months rehab, assignation to labour gang.
Some of the ones on trial with me took the 2nd option. They read the contract, didn’t like the terms, had one last teleconference with their families and walked through the door to the fatal injection room. No audience, not like the olden days, and pleasant apparently: soft music, cushions, low lights, like an opium den. The others, like me, took option 1, had a last teleconference with their family and walked, handcuffed, onto the space ship.
I don’t have a family to say goodbye to; got careless, lost them along the way and what have I got to live for really? But where there’s life there’s hope. Or maybe I just don’t want to make it easy for the bastards. They like it when people choose the 2nd option, a lot cheaper. Now that capital punishment is out of favour; we live in a humane society after all, the cost involved in looking after the lifers, well it’s getting out of control isn’t it?
I suppose Barro could be considered family but he is so far away, and the coded interactions required to reach him are so complex. It’s been years.
I thought that I had just been lying here, thinking, but my fingers started exploring the catch again. Whoever woke me up must want me up and about, surely? The catch is a finger print wide, and my finger pushes it before my brain has time to get involved. The capsule lid rises, silently, smoothly. I know it rises because I can feel the waft of fake real air coming in. The other 8 capsules in my pod are silent as the grave, lying like corpses. The mattress under me gives a shudder and I contain a scream. It moves and rolls my body; the bed sore preventer. Modern technology, it’s a marvel. When it stops I set to work. My medical training kicks in. All the attachments belong to the mattress. I unclip, detach, roll up and pack, all done by touch. My instinct is to hurry, but the drill takes over; slow, methodical, careful.
Now that’s done a malaise came over me, numbness and emptiness. I recognise the symptoms. When stress and fear grows too high it’s my fall-back position. It allows me to function by shutting down emotion and allowing reason alone to operate.
I speculate. What if one or more of my fellow psychopaths are being woken as well? Perhaps the operator is looking forward to a bit of gladiatorial sport from behind
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