Red Sky: Chapter 6
The sky was a prison. The air was a poison. The red sand was a weight tied to my ankles. The redness of the red moon broke in waves over my body. I could feel its dull burn against my fingertips and taste it with each breath as we marched from the transport to a gray building stuck in the middle of a desert.
Once I was inside I was given a new name. It was a number, “22889.” Then I was injected with an airtag through a hole in the collar around my neck.
“Do it again,” the guard told the technician. I had no idea what it was for or why they had to do it again. I felt the sting of the airtag a second time. I was marched forward and the laser chain that connected me to the other prisoners disappeared and I was led by two guards into a great hall that was surrounded by individual cells on the floors above. The guards led me up two flights of stairs. They removed my ankle bracelets and pushed me into my cell. My collar and wrist bracelets stayed on. A transparent field came down and locked me inside.
I sat down on my bed and listened to the other prisoners as they were marched to their cells. For some reason, I didn’t feel the claustrophobic moments of a man who would never breathe the air of Earth again. I was curious as much as horrified. Curious at what awaited me. Everything was new. Or felt new. I had seen prison guards before. I had seen the lances and the shackles and the laser chain before. But I was seeing these things up close, experiencing them in a new solar system. My neurons were firing too fast for me to be depressed. During my first moments of confinement on the red moon a strange sense of exhilaration crept into my thoughts and emotions.
*
“Half of you will die here.” A man shouted from the prison floor below.
“For the next five years this moon will be your home. Five years of hard labor to pay for what you have taken from others, for what you have taken from society.
“We demand discipline. We expect discipline. We expect you to do what you are told. We expect you to know your place. You are here because this is what you deserve.
“You are now in hell and I’m Hades. To get out of hell you will have to satisfy me.”
Twelve guards were lined up on the prison floor. Hades was standing in front of them. They were all dressed in black. They held helmets under their right arms. They looked like they were ready to be part of a military parade. An old man wandered in from the left breaking the precision of the line. He was dressed in white. His hair was white. His beard was white. His shirt was untucked. He had the air of a professor.
The old man cleared his throat to speak. He spoke in a quiet voice, much quieter than Hades.
“If he’s the devil,” he gestured to Hades, “then I am your God.” This was obviously a routine they had done many times before.
“As God, I am omnipotent and omniscient. I know where you are and what you are doing every minute of every day. I know what you are thinking as you lie in your bed at night. I know what you desire in your deepest dreams.”
“If you listen to me, if you behave and work hard, you will have the chance to go back to Earth. You will have a chance to see your families again. For a lucky few you will get to return to some semblance of a normal life.
“These are not decisions I as God will make. These are decisions you will make, by how you act in here, by how well you mine out there. Follow the rules and you will be happy and you will be set free.”
“You are here to provide a service to the Federation. I want a team that performs. If you do that, you will make God happy. And if God is happy, you will be happy. But if God is angry,” the old man raised his voice. “You will feel great pain.”
He walked to the exit. Hades and the guards followed. The lights in the main hall shut down like someone turning off the light in a room when they leave. The lights in the cells were now the only illumination.
When all of the lights were on and the guards were down below, the transparent shield at the front of my cell let in all sounds. When the main lights turned off the noise went away. I was sealed in a vacuum and could only hear the sounds inside my cell.
It was three meters by three meters. It had a bed, a toilet, nothing else. There was no pillow, no sheets, no window. The walls were made of faded white stone with small cracks and crevices. I ran my hand along the crevices. There were carvings in the bottom corner of the cell. Four sets of initials were carved into the stone. Two of the initials had five marks next to them, the other two only had three.
I took my hand away from the stone and looked through the transparent shield to the other side of the prison. I watched the prisoners on the other side. One of them explored the shield at the front of his cell like a mime, poking and prodding it. I had seen enough shields on Earth to know it was as strong as any wall. After a few minutes, he sat down on his bed dejected. I smiled at my superior knowledge and sat down on my bed as well. I fell back and stared into my ceiling.
The next thing I remember was a slight tremor. The vibrations of two hundred marching feet gently rocked my bed. I looked down at the veterans filing in for the night. I watched as they stripped off their mud-caked work clothes and stood waiting in the middle of their cells, looking up to the ceiling as though they were praying. With complete synchronization, water poured down from a little hole in the ceiling onto their tired bodies. This lasted a minute.
The water shut off and everyone put on their orange jumpsuits and climbed into their beds. The lights in the cells turned off one row at a time. I waited for my cell to be plunged into darkness. The adrenaline of the day was wearing off and a tiredness crept into my body. I closed my eyes, not to sleep but to dream, to see images I would never see in reality again.