It’s been three days ever since I encountered the two strange figures and I came to understand who they were. Slavers. To be precise they were somewhat of a slave-trading company since many chained like I came and went through the concrete shed I was held in. Indeed I wasn’t the only one. Women, children, humans, and what looked like many various alien species were all held inside a dome-like structure. In the past few days, people would come and look at us “goods” with the intent of either scanning the merchandise or straight up buying.
The conditions we lived in weren’t that bad, considering my knowledge of how slaves were treated in the past. We were all chained to the walls by both ankles, waist, and neck, our hands were free but our overall ability to move around was vastly hindered. We couldn’t even reach those who stood by us. There was no bed, just a blanket-looking thing that we kept by our side, though most of us used it as a cushion for our backs since we were forced to sleep while sitting.
The food was, in a word, strange. We had two meals a day and were both the same. A jelly-like soup and a cup of greenish water that strongly tasted of minerals. The soup was awful, it tasted just like plastic but hunger makes one desperate so I used to gulp it down as fast as I could just to fill my stomach.
The most annoying thing was that some kind of black wax was pushed inside our ear canals as soon as we came under the dome. Because of it, my sense of hearing was completely blank to the point where the only thing keeping me company was the slow and constant beating of my heart. I wondered many times why would they go to such lengths just to deaf us but the answer came at the end of the third day. An auction!
The third night the stretched-faced guards took a bunch of us and brought us to a smaller room a couple of minutes away from the dome. There, they stripped us naked, checked our conditions, and showered us. At that time I didn’t know what they were doing but something was telling me that I would never see the dome again.
Blinded with a black fabric bag and thrown into a vehicle, I was carried with the others all the way to another location, very far from the dome it seemed. When the bag was finally removed I was standing naked in front of a huge crowd composed of every kind of alien from the imagination of a child, both present and in the form of what looked like a hologram.
I wanted to think. Think and figure out what the hell was happening to me. Why was I there? Where was I? What was happening? I had all sorts of questions going through that head of mine but I was too tired and dismayed to try and answer them.
The auction was fast. It didn’t even pass a minute before the black fabric was placed onto my head once again. I didn’t even get to see who bought me and for how much. I spent the next couple of hours in a dark room warmed only by a hazy light hanging from the ceiling. I knew there were others with me but I couldn’t see them, the only thing I could tell was that people were entering and exiting the room rather frequently. Their footsteps were reverberating on the floor.
Finally, my time to leave came. Two guards took me up from the arms and led me out of the room, then the building and finally into another kind of vehicle, this time smaller. From then my real life as a slave began.
Three years, give or take a week or two, passed ever since the night of the auction. And all I did, from morning to evening and repeat, was mining. I mined and mined and mined. All the way through the hard grey and reddish rock of a hole God knows how deep, all in search of minerals.
The company I was sold to turned out to be a rather famous mining company that, surprisingly legally, employed slaves to gather their materials. Why did they employ only slaves? Of course, it was to cut the costs of labor. Who in their right mind would pay a slave that they bought? At least that was the mindset of the people of that place.
I knew nothing. That place, the work, the people around me…everything was unknown to me. I was alone. Waking up, eating, working and sleeping alone. But thankfully, after a month or so, when my mental health was reaching its limits, my savior as well as my first friend came. Muù, or so he liked to be called. It was too difficult to pronounce his name, he explained.
Muù was my savior. A strange man who looked like a small human with his one and something meters height, two pairs of arms and reddish skin that resembled terracotta. He reminded me of my late grandpa because of the way he took care of me, though he always seemed offended when I told him that. He’d always hit me in the stomach saying “I’m only in my forty you human asshole!” with his deep rough voice, really unbecoming of his looks.
Muù told me everything I needed to know. Apparently, I was on the planet of Cukavaa, an excavation moon of the nearby planet Amodii V in the Amodii system. It took me around an entire month to get my head around the fact that I was now in a kind of futuristic universe like mine and a very long way from Earth at that.
He too seemed skeptical about my circumstances. As soon as I told him that I died and woke up in this place he called me crazy but as I kept telling my story, followed by the fact that I couldn’t remember anything from before I woke up in the desert, he began to trust my words.
Together we snooped around and searched for my slave ID. It was supposed to keep track of my medical condition, medical record and all personal information such as age, race and the rest.
Apparently, I was classified as “Slave N.61519”, human, nineteen and without previous medications or any health problems. The fact that my loss of memory wasn’t mentioned in my ID meant that I really wasn’t lying about my condition since I didn’t even have “a spit of common sense”, said Muù.
What really came as a surprise was when I first looked at myself in a makeshift mirror. I didn’t recognize my own reflection. The “me” then was completely different from the “me” that I remembered. Now I was at least 1,80 meters tall with ochre eyes and black hair tending to blue that were slowly growing after being balded by the guards. I had a well-developed jaw, not too prominent but neither invisible, that made my face look a bit squarish from the front but all in all pleasurable to look at. At least more than my previous one. The nose was thin and a bit crooked. I must’ve broken it somehow, though it must’ve happened before I became a slave; before I could remember. The malnutrition and bad work conditions did not benefit my body in the slightest. Before I could notice, I had become somewhat thin. My lower ribs were showing under the skin, just like my arms and legs’ muscles were slowly retracting. Even my cheeks were starting to become sunken. The thing that bugged me the most though was that I didn’t have any eyebrows. Whether it’d be beards, hair or eyebrows, the guards would cut them out as soon as they saw them growing back. We all looked like a bunch of walking eggs.
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As the years passed I learned from Muù the tricks to survive both in and out of the mines. For example how food fills more when dipped in the green liquid, that certain rocks contain more minerals than the others, that there are rocks underground that drip nutritious liquids and, most important of all in Muù’s opinion, I learned how to play cards. Almost every night for three long years me and Muù played cards both against each other and other slaves, sometimes even betting on the precious food.
One thing that I always found curious was how everyone in the slave camp could talk the same language while the guards talked in a different kind, even though they talked to us in the first one. I asked Muù but even he was unsure about it.
And so, just like that, I mined for three years without a single day of rest. Mining became progressively easier the more time passed and with food I won or stole. My body too adapted to the new changes. Working strained it way less than it did at first, furthermore, skin and muscles regained both color and mass, though my skin tone still remained fairly pale. Spending all of my days underground and rarely seeing the sun through the cracks of the cave didn’t do me very good in that regard.
I spent my days mindlessly mining, only waiting for the night to come so that I could play cards and freely chat with Muù and the others. Freedom? Life outside? What was that? The only times I ever heard of “freedom” were the times when newcomers came into the mines. The people who just became slaves kept ranting about it. About the injustice and unfairness of slavery, the consequences of keeping people underground for too much time and a bunch of fancy-sounding galactic laws. They ranted soo much that even the older slaves, my seniors, started to believe in their words.
“*sigh* Times ain’t looking bright down here rookie” Whined one night Muù after an unsuccessful game.
“Have they ever been bright though?” I replied with sarcasm.
“Nah, ya don’t understand. With all those newbies spouting their shit about laws and what so not, they are bound to raise a fuss with the guards up there. And it ain’t no good time when those asses come down with guns and shockers let me tell ya!”
“What? You already seen it?”
“Aye, I did. A little before you came down here, ‘round three years ago. 'Couple of bastards started railing up other workers…those tunnels turned into a bloody mess. That’s why a bunch of rookies like ya came at that time” Said Muù with a serious and melancholic tone of voice.
“Shit!”
“Yeah, ya right…big, stinky shit mess those guys are bringing up!”
“So you’re saying that the same thing’s gonna happen again?”
“Nah, this time’s worse! The old ones are getting into with the ranting too. Guards are bound to take things reeaaal serious this time. Ain't no batons and whips like a couple months ago either. They’ll be coming down here ready to taste flesh!”
“What do we do then?”
“‘What do we do’ ya say? HAHAHA, we ain’t doing nothing! We work, we eat, we shit…same as usual. No big ideas, no heroics and most certainly no freedom talk. Just keep yer eyes and ears open and stay away from the whining fuckers…that’s all ya gotta do to stay alive” Grunted Muù before angrily pulling up his tattered sheets only to fall asleep right after.
[Freedom uh? I wonder if I’ll ever get to taste it again…maybe playing all those games wasn’t really…uuh, too late to think about that now]
Just like Muù predicted, a couple of weeks after our conversation guards began swarming down the tunnels with guns and rifles. The past weeks had been full of tension ever since the slaves began believing that someone was coming to free them. Something that a group of newcomers promised them. With their new belief, they began to grow rapidly more aggressive until finally, the first shot exploded.
It was a massacre. Me and Muù were in the lowest tunnel where a lot fewer people worked due to its hard rocks. A few newbies and a lot of seniors gathered down on those tunnels ever since the ranting started. It gave us a sense of security and isolation from the revolting ones, in hopes of being left alone by the guards.
When the first fire was shot we all looked at each other with tension and resignation. Some of us were profusely sweating, some were vigorously gulping, others praying and some of the older ones simply sighed. We all knew that sooner or later the guards would have come down there with their guns still hot. Everyone dropped their pickaxes and kneeled with their hands behind their neck while facing the wall. All we had to do now was to wait.
Minutes went by that felt like hours. None of us talked or breathed. The whole tunnel became deadly silent. So silent that we could hear the screams, the sound of bullets fired and lasers being shot, the shouts of anger from the crowds and the cries of pain from those who fell. My blood was chilling.
[How much of a fool was I to even think about freedom that night? There is no freedom for me down here…only rocks and work]
I felt some kind of dejavù as I thought those words.
It was resignation. The same resignation I felt as I approached my death years prior. I hated myself for that feeling but I also hated myself for believing in something, even if briefly. I didn’t want to die but neither did I wish to live the rest of my days as a miner.
As my mind ran laps around those thoughts, the chaos on the upper floors stopped only to be replaced by the loud rumbling sound of what looked like an earthquake. Panic started spreading to the guys on our floor too but something didn’t sit right. Some of us were smiling and smugly grinning.
“So it really was true!-” Excitedly exclaimed a big guy not far from me “- Help actually came!”
“W-whatchu saying?” Jumped up Muù.
“‘Help came’ he said!-” Intervened another one of the seniors “-The newbies told us help would come…turns out they weren’t bullshitting!”
Shouts and angry screams began flooding every floor, ours included. Everyone was cheering those nearby, trying to convince them to invade the upper floors and join the fight. Soon a wave of angry slaves armed with pickaxes and throwable rocks began chaotically marching up the stone stairs towards the objective of their rage and desire: the guards.
I was bewildered. “Could this possibly be my chance?” Was what I kept thinking. It was when a new set of screams that sounded more like hisses began filling my ears that I forced myself to join in. I forced my arms to pick up the pickaxe. I forced my lungs to breathe as much air as possible. I forced my legs to move. And finally, my feet began stomping on the first steps of the stairs.
“ARE YA CRAZY?-” Screamed Muù as he grabbed my left arm with two of his “- YA WANNA GET KILLED LIKE THE OTHERS? It’s bloodshed up there, ya don’t even know if it’s really help or not!”
“So what?-” I shouted back. My face almost touching his “- Are you really staying here like a coward Muù? It may be help or it may not, I don’t care. I’m sick and tired of working my ass off in those tunnels just to live another day. That’s not even life!”
“Then what ya’ll do? Swing ya pick into their heads? Throw em rocks? Uh? Ya stand no chance of even getting to the top floor!”
“THEN I’LL FUCKING DIE TRYING!...Don’t you wanna eat some real food? See the sky? Sleep on a soft mattress? Listen Muù, either we die fast while bleeding for a free life, or we do it slowly inside those suffocating stone walls. This is a fucking chance Muù! When is something like this ever gonna happen again, uh?” I had a hand on his shoulder as I desperately tried to convince him to follow me. A strange feeling of hope pervaded me as I spoke those words. I was sure that, after that day, I would live a life free from chains.
“Mmmhhhh FUCK IT!-” Screamed Muù as he grabbed a pickaxe near him and a fire lit inside his eyes “-But if we make it out of here alive, rookie, ya gotta treat me to some fine women!”
“Then that’s one more reason to leave this hell!” I said with a relieved expression.
Our fight had begun.