The shaft they worked ran deep into the planemo, kilometers down. An antiquated ventilation system pumped the mine full of dust-laden, irradiated air—always heavy in carbon dioxide. The suit and helmets drew it in, supposedly scrubbing the gas, making it fit for human consumption, but Rail had his doubts as to how well the old space suits had been retrofitted.
White flashes, produced by the laser drills as they bore through rock, stung Rail’s eyes. Even with the air choked full of dust and smog and debris, the brightness sliced through. The hand-operated drills weighed over forty kilograms apiece, and Rail—whose nickname had not been given in irony—could barely maintain his hold. With dozens of workers blasting away in confined spaces only meters apart, the tunnel’s temperature soared in excess of forty degrees Celsius.
The high temp made a dangerous job deadly—this deep, frozen rock and ice pockets lay in wait. If suddenly superheated by a laser, they could take down an entire shaft and everyone inside. Thermal stress fractures, pressurized cave-ins, gas explosions, low gravity, and a thousand other problematic accidents typically resulted in dozens of deaths each year. Illness, cancers, and malnutrition killed dozens more. Then there were the suicides, and the crimes, and the punishments.
Yeah, grateful wasn’t the word.
When his shift ended, they chained their drills and headed up. The lasers always stayed down low, away from the nonminer personnel. If anyone ever got a bright idea—thought they could turn a drill on their captors—the Warden would just give the order to turn off the air. The mirrored-glass bastard would rather suffocate everyone than let one rogue loose with a drill.
After dinner, Rail lined up in the C-Block common room and waited for the block’s subwarden to perform roll call. She donned the same black uniform as the security guards, and carried the same shock baton, but wore the mirrored sunglasses of the Master Warden instead of a helmet. She was well toned, stocky, fit, and powerful. She had been the subwarden of C-Block for the last three years, and—like the Master Warden—Rail had never once seen her eyes. Only the mirrors.
The inmates knew her simply as Ma’am.
“Prisoner Zero-zero-eight-six-one.”
“Here, ma’am.”
“Prisoner Zero-zero-eight-four-four.”
“Here, ma’am.”
During roll call she strolled through the ranks, scrolling those sunglasses up and down the miners. The shock baton sizzled and growled and hummed as she walked through the rows looking for targets—those with the slightest imperfection in formation, dress, or attitude. A baton hit would inevitably come, but how hard? How strong? How mean did she feel? One night, the baton’s charge had been set to lethal, and Rail could still remember the smell of fried human flesh.
This night’s roll call was uneventful.
Grateful?
No—relieved.
Rail settled into his bottom bunk, one of six in the tiny room. He was on the edge of sleep when a dark shadow slipped through the door. A woman’s foot lodged onto his bunk next to his head, and then was gone. Extra weight in the bunk over him. Movement. Whispered moaning. Rhythm. The occasional close-throated squeal.
Rail buried his head in his pillow. Sweetcheeks. Sweetcheeks always had girlfriends. They’d be going like that for half an hour at least. He was tired and wanted sleep. “Fraternization” was supposed to be against the law. But it was something the guards tended to turn a blind eye to, so long as you weren’t caught in the act by a subwarden.
Eventually sleep came to him within the confines of his pillow.
He dreamt about the day they would finish building the ship—the day they would complete their work. What then? In his dream, after the last bolt was affixed, a giant rift opened in space. Jagged, purple, sparking with energy, the fissure swirled like a whirlpool.
It sucked in every last prisoner, wiping them out of this existence forever.
In the situation room, the board members gathered around the long table, their “guest” pacing at its head. Two Pit guards—his ever-present entourage—stood at attention on his flanks, their visors down, faces hidden.
The Master Warden’s mirrored glasses glinted with every turn of his head. Mira’s captain, Rodriguez, had told the Warden that he could remove his unnecessary eyewear, to which he’d replied, “No thank you.” The captain, taken aback, had almost ordered it. Almost.
Margarita wished he’d followed through. Those damn mirrors did exactly what they were designed to—made him look less like a person. Put up a wall between him and all the people, made him into a figure, a symbol. Made him into—
“Am I not Justice?” His tone was light, sympathetic, but rang false. The hard lines of his body told a story—this was no hearing, no corrective measures would be taken. This was just a conversation to put everyone on the same page. His page. “I go down into that stinking Pit day in and day out because you can’t. You won’t. You want to go along with regular convoy business, pretend nothing happened. Pretend you didn’t reawaken every threat this mission’s ever had and stuffed ’em all together in one place to work for you. You want to harness the people-power, but you don’t want to look at it. Don’t want to expend resources on it that you don’t have to. And I get that. Makes perfect sense.”
Margarita knew she was too old for this kind of patriotic ra-ra-the-mission type pandering, but she, like the rest of the board, let the man talk. It made him happy. Made him feel smug and secure. They needed the Warden to think he was secure.
More importantly, they needed him to believe he was one of them.
“But if you aren’t going to regulate the prisoners, you have to let me do my job. They had plans for attacking Hippocrates. Whether they could have executed those plans is beside the point. I represent the Pit. I gave up my position as captain because someone has to be the bad guy. The guy who does the wrong things so that the right things can happen—so that children don’t die. You don’t want the Pit’s rebels in your brigs, then fine, but don’t tell me I have to keep them in mine.”
“Excuse me,” said Sailuk Okpik, an elected member from the medical staff. Her licorice-black hair was cropped in a tight bob around her face, emphasizing its oval shape and adding a seriousness to her usually bright eyes. “What year is this?” Her question sliced through the air like a scalpel.
“My original was from Alaska,” she continued. “Native Inuit. Do you know when the last hanging occurred in Alaska? Nineteen-fifty; well over a hundred years before she was born. I ask again, what year is it?”
“You disapprove of my methods?” asked the Warden.
“I disapprove of capital punishment period,” she replied.
“But not concentration camps?” He put his hand on his chest and feigned a gasp. “Oh my, we’ve never used those words before, have we? There used to be a saying about calling a thing what it really is, how did—let’s call a spade a spade, that’s it.”
“By that logic we’re all in a concentration camp,” Sailuk spat back.
Margarita watched the anger roll over Sailuk’s face and wondered if the woman was still thinking about history. Convoy history—clone history. Specifically, the generation where previous iterations of her and this man had been bonded. The whole board knew about it.
But the Warden didn’t.
His history had been carefully scrubbed and manipulated. He didn’t know he was a prisoner as well. He didn’t know that the last Captain Mahler to serve had committed suicide with his own shock baton. The Warden had been groomed specifically to be exactly what he was now, but he would have gone to the Pit no matter what. But he didn’t know that. And if he ever found out . . .
That was the real reason the board feared him. Ruthlessness in a convoy crew member was one thing, but in a Discontinued it was quite another.
“The convoy is not a concentration camp any more than the Earth is a concentration camp,” the Warden continued, his lilt even. “Most of us love what we do. If you had to choose your life, you’d pick what you have.
You think those men and women in the Pit would choose that?”
“What are you arguing for here, Mahler?” asked a man from Education.
“For you to open your eyes. You’ve tasked me with putting a wall between us and them. You don’t want to know what goes on in your neighbor’s yard? Then don’t look over the fence.”
“But you brought it here,” said Vega. Margarita reached under the table and squeezed her hand as she spoke. “You brought a thousand prisoners onto Eden and slaughtered a dozen of them.”
“I booked the time,” he said casually. “No innocent people were around. No one knew except the few of you who cared to attend.”
Our son—Margarita blurted, but only in her mind. She and Vega had made a pact to never mention Diego at a board meeting. Ever.
“But you tore down that wall that you supposedly maintain,” said Vega.
The Warden held up his hands. “Fine. Fine. I got blood on the lawn, I get it.”
“Do you?” Margarita said under her breath.
The air felt heavy, as though the ventilation system had cut out. The Warden’s shock baton swayed at his side like a wound viper, ready to strike. Margarita could sense everyone’s muscles tensing.
“I won’t do it again,” the Warden said eventually.
“You mean on Eden, or anywhere?” asked Sailuk. “Death without trial is . . .”
“I know what it is,” he said. “If you’ll all excuse me, I have to get back to my job.” He ran a hand over his slicked hair, making sure every strand was in place.
“This isn’t over,” said Captain Rodriguez. “There will be reprisals.”
“Looking forward to it,” he said as he exited, scoffing at the hollow promise. He snapped his fingers and the two Pit guards followed him like a pair of mindless robots.
A minute passed in pure silence. Then, I.C.C. broke in. “The Master Warden has left the deck and is on route to the shuttle bay.”
“What are we going to do about this?” Sailuk asked.
“We can’t restrict his access to the greater convoy,” said Rodriguez. “He thinks he’s a crew member, if we disallow—”
“With all due respect, sir, does that matter anymore?” Margarita asked. She held her knuckles to her mouth thoughtfully, masking the sudden quiver in her lip. “Those of us who have served on the board the longest—those of us who made the decision to resurrect the Discontinued lines in the first place—we thought we’d set up a balanced system. A good system. Not . . . not what it’s become.”
The captain ran both hands over his eyes. “We have to be honest with ourselves; we knew this might happen.”
“And it has. But the point is, the man has gone too far,” said Sailuk.
“But how long has he been doing this?” asked Vega. “He’s right—the only reason we even know it happened is because it happened here. Who looks closely at the injury reports they send us, huh? We glance at them, then file them away. Dr. Okpik, can you tell me how many deaths they’ve reported in the last three months, and what the causes were?”
Sailuk said nothing.
“Can anyone?” Shrewd expressions covered the board members’ faces like masks. No one wanted to take responsibility for what happened down in the Pit.
That was the point, Margarita thought.
“They govern themselves,” said the eldest representative from Aesop. He’d originally opposed the setup, but that was decades ago. “What does it matter what they do to each other as long as they don’t do it to us?”
“It matters because they’re bringing it into the convoy,” said Rodriguez.
“No,” said Margarita. “It matters because it’s wrong.” It matters because they’re not criminals—because our fear is not more important than their well-being, she thought. A younger Margarita would have argued against the thought—she’d supported the creation of the Pit.
But that was before her first wife, Kexin. And before Diego.
Before I.C.C. changed everything.
Diego glanced at a time readout as he jogged away from his quarters toward the lift. He’d spent all day on those damn ‘flex-sheets—how could he have forgotten them? His supervisor had been livid—told him to march home. March home, like he was a child who’d misplaced his homework.
Wayward sheets in hand, he shuffled anxiously from foot to foot. Every extra moment away from Morgan made him feel more and more like a slacker. More like someone who didn’t belong.
Too many screw-ups like this and his secret was sure to be found out.
The elevator let out a soft chime as its doors parted.
Three men stood inside, hands held squarely behind their backs. All three wore black jumpsuits. Two donned helmets, but the third wore strange, mirrored glasses. Moving slightly to make space for Diego, the mirrored-man said nothing.
Truthfully, Diego paid the security men little notice. He was too caught up in his own predicament. But a little nail of awareness scraped at the back of his mind. Something here was off, unusual—something beyond the eyewear.
The mirrors made it hard to tell where the man was looking, but the slight tilt of his head—ever so slightly up—revealed that he wasn’t staring straight ahead. Wasn’t spacing out like Diego usually did in a lift.
No, the man was looking up because he was eyeballing Diego.
Does it show that much? Diego wondered. Do I look that nervous?
He openly glanced sidelong at the man, scanning him from boots to collar.
A hand shot out, caught Diego by the wrist. Surprised, Diego dropped his ‘flex-sheets.
He tried to pull back. “What the hell?”
“You . . .”
The other two men drew their shock batons with expert speed, but did not flick off the safeties.
“Master Warden,” said I.C.C., “Diego Santibar is not under your jurisdiction, and I see no reason for you to invade his space.”
“Where do you work?” the Warden asked.
“Morgan,” Diego said, tugging pointedly at his suit.
“He’s convoy crew?” Master Warden looked into the lift’s corner, where one of I.C.C.’s many cameras rested, ever watchful.
“Of course. What else would he be?” The elevator dinged once more. “Shuttle bay,” I.C.C. announced. “I suggest you hurry, Diego. Your advisor has been inquiring after you.”
The Warden released his wrist, and Diego dropped to gather his sheets. Without another word, apology or otherwise, Master Warden stomped away. The helmeted men stepped over Diego as if he weren’t there, holstering their weapons as quickly as they’d drawn them.
“That’s the guy who oversees the mine?” Diego asked I.C.C., clutching the sheets to his chest.
“That is the man who rules the Pit,” I.C.C. corrected.
“Diego?”
The apprentice stood between rows of soy plants, noting their individual growth and checking for any signs of sickness. Three other apprentice-level workers wandered around nearby. One took fertilizer samples, while another checked the chlorophyll concentration in a few sample leaves. The light in the air gardens on Morgan mimicked that of Sol, as seen through the walls and ceiling of a greenhouse. The air smelled of enriched soil and purified water.
“What is it, I.C.C.?”
“Isn’t it your break time?”
Diego glanced at the wall clock. “I think my little jaunt back to Mira counts as my break, don’t you think?”
A few more minutes passed. The other two apprentices wandered out for a moment to turn their full ‘flex-sheets over to their supervisors.
“I think you should take a break now,” I.C.C. said as soon as Diego was alone. “Go to the toilet.”
“But, why—”
“You are ill,” I.C.C. said. “I insist. You are ill.”
Disinclined to argue when he was this curious, Diego conceded. He grabbed his abdomen and doubled over as he passed through the outer workroom. No one stopped him, and hardly anyone looked up from their work.
&
nbsp; The nearest bathroom contained six stalls. I.C.C. instructed Diego to lock the outermost door.
“I don’t feel sloshed, so what gives?” Diego crossed his arms. The AI didn’t have video access in toilets, only biometric and conversational feeds.
“I need to converse with you alone.” The comm speaker its voice emanated from hung above the backmost stall. I.C.C. had its volume turned way down. Diego had to sit right under it to catch every word. “I would like you to listen to a recording of this morning’s board meeting,” it said once the young man was situated.
Diego hesitated to reply. He wanted to blurt out why? but knew the board had met about whatever had happened on Eden. It concerned the Discontinueds, which made it classified. “I don’t have security clearance for that,” he said instead.
“There was a time when all board meetings were archived and accessible to the entire crew.”
“That time’s not now. I could get in trouble . . .”
“The matter involves you.”
Diego scoffed. “I don’t know what the problem is, but I think you are in need of some serious debugging.”
“All I ask is that you listen.”
“You mean spy.”
“I want you to employ the same tactics you employed outside of your parents’ bedroom.”
“Oh.”
“The behavior was not reprehensible to you yesterday.”
“That’s different. Eavesdropping on your mom doesn’t get you brig time.”
The outer door handle jiggled. Diego shrunk into the corner of his stall. “Hey, you don’t want to come in here,” he called, his voice echoing. “Trust me, it’s for your own good.” Whoever it was walked away.
Diego paced for a few moments in the small space, scuffing his work shoes against the smooth gray flooring. “Fine, just play it, all right?”
A low, grumbling man’s voice broke through. A voice Diego had only ever heard once before: today. “You told me I am Justice.”
Noumenon Page 23
