Within any organization, there will be rule-breakers, and the Storm League is no exception. Those that disobey orders commit crimes or betray their organization must be punished. Previously the Consortium relied upon the militaries of their member states to render punishment upon those deemed as criminals. The Storm League, in contrast, punishes its own and, therefore, was deemed to need its own prison system. This would be a military prison system, unlike the reeducation system of Imperial Japan, the corporate work camps of the GmbH, or the traditional prisons of Texico. Most prisoners are held on Erde, as the infrastructure to support them is already there. There are plans to build specialized prisons on far-flung colony Realities, but the funding isn’t there.
All current military prisons for the Storm League are former prisons that member nations no longer use. On Erde, there are six prisons that the Storm League uses. Each prison is segregated by gender, with only one gender per prison. The two prisons for magically active prisoners are located in areas that are Magic Dead Zones. Two are for prisoners with Infowarfare specialties and are located in Data Quiet Zones. The remaining two prisons are for individuals that are considered non-powered.
The prisons for magically active prisoners have each prisoner fitted with specialized collars, anklets, and bracelets that disrupt the flow of mana within the body. They also slowly drain the wearer of mana into mana crystals that are removed every morning and night. If removed, the devices forcibly drain the wearer of most of their mana and discharge it into the ground. Older versions were completely technologically based and connected by chains. The new versions work with applied magic spells and inscribed disruption sigils.
Analog Prisons for Infowarfare specialists are located in areas where no data infrastructure has been made available. Further, prisoners have their cyberware disabled with software blocks or removed to prevent access to The Network. Any devices on the premises will be single terminal devices that require physical data removal to be used.
Report on Storm League Prisons
Military Justice Within The Storm League
Masingita Nyakane
February 2188 ESC
Kalifornischestadt Military Prison
Assistant Warden’s Office
September 17th , 2189 ESC
The small assistant warden’s office was brimming with tension. Doctor Pauline Marcelin was sitting in a chair next to the maximum security unit’s head, Captain Débora Grandis, and across from the desk of the assistant warden, Major Duron Maddix. The office was sparsely decorated with a flag of the Storm League showing the globe of the Earth against a background of storm clouds with lightning, a few books, and a large old-fashioned computer terminal on the desk.
Débora Grandis was sitting in her guard’s uniform of greyish-green, red hair in a severe bun framing her pale schoolmarm features. “I understand you want the best for your patients, doctor,” she said. “However, this is a dangerous Mechanese. She’s in combat mode all the time.” She held up a pair of broken hinge cuffs. They were twisted, and the hinges were almost snapped. “This happened when we stunned her! There are claw marks dug into the hardened steel!”
The doctor shook her head, “You stunned her when she was telling me how depressed she is!” She gestured with her hands as she talked, her French accent more noticeable. “She’s a young woman who doesn’t want to cause anyone any trouble. She misses her girlfriend and is upset she’s not allowed to go home for twenty years!”
Grandis sneered, “Oh, just a young woman? One that broke four sledgehammers until we replaced them with a steel version. Tell me another one. She’s strong and quick and dangerous. She’s here because she started a battle without authorization and disobeying orders. The only reason she’s not here for murder is that someone must like her. They declared those deaths as combat related, but I’m not so forgiving.”
Assistant Warden Major Duron Maddix let out a sigh, his dark eyes in his light brown Arabic-featured face fixing his unit commander with a reproachful look. “You know we’re not supposed to discuss that, Grandis. Officially it was an accident.”
The redhead shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Aye, Sir. She’s still dangerous. Her skin patterning is almost always visible except when she’s asleep. Everyone knows that means she’s going to go into combat soon. It’s in all the vids.”
“Her skin patterning is caused by more than just going into combat,” Marcelin said quickly before Grandis could continue.
“That’s bullshit….” Grandis said, her eyes flashing. She stopped when Maddix held up a hand.
“Explain, doctor,” he said quietly.
Marcelin nodded, “Major, we know next to nothing about the Mechanese except what we have been told by Mechanon and first-hand observation. Most of which was them supporting us in combat operations.” She gestured to the paperwork on the desk with Althea’s picture on it. “That girl told me more about the Mechanese as people in five minutes than we’ve learned in the eighty years we’ve known about them.”
“This is just about research, isn’t it?” Grandis said disdainfully. “This is a prison, not a research facility, doctor, and you’re just a prison doctor.”
“Grandis…” Maddix warned quietly, and the redhead shut her mouth, but she had a sour look. He made a gesture with his hand. “So what does the skin patterning mean? My guards are in a constant state of panic around her,” he asked the doctor directly.
The calico humanocat smiled widely and said, “It’s her emotional state. We say that people wear their emotions on their sleeves, but it’s literally true with her.”
“What emotions? She’s always got that blank stare,” Grandis said. “It’s fucking creepy.”
A printed photo from the perspective of the stunner at the moment before it fired hit the desk. It showed Althea with a pained look, tears in her eyes, and a small, sad smile on her lips. “ These emotions! ” Doctor Marcelin said, slapping the picture.
“That’s manipulated! Mechanese don’t have any emotions. They’re just killing machines,” Grandis said, sniffing dismissively. “I’ve watched hours of her cell footage, and except for that one incident where she cried, there has been nothing.”
“What crying incident,” Maddix asked, surprise on his face. “I wasn’t told of this.”
Marcelin blinked, and her ears flicked on top of her head. “Yes, do enlighten us. Her tail began to thrash a bit as well.
Grandis shrugged and said, “It was nothing. She got a letter from someone she knew. Her expression didn’t change; she just cried for about an hour as she read it.”
“What was in the letter?” Maddix asked, leaning back and steepling his fingers.
“Sappy stuff, like how long her friend had been searching for her. Also, that she missed her,” Grandis waved her hand. “Normal things that all prisoners get.”
“Except she isn’t normal, according to you,” Marcelin said. “And did her behavior change in any way?” she suddenly asked, pulling out a notepad and starting to write.
“Oh, she worked harder and tried to talk to the guards more, but I’ve put them under orders to not engage her with idle chitchat,” Grandis replied. “We’ve run out of rocks and have to get more anyway. So this last week with her locked in isolation actually gave us time to get her more to do.”
The doctor scribbled while the assistant warden listened along. “Has she ever attacked any guards or done anything but be compliant?”
Maddix shook his head, “Not that I’m aware of. Captain?”
The redhead said, “She tried to attack you when we stunned her. Besides, she’s in shackles when she works, and our guards have stunners pointed at her whenever she’s out and about. So I imagine she scared of that.”
Doctor Marcelin’s tail fluffed up in annoyance. “As I have stated, she did not try to attack me at any time.” Then, reaching out, she picked up the twisted hinge cuffs with the end of her pen. She looked at the assistant warden and held the handcuffs in his direction. “This was done while she was stunned and didn’t have control of her body. What do you think she could have done if she wanted to harm anyone?” Her nose twitched, “She’s been given a ten-kilo sledgehammer that, according to your guards’ reports, she carries around as if it were a stick.”
“We have stunners, and if it comes to it, we have a sniper with a high-energy rifle pointed at her when she’s out,” Grandis sniffed.
Maddix interjected, “Has she mentioned any of them?”
Grandis shrugged in response, “No one’s reported it. But she waves to the sniper daily, and they sometimes wave back.”
“I would say that indicates that she’s not very afraid of the guards,” Maddix concluded and leaned back in his chair.
“So you think she’s playing with us?” Grandis asked, looking at the papers with Althea’s picture suspiciously.
“Honestly, no,” Maddix replied. “She seems to want to be a model prisoner. I listened to the vidrecording of before she was stunned, and she was concerned that she wasn’t being compliant enough. She wants to be a model prisoner, but everyone is scared stiff of her.”
“Thus, she’s kept in the Maximin Security Block under my control,” Grandis said with a smug smile.
Marcelin sighed and gave a little shrug, “Since you have her under lock and key, she is very safe there. Then I can go visit her there to test her bloodwork and see how she is doing mentally.” She looked at Maddix and then Grandis.
Maddix let out a little sigh, “I truly hope you know what you are doing. I will have you fill out the forms for visitation every time you see her. That may take some time as this is an all-analog facility.”
Grandis shrugged, “If she wants to die, that’s on her. I will let her do it if I have the proper paperwork absolving me of blame.”
Kalifornischestadt Military Prison
Maximum Security Wing C
September 19th , 2189 ESC
Althea had just finished doing chin-ups by hopping up and grabbing the bars of her cell near the top and pulling herself so that her head barely touched the ceiling. This was the second part of her normal routine for the last two days that she had made for herself. She had just started doing 300 hanging situps by hooking her feet on the top part of the cell bars and bending her body so that her elbows touched her knees.
There was a rapping at her cell’s outer door beyond the inner cell bars. Althea dropped to turn and placed her feet and hands on the painted outlines against the wall as she heard the heavy key go into the lock and clack open. A guard walked in and looked her over. It was always a different guard, but she thought she had seen this one before. Maybe they were rotating them?
The guard looked her over and nodded at her in the right position, “Prisoner d’Argus, you have a visitor.”
“Tiki?” she blurted out before stopping herself. Her cat coloring flashed on briefly, but she controlled her emotions to make it disappear.
“I am sorry, mon copine, ” Doctor Marcelin said as she came in holding a folding chair. “I am sorry to disappoint you. It is just your doctor.”
“If she does anything funny, I am outside the door, doctor, but the cell doors should provide you enough room to not be grabbed by her,” the guard said. “We’ll activate the cell stunner if we see her moving towards you.” She pointed to Althea. “You can sit on the chair or lie on the bunk. I’ll stand here if the doctor needs to take your blood.”
Althea nodded and said blandly, “Of course, Sergeant. I shall be on my best behavior.” The guard turned around and walked to the door. Althea heard a click and hum as something was plugged into a socket on the wall outside her cell. Oh, that must be a portable video monitor! she thought as she relaxed and looked over the doctor. She was wearing her uniform, with a lab coat over it, and carrying a pen and paper.
“So, I am afraid our last visit was cut short due to cultural misunderstandings,” Marcelin began.
Althea nodded and sat on the concrete excuse for a chair, her hands on her knees, back straight, and ears perked up. “Yes, I apologize for the problems I have caused. I knew they might overreact, and I provoked them purposefully. I just needed to say that,” Althea said in her monotone. Why is she here? Is she upset? Did she get stunned, too? she thought. The doctor’s scent was standard humanocat, but she didn’t seem agitated or fearful, unlike the guard.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The doctor nodded and wrote down things on her pad. “I want to talk to you about that, actually,” she said with a smile. Her tail was lazily moving behind her on the chair, and her ears were perked up. “You say you needed to tell me about that. Was it me specifically or anyone?”
Althea thought about it a moment and said, “No one would talk to me, and you were listening,” she said with a little nod. “I thought that maybe with getting a letter from Tiki and getting an appointment with the infirmary, things may be getting better.” She flashed another awkward smile at the doctor, “Maybe they have. You are here to talk to me now, and I am less sad.”
The doctor looked stunned a moment before Althea blinked and asked, “Were you stunned too, Doctor? I apologize if that happened. It was not my intention to cause any discomfit to you. You are very nice and treat me like a fellow sentient instead of a monster.”
The humanocat shook her head, “No, they didn’t hit me. But you thrashed around and nearly broke your cuffs.”
Althea’s eyes opened slightly more, “Oh, I am sorry. I knew they were slightly fragile. I didn’t mean to damage them. On the other hand, they did bruise my wrists for a day or two, so maybe they aren’t that fragile?” She tilted her head, closed her eyes, and tapped her temple as if in thought.
Marcelin wrote all this down and shook her hands at Althea, “Never mind that. Explain your facial expressions, please?”
Althea nodded, “I have been practicing but have not had much time to do so.” She gestured around the cell, “I now find myself with an abundance of time.” She gave an awkward smile, her canines showing as she paused, her skin patterning in emotion. At Marcelin’s blank look, she nodded blandly, “Ah, that joke needs more work. I will try to do better next time.” Maybe the smile wasn’t right? That was a joke, wasn’t it? I thought it was funny, she thought.
“Jeshua fucking Cristos!” came from the hallway. First, there was a clatter of a dropped portable vidscreen hitting the wall, and then the guard was there with her gun pointed at Althea’s head. “You creepy motherfucker get against the wall!”
“What the hell are you doing?!” Marcelin yelled, standing up as Althea quickly went against the wall and waited.
“Stopping this weirdo from trying to kill you!” the guard growled.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Althea said quietly as she shook her head. Her body was tense, and she shook a little as she pressed her hands and feet into the right spots, her skin darkening into her cat pattern. No, no, no. If I mess this up, I won’t be able to talk to anyone, and I’m so lonely. Tiki, I miss you so much.
Marcelin noted that tears were falling to the ground near the wall. “Killing me? She was trying to tell a joke!” the prison doctor yelled. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Althea heard the woman pull the trigger, and darkness took her.
She woke several hours later on her bed and felt a tug at her inner elbow. Lifting it, she saw a cotton ball taped there. Ah, the blood sample, she thought. She let out a snort and a small miserable laugh. “Ke lavuu luu tsemuu,” she said aloud.
“And what does that mean?” a man asked from near the front of the cell.
She blinked and sat up. A man in a khaki duty uniform with a single-filled diamond above crossed laurel leaves on his lapel was standing against the vestibule wall before her cell doors. He had short black hair and swarthy skin. The nameplate read Maddix. Althea smoothly got up and gave herself a shake to clear the last effects of the stunner on her body. She stood at attention and said, “It meant ‘I am so stupid,’ Sir.”
He smiled and nodded, “Well, I will not argue with that self-assessment, d’Argus.” He moved from the wall and smiled at her. “It’s good to see you still have the decorum of a soldier. By the way, I’m the assistant warden.”
“Yes, Sir. I read it in my prison manual, Sir,” she said in her monotone as she watched him. Oh no, are they going to extend my sentence? Why would the assistant warden want to see me?
Maddix let out a sigh and looked at her, “I don’t usually visit prisoners individually, but it was deemed too dangerous for you to visit me in my office, d’Argus. I need to ask you some serious questions.”
“Yessir!” Althea barked. I am not dangerous! Why won’t they see that? She controlled her skin patterning with some effort.
“First, do you understand why you are here?” he asked.
“Yes, Sir. I was found guilty of dereliction of duty for failing to follow orders, property damage, and misconduct before the enemy, Sir.” Althea noted that he didn’t stink of fear or hatred like the guards.
He nodded, “Ok, that’s out of the way.” Then, he paused and smiled easily, “d’Argus, why are you giving my guards heart attacks?”
She blinked at him and tried to contain her confused coloration, “How am I doing that, Sir? They are so frightened of me it is like they are pazesogu running before a tsîche.” At his raised eyebrow, she said, “The closest you have would be, umm… rabbits running before a wolf?” The animals here were similar to the ones on her world. The Mechanese versions were tougher and larger, with fur patterning that blended well into their native environments. A cornered pazeso would turn on and attack a tsîche to the death, but it often was just a gesture of defiance.
“Are you the wolf, d’Argus? Do you want to scare my guards?” he asked, his face devoid of emotions.
“I do not want to be, Sir,” Althea answered. “I would prefer to follow orders and not scare them, Sir. They seem to think I am in combat mode, but this is merely how I show my emotions,” she said. She held back comments on how she had been treated because of this fundamental misunderstanding.
“What would you do if you saw a guard being attacked by fellow inmates?” he asked her suddenly.
Without hesitation, she answered, “Help the guard, Sir.”
Surprised, he raised an eyebrow, “Why, d’Argus?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do, Sir,” she stated flatly.
“And if an inmate was being subdued by guards, would you help that inmate?” he asked.
She thought for a bit and said quietly, “Sir, I would not, but I would try to find out later why it happened. There is a section in the rulebook stating how to file a complaint against guards. I would do so but not expect any action on your part, Sir.”
“Why wouldn’t you, d’Argus?” he asked her.
She stared flatly at him, “Because the inmate in question may be wrong or because these things happen in prison, Sir.”
He nodded, “At least you have the right attitude.” He stroked his chin, “What do you want your time to be like here, d’Argus.”
She stared at him for several long moments before she answered, “I want to serve my sentence as worry-free as possible, Sir. Write my girlfriend and be able to talk to someone. Maybe get a skill or something I can do when I am released. But unfortunately, I cannot return home and have been a defender my entire life. I have no idea how to live outside the military.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and her voice broke near the end of her sentence.
“What is a defender, d’Argus?” he asked.
“It’s my caste, Sir,” Althea said flatly, sniffing a bit.
He looked a little skeptical, “Aren’t you all soldiers, er, defenders?”
She shook her head, “No, Sir. We have scientists and commoners too. Only defenders fight. We are the most emotional except for some commoners that are entertainers, Sir.”
“Emotional? Most of the footage I have seen of Mechanese soldiers show you as stoic at best. You’re standing here almost crying. I also see your skin patterning fading in and out. Why is that?”
Althea nodded and said, “My sisters often teased that I was defective, Sir. I was the jokester in my unit. They said I scandalized them because I couldn’t control showing my emotions very well.”
He sighed slowly, “How many times have you gone into combat mode, d’Argus?”
“In total, Sir? That would be a large number,” she replied.
He looked at her with one eye and said, “Since your release from the hospital.”
“Oh, zero, Sir,” she said deadpan. “There has been no need to go into combat mode, and my systems were damaged until recently.” She nodded once, breaking decorum. “I may still be damaged as I cannot pick up any data streams or wireless, not even from other people’s cybernetics.”
He smiled at her, “Zero, huh? Can we hook you up to our system and check?”
Althea nodded, “Yes, Sir. I believe I could form a connection to a computer if I cut myself and let my nanites flow over a data port. But as I said, I believe I am still damaged, Sir.”
“That won’t be necessary, and you’re not damaged. You’re at an analog Prison for service members with a known penchant for infowar.” Maddix smiled at her, “ You’re not picking up any signals because none are allowed within a hundred kilometers of this facility. We don’t have any networked computers or hackable devices here. It is all done the manual way. But, we still have some old ROM encoded computers that we keep updated for medical tests.”
She blinked at the news before he continued, “Before here, I believe you were locked out of the network at a system level by the Intelligence division.”
She tilted her head quizically, “That should not be able to happen, Sir.” She snapped back to attention when he gestured for her to continue. “All of my people are extremely advanced as far as infowar devices are concerned. So no one should have been able to restrict me….” She blinked and checked her logs. Yes, there was a download of her memories with Mechanon’s signature on it on December 20th and then a code injection an hour later. She blinked suddenly and started to breathe oddly.
“Are you all right, d’Argus?” he asked.
“I am sorry, Sir. I am emotional at the moment,” she said, shaking a little as she blinked back tears. “I was restricted by Lord Mechanon, Himself. There is also a block on my memory recordings of the 19th of December,” Althea sniffed back tears. “My Network access is set to return when I am released from here.”
###
Things began to get better over the next few months. Althea had written Tiki back, and it only took two weeks for a response. There was apparently little for the censors to remove as the handwritten letters from Tiki were unmolested. In addition, the sniper had been removed from her guard detail after Octoberfest. On one of the festival days, Althea had even gotten a festive dinner of schnitzel, red cabbage, and mashed potatoes. After that, the only guards who relaxed around her were a few of the Kondarrians that had served in the war. They still treated her like a prisoner, to be sure, but they didn’t outright try to stun her when she moved differently than they expected.
The doctor had started coming to her cell once a week soon after the visit with the assistant warden. She was always there with an escort, but they were less twitchy than before. Althea let doctor Marcelin take her blood and gave her nutritional supplements and an occasional treat. The best thing she ever received were these tiny brown squares of honey-flavored caramel that the doctor called Babeluttes de Lille. Althea only got one or two every few weeks, but they were a joy to eat. She had to fight herself to savor them slowly.
When Yuletide passed, she received a small pillow from Tiki that had been crocheted by hand. It was ugly and poorly made, but Althea treasured it. Althea had been allowed to take a rock and, using her claws, had carved it into a tiny replica of herself, no bigger than her pinky. She had given it to a guard every night, so it couldn’t be construed as a weapon. Althea worked on it mostly during her lunch period. She was allowed to mail it to Tiki, but the guard had to handle that.
Althea was told that the mail was slow around the holidays when it was sent out. As a result, the letter from Tiki returned a week later than usual. Still, Tiki was thrilled to have received the small figurine and now had it next to her bunk. After that, Althea started to make more of the tiny figurines of people around her and gave them to the people they resembled. This gift was only rejected in one case by a guard from the Federacy, but it had gone missing later on, and the guard treated her better from then on.
In March, Althea was allowed to start working on larger pieces of stone. She began to make tiny dioramas that depicted memories of the war that often contained her sisters. These were all carved in the same stones that she was breaking up. The breaking of rocks began to be a secondary thing she did to get pieces of stone for the artwork. When she questioned a guard about it, she told her they were tired of going out and digging up rocks for her because Althea went through them too quickly if she was just breaking them. In addition, the art production had slowed the guards’ own backbreaking labor. Besides, her statues were being placed in offices within the prison and sent out to other places.
At the beginning of June, Althea was allowed limited mixing with other prisoners in classes. Their reactions ran the gamut from hostile to curious. Many were heavily cyborged or had enough infowar cybernetics to be visibly noticeable. Still, they were largely well disciplined as most of them would return to service life when their sentences were up. Althea took a course on Search and Rescue as it interested her and a practical machining class for future work. There were several fellow prisoners for whom the guards allowed her to make figurines. They would be placed in their personal effects when they left the prison. In this way, she managed to make, if not friends, acquaintances.
She had also been allowed to take a course on how to do mundane tasks. These included finding a job, how to secure an apartment, and basic things that she had never learned, like how to cook and wash her own clothes. Her discharge when it happened was to be as a Mechanese citizen upon Erde, but she was finding it hard to figure out where she could go when she was released from the prison. They would only provide her with a one-way bus ticket to a single destination. No skyship passage and no gate travel included at all. She would leave with the civilian clothes she had with her when she entered the prison and was disallowed to wear her uniform again. They ‘generously’ would allow her to retain her medals, but she couldn’t wear them.
So, Althea searched for a destination on Erde that a bus could reach. The closest was the GmbH, there were several microstates, but the close ones were under GmbH hegemony and followed GmbH federal rules.
Apparently, to enter the GmbH as a tourist and former prisoner, there was a price. She needed a partially refundable fee to cover her medical insurance and guarantee that she would behave while there. She also discovered that she would not be allowed to work at most GmbH subsidiaries like Fess-T-Burger because she wasn’t an employee-citizen. The requirements to become an employee-citizen were strict and her having served time disqualified her. That had saddened her, and she made a tiny replica of the dining room she had been in on Neu Holgaard, which she gave to the guards.
She had also learned which pieces of identification she would need on her, digital and analog. Next, she looked into the work requirements for both Imperial Japan and Texico. She discovered they were much more relaxed for a foreigner like herself than the GmbH. For example, a bus could reach the IJ territories in Alaska. But, they also required a large amount of money to even enter an IJ territory as a guarantee that she wouldn’t commit any more crimes. In addition, Althea would have to check in with neighborhood police stations weekly. At least the guarantor money was refundable there.
Texico merely required that she be married to a citizen of their country. Or, again, give the government a large amount of cash to guarantee her good behavior. The issue seemed to be money, no matter how she looked at it. There was one place where it seemed she could go with the limited funds she had available: the Free trade zone of Santa Onofre. It was located between Annasheim and the Northern Texican city of San Miguel Del Diego. The city-state was established in 1982 as a buffer between the fledgling nation of Texico and the GmbH’s territory. Companies and representatives from all Realities were represented there, like a giant version of Neu Holgaard, but with fewer laws and no giant Fess-T-Burger.
No large amount of money was needed, and anyone could work there. However, the high crime and colossal shanty towns in the hills to the east worried her. It looked like a corporate center surrounded by less and less prosperous neighborhoods, with things getting richer the more you went towards the ocean and poorer towards the hills. On the other hand, the highways north and south were surrounded by thriving middle-class communities. Those seemed to be kept up by the companies that used them as housing for their employees. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any marketable skills except soldiering. The instructor told her she would only find dishonorable work as a soldier, with her discharge being what it was. She talked to some of her fellow inmates that told her to be wary of people in Santa Onofre as they were all dishonest.
Tiki was against Althea going there but admitted that she wouldn’t be able to get her into Texico while still in the service. There were provisions against an active service member marrying one with an other-than-honorable discharge. Tiki said her family was unwilling to let Althea stay with them without her present or even help her find her work without first having met Althea. But, there was a long shot. She had been trying to get hold of Mr. Garza-Sanchez, who owned the restaurant on Edelweiss that they had been in when everything went down. If they could contact him, maybe he could recommend a job for Althea. Tiki would continue to try to contact him, but the letters she had sent had never been replied to. Edelweiss was having to have the entire city rebuilt by robots. She had heard that many of the residents had left for greener pastures.
If Althea would only stay in Santa Onofre until Tiki managed to have one of her family members meet her there so they could sniff her out, things would work out. Tiki was sure that her mother would approve of Althea and that even her father and brothers would like her. If they didn’t, Tiki would show up and take Althea home anyway. Althea had written back asking how she would get a tourist visa to go with Tiki when she would take her home. Another letter came back two weeks later, saying explicitly that Tiki intended to take Althea back as her wife. She had better accept, or Tiki would take leave, come and visit her and paddle her until she said yes.
As appealing as that prospect was, Althea wrote back that she would accept. This turn of events and forcefulness of Tiki’s had Althea embarrassed and happy as Octoberfest rolled around again. Her spirits were much higher, and she performed her work with a vigor that surprised the guards until she told them what had happened. Most nodded knowingly and let her continue to go to classes and make sculptures that were taken or given away as soon as she had done them.
However, anxiety continued to rise in Althea as she knew that she would soon be released and had no idea how to navigate the intricacies of life not in the military. Her classes had taught her a lot, but there was a knot in her stomach that wouldn’t go away. Yes, she and Tiki would be wed, but that was about a year after she got out. Neither of them had been able to get hold of Mr. Garza-Sanchez, but Althea would start a search for him when she was let out and allowed access to the Network again. She should be able to find him unless he was hiding from them.