Discarded Colony

Discarded Colony

by V.M. Gunn

Published October 2014

Edited by: B Alexander Fraser

Cover Art by: TriptychGraphics

The purchaser of this book is subject to the condition that he/she shall in no way resell it, nor any part of it, nor make copies of it to distribute.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

© 2014 V.M. Gunn

All rights reserved worldwide

The sun was beating down on his head with the ferocity of a midsummer's day in the Mojave Desert. Sweat dripped down his cracked forehead and naked back but did nothing to cool him. His throat was parched. What he would give for some shade and a long glass of cool water to quench his thirst. Yet he knew any respite would be at least an hour or two away. He could not stop his work now. Those from afar monitoring him via his nano implants knew that he could sustain considerable more time in this oppressive heat. His dehydration levels, despite being considered worrisome by any qualified doctor on Earth, would show up on the overseers' HUD's within normal ranges.

"Those cruel bastards," he thought. They knew exactly how far they could push a human being before extinguishing their life force for good. He was being monitored like cattle in a pen by soulless humans ordered to extract the very last ounce of labor from him. Should they overstep the bounds and accidently kill him, there would be no grave consequences for any of them. He was a prisoner with no tangible value and certainly no hope for redemption.

He plunged his small garden spade into hard the dirt from his kneeling position. The spade was made of a light and soft polymer probably designed so that he was unable to ram it through his stomach and empty his guts onto the ground, quickly putting an end to his misery. As he pulled the spade up out of the soil, a bright orange carrot was brought up amongst the dirt. He grabbed it, dusted it off and for a moment considered taking a bite out of it. He glanced up and saw a group of mosquito-sized patrol drones buzzing past 30 feet overhead. Despite his urges, he knew it was not worth the pain that would be inflicted on him for breaching such a serious rule. Something, somewhere, would certainly see him, or his implants would notify his overseers that he had ingested something that was not authorized or scheduled. They would simply force him to work twice as long in the sweltering heat, to the brink of death. Instead, he tossed it into the clear box sitting next to him, along with the other hundred or so carrots he had already dug up for the day. He tried not to look at them as he knew such fresh food will never touch his lips.

"You’re going work for us," they had said to him and a group of others the first day they arrived. "We need to eat and you’re going to grow the produce, tend to the animals and make us love coming to this shithole every day! You are dangerous, unwanted… discarded from society... so at least this hard labor will instill a sense of purpose into you while you rot here!"

His confine for the day was a square garden of approximately 10 by 10 feet. "Plot 3483" they had called out at the beginning of the day. He often wondered why they just didn’t call them "cells", because that’s what they really were. But then again, if he was confined in a prison governed by the laws of Earth he would at least have had some form of rights - here he did not. He was surrounded by semi-transparent walls about ten feet high. They were very innocent looking; modern and sleek. But, he knew the slightest touch of them would send a massive electrical pulse through his body, making it feel like all his fingernails and toenails were being peeled back while simultaneously emptying his bowels and ejecting projectile vomit from orifices he once didn’t even know existed. He had made that mistake once and vowed never to do it again. Here, every punishment was designed to inflict as much pain on someone without killing them so that it would leave a permanent mental scar.

"Here," he laughed to himself, "One of man’s greatest marvels being used as a human cattle death farm." He was not being held in a standard prison on planet Earth. No, this compound was one of the many structures hovering outside of the Earth’s atmosphere on a sliver in space and time. He had not seen this particular one from afar as his captors had been generous enough to freeze him in liquefied carbon for his transport from Earth. However, he expected that it was enormous like the ones he had worked on before all of this happened. Giant floating islands, built using impossibly light yet strong metals and polymers, fused with genetic qualities which blended man-made structure and organic plants and fibers. They were so immense that they generated their own atmospheres and blue skies.

When they were first made possible by breakthroughs in all areas of biotechnology and engineering a half-century ago humans imagined space resorts, "Las Vegas style oases and Amazon Jungles in space" as one famous headline put it. Everyone thought that they would further supplant human space colonies on the Moon and Mars, not to mention revitalize aging space outposts built with obsolete ‘dirty’ technology, with a new level of feasibility and cost effectiveness never seen before. To a certain extent that happened, but as had been evidenced over the course of history, perverted and greedy bodies prevented any chance of a utopian outcome. So many islands had instead been built for use as military commands, ships and, of course, prisons.

He did not know how many people were confined to this place. He assumed, given the numbering that there were roughly ten thousand plots; numbered 0000 to 9999. Although, he had never seen more than 100 prisoners together at one time. Even that only happened on the rare occasions when they were allowed to congregate together for briefings, showering or signing contracts for consensual intercourse. So far he had never bothered with the latter bizarre practice, but given that the majority of his counterparts were hollow looking men all seemingly begging for death as he, it was not exactly the type of atmosphere that inspired romance. He wondered why they even bothered.

Everyone that was brought to this terrible place had a death sentence. Not one imposed by the government for breaking some type of law. This death sentence was the form of an incurable sickness that would slowly break down each cell in his body until all of his hair, skin and digits fell off and his body decomposed so badly that he could no longer work. He, like all the others here had acute radiation poisoning that had been deemed by the Earth’s government as "incurable and dangerous." The laws of 2157 stated that when a citizen was diagnosed with such a level of the disease that they would not be taken care of by the already overburdened medical systems. It had been centuries since most types of socialist-style health care systems were abolished as most countries now invested 90-95% of their budgets into military and space expansion projects. Health care, therefore, was only available to the 'Tier One' citizens that could afford it. But even then, if someone contracted anything terminal or contagious such as this poising it was considered an instant death sentence. On Earth, on top of being immediately isolated, patients were given one to two weeks to live. He could swear that he'd been in this place for over a month already.

As he wiped the sweat off his forehead, he thought back to the fateful day when he took an unplanned blood test requested by his employer. He should have never done it; he was not legally obliged to deliver it without the presence of his physician. People had warned him of stories that now parallel his. As soon as his implants communicated any sign of radiation poisoning the authorities were notified. Then, before he knew it, he was here.

"This is no life," he thought to himself. "I would rather be a decomposing corpse underneath this soil... fertilizer for these plants." He didn’t know how long he had left, but it wasn’t a lot of time. In his former life, he had always been a competitive person and someone that would often brag that he’d "never lost a game of anything" in his life. Here, however, his health was slowly getting worse. He had gone from a confident even cocky person to a broken, shuffling shell. He was weak. Some days he vomited as soon as he woke and his skin was becoming hard and flaky.

As he closed his eyes, wishing again for his final moments to come fast, he heard the buzz of a patrol mosquito hovering directly above his plot. He opened his eyes to look up at it as the drone let out a soft sounding ‘zwoop.’

"Ahhh, the sound of joy," he thought to himself. It signaled the end of his shift. His deep reflection and self-pity had somehow made this day pass faster than usual and the crippling dehydration more manageable.

"Associate XJ49352. Ryder, Dean. Please prepare for extraction."

"Associate?!" That never ceased to make his blood boil. "I'm your prisoner, you cunts," he thought.

Without hesitation, like a well-rehearsed soldier, he stood up and placed his hands behind his head. The small mosquito drone made way for a larger human transport. The transport drone was around six feet in diameter, black, metallic and somehow military in appearance, but nonetheless harmless. It dropped down, extended some arms to Ryder’s upper torso and quickly disappeared into the sky with him.

***

"Wake up you fucking pukes!" roared the voice. The unmistakable sound of metal on metal clanged repetitively.

Ryder pried open one eye. "Shit… I’m still alive… and here," he croaked. He knew that was his wake up call. Every day, without fail the guards got pleasure in performing this archaic routine. Even though there was more than adequate enough technology available to wake all the residents using programmed alarms or their nano implants. He saw a vintage clock hologram flashing on a nearby wall: 05:00 it read; right on cue. He sat up - there was no point delaying it. He was in his ‘living quarters’ which was, quite frankly, a poor excuse for a prison cell. It was a small box in which he was forced to spend almost half his time in. He had a small bed flush against the wall and a meager desk and chair next to that. They were all made of soft polymers for the same reasons as everything else he was allowed to touch. There was a hole in the ground in the corner for him to relieve himself. Drab. Depressing and cold. Just like the rest of the internals of this facility. It contained none of the nice, soft textures and organic elements that he knew could be grown in such place. "Designed like a prison," he thought to himself. "But at least people get let out of prison eventually."

The door to the room was grey with a small slit which only showed the cold corridor outside. He was wearing, as always, his standard-issue outfit of flowing white pants and white slip-on loafers. He never wore his matching shirt which was strewn at the end of the bed; it was far too hot for that. The complete outfit resembled something that you would see people wearing on the Greek Islands back on Earth. "At least they don’t dress us in black," he thought. He had no hair on his body apart from his eyebrows as they had removed it all via a painful laser procedure before leaving earth. His outfit was starting to get a little dirty; perhaps he would be given new clothes soon.

Water and his nutrient pill had appeared as always on the desk next to his bed. The tasteless, grape-sized morsel contained 2000 calories and would be all the food he would eat for the day. He forced it down his throat; nearly choking on it in the process. This day he felt a little weaker than the previous, but this was normal. The sickness was slowly killing him and he knew it.

He approached the door, knowing that the guard would be back within the next 10 seconds.

"RYDER!" shouted a voice from the other side.

"Here sir," he replied.

The door opened with a clink.

              "Approach!"

Ryder walked out into the dark corridor which was constructed out of hard metals and had many rounded rivets running along the top, bottom and vertically every few meters. Lights flickered down the corridor. Again, there was no technical reason for such an old-fashioned lighting system, but he always assumed it was for effect, or even perhaps neglect of the facilities themselves. Standing to his left was the aforementioned guard. Ryder could smell him as he walked out of his cell. The guard was a large brute of a man, looking more like a medieval executioner than a 22nd-century prison guard. He was wearing black shorts made out of some animal hide and crossed leather braces across his chest. He was over six foot tall and bald with an ugly, puffy face. Ryder could only assume he self-administered a cocktail of growth hormones and other stimulants since birth causing his body parts and features to be horribly oversized and mutated. Perhaps even some limbs and organs were artificial; however, it was difficult to tell. If Ryder wasn’t in such a dire situation, he might have laughed at the ridiculousness of this fellow. But alas, that bear of a man was the master here and would not hesitate to smash Ryder’s face to the ground for the slightest remark.

The guard was holding a large whip in his left hand. It was no ordinary whip, however as it contained as much electronics in it as any computer would. The whip could be programmed to inflict all sorts of various types of pain and would take different forms, be it solid, flexible and everything in between. Ryder had seen it in action and it was not a pretty sight. He never thought it was possible for a whip to dismember and scatter body parts with as much fervor as this one did.

"Technology at work again," he thought. He turned to his right to see ten other people lined up down the hallway. His ‘pod’ was therefore full and represented about as many people as he would see on a typical day. They were mostly men a little older than him. He did notice one woman and teenage boy further down, all looking frail like the rest. The woman, who would have been spared the initial laser removal of her head hair, still had a decent amount growing which indicated she was not as sick as some of the others. Yet.

They were marched down the hallway a short while before reaching a central opening and a large high-roofed hall decked out in the same depressing metal and flickering lights as the corridors. To Ryder’s surprise there were other people in the area, probably 100 or so. This meant that today there was going to be either a training session (traditionally someone dictating on the different ways you could get punished here), another serious announcement, or that it was shower day. He soon saw the high double doors to the shower hall 100 feet away opening and knew that he would be getting his new change of clothes today after all.