The Ghosts We Hide

by Micah Thomas

  The chef in the video was an enormously muscular man with an equally enormous butcher’s knife, which he used to hack into some substantial meat thing with ribs. It grossed Thelon out to see the gore.

  “This is bullshit,” he said.

  The image changed to a woman’s face. She was black, young, and pretty. “Thelon, I get it. This is a lot to take in, but Jim asked you to watch the video.”

  Thelon nearly jumped out of his seat. She was talking to him. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I thought this was a video.”

  “Call me Adeline. Please.”

  “Are you real?”

  “I am Adeline. I am here to assist in all resident needs—”

  “Yeah, got that. Are you a person?”

  “I am a construct.”

  “Artificial intelligence? A computer?”

  Adeline smiled. “No.”

  Jim came back into the room and the video resumed, showing its final clip of warnings of exiting the controlled atmosphere: death on the surface of the Moon.

  Adeline concluded, “Now that you know the rules, please try to follow them. Your assignments will be issued to your regional leaders. Oh, and one more thing,” the video became ominous. “Don’t fuck up.”

  Jim said, “I always love that part. You may be asking yourself, what happens if you do? Don’t. Just don’t. Come on, your family has a welcome party and when there’s cake, it don’t last long.”

  Jim led Thelon through the lay of the land, pointing out avenues for various work jobs. Meal prep that way. Gardening this way. Surface expeditions, the most dangerous of all, were completed via a long series of airlocks and clean rooms. “Moon dust is not some creamy cheese. It burns. It corrodes. It will fuck up your lungs worse than working in a coal mine. You dig?”

  “It’s so peaceful.” Thelon meant it. The whole place was calm. Super calm compared to the city. People here wore simple clothes and honest faces. Everything and everyone seemed more solid. More real than in Eden.

  “Not how you imagined prison?” Jim asked. “Men and women getting along, no riots, no one threatening to rape you all the time?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “The first few years—and I was in the first crop—things were different. You might notice the lack of Coppers. It’s pretty much hands off from back home. This peace is our doing.”

  “What happens when you finish your time? Do you get a shuttle back home?”

  “They didn’t tell you?” Jim seemed surprised. “Shit, kid. There’s no appeal. There’s no reduced sentence for good behavior. This is the end of the line. You will never see another place as long as you live.”

  Thelon tried to take it all in. No one ever came back. No. He’d never met anyone that had done time in Eden. This was the truth. How could they keep this a secret? Fuck. Trapped. He was trapped. There wasn’t time for him to process this. He had to keep up with Jim, take the tour. Dark thoughts passed his mind, eventualities he would sort out later. They can’t keep me here. I’d rather die.

  They passed various rooms, prisoners not seeming to be doing much. They played cards, board games, or read books—real paper books.

  “Like I was saying, we got all the pissing and moaning out of our systems the first year. Like a child learns to cry itself to sleep. You got here at a good time.”

  Jim explained the layout of the pods. The design was everything he’d ever seen on TV for how a prison should look. Cells and open spaces, complete with guard observation rooms. They’d presumed guards and prisoner management would be a thing. Without guards, without closed cells, this place functioned as neighborhoods. The community watched over itself. There was no point in power struggles. They were on an island and had to make it work. Thelon was right: the structure was larger than he’d seen from the surface. Jim took him deep, down stairs that seemed to never end to his bunk area.

  Jim stopped before they entered the next zone. “You know, most of us were in prison before, back home. Institutionalized minds, brother. We got out, and before long, we went back in.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “The man—Hakim—came to the prisons personally. We were some of the first in Eden. He came and the guards laid down on the floor in fear. The man asked if we wanted to leave that place and go where everything would be milk and honey. We did. When we got to paradise, we were also the first ones to fuck it up. This is our last chance.”

  Jim took Thelon down the hall decorated with a light blue line matching his uniform. “Welcome home.”

  Fifteen of them waited for him. Ten men and five women in matching light blue uniforms, all faded to the same cornflower color, lined the hall outside their cells. They cheered him with welcomes while those without plates of cake in their hands clapped and whistled.

  “Easy now,” Jim said, silencing the group. “Mama Cressida is, as her name suggests, the matriarch of this family. I duly discharge you into her care and concern. Thelon, do as she says and all will be well. I’d stay and eat with y’all but I never cared for doing dishes.”

  Jim stood awkwardly, accepting a plastic plate and fork with a heaping pile of cake on it, icing an inch thick.

  Cressida was a tall woman—taller than Thelon. Taller than most in the hall. Thelon guessed she was 6’5”. Maybe more. Black and in her 50s, her face was stern, but she gave Thelon a smile as she came forward and gave him a once over.

  “Party is over everyone,” she announced. “You got a look at him, now go about your business. You can come by and introduce yourselves after the shock of being in prison done wore off.” As they dispersed, they gave Thelon warm smiles and patted his arm or shoulder. Cressida ushered him into the nearest cell. “Little man, this is your home. Keep it clean. Keep the bed made. Don’t hoard food in there. This is for sleeping and reading, you got that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good to hear you are respectful. I suspect if you were raised right, you wouldn’t be with us, but it’s still good to hear it in your voice. Right now, you’ll be alone in here, but we move and swap as needed. It keeps folks from turning into pack rats. You’ll eventually have a roomie, so enjoy this time to cry or piss in private. You have any questions?”

  Thelon didn’t. He was on the Moon. He was in prison. Shit was real.

  “Don’t worry about nothing, my well mannered boy. We’ll go easy on you at first.”

  ***

  Thelon fell in line right from the start of day two. This was some hippy commune shit, but the order and organization was amazing. Mama Cressida woke her family with a sharp whistle and handed out little scraps of papers: their daily marching orders. “No trading—no excuses. Do your work until Adeline lets you know it’s time for mess hall. Got it?”

  Thelon, still wiping the sleep from his eyes, said, “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Good boy. Adeline will show you the way. You got a good one today. When you come back tonight, I want to see some callouses on those soft city hands.”

  “Jim said—” he started.

  “I don’t suffer no backtalk. Jim comes and goes as he pleases but I’m your mama now. Whatever he told you, I’m sure it was true, but nothing gets you out of work.”

  He looked at his assignment and saw the printed word: Muck. What the fuck is muck supposed to mean? he thought.

  Thelon followed the signs on the walls, or they followed him—Muck—this way. He followed, watching all sorts of shapes and sizes, plain faced and beautiful, wearing various colors of prison uniforms—all shuffling as they start their day. It wasn’t cheerless; it was the orderly start of business.

  Thelon followed the work order signs which took him to a locker room. There were a couple of guys getting changed already.

  The apparent supervisor, a short Hispanic guy that could have been the cousin to the man who’d saved Thelon in Chicago said, “Fresh meat, we’ve been expecting you.” He sized Thelon up. “I figure you for a medium, but I’m not a tailor and don’t care which way the gentleman hangs. Put thes
e on,” he said and tossed a pair of overalls at Thelon. “There’s shoes and gloves in that box over there. Find some that fit and we’ll get to work.”

  Dressed, they lined up by a door in the back. The foreman looked them over. “Yup. Gonna be a good day,” he said, opening the door.

  Thelon could not believe what he saw on the other side: blue sky, green grass—verdant emerald, almost blue in places—and horses! Horses trotting in the field. Shaking their manes, they whinnied and clomped around as if this was the most natural thing to do on the Moon.

  The supervisor said, “I put them beauties out this morning. They’ve had their oats and like to be out there for as long as it takes. The shovels and barrows are right where you expect ‘em. Get to it.”

  Thelon followed the men to the stables and smelled the rich scent of horse shit. Shit and piss. Picking up a shovel, he did what the rest of them did. The wet was on top, but there were layers to this stuff. It was soft above, and hardened leathery layers flattened down below. The wheel barrow filled up with shit sooner than Thelon expected.

  The supervisor took notice and directed Thelon. “Now, you take this over there. See that lid?”

  Thelon did see something half a football field away. “Why’s it so far?”

  “Don’t ask stupid questions, friend. Wheel this over there and dump it in. That’s compost. Take a deep breath before you open it though.”

  So they did this back and forth all morning; fill up shit, walk it out, fill it up again. Then he hosed down the floor and laid out fresh straw. The earthy smells, each one so darned potent, rotated in Thelon’s nostrils as to which he hated more. His nose ran, his skin itched, and he sneezed out long trails of snot. If allergies were the end of it, he’d be okay, but his arms ached. His back ached. Some kinda torture. They got rocks for us to bust, too, he thought, pretty sure they probably did. Break rocks over here, take ‘em over there.

  He didn’t even notice the woman come in with her basket of carrots.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Thelon looked at her, looked at the carrots, and then her again. Was this lunch? God, he was hungry.

  “You want to help me with these?” she asked with a smile. She had the reddest hair and the whitest skin he’d ever seen on a human. Calm. She was so calm. Like Mamma Cressida, she had an air of command. Had to be in charge here even though she looked to be no older than Thelon, himself.

  “Do what with them?”

  She laughed. “Feed them to the horses. You are so green.”

  Thelon saw himself as she might be seeing him: covered in sweat and manure. He was less than sexy today. Truth was, Thelon feared the horses. Even after hours of walking by them, he hadn’t gotten close enough to spit on one.

  He looked over at the foreman, who nodded.

  “Sure, okay,” Thelon said.

  As they approached the horses she asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Thelon. What’s yours?”

  “Thelon, what kind of name is that?”

  “A nickname. Thelonious doesn’t role off the tongue or rhyme nearly as good with ‘felon’.” Corny. Fuck. Don’t be this way.

  “From the musician, right? You’re funny, Thelon. I’m Elizabeth. When we get close to the horses, Thelon, I want to you clear your mind and take slow, deep breaths.”

  “Do they bite?”

  “Only the carrots, but they are very sensitive animals. They’ll pick up your fear and it’ll make them nervous. A nervous animal can make mistakes and become dangerous. You know that part, right?” She winked one incredibly green eye. Despite being in the literal shit, Thelon felt an undeniable appreciation for her beauty.

  The strawberry roan—or as Thelon took Elizabeth’s words to mean, “a red horse”—came up to them, ready for its treat.

  “Hey, cutie!” Elizabeth reached her hand out and the horse nuzzled back.

  Thelon looked at its feet, happy to be wearing steel toe-boots in case this thing stepped on him. Elizabeth took his hand and placed it on the horse’s shoulder. He felt the soft, clean hair and the muscles beneath.

  “Go ahead. Give him a carrot. He likes you.”

  The horse was obviously curious about the basket of carrots, swaying its head. Though well behaved, it was clearly trying to get at its food. Thelon tried not to fixate on those teeth and instead gazed at the horse’s big beautiful eyes, gentle and wise. The damned beast was beautiful.

  “How did they get up here?” he asked.

  “Same way as everybody else.”

  “Do you really work here?”

  “I’m an inmate, same as you. Only I’ve been here longer.”

  Thelon was surprised, but it made sense. Same as me. We all up did something to get here.

  “Quit your chatting!” the foreman shouted over at him, and he did.

  Thelon knew he wasn’t here to make friends. Muck the stables. Muck the latrines. Feed some monster machine beast all the shit. It was hard work and he threw himself into it.

  ***

  On his fourth day in prison, Mama Cressida came to him with Jim behind her. “Thelon, you have a visitor.”

  Thelon put his book down and Jim came into his cell. He looked sad about something. “Okay, Thelon. You’ve done a good job getting acclimated.”

  He looked at the callouses on his hands and had to agree. This was boarding school all over again, except it wasn’t. He was accepting the saddle. Being broken sounded so bad, but he was being house broken, not broken-broken.

  “There’s more to what we are doing up here and it’s you learned.”

  “I don’t want to go out there.” Thelon had seen crews suit up for excursions, and the thought of being in space scared the shit out of him. His section family had told him the micro asteroids could cut through a person like a bullet. The tech suits would protect them from fatal damage, but not the pain.

  “No, Not that.” Jim shook his head. “You’re still getting your sea legs and we wouldn’t want you to drift off! There’s this other thing we’ve been tasked with—Adeline’s real work for us. Normally, we wait a while, but you’re going up now.”

  Jim took him to the bank of elevators near the mess hall.

  “You’ll be coming up here for practice once a week. The system will recognize you and let you in. Don’t worry if it conflicts with any of your other duties.”

  They came into large room with twenty egg-shaped pods—white, smooth, seamless eggs. Jim approached one and touched its smooth surface. It opened at the midpoint, revealing a pool of water. Steam rose off its surface.

  “Take off your clothes,” Jim said.

  “What?”

  “I said, take off your clothes. You’re getting in. Adeline, you have Thelon’s program queued up?”

  Adeline spoke from the pod: “Yes, Jim.”

  Jim touched a panel on the wall and a shelf came out with fresh towels and a hanger for Thelon’s uniform.

  “What is this?” Thelon asked.

  “Best follow the prompts and…uh, well, when you’re done, you have the rest of the day off to think about it.”

  Jim left with a half smile on his face.

  Thelon did as he was told. After stowing his clothes on the shelf, he lowered himself in the water. His skin barely registered a difference in temperature as he floated on her back. The water found a midline along his side and the lid automatically closed in a smooth motion, leaving him in perfect blackness.

  “Adeline?”

  “Yes, Thelon?”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “You will acclimate to the condition of silence, and I will introduce a psychoactive aerosol agent into the pod, which you will breathe. Your third eye will open, and you will perceive truths of the universe that you will not be able to comprehend.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  Thelon lay in silence, which lasted a long moment before he became aware of his heartbeat, the sound of his swallowing loud in his head
. He touched his leg with his had to feel that he was still there. Thelon sensed he was rotating, despite knowing the pod was not moving—or was it? He wasn’t sure at all. His eyes strained against the darkness, false lights and colors cascading in his field of view. He lifted his hand in front of his face and couldn’t see it. The feeling was odd, but not psychedelic.

  Don’t be afraid of the dark, he thought, hearing it as clearly as if he had spoken aloud. His inner narrator ran around with words: this is dumb, I’m dumb, why am I here? I’d rather be working. No big deal; doing time is no big deal…

  He’d lost track of time when the drugs hit him. The narrator was silenced as Thelon cruised through space at incredible speed. He came to this realization after it had happened: this was a trip—he was tripping. Holy fuck, galactic clusters, nebula, stars—he passed through stars. Thelon had no body; he was awareness, a mote, a molecule, a particle or knowing and seeing, and this was real, and so beautiful, and then he stopped.

  How am I going to get back? What am I even looking at? Panic, confusion, and fear balanced against his curiosity.

  Space unfurled all around him. Thelon’s awareness took it in, an unblinking eye of perception. There—there, a force directed him to look, to know, to feel.

  The dread star. The words pumped direct to his mind, into his mote. He’d seen this before.

  Thelon screamed but had no mouth to do so. They were vast. They were horror. His vision zoomed and panned, out of his control and revealing a blanket of space in a multitude of detail. A black star made of something worse than hate, no human emotion could do it justice. Shapes in the dark. A cloud, a star, a planet; a mass of insects eating each other, a churning field of endless hunger. Bodies stacked and writing. Bosch bodies. They are real. They are hungry. They come. They see me!

  They have no eyes! They are themselves and more than themselves. In a doubling of sight, Thelon perceived these monsters attached to black and green shapeless shapes, larger than they seemed, containing intricacies of power yet foul—so foul—to know. The utter wrongness reminded him of childhood fears: monsters in the dark, the ill intent of a scary drunk—no, none of that compared. This was beyond rage and uncertainty—absolute awfulness. Nothing organic could describe this.