The Hourglass

by Donaldson, Casey

  “He, er, he doesn’t have anything to do with us, does he? I mean, it’s not like there would be any reason to, right?”

  “I don’t know. As far as I can make out, the King and Queen have some sort of agreement in place.”

  Justin nodded in consensus. “They use each other to mutual benefit,” he extrapolated.

  “Did you have an interview with him?” Sarah asked, intrigued.

  “Yeah,” replied Finn, his hand subconsciously touching a dark bruise on his upper arm that Sarah hadn’t noticed before. “It was a bit more hands on than yours was.”

  Sarah shook her head in disgust. “How can they let this happen?” she demanded.

  “Who? The guards?” replied Finn with a lopsided smile, “what do they care? The King and Queen already keep everybody in line, it saves them some work.”

  Before she could reply a bell shrilled throughout the cafeteria and everybody around them got to their feet, collected their dishes and headed back to the buffet area to dispose of them. Sarah, Finn, Justin and Marland did the same. Now that she was aware of them, Sarah felt herself constantly glancing at the King and Queen. Neither of them collected their own dishes, instead leaving it to one of their followers. As a group they left the cafeteria, and under the watchful gaze of the guards ascended another staircase. Sarah found herself walking next to the curly red-head who told them to be quiet earlier.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “To work, obviously.” She glanced at Sarah’s face and chuckled humorously. “Why do you think they have the prisons in the middle of the ocean?”

  “I thought it was to protect normal people?” volunteered Finn.

  “It’s so we can build shit for the military in secret,” she told them bluntly. “I mean, even if someone managed to steal something and smuggle it away, where exactly are they going to run to?”

  “So what are we building that is so top secret?”

  “Stuffed it I know,” said the red haired girl, turning her back on them to chat to a tall boy with a large nose.

  Sarah turned back to the group and found Marland nodding her head thoughtfully.

  “It all makes sense, you know. I mean, they tell people that we’re out here because its good PR, but c’mon, shipping out food and maintaining the ship, let alone paying guards to come out here away from their homes is expensive, right? Do you think that they are really prepared to spend that kind of money on us? No, this makes far more sense.”

  “Well at least they’re not throwing us overboard,” replied Sarah with a half-smile towards Marland, remembering Marland’s earlier conspiracy theory about what happened on the ship.

  “Not all of us, anyway,” said Marland thoughtfully, frowning in concentration. “I mean, what if we see some really important design or something? They can’t just let us go with that knowledge stored in our brains.”

  Sarah gave up.

  They soon understood why the red-haired girl had no idea what they were building. They were ushered into a massive room, mostly taken up by a conveyer belt system and various machines situated at random intervals. Placed alongside the conveyer belt were stools. Lining one of the walls was a huge pile of boxes. Each had a symbol of an hourglass in a circle sketched onto it. Sarah frowned at the image. It was nearly exactly the same as her scar. The thought made her uncomfortable, but she didn’t know why. Before she could think too much about it she was ushered aside by a guard along with the rest of the new prisoners. The guard assigned them seats and instructed them on their task. They mostly found themselves paired off, with one or two of the long term prisoners littered amongst them in case they needed help. Sarah had no idea why the guards thought that they would possibly require help. The tasks themselves were painfully simple. Sarah and Finn were assigned to assess the patency of metal tubes that arrived in front of them via the conveyer belt. The others were doing something equally benign. Sarah glanced around the room. Nearly everyone was working with some obscure piece of metal or plastic. It could have been put together to make anything.

  The third and final person on their section of the conveyer belt was called Boulder. Boulder was a boy of about fifteen who, according to him, had been on the ship for a number of months already. Boulder, like his namesake, was short and stocky. Boulder mainly cared about Boulder.

  Sarah was bored after five minutes. The metal tubes were cylindrical, approximately twelve centimetres long, three centimetres in diameter and were open ended. They also had a hole towards one end of the tube. Besides that they were utterly unremarkable. Their job was to pick up each piece and check that the tube was open at both ends and was devoid of irregular shapes. After a while Sarah started picking up and putting down the cylinders automatically, without even looking at them. This earned her a slap across the back of the head by a passing guard who had crept up on her while she was daydreaming. After that she made sure that she at least appeared to look at the tubes.

  “Do we do this all day long? Every day?” she asked Boulder.

  “Yup,” he drawled, not even looking up.

  “How can you stand it?”

  “I imagine I’m not surrounded by idiots.”

  “Hey!” Sarah’s and Finn’s indignant cry rang loudly throughout the hanger. A few heads turned in their direction.

  “Shut up,” muttered Boulder, his head over his work and barely moving his lips. “Don’t draw so much bloody attention. Idiots.”

  They quickly went back to work. After a minute or so the stares faded and the heads reluctantly turned back to their work.

  “Why not? What will happen if we do?” muttered Finn. Sarah glanced at him quickly. His head was now also bent over his work. It was like he hadn’t spoken. There was a pause and for a moment Sarah thought that Boulder wouldn’t reply.

  “What will happen is that people will notice you,” he replied, speaking as if to a child. “Look the frag around. Is there anybody here who you would want noticing you?”

  Sarah couldn’t help herself. She glanced around the room. At the same time, almost as if he had heard Boulder’s words and wanted to give them weight, a guard on the far side of the room smacked his truncheon against one of the prisoner’s legs, causing him to yelp out in pain. Another prisoner used the distraction to throw a sharp, pointed piece of metal at a third prisoner. It hit her in the face and drew a small bead of blood. She quickly wiped it away but didn’t say anything. Boulder was right, Sarah thought. She didn’t want to draw the attention of any of these people.

  Chapter Ten

  Factories and Friends

  After their third straight hour of sorting through the tubes Sarah felt her eyes starting to close involuntarily. She shook herself awake and sought out a distraction.

  “So what did you do Boulder?” she asked quietly, head bowed over her work.

  “Mind your own business.”

  “So what did you do Finn?” she asked, her voice not changing at all.

  “I told you,” replied Finn, “I got on the wrong side of a soldier.”

  “Yeah but what does that involve, exactly?”

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “What?” asked Sarah, looking up at him and feeling somewhat hurt despite herself. “Why not?”

  He winked at her. “I like to be surrounded by a bit of mystery.” He said it light-heartedly but his light brown eyes were sad. He didn’t hold her gaze but instead went quickly back to work. Sarah found herself staring at him. His eyes had glazed over and his jaw clenched as if recalling an unpleasant memory. His gaze was lowered to the tube in his hand and Sarah noted that he had surprisingly long, dark eyelashes for such white hair. Sarah wanted to prod him, to find out what it was that had happened. She wanted to know more about him, but she didn’t want to force him to share obviously painful memories if he didn’t want to. Especially in a room full of people who might overhear, no matter how quietly they spoke. Boulder would definitely hear, for one. Also there was the possibility that he wasn’
t going to tell her because he had done something bad. Something really bad. She hoped that wasn’t the case. She had already decided that he was like her; someone who should have been sent to the farms instead for a relatively minor crime. But what if he was actually meant to be on the ship? What if he had done something terrible? Finn looked up and caught her staring. She blushed and looked back at the tube she was clutching onto, inspecting it far more minutely than any of the other tubes that had passed through her hands. Or maybe, she thought, he just doesn’t want to tell her because it was her listening. After all, what did they really know about each other? A loud thud reverberated close to her and Sarah jumped. One of the guards had whacked his truncheon against the leg of her stool.

  “You’ve been staring at that tube for three minutes. I get that it’s fascinating,” he said sarcastically, “but we have a quota to meet. Move on.”

  Sarah quickly discarded the tube she had been playing with and picked up a new one. Her fingers fumbled under the guard’s gaze. He watched her work for a minute and then ambled off. She sighed. The next two hours passed monotonously and Sarah grew increasingly hungry. It was all the worse because there was nothing that she could use to distract herself. A bell rang throughout the factory floor and everyone around her stopped working, dropping whatever it was that was in front of them. Most of them had already left their stations and were heading in the direction of the cafeteria.

  “Please tell me that means lunch?” asked Finn.

  “Yup,” replied Boulder, walking away from them.

  Sarah stood up and stretched. Marland, and to Sarah’s slight surprise April, joined them from their station further along the conveyer belt. April stood comfortably at the edge of the group as if she belonged there, her arms crossed in front of her chest. On an impulse Sarah looked around the room, searching for Heather, the only other girl that arrived on the boat with them. Marland beat her to it. She whacked Sarah on the shoulder and pointed across the room, her eyebrows raised.

  Sarah followed Marland’s gaze. She felt her own eyebrows rise as she saw that Heather was having another interview with the Queen, only this time Heather looked a lot more pleased.

  “That can’t be good,” said Sarah, matter-of-factly.

  “I know,” agreed Marland. She shivered theatrically. “Every time I see Heather happy, I feel sick inside, because you know it’s going to be bad.”

  “C’mon,” said Finn, walking past them with Justin, “let’s go get lunch. I’m starving.”

  Sarah and Marland both tried to keep an eye on Heather’s meeting with the Queen while they followed Finn off the factory floor. April followed their gaze curiously.

  “That girl is a cow,” said April flatly, once she realised that they were looking at Heather.

  “Exactly what I said!” said Sarah. She glanced at April out of the corner of her eye. “So, um, are you alright?”

  April shrugged. “I’m fine.”

  “It’s just that last night I thought I heard a thud coming from your cell.”

  “Oh,” said April, “that.” She looked down at her shoes, her expression difficult to read.

  “So that thud did come from your cell?” added in Marland. She shared a look with Sarah.

  “What happened?” asked Sarah.

  April shrugged. “My brain-deficient cell-mate decided that she needed to prove something.” She looked up at them. “She threw me against the wall,” she elaborated.

  Marland made a distressed noise and Sarah frowned. “Who is she?” asked Sarah.

  “Campher.” The corner of April’s mouth twitched up slightly as Sarah looked around the room. “You won’t find her. She’s in solitary.” The slight smile widened. “I may have tripped her this morning while she passed a guard carrying coffee. The guard got burnt and wasn’t exactly happy about it.”

  Sarah gasped at her, astounded. “But didn’t they catch you doing that?”

  April shook her head, a huge grin now plastered on her face. “There were all these other people about, and what with all the shouting and flailing I just slipped out of the way.” Her grin widened even further. “It’s good to be short sometimes.”

  “What are you going to do when Campher comes back?” asked Marland.

  The grin slipped slightly from April’s face and she shrugged again. “I’ll just have to take it as it comes, I suppose,” she said. The grin returned as a thought occurred to her, “but judging from how pissed off that guard was, I’m pretty confident that she’ll be there for quite a while.”

  The other girls chortled. They knew that they were at the bottom of the heap in regards to pecking order on the prison boat, so April’s success in getting retribution for Campher’s assault felt like a small victory for all of them. April’s presence in the group suddenly felt more natural and they chattered about how mind-numbingly boring their mornings had been until they reached the cafeteria. Finn was already in line for food when they arrived. He hadn’t waited for them. Despite their triumph over Campher’s situation they weren’t game enough to join Finn and cut in front of the others, so they joined the back of the line. To Sarah’s surprise Colt joined them, draping a languid arm over Sarah’s shoulders.

  “Ladies,” he greeted them, nodding his head at April and Marland. “Are you bored to death yet?”

  “Pretty much,” said Sarah, acutely aware of his arm.

  He picked at his shirt. “I’m not too fussed about these prison clothes, hey,” he said, frowning at himself. “One size fits all never fits all.”

  The girls all looked at him. Somehow he managed to make the clothes look like they were tailored specifically for him. “I don’t know,” said Sarah, “some people can pull them off.”

  A loud giggle ahead of them drew their attention. Two girls further up in the line were looking back at Colt and whispering to each other. Colt grinned wolfishly and straightened up, removing his arm from Sarah’s shoulder.

  “Another time, girls,” he said, giving them a wink. He walked off to join the whispering girls, who were now giggling, his shoulders thrust back and his chest pushed out proudly. Sarah, April and Marland exchanged rolled eyes and laughed. By the time they got to the buffet table Sarah was again fully aware of just how hungry she was. Which was a good thing, she decided as she considered the substances in front of her. It was probably unfair to call it food. Her grumbling stomach made it even look edible. She loaded up her plate and moved towards the same table that they had sat at that morning. Finn was already sitting at the table, gulping down the food. Justin sat next to him, looking at it forlornly. Sarah sat across from Finn and watched his food disappear with a mixture of amazement and horror.

  “Do you actually like this?” she asked.

  “Of course I don’t,” replied Finn through a mouthful of food. He gulped hastily. “The trick is to eat it before your tastebuds register it as indigestible.”

  Marland sat down besides Sarah and started poking at the pale mound dubiously with a spoon while Sarah took her first few bites. “What do you think it is?”

  Sarah considered the question as she chewed and then swallowed before she answered. “Some cardboard-protein hybrid.”

  Finn pulled out something long and skinny from his teeth. “It sort of looks like a fish bone,” he said, “but I doubt they would put something that nutritious in here. Maybe it’s some type of plastic.”

  Justin hadn’t taken a bite yet. He was just swirling the mixture miserably with his spoon. “I’m going to die here,” he said. “I can’t eat this.” He stood up.

  “Where are you going?” asked Finn.

  “To the bathroom. This stuff just makes me feel sick.” Justin left quickly, a slight green tinge to his skin.

  April sat down next to Finn. “It’s a potato and rice mixture with powdered protein,” she said.

  They all looked up at her in surprise as she took her first tentative bite. She hadn’t guessed the answer, she had known it.

  “How would you possib
ly know that?” asked Finn, looking at her rather more seriously than Sarah thought the situation warranted.

  April shrugged, suddenly aware of the extra attention. “My uncle works for one of the Covenant city bodies. He comes across this sort of stuff as part of his job.”

  Finn stared at her with a weird sort of intensity, as if deciding whether or not April’s family contacts in the government would change things between them. Sarah wondered if she would ever find out what had happened to make him despise the Covenant so intensely. Then Finn’s expression lightened and his face relaxed. “So you’re saying that I can blame you for this mess, right?” he said, prodding the leftover food with his spoon.

  April rolled her eyes at Finn and went to flick a small piece of mash at him. Just before she could let it fly a group of three boys appeared behind her. One of them grabbed her wrist and removed the spoon. He turned it over and the lump of mash dropped onto April’s head.

  “What the hell?” demanded April, shaking her wrist free and wiping the mash off. One of the boys sat down at the table next to April while the others remained standing. The boy sitting down had a pointed chin and nose and black hair. His companion on the right was thickset with dull eyes, and the one on the left was of average build, with light brown hair and glasses. He looked normal, even slightly nerdy, except for a weird glint in his eyes which made you want to look away. The boy with the pointed chin spoke first. He voice was curiously high-pitched.

  “Hello newbies,” he drawled, ignoring the furious glares of anger April was throwing at him. “I thought it was time that someone came over and gave you a proper welcome.” If his tone of voice didn’t drip with evil and mal-intent, his message would have been nice. Instead it sent a shiver of apprehension up Sarah’s spine. Marland was sitting still, her eyes downcast and directed at her plate. Her hands were clasped tightly together on her lap. Finn was looking at the boy, his expression unreadable.

  “What do you want?” demanded April, red and angry with a smear of the mash still on her head.