Building Up - jedcline's 2006 NanoWriMo

Day 13 of 30 2006 - Building Up

day 13 of 30 2006 jedc

As they stared at their "obituary" found via their fortuitous Asian internet connection, the implications slowly settling in, they realized that an effort to send messages that they were alive, would not be wise. Somebody big wanted the world to think they were gone, history. And permanently so. An effort to deny it would likely invite a missile coming up and silencing them, making it reality. As it was, at least they were alive. Wait and see, seemed the best mode right now.

They decided it best to make peace with their new neighbors, despite their initial rebuff from the prison guard staff, essentially telling them to stay out, stay away, don't come near us or we will shoot. How to connect with them? Probably they too had noticed that supply had ceased coming up, and presumably internet connection gone too. Were the staff members over there cognizant in advance re the abandonment, or were they just as surprised?

Catalie activated their one video link, put in when the first segment was made habitable by themselves. It had ended up being in a storage room, when the new wheel's arrangement was fleshed out by the new occupants, so it was pretty dull watching. Yet, it was the one link that still existed open between the two wheel space settlements. Eventually someone came into the storage area, and they recorded the activity, and examined it in detail afterwards. The person was in prison garb, so it looked like it was storage for prisoners use, not for the guards. Would the guards have the room bugged? Deciding to risk it, the next time a prisoner went in there, Improy used the voice link through the video monitor, to get the attention of the prisoner and tell who he was. And advise of the new turn of events, and the need to communicate as soon as possible. Survival of all was at stake. The man in prison garb paused, listened, then continued on with digging through the boxes and left the room, not making a response. A few hours later, two of the prisoners showed up, one the same as before, who stayed to fiddle around by the doorway, while the new prisoner approached the video monitor. Improy again used the audio link and said hello, and repeated who he was and a brief description of the situation and need for cooperation. "Do you hear me?" was the response. Soon they were having a conversation, albeit awkwardly. The prisoners were used to video monitors, but the watchers normally were hostile, suspicious, and never talked to them; just responded with a sudden appearance of armed men if they got suspicious. So, this was a novel experience. The normal guards did not seem to have the imagination to concoct this as a new form of torture, so they chose to go along with Improy's information, see what would happen.

The prisoners advised that efforts to contact the prison staff would be much like interaction with Ownma Management, in that they were utterly steeped in dogma of their innate superiority, all others being little more than farm animals to be used for profit. "So what's new" Improy commented. A description of the internal arrangement of the prison wheel was gradually provided. The prison staff actually was quite small, and held one segment extending between two wheel spokes, and the hub. They had airlocks separating the staff area from the prisoner area, and had threatened the prisoners with having their air supply being vented to space if they ever tried to rebel. In fact, they had demonstrated it not long previous, by venting the prisoners' air into space until they were gasping for breath; then air was returned to them. It was a convincing way to keep them in complete subservience, just as the guards intended. "Be careful of your contact with us; if the prison staff learned of it, they were likely to assault all concerned, perhaps even blow a hole into the original wheel to get rid of everyone there. Probably they would do that anyway, considering the new circumstance. Ownma Management had no toleration for any who opposed them, or even might oppose them in any way. The prisoners there knew of that too well. The "crime" most of them had been sent here for, was opposing Ownma just enough to try to get access to the means to survive the epidemic that was killing many of their loved ones. Going against the ultra-arrogant masters of intimate surveillance had always been very dangerous; but the lives of the employee's families had been at stake, and so were near lost anyway, so they tried. And failed; here they were.

A few weeks went by, and a good rapport was established between Number 283, as his uniform identified him, and Improy. The prisoner's affect visibly was cheering up, a bit of hope was enlivening him. His improved mood was having a beneficial effect on his fellow prisoners, too.

Unfortunately, the improved prisoner mood did not escape notice by the guard staff.

When the usual communication routine did not happen for two days in a row, Catalie got worried. "I feel something is wrong; we need to do something." Improy was a bit tense too, but said only that there was nothing they could do, except wait. They had to show good will to all concerned, especially to the prison staff.

One of the agricultural workers reported something strange out the sunward window, there appeared to be something moving rapidly out there, and whizzed past every few minutes. A camera was set up and captured the event. Sent to the control room, the image was of a man in prison garb, out there with no spacesuit, tethered by a foot, the body rotating around so the number 283 was visible from the agricultural area of the prison wheel. It was also sometimes visible in the agricultural area of Improy and Catalie's wheel, too. It was a message from the prison guards, obviously.

Catalie blocked Improy's immediate move to head for the spacesuit area. "Hold off", she urged, "get rational about this. You can't save him, you know that; he is long past that possibility. That it was a result of your effort to connect with them over there, is not the same as you having done the wrong. Instead, let's re-weigh the nature of the beast we try to tame, based on this reality test." Improy simmered down enough to stop there; then he went to the gym to burn off the adrenaline before it went toxic in his bloodstream.

The next day, their video monitor of their internal hub area showed a group of armed prison guards headed toward them. The guards activated the airlock hatches, both left open, as all the hub was pressurized. Improy realized that their space worksuits were at risk, the armed guards headed toward the Embarcadero section. But instead of stopping to snatch the worksuits from their storage containers, they continued on to the Embarcadero's airlock, and activated the opening of both doors, as if the outer hatch had been sealed by an arriving space bus. But there was no space bus out there to seal the opening. Clearly their intent was to vent the air from the whole wheel. They hurried back toward their end of the hub as the doors began to swing open to the hard vacuum of space. But the hatches opened very fast. The rush of pressurized air from inside the station roared past the guards like a tornado. And then the guards were nowhere in sight, blown out through the hatches, out into space.

Improy took the situation in, and activated the closure of the Embarcadero inner hatch from the control station. The rush of air was halted. Would another bunch of armed guards head out to finish the job? He closed the shaded end hub airlocks remotely, had Catalie stay there in case the guards re-appeared while Improy was out there. He hurried up the nearest spoke's ladder, up into the hub, and scrambled toward the now closed shaded side airlock. Reaching the power panel for the airlock, he popped open the circuit breaker, so the hatch could not open electrically. It could still be opened manually, however, from either side, including the attackers' side. Then he went into the Embarcadero, got their space worksuits, then returned to the wheel rim with them. From the control room, he activated the hatches sealing off all their spokes at the hub, then he re-opened the airlock hatch, venting the area to space. "That will keep them from getting into the hub to try that again, while we are sleeping" he coldly announced.

But the next morning, what he found was that the remaining hatch on the shaded end of the hub was open, manually unlatched from the other side. The whole hub was now open to space. "Now what are they up to?" he groused at Catalie. She replied that people who believed too much in their invincibility, would eventually learn of their real limits, or perish in their arrogance. Especially in areas where their surveillance did not give them secret info on where to easily hurt their baffled opponent.

The next evening they were surprised by a man in prisoner clothing coming back into the storeroom which had the video link. Not one they recognized, however. Was it a guard being tricky? The man seemed to not know where the camera was, so he just talked into the air. "Are you there, somebody? What is happening?" The man looked scared. Catalie remarked that no arrogant guard would ever do that, even to be tricky. But this might just be a stakeout, a guard just out of sight. Improy risked talking with him. The prisoner said that most of the prisoners were not being let out anymore to go to the restroom or cafeteria; and that the group of prisoners, including himself, that had been out last, have been out for a whole day. They had been carrying food and water to the still locked up prisoners. But the guards were not activating food preparation anymore, and it was getting desperate over there. At least the guards had not vented their area into space again yet, thankfully. "Can you help us?"

"Do we want a companion wheel full of dead prisoners, while we struggle to survive with provision cutoff from the Earth?" Improy asked Catalie. Catalie pointed out that from what they had learned, that there were two agriculture and associated restaurant areas over there, just like in their wheel station. And if neither restaurants were operating, then the prison guard staff was not eating either. Perhaps Improy could go over and bargain with the guard staff, offering to get the restaurant equipment running again, in exchange for peace talks.

Improy had his space worksuit, but there was no way to re-pressurize the hub from their control room, as the power was off the interior hatch, so it could not be closed from here. So they both got into their worksuits, went to the rim airlock they had installed where the wayward bulkhead had long ago torn a hole, and they climbed down onto the "bicycle built for two" they had left there. Pedaling around to where the rope ladder led to the Embarcadero's hatch, they climbed up it, and entered the airlock, both doors still open to space, and the Embarcadero in vacuum. Once inside, Improy proceeded down the hub, and closed the shaded side hub airlock hatches. Catalie closed the outer hatches and re-pressurized the Embarcadero. From the control station there, they looked in on the video link with the other wheel's storeroom, to find several prisoners in there now, who were greatly relieved to get a response from Improy. There had been no change in the situation over there, just getting worse, no food or water for anybody now.

Catalie said she was going with Improy; if it is a trap then she might as well end it then too. So the rest of the hub was re-pressurized, which took a huge amount of their air reserves to complete. "Why could that be?" Improy puzzled. "I hope we can negotiate for some of their air reserves, too." He lashed a small porthole-sized bulkhead to his left forearm, to fend off projectiles if necessary; then they proceeded into the prison half of the hub, finding the hatches open. They found a guard still with a deathgrip on the top of the spoke's ladder, clearly asphyxiated. Climbing down through the spoke, by the time they reached bottom, they knew what had happened. The guards had indeed attempted a sleep-cycle-nighttime repeat assault, but did not stop to check to see if the Embarcadero side was pressurized, when they opened the hatch into it. That would have unfortunately opened up the last barrier to space, and there were no airlocks between the hub, spokes and the wheel rim segment that the prison staff occupied. That they kept the airlocks sealed between their area and the prisoner's area, threatening to instantly vent the air from the prisoner's side, was what kept the prisoners from losing their air too; the airlocks work both ways. Examining the control panel down there, since everything was again pressurized, he soon had the airlock hatches in both directions open to the prisoner's area. Then he sent the control signals to open all prisoner doors, and activate the restaurant facilities. Then they went back up the spoke, no telling how the prisoners would react at first.

Back in their own little condo area, home at last again, adventure too much today for either of them, Catalie did activate the link to the storeroom video link, for a last look in the area. What they saw there, was a sign scrawled with a big "THANK YOU" on it. It was time to get some sleep.

posted by Unknown @ 4:53 PM