Learning the Hard Way 2

by H. P. Caledon

Jasper shook his head and glanced at Keelan, who nodded, so Jasper changed his shaking to nodding his head. Keelan bit down hard not to grin.

  “Okay, the halls with faucets at the end have cells. You have to have crossed them. Forget all this keep left stuff, everybody copied it from some old guy in here. Faucets and crossing hallways—keep those in sight.”

  “And food?”

  “Have you looked into the ceilings?”

  “Yeah, little holes with light and a lot of doodles.”

  The man laughed. “On the halls with cells, there are these big plates. Mealtimes, they open, and food comes down.” The man walked them a few meters up the hall. He pointed, and Keelan saw a displacement in the ceiling.

  Keelan reached up and felt that it was made from steel and not cement, but it was as doodled like everything else. “So, get there first principle?”

  “Exactly,” the man said and returned to the octagon.

  “And toilets?” Keelan continued.

  “Scattered around the halls.”

  “And empty cells are more precisely placed...” Keelan began and made a gesture to pull the information out of the man.

  The guy smiled. “You sound like you’ve been to prison before. Then you know nothing is free, right?”

  “Yeah, but the last place people learned to just give me what I wanted. It became cheaper in the long run for them.”

  “I’m not one of the people you want to threaten.”

  “Who’s threatening who? I’m just sharing anecdotes.” Keelan offered up a smile.

  The man sized him up.

  “What’s your name?” Keelan asked to try to keep it civil.

  “I’m the minister here.”

  Keelan nodded, grabbed Jasper’s shoulder, and guided him back the way they’d come while Jasper looked confused from Keelan to the minister.

  “What now?”

  “We won’t receive anymore help from him unless we’re willing to pay for it.”

  “With what? We don’t have any money,” Jasper said.

  Keelan stopped and looked at him. “Actually, continue the story you started earlier. You know, about how you ended up here. Where you’ve been before that would be nice, too.”

  “Okay, I worked on Kanakoon’s docks. I gambled a few high stake tasarik with the wrong people and ended up owing a lot of money. One day they came to my place of work to collect. I saw a way out, which was to escape in the ship we’d just finished. So I jumped in, shut the ramp, and blasted out of there. Only problem was that we hadn’t released the left docking station yet, which I had forgotten. So, the ship took down a three-story building, forty-two people got hurt, and eight got killed, two of whom were lawmen. And the ship was wrecked irreparably. It took them a while to figure out that I had made it out of the ship and wasn’t lying in the burned remains. So I jumped a ferry to Motáll.”

  “First conviction?”

  “Yeah.”

  Two lawmen? That would explain why he ended up in a max first time around.

  “Ferris scan retinas, you know,” Keelan said.

  “Yeah, but I left the System, and then they can’t see them anymore.”

  “You really think that? They are all collected into one archive. On a SWIS server.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Knowledge like that costs a lot,” Keelan mumbled and turned right in a hallway with a faucet. And that one had a lot of doors—all doodled.

  Bells went off around them, and people scurried into the hall. Keelan looked up into the ceiling and saw a plate vibrate.

  “Feeding time, fill more than your hands,” Keelan said. He looked at the others to know where he should or could move in with the least amount of resistance while ripping a hole in his pocket so he could hide the machete against his leg. Good thing it was dull.

  The plate from the ceiling lowered on hydraulic rods and revealed buckets of bread, dried meat, and a big bowl, welded onto the plate, full of stew. On the opposite side of where Keelan stood, he saw a man get ready to what looked like an attack on the food elevator. As it lowered fully to about waist height, the man set off and ran into the people surrounding it. He had getting to the food down to an art form. With one hand, he grabbed bread and jerky, and with the other, he scooped up a bowl of stew. He was gone before the majority had gotten half that.

  Keelan focused on getting meat, which he filled his pockets with, and bread, which he crammed down the neck opening of his shirt. He managed to get his hands on the end of a piece of bread, which he hollowed out and used it to scoop up a load full of the stew. He then retreated, but not without spilling some of the stew on some of the other prisoners. He almost swallowed his food without chewing it while watching how people crowded the food elevator. Jasper came to stand next to Keelan.

  “Ah, good idea for the stew. I wished I could try it, but there’s no more.” Jasper grimaced and bit off a piece of jerky.

  A man who also looked like he’d just arrived in Irgang rounded the corner and ran for the food elevator, but before he could get much, the elevator went back into the ceiling. The guy yelled in frustration and kicked the wall.

  “Hide your food,” Keelan whispered to Jasper, who stuffed his handful of jerky into his pocket, but he wasn’t discreet enough about it to not get the hungry man’s attention. He closed in on Jasper, who held up a piece of dried meat, which the man snatched from his fingers.

  “You have more!”

  “Yeah, but it’s not free,” Jasper said.

  Keelan would prefer that Jasper kept the meat and held out a piece of bread. The man took it and stared expectantly at them.

  “This isn’t Goodwill. We’ve been kind and shared!” Keelan glared at him.

  The man growled something and left.

  “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t hope you’ll share what you just put in your pocket,” Keelan whispered.

  Jasper chuckled and looked at him. “Isn’t it important to stick together in prison?”

  “Nyah, only if you can trust the other one, and that doesn’t happen too often. But it’s nice,” Keelan muttered.

  Chapter Twelve

  Keelan and Jasper continued their search for a cell and peered into them as they walked by. In one cell, only one person sat in a corner, drawing something on the floor with a finger.

  Keelan glanced at Jasper before entering the cell. “Hey.”

  The man jumped and fumbled for something around him.

  “How many live in this cell?” Keelan asked.

  “Who are you?” the man asked and looked around, and Keelan could see enough of his face to notice that the man didn’t have any eyes. Just two dark cavities.

  Keelan glanced at Jasper, who shuddered violently. “We’re new here, and we’re looking for a cell.”

  The guy didn’t seem to notice that Keelan was talking to him, so Keelan reached under his shirt and found a piece of bread. He knelt next to the man and made his close proximity known by making noise and shuffling the stuff scattered closely. The man retreated even further into the corner.

  “Have you eaten?” Keelan asked and took in the sight of the man. He was emaciated—only bones, sinew, and skin. The body had broken down the muscles long ago in need of protein. The blind man finally shook his head, and Keelan reached for his hand to press the bread into it.

  “Who else lives here?” Keelan asked. “There are four bunks.”

  “Just me... now.”

  “Then we’re moving in,” Keelan announced, and smiled at Jasper.

  The blind man sniffed the bread and nibbled at it. Keelan looked at Jasper’s pocket and nodded at it. Jasper pulled out a piece of jerky, which Keelan passed on to the old man. He, in turn, retreated into his own little world again, huddling in his corner where he mumbled to himself, rocked, and drew blindly on the floor.

  “Could be nice if we could lock this door,” Jasper said, opening and closing it while he examined it.

  “With a frame that uneven? Don’t
think it’s possible.”

  Jasper looked around the mess of a cell while Keelan plopped down on a bunk, raising a cloud of foul smelling dust. It seemed like the cell had only been occupied by the hermit in the corner for quite some time. While Jasper rummaged through the mess of things, Keelan took the mattresses and blankets to the hallway and beat them against the wall. Some guy bitched about it, but he moved on quickly enough.

  Jasper sat himself and all his findings in one of the bunks Keelan had just cleaned, and he worked with the things for about an hour while Keelan cleaned the rest of the place.

  Jasper finally produced a wedge-shaped... thingy, but Keelan didn’t have the imagination to see what it could be used for. Jasper walked to the door and jammed the wedge in between the uneven frame and door and kicked it a few times. He then pulled at the door handle. The door didn’t budge.

  Keelan got to his feet and pulled the door, too. It was locked. “And when we have to leave?”

  Jasper smiled secretively and pulled a small lever in the thingy. The wedge sprang free, and the door seemed to fall back into place.

  “What did you say you did for a living?”

  “Docking engineer. We used something like this to secure docking stations.”

  Keelan shook his head, smiling, happy about his new cellmate.

  Keelan ran the halls of Irgang and looked at symbols. He knew he had to find one, and he felt like he knew what it looked like, but he couldn’t remember it. He tried harder and harder but just grew more and more frustrated that he couldn’t remember the symbol.

  All around him all the prisoners walked, shuffling their feet, and repeated the same sentence again and again.

  “Keep left, keep left, keep left...”

  A low but young voice almost drowned out by the mantra sounded somewhere in the distance.

  “Dad, Dad, I’m here, Dad!”

  Keelan looked around, confused, and suddenly the symbols on the walls were gone. Every surface was now covered in colorful stick-figures and typical children’s drawings of two-dimensional houses, pets, and families holding hands.

  “Dad!”

  Sometimes the voice was so close, then far away, and Keelan ran the halls looking for the child until his lungs burned.

  Keelan jumped awake and just reacted—Jasper fell back with a pained scream and covered his nose.

  “What happened?” Keelan asked out of breath.

  “You were dreaming,” Jasper croaked nasally and leaned his head back, revealing blood flowing down his chin.

  “Shit, I’m sorry. Come here, don’t put your head back, you’ll just fill up your sinuses. If blood isn’t in the veins, it shouldn’t be in the body.” Keelan pulled him to his feet before leading him to a bunk. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  Keelan grabbed a bowl and went into the hallway to find a faucet. He came back and knelt in front of Jasper, whose hand was smeared with blood.

  “Put your nose in here and inhale gently. Not all the way back to the throat, of course, just in—the cold will make the blood vessels contract and stop the bleeding.”

  Jasper looked at him skeptically, but he did as Keelan instructed. Moments later, the gush had dimmed to a sporadic drop here and there. Jasper looked surprised that it worked. Keelan took the bowl and handed Jasper a cold cloth before inspecting the nose closer. Luckily it wasn’t broken.

  “Nightmare?”

  “I don’t know, but it was weird,” Keelan said. He hadn’t had time to think about the dream until then.

  “What was it about?”

  “I don’t think I want to share that, because I haven’t really figured that part out myself.”

  “You said something. While dreaming. Who are you, where are you? You can’t be here.”

  “Did I say anything else?”

  “Yeah... something in the line of I can’t find you here,” Jasper said, looking worried.

  Keelan waited, but apparently, that was all he’d said.

  “How about dream interpretation?” Jasper finally asked.

  “No!”

  “Sounded important to you. In the dream, I mean. Did you find out who you were looking for at least?”

  Keelan sighed and took a seat on the bunk next to Jasper. He stared at the ground, wringing his hands. Then he nodded. “Dream interpretation, huh?”

  “I think priests could help with that.”

  Keelan glanced at Jasper but finally shrugged. “It doesn’t make a difference when I’m in here.” Keelan sighed heavily, feeling something he couldn’t define. It frustrated him even more, but before he could give it more thought the food bells went off.

  Keelan and Jasper grabbed their bowls and ran for the door. Over the past week, they had learned the art of getting to the food elevator quickly, grabbinb what they needed, and returning to their cell before the halls were too crowded.

  The blind man made it all the way to the hallway today and fumbled around on the ground for the scraps people dropped that hadn’t yet been picked up by the ones who didn’t make the elevator.

  Keelan placed his food on the bed. “Mind it,” he said and ran back to the elevator to grab bread and jerky. He managed to get some and grabbed the back of the blind man’s shirt to haul him back into the cell. The blind man curled up on the floor and wailed about being stepped on.

  “Here,” Keelan said and pushed food into the man’s hands before taking a seat to eat his own food. He still couldn’t get over the fact that the majority of the food there tasted better than the stew he’d eaten on the prison transporter during his escape, but he really missed eating on rooftops.

  “What do you miss the most about the outside?” Jasper asked and scooped stew onto a piece of bread while glancing curiously at Keelan.

  “I was just thinking about that. Eating on rooftops. Great view.”

  “On a rooftop? I miss sitting in street cafes with my girlfriend and enjoy a cheese platter.”

  “What the hell is a cheese platter?”

  Jasper stopped his attempt at scooping up stew and stared at Keelan. “Cheese. Lots of different kinds of cheese on a platter with crackers... maybe jarred condiments or cured meat.”

  “I have no idea what half of that is. The only cheese I ever tasted was moldy blue and so bitter my eyes watered.” Keelan remembered Mr. Churchburrow insisting that he eat it now that they’d bought luxury items for his birthday. “I remember it being expensive, so you must have earned a decent living.”

  Jasper nodded. “So did my girlfriend. She was a freight agent.”

  “The girlfriend’s name?”

  “Annabell. We have a daughter, too. Three years old.” Jasper smiled proudly, but the fact that he would never again see said daughter seemed to dawn on him and his eyes glazed over.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Jannie.” Jasper poked his food. “She was the reason I began gambling. She... she’s sick. The medicine we could handle, but the treatments were so expensive. You know how it is when you have kids. You’ll do anything for them.”

  “No, not really my area of expertise,” Keelan said and thought about the faceless, genderless child out there somewhere with his and Alice’s blood in its veins.

  “Don’t you have someone? That Alice you mentioned in your dream?” Jasper asked.

  Keelan looked up, shocked.

  “Sorry, I should have shut up.”

  Keelan shook his head. “It’s okay. You just don’t get an answer.”

  “I had a woman once,” the blind man said.

  Jasper and Keelan stopped eating and looked at him. It was the first time he’d participated in their conversations—unless they’d coerced him.

  “What was her name?” Keelan asked.

  “Uhm... something with an H... H... H... anyway, she was hot!”

  “Hot. That’s spelled with an H.”

  “Yes, exactly!” the man exclaimed and pointed at no one in particular.

  Keelan and Jasper laughed. So did the old man, b
ut he seemed to forget why they were laughing, which only made Keelan and Jasper laugh even harder.

  Keelan sat on the edge of his bed after having just finished showering. He’d had that dream again—the same dream every time—and thoughts of it wouldn’t leave his head. Granted, it had been almost a week since he’d last dreamed it, but the voice haunted him—a child’s voice calling him Dad. The same indefinable feeling was back and sometimes burned in the pit of his stomach. He rubbed his face frustrated in the hope that it would retreat.

  Jasper’s got to be done showering soon, too.

  Someone knocked on the door, and Keelan opened it.

  A prisoner he’d seen in their hall many times stood there looking uneasy. “Your cellmate... he... you better...”

  Keelan’s insides twisted, and he pushed past the prisoner and hurried to the shower room. Jasper lay naked and very still in the middle of it. Looking down his body, it was obvious how the last minutes of his life had transpired.

  “Who did this?” Keelan asked and glanced over his shoulder at the few prisoners standing there—one of whom was the guy who had broken the news to him. “Who?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “No one touches him,” Keelan ordered, pushed past them, and made his way to the halls with the glass roof. A guy crouched by the octagonal, following a line with his finger while nibbling on a piece of bread.

  “Hey,” Keelan said.

  The man got up with a guarded expression.

  “Do you know where I might find the minister?”

  “First cell on that side,” the guy said and pointed.

  Keelan nodded his thanks and headed for the cell. The door stood ajar, so Keelan listened a second before knocking.

  “Yes,” the minister answered.

  Keelan went in and closed the door behind him.

  The minister sat on a chair with a bible in his hand. “How can I help you?”

  “If I had the need to learn some of the rules in here and a little about some of the inmates... how much does that cost and who do I see about it?”

  The minister laughed and gestured for Keelan to sit on the bed. He did, reluctantly.