Shadow of the Factorum: The Interview

by K. A. Trent

  “Callie has a video she would like to show us,” The middle judge said. “Per the rules of the high court, it has remained unwatched prior to this moment to prevent any form of bias.”

  The ‘screen’ appeared from an emitter above the chambers, affixed to the ceiling. I recognized the method, a low-grade force field that could have been passed through, but would have made the air a bit thicker had you tried to step toward it. Overlaid upon it was the translucent display, and an image of a moment I remembered very well. It was that moment I’d met Callie outside of the Factorum for the first time. There was me, wearing the gray dress Kerra had given me, Callie sitting on the couch beside me. I heard our voices, but I didn’t remember the conversation; it was me that was speaking.

  “Calllie, I’m more important than you. Males are better than women, it’s just the way it is. That’s how it always has been.”

  Had I said that? Had I really truly said that? I couldn’t remember. I felt a wetness on my cheek as I searched my memories. I couldn’t be that person, I couldn’t have said that, why would I say that?

  “This isn’t the only incident,” Callie continued to elaborate. “On the day she was escorted to Miss Smythe’s salon, she instigated a fight with a citizen, we have video of the incident…”

  As she spoke, the screen changed, showing a scene from an overhead camera at the tram station. I showed a brief clip of me pushing the lady, the one that had thrown her drink at me, the one who had screamed at me. It showed nothing else. It didn’t show me being attacked, it didn’t show me being rushed out, it showed none of that. It was as if all of the events had simply been erased from living memory in the blink of an eye.

  “And it is your opinion,” the judge said as the screen vanished into thin air. “That the defendant, Astra, is unfit for life in Ereen society?”

  “I have seen in her many of the violent and narcissistic tendencies that ultimately led to our rebellion against the males many centuries ago,” she nodded. “I didn’t say anything at first, I thought maybe ‘she’ was simply overcoming some of the habits that they had learned inside the Factorum but as time goes by, I don’t see those tendencies going away.”

  “And you believe that those tendencies are an inherent part of the defendant?” the judge on the far right asked.

  “I didn’t see any changes in the time that we were together,” Callie nodded. “While in some ways he is a very nice person, I feel like the anger will always be there, the male tendencies will always be here. A martekka cannot change its strips, no matter how you try to cover them up.”

  I couldn’t hold it anymore, I couldn’t control myself.

  “Callie, what are you talking about? What are you doing?” I shouted; my voice cracked under the pressure of the oncoming tears. What was going on? Why was she betraying me? What had I done to her? I didn’t want to go back. She didn’t answer me, her eyes flicked over to be for the briefest of seconds, and then she returned her gaze to the courtroom.

  “The defendant will remain silent!” the middle judge ordered, slamming a gavel into the podium. I stared at Callie, my eyes wide. I heard Donna shushing me, squeezing my hand and pulling me closer to her.

  “It’s okay,” Donna whispered to me. “Just calm down, it’s okay Astra.”

  “I feel like the cost would be higher than the potential benefits,” Callie went on. “Having a transgender woman living among us would be a great learning opportunity in my opinion, but I also think that maybe we should find one that isn’t so violent, one that is more willing to take direction. Living in our society can be overwhelming for someone who has been…uncivilized for so long. It sounds cruel, it sounds exclusionary, but it’s the truth. We have a certain standard here that needs to be upheld and Astra just isn’t doing it.”

  I couldn’t contain myself anymore; what was she doing, why was she doing this? I stood from the table, my vision blurred, I felt Donna’s hand trying to pull me down. Heard her whispers in my ear telling me to calm. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. This couldn’t be happening.

  “Callie please!” I sobbed. “Please tell them the truth! Please don’t do this to me!”

  “Bailiff,” The judge commanded. “Remove the defendant from the courtroom.”

  Two women in black uniforms began to move toward me, I looked around, panic drawn across my face. I

  “Donna?” My voice quivered.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” She stood up, wrapping her arms around me as the uniformed women began to tear me away from her. I held tight; this would be the last time I held her. The last time anyone held me. The last time I had this type of human contact. The last time. They were going to send me back. It was over. There was nothing I could do as I was pried from her arm and I was pulled away. Farther away. I could hear myself screaming, begging them not to take me back there, pleading to be let go. Telling them I’d be a good girl.

  The onlookers in the courtroom glanced back and forth at one another nervously; some looked to me, confused. Callie stared straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact with me.

  “You can’t do this to her!” I heard Donna scream as I was dragged toward the door. “She’s just a little girl!”

  I saw Donna rise from the table, she made a move toward me but was quickly restrained. I kicked, I twisted, I pushed with futility against the fate that had been assigned to me.

  No matter how much she screamed, and no matter how much I struggled, I was pulled away, dragged out toward my inevitable doom. It was over. We’d lost.

  Chapter 30

  I am not here.

  I am not in this cell.

  This has not happened.

  Those were the things I told myself over and over again as the hours passed. There was nothing here. A steel bed affixed to the wall, a toilet affixed to the same wall. There was me. This room was my entire universe. It was me, and the bed, and the toilet, and these four solid gray walls. The light shone overhead; I couldn’t hear its hum. It was silent. I was silent, this room was silent. Maybe they would let me die in here; maybe they would have that kind of decency. Maybe they would just let the hunger and thirst overcome me, let me drift off in a starvation induced coma.

  Donna help me.

  Callie why did you do this to me?

  Pleas whispered into nothingness, questions thrown into thin air, none were answered. I was alone. I would always be alone. Deep within the bowels of the Factorum we had lived with resolve; the resolve to never become attached to anything. No possessions, no people, no friends. No names. Nothing. Why? Because the moment you love a thing, that thing can be taken away. I briefly remembered another boy who went by the name of ‘Screws’. I had liked him. We had run together across the framework and through the walls of the Factorum, delivering tools and keeping the flow, but one day, he had tumbled from the top of a crane arm, plummeting downward into a crowd of milling workers. I’d screamed as he’d slipped from the arm. I’d reached my hand out, I’d touched the tips of his fingers, I’d leaned out as far as I could, watching his expression of terror escalate as he plummeted toward his eventual fate. In the coming days he’d been forgotten. No one remembered him, he’d faded from my memory as well. In the Factorum, all males are interchangeable. The same shorn heads, the same emaciated bodies, the same brown tunic and drawstring trousers. We were no one, we were nothing. I was nothing. I too would fade from memory. Let me die.

  A slot opened near the bottom of the door; a tray of food was shoved inside. I stared at it. I wasn’t hungry. I laid down, staring at the ceiling, waiting for death to come. The tray was removed, another took its place. It happened again, and again.

  This was my fault. Mine alone. If I hadn’t been born a male, then this wouldn’t be happening to me. I was disgusting. I laid on the steel bed, my mind blank, my eyes fixated on the ceiling. Tray after tray replaced. I felt the hunger beginning to take hold; I didn’t care. I wanted to wither away into nothingness. I wanted to stop feeling.

  The door opened.
Not the food slot, the actual door. I didn’t care. So, someone was here to share my hell. Maybe they could die with me.

  “Astra,” a familiar voice said to me. I turned my head weakly and opened my eyes. It was someone I hadn’t seen in weeks. The Prime Minister. We’d met briefly, when I’d first been pulled up from the Factorum, but from then on, I’d only dealt with Callie. Callie. She’d betrayed me. “Astra, sit up.”

  I didn’t want to sit up, I wanted to drift off, I wanted to be invisible. If I wasn’t really a woman, then what as the point of all this? What was the point of being alive.

  “Astra, we need to talk,” she said again. “Sit her up.”

  Hands wrapped around my arms, two uniformed guards pulled me upright and then stepped aside. I raised my head slightly and met the Prime Minister’s gaze.

  “You look awful,” She commented. “Have you not been eating?”

  As she spoke, she looked down, toward the discarded food tray and shook her head.

  “That’s really not going to do, Astra,” she sighed. “We need to talk.”

  “What did I do wrong?” I asked softly. “I tried to be a good girl. I really tried.”

  “It’s simple,” she said. “Well, maybe not so simple. Guards, give us the room.”

  As soon as she spoke, the two guards that had accompanied her exited the room, allowing the door to slide shut behind her.

  “Astra,” she continued. “The DNA marker test was mostly faked, but after a while we felt that you had put forth a true effort to embed yourself into our society. You followed the rules, you were humble, you asked for nothing. You were much more than I expected, but there’s a problem. You see, we don’t keep track of males in the Factorum, we don’t know who they are, we don’t keep track of where they come from. You already know where most of the males of the Factorum come from, grown in labs, raised into absolute servitude but that’s not always the case. We can’t produce fast enough so we source our males from elsewhere much of the time. We vet many of them carefully, making sure that they are orphans, or men without families. We stage a lot of ‘accidents’. A ship explodes in space, the men aboard are assumed dead. Dead is dead and no one cares. We need the labor. You, however, are not dead. You’re an oversight.”

  “An…oversight?” my voice was trembling. What was about to happen to me?

  “You see, Astra, long ago, well, maybe thirteen years ago, one of our officers fell in love with a male during an offworld mission. This type of love is forbidden, but regardless, they gave birth to a child. We hunted her down, we boarded the ship they used to escape, we killed the male. At some point she assumed you were dead and jettisoned in an escape pod, we never found her, but we found you. A disgusting male, sent to the Factorum. We assumed her dead; an escape pod that deep in space? What were the chances of survival? She resurfaced, however, on Jupiter Station, light years from here, looking for her lost son. She never found him of course, but she made quite the ruckus. A few weeks ago, we tested your DNA and while we found no transgender markers, we matched your DNA…to hers. I know you’re not an expert on Federation law, but you were born offworld, in a Federation colony. That means your mother, wherever she is, would have claim to you, legally. If it ever got out, if you were ever taken off-world, you could bring this entire system down on top of us. That’s why Callie lied. Not because she hates you, but because she wanted to save lives. Can you imagine what the Federation would do if they found out we were running slave factory the size of the entire south pole? Well let’s be honest, she was wavering on that point, but when you tried to send her best friend to prison she made up her mind.”

  I stared at her, I blinked, I tried to take everything that she was saying into account, I tried to make sense of it.

  “It’s unfortunate, Astra, this was all done by mistake. You might actually be transgender. Callie went down there looking for someone line you, she’s an activist, she thought she was making a difference. She didn’t realize that she had handpicked the one single person that could bring this all crashing to the ground.”

  I am not here. I am not facing this woman.

  I am not facing my own death.

  “Please, Ma’am, Prime Minister,” I begged with a parched throat, every word scraping the interior of my esophagus. “I don’t know that woman. I’m a good girl. Please, I want to serve Ereen. I want to serve Luna.”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “You’ve proven yourself, you are a young lady, perhaps more so than I thought you would be. For that reason, you will not be returned to the Factorum. I will not have a lady of Ereen cast down with males. You will instead be sent to live out your days in an off-world prison colony, with other women. Political prisoners mostly. Your life will be difficult, but nothing compared to the Factorum. I apologize Astra, but it’s the best I could do for you. As for Donna, she will be told that you were returned to the Factorum and subsequently executed. Within a few months, this entire affair will be forgotten.”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “I...I just have one question. When I was leaving the Nocht...Brea, she called the Proctorum, but the Black Swan showed up. How did that happen? I don’t understand. I’ve just...been wondering about it.”

  “You’re a smart girl, Astra, and you wouldn’t be asking me if you didn’t have some idea. You remember the bird sculpture on my desk when you first came to see me. The swan. Callie has no idea, I was just letting her do her thing really, and you turned out to be far more than I expected. I was really trying to put an end to her experiment in a way that looked like an act of terrorism rather than well, this, but you were smart. You made allies, you wiggled your way out of the situation. I didn’t see that coming. I’m impressed, and that’s why you’re not going back to the Factorum.”

  The Prime Minister turned and rapped her knuckles against the door. It slid open, she stepped through.

  “Prepare to transport her to the starport, we’ll move her out within the hour,” She told them, just before the door closed once again, leaving me to my fate.

  I am not here.

  Chapter 31

  I was thrown into another cell, this one with a much higher ceiling, but still a cell.

  “You’ll only be here for a few hours,” the guard explained to me in a tone that was almost kind. “We’ll load you onto a ship shortly and you’ll be on your way.”

  The door closed, and I felt the entirety of my previous life vanish. Everything I had worked for, everyone I had loved was gone. Just gone. Why had I bothered to love when love was a thing that could be taken away? I raised a hand to my chest; my heart hurt. It felt like physical pain, but that was impossible, right? I looked at my arm, where the wristband had once been; I had no way to call Donna, I had no connection to anything or anyone. I had been torn from my new life like a worn patch from a piece of clothing. I was disposable. I was discarded. I had been stripped of the beautiful dress that Donna had given me, and instead, dressed in a solid blue dress that hung just below my knees. I wanted out. I wanted to be with Donna. I wanted…I wanted to disappear.

  I took a moment to look around my new cell; it was a strange cell with a seating area, a basin, toilet, and a few running lights placed at the bottom corners. The ceiling was high, maybe a full two stories, leading me to believe that this was once a space reserved for storing machinery, but no more. Now it felt like it was as spot for mass incarceration, though maybe they didn’t feel comfortable locking me inside with a lot of different people. I had no idea what their reasons were, but maybe it didn’t matter. I walked to the seating area and dropped myself onto the metal chair, head in hands, tears flowing. Hadn’t I done okay? Hadn’t I done everything they wanted? I didn’t mean to be a bad girl.

  Please give me another chance, I prayed.

  I am not here.

  Minutes passed, then hours. I’d been here a long longer than they’d said I would be. Or…had I? I couldn’t tell. Suddenly, I heard it, that sound, what was it? I cocked my head, hearing tones, sound, music? I looked u
p, craned my neck, where was it coming from? It took a few seconds, but I recognized it, the song. Donna’s lullaby. The words she had sang me to sleep with that night. I concentrated hard, I could hear the words.

  “Donna?” I said softly as I rose from the chair and turned toward the sound. “Are you here? Can you hear me?”

  “Donna?”

  She wasn’t here, it was just the song, but where? Why? I looked up, along the back wall, it was coming from above, but why? How? Where was she? My eyes followed the wall, there was something familiar about it, something very familiar. Then it hit me, it all came rushing back. The obstacle course Kerra had forced me to run, the wall. The wall leading up to it. This was it. I recognized the piece of jutting metal partway up, only it was more of an indent in the metal wall itself. Could this be real? There was only one way to find out.

  I took a running start, leaping toward the wall and propelling myself upward on the toe of my shoe, reaching toward the indent, but fell short by a few inches, falling back to the floor and crying out before I clamped my hand over my mouth, lest someone in the hallway outside hear. As I sprawled out on the floor, I heard her voice, Kerra.

  “Let me tell you a secret,” Kerra’s voice and words resonated in my ears as I stood and stepped back further, to the door this time. “You’re fast, really, really fast, but being fast doesn’t mean much if you can’t be fast all the time. You’re tired? Too bad, you need to be able to run. You need to be able to climb. You can’t just say ‘oh I’m too tired’. You can’t say ‘Let me take a nap first’. You give up, and you’re dead. Remember that.”

  “I can do this Kerra,”I whispered as I took another run at the wall. This time I shot upward, my fingers wrapped around the ledge and I pushed myself upward again. Sure enough, just at the top, there was a ledge, and at the end of the ledge, a vent. I pulled it aside and rushed through the opening. After a brief scurry, I found myself in a large space with a huge gap, I could see the bottom, it was a cooling vent, air rushed upward from it, and across, a narrow pipe. I leapt onto the pipe and rushed across, sliding through another duct and grasping a low hanging piped to swing as I shot out and landed inside A room with three sets of angular ramps on either side of the wall. Instead of running down the center, I leapt from column to column until I’d reached the other side.