train you at the prison not to touch them?”
“Ah, well, I don’t know anything about the diseases. We don’t normally touch the inmates.”
“Good,” Herise looked vastly relieved. “Make sure you stay away from them. God forbid you bring home parasites.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gemma said meekly, uncomfortable with the topic for some reason.
Her mind conjured an image of the white skeletal creature in the cell with the boarded-up window. It would be dark there now, the lights out for the night with only a feeble emergency bulb flickering by the door that led to the stairs. A woman prisoner had once confessed to Gemma that the nights were the worst, dark and cold in winter, with the sounds augmented by the still air and echoing walls.
Was the alien suffering now, alone in the cold cell, in the dark? Did it even matter to him, blind and deaf? Did he dream of home?
Gemma had no idea what species he belonged to or what his home planet was.
After helping Aunt Herise clean up and wash dishes, Gemma retreated to her room armed with a study book on aliens and the Universe. Her eyes felt gritty and her eyelids heavy after a long day, but she wanted to know.
The study book, intended for children, yielded only the basic information about well-known alien groups, like Perali, Tana-Tana, and Sakka. A few others were briefly described to a lesser detail, and Gemma absorbed the tidbits of knowledge motivated to learn as much as possible to be better prepared for her new assignment.
After perusing all the available information for a short time, she closed the book. White skeletal creatures with long hair and overly large milky eyes didn’t feature in the contents, and the mystery of it nagged at Gemma’s mind.
Before turning in for the night, Gemma got up and took out a stubby pencil. On a small wall calendar that she’d fashioned out of recycled sheets of paper, she crossed out today’s date with a neat diagonal line. Just as she’d done 782 times in the two years, one month, and three weeks that went by since she’d waved Zeke off on a cool windy morning.
Chapter 3
"Hey, Gemma, come quick! Didn’t you hear the summons?”
Gemma hurried over to Ruby holding a stack of dirty aluminum cups against her chest.
“No. What happened?”
“A dirty protest went off on the fifth floor during the night. It’s contained now, but the mess is epic. We are to help clean up.”
“A dirty protest?”
“You know, when inmates piss and shit everywhere except in the toilet. They smear the stuff on the walls, throw it around.”
“Eww.” She couldn’t even imagine. “Why would they do that?”
“In protest. Because of the conditions, the overcrowding.”
“How is this going to help?”
“It ain’t. But they try anyway.”
Gemma was having a hard time picturing the deed. Defecating on the floor and smearing excrement on the walls? Picking up and throwing feces by the handful into the corridor?
“I can’t believe anyone would do that. How disgusting.”
“Human males for you - shit’s everywhere. Piss is dripping from the ceiling. You know, aliens don’t do that. Well, except for…” Ruby threw a pointed look toward Little Green Man, who, Gemma had learned from the study book, belonged to a Weerstra dwarf race. The Weerstra were not a real developed nation, but they adapted well except for their poor appropriation of social norms, which made it a challenge to interact with them long-term. And their limited self-control was a known problem, so much so that some alien groups considered them parasitic and killed on sight.
Gemma didn’t want anyone killed, but if their prisoner was a representative example of his people, she could see why Weerstra failed to endear the Universe.
She adjusted her stack of cups. “Let me take them downstairs. Do I need to get a bucket?”
“No, someone else is bringing supplies. Just show up and quick. The OO will do the inspection hisself.”
“Say no more.”
She hurried on down.
The Operations Overseer - OO or Double Zero as he was not-so-affectionately referred to behind his back - held immense power over the prison employees. While inmates and their families went out of their way to curry favors from the warden, OO reigned supreme over the fate of anyone providing services inside these walls. The lowly cleaning folk like Gemma were especial
ly vulnerable to his moods for they were a dime a dozen in the godly eyes of OO.
The fifth floor was a disaster. Guards had corralled the chained prisoners in a corner to allow the cleaning people access to the cells. The stench took Gemma’s breath away. Ruby had been on point: shit was everywhere.
Several fellow janitors were already at work with rags and mops, vigorously scrubbing surfaces in an effort to restore the exceptional cleanliness of the prison that Warden Heis liked to boast about to the City mayor. By the looks of things, everyone had been made well aware of OO’s intent to personally inspect the cell block, and people were putting forth a good show of doing their best for the sake of the guards who observed the cleanup efforts with keen interest.
“God, please, open the windows! I can’t breathe,” someone complained.
The prisoners, crowded together, snickered.
“Oh, yeah, motherfacka?” one hollered, rattling his chains. “You ain’t smelled nothin’ yet if you ain’t smelled Big Chugga’s backdoor tuba.”
“Yeah, c’mon, Chugga, bring on some ass haze!” others chimed in.
Egged on by fellow inmates, a big guy with facial tattoos, presumably Chugga, obligingly bent his knees into a slight squat and regaled his audience with a deafening, pistol-shot loud fart.
“That bomb was fetid!” The prisoners whistled and clapped.
But the guards weren’t amused. A baton was promptly sunk into Big Chugga’s gelatinous belly, and he grunted, doubling over. The dull thud of the weapon striking flesh went straight to Gemma’s core. Another baton swung and connected with the prisoner’s face, smashing his nose. Blood poured, bright red, on the floor. Chains holding the inmates together rattled like some hellish wind chimes.
Gemma couldn’t look away.
A helper muttered under his breath about extra clean-up, pulling her out of her horrified daze. After seven months at the prison, the commonplace violence was still jarring to Gemma’s senses. Yes, these men were criminals, yes, they shit all over the place and now she had to clean it - and she still couldn't see them hurt so methodically and deliberately. She was a poor fit for this job.
As she grabbed a bucket already filled with water, Gemma saw Arlo, ill-tempered and scowling, coming in to help. He wore rubber gloves that she hadn’t known existed at the prison. She had surely never been offered a pair.
“Good morning, Arlo,” she called out to him.
“Morning,” he muttered.
Ruby also noticed the gloves. “Hey, where did you get these? How come the rest of us have to handle this filth with our bare hands?”
“I’m special.”
Ruby placed her hands on her hips. “Oh, we know you are, hun. A diamond in the rough.”
“Listen, I hurt my hand, alright?” Arlo pulled one glove off to demonstrate gauze covering his palm.
Ruby remained unimpressed. “Doing what? Handing out gruel?”
“It’s a bad gash, the skin’s split from here to here. It hurts, by the way. They gave me the gloves at the medical bay so I could be here to help y’all without catching the bubonic plague.”
“Uh-huh.” Ruby scoffed, his plight earning him zero points in her opinion. “Looks like a knife cut to me. Who’d you piss off, Arlo?”
He put the glove back on and shot Ruby a mean look. “Mind your own business, Ruby. Go clean shit or whatever.”
He snatched the nearest bucket and rolled it away from the two of them.
Ruby clucked her tongue. “I swear to God, one day he’ll get his dues. Back to his old tricks, I see.”
“What do you mean?” Gemma asked.
“Nothing. Come on, let’s go clean some shit.”
By the time OO made an appearance on the fifth floor, the contamination was largely eliminated, thanks to the mass effort put forth by the groaning, gagging cleaning crew. No one liked their job on a good day, but this task was rough compared even to their regular toil of picking off dried up boogers and wiping the yellow crust from the toilet rims.
OO’s thick-soled boots stepped carefully on the freshly mopped floor leaving behind clear tracks. His hand held a taser stick, and he was tapping the taser casually against his thigh encased in gray uniform pants. He wore glasses, and when he turned his gaze on Gemma clustered together with Ruby, Arlo, and the others, the light gleamed in the lenses, making it seem that his eyes shone with an unholy light.
Gemma’s animosity toward him had been immediate and instinctive, and at the beginning, she hadn’t been able to figure out why. He spoke well and didn’t patronize. He was firm but polite in his orders. Yet her entire system would go on high alert when he drew near.
Later she’d heard stories on the women’s ward about a special “punishment” room he reserved for the prettiest girls…
“Good job.” OO’s gaze skimmed over the cleaning crew’s faces without bothering to personalize his attention. To him, they all composed one unimportant, indistinguishable mass, no doubt bearing traces of excrement they’d just cleaned off.
He motioned towards one of the guards. “Open the shower room for the help and see about fresh scrubs.”
Gemma followed her co-workers downstairs to return her bucket to the supply closet - and sign off for it too, for the prison property was guarded better than the prisoners - and went to the showers, grateful for OO’s permission to use the facility.
Women went first. The water was lukewarm but available. OO’s generosity extended to providing soap but not towels.
Gemma wrung her hair dry as best she could, and she and Ruby shared the corner of Gemma’s overcoat that appeared clean to wipe the water off their skin. Teeth chattering, they pulled their clothes back on and covered up with fresh overcoats.
Outside of the washroom, Ruby stopped. “Wait here. Let me go see if someone at the kitchens can spare us a warm drink.”
Gemma waited. The air in the basement was colder than on the upper floors and damp. Rubbing her arms, she started pacing, measuring her steps to walk approximately eight feet one way, stop, turn, and walk the eight feet back. This was all the space prisoners were allotted if they wanted to walk inside their cells - eight feet in length. Across, the cells were even smaller at only six feet. What must they feel like, cooped up in their cramped cages for days, months, years to end?
The horror of being stuck in a box measuring eight by six, cold, damp, dirty, with nothing to stimulate your brain, no interaction except the shouts of the guards and orders of the helpers - Gemma struggled to absorb it. She knew that people - and aliens - survived incarceration all the time, but even picturing herself in their place made her want to howl.
“Gemma!”
“I’m here, Ruby!” Gemma turned and hurried back down to where Ruby was waiting for her with a steaming mug.
“Look! Hot tea. Chamomile.” Ruby sipped from the mug and squeezed her eyes from the pleasure of the warm fragrant drink spreading through her. Her entire wrinkled face smoothed out in bliss. “Mmm, my daughter’s favorite.”
They slid down to sit on the floor, their backs to the wall. Ruby passed the steaming mug to Gemma.
“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Ruby,” Gemma accepted the mug and blew on the brew before taking a sip. It was delicious. She couldn't remember when she last had tea. “How old is she?”
“She’s eighteen.”
“I bet she’s beautiful.”
Ruby nodded, and her face shone with pride. “And smart as a whip. She got on with the docks last week. Finally! I hope it lasts.”
“Oh, that’s great. What does she do?”
“She’s a delivery girl. She brings parts from the warehouse to the shops. They even gave her a small trolley to drive for the heavy stuff. Imagine that!”
“Well, why not? She’s a smart girl, she can do it.” Gemma smiled at Ruby.
But instead of basking in the praise, Ruby suddenly looked crestfallen. “Yeah. I hope it lasts,” she repeated.
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“
She’s sickly, my baby is. Bad lungs. She gets them sick spells and starts missing work, and they end up letting her go. They always let her go.”
“Oh, no, Ruby, I’m so sorry.”
“But this time it may be different. The doctor says fresh air is what she needs, and with the docks being near the water, we think she can manage. We’ll see.”
“Can she be treated?”
Ruby slowly shook her head. “Nothing can be done. The doctor says the air’s too bad in the City for the likes of her. That she needs to go away from here. But where would we go? If only I could earn enough to send her to Meeus.”
Gemma remained silent. Ruby was paid as much as she, which was barely enough to keep her stomach full much less fly through the stars to another world. At least she, Gemma, had Zeke. Sooner or later he would send for her. She just needed to be patient.
They finished the tea before it had a chance to cool. Gemma pushed herself up and held her hand out to Ruby. “We have to go before someone looks for us.”
Reluctantly, Ruby grasped her outstretched hand and rose to her feet, and together they returned to the third floor to resume their work.
Arlo assigned himself to light duty on the account of his injured hand. It wasn’t clear why the cut in his palm prevented him from going up and down the elevator, but it fell on Gemma and Ruby to haul up the bucket of gruel. Ruby gave out bowls. Arlo, operating with one hand, went up the corridor with a ladle to pour the mush into the bowls inmates dutifully held at the ready.
Gemma trundled along holding the bucket.
“Now, you so much as blink funny, this lunch is passing you by,” Arlo warned Little Green Man.
The alien bared his stumpy blackened teeth at the helpers but did nothing more than hold his bowl up. Today he dispensed with his top and paraded around the cell with bare torso, showing pale skin reminiscent of a frog’s belly and covered by coarse sparse hairs. In Gemma’s revised opinion, he took the prize for the most repelling creature on the cell block, both in appearance and personality.
