Part Four

 

The punishment didn’t fit the crime, or at least that’s what he thought. That thinking certainly went against what the current incarnation of the justice system had to say about it. Ever since the judge had pronounced sentence, his gavel pounding like the sound of a hammer driving nails into an old wooden casket, he’d had plenty of time to think about it. He could still hear the voice thundering out the verdict from somewhere above, its heaviness crashing down on him as though it had physical form, and weight.

He had stood alone in the darkened courtroom, the only light that of the spotlight that illuminated him, shackled like a dangerous animal, as the sentence was read aloud by a judge he wasn’t permitted to see, and now in accordance with the law, abandoned by a defense attorney he’d never met. He wasn’t even allowed to speak on his own behalf, or beg for mercy. Long ago, that had been deemed pointless. Even though his punishment was not considered a death sentence, from everything he’d ever heard, it might as well have been. No one had ever survived it completely unscathed, either mentally or physically. His life was over.

He remembered little in the immediate span of time that followed, as he was administered a chemical cocktail to make transporting him easier. A common practice, the after effects left a gaping two-month hole in his memory that nagged at him to this day.

Even so, there were fleeting glimpses of things he could see now and then. Just snatches of memories that seemed to dance maddeningly just beyond his ability to see them clearly. If he closed his eyes he could see them. But when he did, they were so hideous that he opened his eyes again, heart pounding, his breath quick and ragged. They were terrifying images of nightmarish faces staring at him, studying him, with huge eyes, and mouths that moved but were silent. As the faces moved to one side or the other, their grotesque features swam, and changed, flowing from one reality to another. Even now, he sometimes saw them in his sleep. When he did, he would awake with a start, whimpering at the realization that he was alone.

He’d given it plenty of thought, and reasoned that the images must have been from when he was encased in the holding tube on his way to carry out the sentence. The tube was a clear material of some sort, quite unbreakable, and filled with a liquid that carried a vile stench that even to this day seemed to cling to him.

While in the tube, he was in a medically induced coma, and although he wasn’t supposed to remember anything about it, he did. He was certain that the faces were those of the transport technicians, checking on him periodically, making certain that he was indeed still alive during the trip. What he’d seen was the look of their faces as they moved from one side to another, monitoring the instruments that indicated his life signs, their faces changing as he saw them through varying depths, and viscosity of the fluid that his near-lifeless body floated in.

Supposedly the only memories that he would have from this experience, were the ones they would implant during the trip. While in the holding tube, several cables had been surgically implanted into the fleshy part of his upper back, just below the neck. One supplied his tissues with the necessary oxygen and nutrients to keep him alive, while another administered periodic electrical impulses that served to expand and contract the voluntary muscle fibers throughout his body. This was intended to prevent any atrophy in his musculoskeletal system. The purpose of the third cable was to “feed” thoughts directly into his brain stem. Thoughts in the form of instructions on what duties he would be expected to perform, the rules and regulations for his incarceration.

The trip was scheduled at two months, give or take a few days, and when he awoke, he found himself in the bed that he now called his own. He was alone. The transport technicians had dropped him off with the bare minimum of supplies to see him through. They then administered the drugs that would eventually bring him out of the coma, and departed. He only knew all of this because they had “told” him all of this through the implanted instructions.

That first day, his body ached. In spite of the electrical stimulation they’d given him, every movement sent sheets of fire burning through his muscles, feeling like they would stretch and break at any moment. He was incredibly hungry, but in too much pain to get out of bed and fetch anything to eat. His head throbbed as well, filled with a thousand images, and phrases all overlapping, and running together, as his mind sought to make sense of all the instructions he’d been given.

Sorting it all out, he began to understand what his life was going to be like for the next two years. He’d been sentenced to work on an orbiting solar observatory, or OSO as it was more widely known. It was little more than a massive metal can that kept a distant orbit around a far away star. It was filled with instruments of every kind, and the most sparse of living conditions. And he was going to live on it. He knew that much from the sentence that had been pronounced back on earth. But he had known none of the details until now.

Once there, he was dumped off, his head crammed full of instructions on what to do.

For at least twelve hours every day, he was required to take an observation of the conditions emitted by the star he orbited. The instruments on the OSO would record a full range of the electromagnetic spectrum, and solar winds. His job was to collect this raw data, and run it through a series of algorithms to process it into something useful, then disseminate it via trans-space communication channel to a collection terminal that sat at a fixed point in space, back in his own solar system. There the data was sorted and stored, along with all the information that came from his OSO and a dozen others like it around this quadrant of the galaxy. Part of the information implanted in his brain were instructions on how exactly to do all this.

The OSO consisted of two main decks, an upper and a lower, plus a sub-level deck below that, which contained a docking enclosure for incoming vessels, as well as supply storage. The upper served as his living quarters. It was a depressing place. The walls, floor and ceiling were bare metal, as was all the furniture. Where there was cloth, such as on the bed, his couch and his chair, it was white, and so his entire environment was a bland, colorless affair. It looked sterile, like a hospital room, and he was not allowed to change it.

Besides the sparse furnishings, his living quarters consisted of a closet, a bathing and toilet area, a bed-side table, a desk and a small kitchen facility. A few books and some meager writing materials had been furnished for him, but largely that was it.

The lower deck was reserved for work. It contained all the instrumentation needed to perform his duties, and the materials he needed to keep the place clean.

Contact with anyone outside the OSO was exceedingly limited, and then only via text messages that came across the computer screen on his work desk. He was only allowed to send and receive messages from the administrators of the justice department that ran the OSO. They would contact him on occasion to inform him of the schedule for the re-supply vessel. The schedule varied from month-to-month, so he couldn’t count on it at any certain time. They had designed it this way. Once every month or so, a ship would approach and dock with the OSO, and drop off any needed food, supplies or spare parts (maintenance of the OSO, made possible by knowledge that had been implanted, was also one of his required duties). Any messages he transmitted were limited to strictly business, heavily screened and only occasionally answered.

The administrators had complete control over every function of the OSO, and he was subject to monitoring around the clock. He wasn’t even sure that he had privacy when sitting on the commode, but that was part of his punishment; never knowing when or where they might be watching and or listening to him.

Some had in the past, argued the logic of placing convicted criminals in charge of an entire OSO, with no guarantee that they would fulfill their duties, and thus pay their debt to society. But the administrators had their ways of ensuring that the job got done. He knew this for a fact; one of the earliest things he learned was their trick with the lighting to get him out of bed.

That was a mild form of coercion, more annoying than anything else. However, there were much more aggressive ways to get one to perform his or her assigned duties. If a convict decided one day to not perform their duties, life support functions within the OSO could be turned down to the lowest level possible without causing death. The lights would go out, leaving total darkness. Oxygen levels dropped as did the temperature, subjecting anyone inside to a form of altitude sickness, and the killing cold of deep space. Once they were convinced of the error of their ways, and agreed to go back to their job, life support levels were slowly brought back to a normal level.

So it came down to a simple equation; either do the job you were put there for, or face the consequences, which were not death, but were about as unpleasant and close as a person could come to it.

He remembered the first time he sat down at the controls, following implanted schedules and instructions he dared not deviate from. Even though he had never seen controls and instruments like them, he instinctively knew how to operate them. Before long, he could operate the controls and take the observations with the deft and skill of one who’d been doing the job for years.

All he had to do was follow the schedule, do his job, and in two years he’d be retrieved and taken back to earth, his debt paid in full. It sounded simple enough when he thought about it like that. When he first arrived, it didn’t sound too difficult. He had no idea just how wrong a person could be.

 

 

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