Rasp itched at his restraints. The sedation gas had left a pinpoint rash on the tops of his cheeks and nose. It prickled like sunburn, and a hot trickle drained down his throat. The holding room smelled like ozone. He could hear the other men shuffling in the cells next to him. He wondered about his demerit record floating somewhere in a digital otherworld. Another checkmark added to it. Another step toward becoming grease. He recited jokes in his head.
Why is ten afraid of seven?”
Because seven eight nine.
What do you call a cow with no legs?
Ground beef.
What did the bra say to the hat?
You go on ahead, I’ll give these two a lift.
What is a beef? A bra?
The pneumatic door to the holding room hissed open, and a white Suit from HR strode in. Definitely human. HR was always human. His body suit bunched under the arms as he angled the tablet toward his face. He lifted a vapor cigarette to his mouth and inhaled deeply. Unfashionable since The Corporation released NicDelivery systems.
His brow creased as he scrolled through Rasp’s record. The Martian gravity made him look stretched and thin. His suited shins crossed and uncrossed as he sat on the edge of the foldout bunk beside Rasp. He gazed up at the screen in front of them. A woman French kissed a rat while Jypsy Tra La La La featuring Shanana Schwoop Shigetty sang about breaking up with petroleum products and bit off chunks of synthetic skin from each other’s fingertips, stripping it off like plastic coating from a wire. Rasp thought the song was very environmentally conscious. He tapped his foot to the beat. The man from HR stood up and turned the screen off.
The silence was unbearable. A small tide of panic rolled into Rasp’s guts.
“Ok, Rasp, do you feel happy in your current position? I’m Grip, by the way.” He sat back down beside Rasp and stuck the vapor cigarette behind his ear.
“Can we turn the screens back on?”
“I really think it’s much better in here without all that noise. Do you like your job?”
“I mean, I didn’t choose it.”
Grip shifted on the bunk and tapped something into the tablet. He rubbed his right hand on his own thigh, the fabric stretching and snapping back with each movement.
“But do you like it?”
“It’s fine, I guess. Better than the rig.”
“We want you to find satisfaction in your work, Rasp.”
Grip’s right eye came unmoored for a moment and drifted around in its sockets. He reached into his utility belt and pulled out a bit of fine purple powder in a small plasticine bag and a tiny spray bottle. He tipped the powder into the spray bottle and added a few drops of fluid from his hydration tube on the body suit. Grip held open the eyelid of the wild eye and spritzed it with the purplish substance. The silence was punctuated by the drips and scrapes of plasticine, the tsk of the sprayer. Rasp’s scalp tickled. The substance smelled like synthetic grape.
“We’d like to see you be more of a team player,” Grip said, blinking as the drops rolled down his cheek staining a lavender line down to the corner of his mouth.
“How can I do that?”
“Well, The Corporation would like to send you on a staff rejuvenation retreat, where you’ll be mingling with other staff members and relearning some fundamentals.”
“Like what? How to wipe properly?” Rasp grinned at the Suit, gritting his teeth.
The Suit did not smile back. His pupils pushed at the edges of his irises and his nose ran with purplish mucus.
“These jokes, Rasp – they aren’t work-appropriate. They don’t fit The Corporation’s image. They make management uncomfortable.” He swiped at the mucus with the back of his fist. “Also, we need to see you interacting better with your coworkers. You’ll be learning all this and more.”
The words bounced around the silent room. Grip patted Rasp’s shoulder. A fine patting place according to the employee handbook.
“Plus, it only costs 200 credits, which we will deduct from your Commissary credits per pay period.” Grip stood up, using Rasp’s shoulder to brace himself and switched the screen back on.
The O logo flashed on the screen. A video of two men playing a game of cards lit the room in cold white-blue. Rasp felt his pulse slow as the room filled with light and sound again. The men on screen talked quietly as an artificial sun rose behind them. They sat on a red beach beside an opaque rust-colored lake lapping around their ankles. A supervisor model rolled over to the men on the screen with a tray of drinks.
One of the men stood up and stretched, sipping at a milky liquid. Cubes of white ice clinked around as the men drank. A vibration thumped beneath the water, rolling small creamy orange waves toward the men. A pair of ringed planets stretched huge and pale through the clear containment chamber. The men began to laugh in unison, the white liquid sloshing over their glasses and trickling over their fingers.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Rasp tried to look back at Grip, but he was transfixed. His back molars ground together, his jaw muscle gripping for relief and the word “rejuvenate” repeated in his mind. A mantra to stop the pulsing beneath the lake. A prayer for his body.
The O flashed on the screen again and Rasp’s jaw loosened. The screen went black.
Grip smiled widely at the screen.
“Do you see, Rasp?”
“I think I see.”
“You will feel so refreshed upon your return, so alive.”
***
The Holy Book™
Chapter 4 Verses 9-18
9 And man was cursed to toil among the stars for his weakness. A weakness of flesh and mind that did settle in the veins of man. For in those days men succored from the teat of the god of pharmacology without the wisdom of the ones blessed in spirit.
10 And it was then that the spirit of The Most High descended from His 34,000 square foot mansion on the mount and did transcribe the transcendent order and did save man from himself and woman from herself and others from all selves.
11 So The Most High inscribed these commandments into our digital consciousness to remain in the server on the planet of Thross beneath the waters of Lotan.
12 The first and highest of these being, ‘toil is freedom and freedom is toil.’
14 ‘Man and woman are divisible by labor and beauty, sin and unsin, sex and nonsex.’
15 ‘Each worthy woman shall be given a familiar on her sixteenth cycle for the betterment of toil and the benefit of freedom.’
16 ‘Worthy women gifted with the familiar shall be in the following fields: pornographic arts, news and entertainment, and any others herein deemed worthy by The Corporation.’
17 ‘Each man shall work according to his own ability and when his ability wanes he shall be decolonized and regulated for toil is freedom, so say we.’
18 ‘Each woman shall perform according to her own ability and provide the oil for The Machination through their bodies as it has been and how it will be forevermore. Amen.’
***
Rasp stood in the open corridor of the largest dwelling he had ever seen. The floors were deep black and so glossy they looked almost transparent and deep, like a bottomless vat. Grip guided him by his restraints to a smooth white bench and left him, slipping through an old door that opened on hinges somewhere behind him. The corridor charged ahead into a vast hallway. No screens hung on the wall, just pictures, imperfect pictures made with paint and grease. Light poured from frosted glass lamps in long ribbons of molecular streams that curled like smoke up to the golden ceiling, where steel tentacles vacuumed up the phosphorescent trails.
A creature crouched under a hovering table not far from the bench and eyed him. It was covered in fur and had green eyes narrowed into slits beneath pointed ears. Its long tail lashed back and forth. A memory of The Before strained at the back of Rasp’s mind. Somehow, he knew the creature’s fur was soft and that it made a rumble sometimes. The creature lurched forward and dashed toward his dangling restraint line, gripping it in sharp claws and flopping over onto its side, rubbing its face against the now taut line. Rasp remembered the word “whisker.”
He leaned forward and rubbed his bound hands across the creature’s side. It rolled to its back and gripped his hands with needle sharp claws, kicking with its back legs, green eyes swamped in black pupils. A door cracked from across the hall and feminine whispers bounced around the hallway. The creature gnawed at his knuckle, still kicking at his wrists. He pulled away from the claws and squinted at the cracked doorway.
Slender fingers slid through the doorway and a round face with thin lips peeked through. She was thin-boned and tall, a Marsborne. Perhaps 20 Earth cycles old. Rasp had only seen Marsborne in the docu reels that HR forced rig workers to watch when they complained about exploding dust mines, body parts drifting in the black of space, rancid shine rations, or bad plots in the next Star Wars movie.
The Marsborne giggled.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” Rasp readjusted his wrists, pushing them between his thighs.
“You are dirty and short. Are you my new playmate?” The words sounded misplaced in her rich tenor, like a game of some sort.
Rasp ground his teeth, shame welling in his belly. He rubbed at the Shine spots on the back of his left hand clutched between his thighs.
“I don’t know. You want to hear a joke?”
“What’s a joke?”
“Something to make you laugh.”
“You make me laugh already.”
“Well, this is even better.”
“Alright, playmate. Tell a joke.”
“Where did Susan go after the explosion?”
“Who’s Susan?”
“Just a woman from The Before.”
“What before?”
She fully emerged from behind the door, wearing a real white cotton shirt with a strange shape airbrushed on it. Blue loopy script spelled out the word “Florida”. Her wrists poked past the sleeves. Her feet turned in at the heel and her knees nearly touched. No sign of a familiar. No irritation at the corner of the mouth, no glitter behind the eye, no fist-clenched hands.
“The Before on Earth, before all of this.”
“All of what?”
“Do you want to hear the joke or not?”
“Yes, but before all of what?”
“Before the mines and The Separation and all that.”
“What separation?”
“When The Corporation separated men and women. Haven’t you seen a history vid?”
The word niña flitted through his brain and he knew it meant girl, but he did not know how he knew that. The Marsborne stood before him, twisting the tail of her cotton shirt in her hand.
“Well, I’ve read a history book, but it never said anything about a separation. We’re here talking now, aren’t we?”
“She went everywhere.”
“What?”
“That’s the joke. Susan went everywhere after the explosion.”
“Oh.”
She glanced at the door behind him and inched closer to Rasp, sweeping her palm behind his head and drawing his forehead toward her lips. She kissed his hairline, inhaling, her breath hot on his scalp. Her tooth grazed his skin as her tongue slipped from between her lips. Tasting. Sampling. Her fingers slid from the back of his head to his throat and pressed soft against the sides of his neck until grayness shadowed behind his eyes. He was uncomfortably erect.
The door behind them swung open and she leapt back from Rasp, who dropped his hands over his tented jumpsuit. Grip and the tallest man Rasp had ever seen strode into the hallway. The Marsborne was nowhere fast. Her scent fled with her and Rasp wondered if he had even seen her at all or if he was hallucinating, like the time they sucked the gas out of one of the compression chambers on the rig until they all slumped together in a corner, laughing. That had been two demerits, though they could buy whippets at The Commissary that did the same thing. The men eyed him and Grip reached down to release his restraints. The tall man shook his head and held out his palm for the Lite Lock™ key. When Grip placed it in his hand, he motioned for Rasp to stand and eyed the cracked door across the hallway, distracted.
Cold air seeped from the room behind them, prickling against Rasp’s neck. The man looked down at him and turned him toward the cold room with thick long fingers. Darkness swallowed all the shapes and Rasp tasted ozone.