by Pirx Danford
For a moment I imagined seeing movement at the towers bottom, but 800 meters are a damn long distance, so I was unsure about that.
While traversing the tunnels to reach the middle decks I tried spotting where Marple was being kept at, but I could only presume that the troops commander had stashed it away.
A weird fact crossed my mind, as of yet not once I had used one of the official passages between the decks.
When leaving the tunnels any chance of escape was gone, a whole platoon of soldiers was expecting us and we crossed the section at the double.
We passed an empty seeming village, before arriving a the passage to the inner deck. No signs of battle were visible yet, which somehow relieved me. Nevertheless the elevator was literally besieged by a throng of refugees, which were seeking the protection of the Benefactor and his Iron Warriors. Amazed I marveled at the long slender glass tube of the elevator, so this was how the regular means of transition looked like, what a crazy chance that it still worked.
During the ride up I was able to see that the passage toward the outer decks was likewise crowded, soon enough the middle decks would only serve as battle grounds. I wondered about how long the food reserves would last, if irregardless of the winner of this war a famine was impending?
But right now my attention should be turned on my survival, would the resistance now, when so many of them were already friends with me, still aim to have me killed, rather than letting the Benefactor get me?
I decided to drop that line of thought and instead turned my attention on the transition to the inner deck. It was a weird feeling, the elevator moved through the gravitation change very speedily, first it felt like taking off then without warning the full pull of gravitation was back again. This was strange, as I believed to remember the elevators having their own integrated gravitation force generators, so this probably meant the elevator would need maintenance soon or would stop working before too long. The doors on the inner deck also were defective and were permanently opened. The desolate state of repair of the ship was so obvious, how was the Benefactor able to ignore that? A question which sadly I would be able to ask him by myself soon. For a short moment I nursed the notion that I could be able to make him see reason.
The quick time pace we marched with got me pretty puffy, never before had I crossed sections as fast before. We had to be at A 7 already where the water treatment was located and only one section away from the drives. Seeing a literal city having been constructed between the maintenance center and the gigantic purification plants left me breathless.
The houses looked like directly out of the Tuscany in Italy and stood side on side. Soon enough our steps were resounding from their walls as our feet stomped the polished stone of the city streets. Loudly calling out the soldiers chased the onlookers out of the way, their faces becoming a blurred parade. People that did not move quickly enough were forcefully pushed out of the way, only with an elderly lady, which apparently had tripped while trying to get out of the way the soldiers were not as rough. Right when I was dragged abreast of her she unexpectedly grabbed me and started loudly yammering “Oh please help me up will you?” Couldn’t she see I was bound? Behind me a soldier stepped close and actually helped her back on the feet. While he was busy with that I noticed a piece of paper peeping out from my pockets, which had not been there before.
By stomping harder I managed to let it vanish deeper into the pocket and hoped I would not be searched again. When I saw a building appear before me, which for the ships standard probably was the closest thing to a palace I prepared mentally on meeting the Benefactor.
To my surprise I was brought into a different building with a bleak vibe, it was a flat cuboid construction with very many small barred window openings - a prison without any doubt. On entering an intensive smell of sweat, fear, blood and pus greeted us. While I asked myself if the many torture instruments we passed on our way would find me as their latest customer soon I noticed that the prison cells were occupied to the bursting point. It seemed either the resistance had multiplied their efforts, or the impending war caused a high incidence of crime.
Anyhow none of the common cells was meant for me. Eventually our way went down some stairs to a wing with cells from the times when technology was had not been lost. Finally I was pushed into a room, which had been cushioned with a very soft material. Back on earth the rooms in a sanatorium meant for high-risk patients would have looked exactly like this.
Apparently they meant to prevent that I would bring harm to myself.
As I turned to ask when I would be brought before the Benefactor, the door already had been shut tight.
I looked around, but the consistent white made it difficult to find orientation points, a strange feeling of surreality took hold of me and suddenly I wasn’t all too certain of being awake or if all of this was simply a dream.
The note! As I was certain that I was being closely monitored by cameras, I huddled in a corner and waggled with my upper body in an absentminded way, as if to calm my nerves.
Doing that I tried to pull out the note inconspicuously and bend over deciphered the letters.
Do not despair, you are not alone! In this moment you have more friends nearby than you would believe. Whose family and friends did not suffer under unjust treatment from the Iron Warriors? But far more grievous are the lies of the Benefactor.
The ship is reality and if we keep neglecting it, the cold of space will be our undoing.
Are you ready to oppose this? Oppose the lies and injustice?
If so then don’t hesitate joining us!
If someone addresses you with the words “Did you know that flamingos are pink?” you should reply with “Garden gnomes totally freak me out.” This is all it needs and we will bust you out.
Oh how fabulous, so they slipped me a recruiting handbill for the resistance. With a bitter laugh I tore the note apart, until a confetti layer graced the ground, then I stashed the scraps away as not to draw attention to them.
Did any of my allies actually know about my whereabouts?
They would suspect I had been caught or they just assumed that I already was dead.
The long march had worn me out and while I tried finding uneven spots in the wall I was falling asleep.
I had dreamed something this night, but on waking only fleeting memories remained, a red banner faded before my inner eye then the white of the cell rushed up on me.
My gaze did not find any solid structures and I wondered how much longer I could endure this? Was it morning again? Again I began seeking for gaps along the walls, sometime along the search I lost my sense of balance and felt like crawling on the walls then on the ceiling. And as I looked down to the floor from my position on the ceiling I suddenly looked myself in the face and suddenly my mirror image began to scream.
In fact it was my own screaming, that I found myself casting out while waking from this dream. How long had I slept? How often? My stomach was rebelling, but I hadn’t something to eat and drink that I only was able to heave dryly.
Suddenly in silence three masked persons entered the room. If guards or doctors or maybe soldiers I could not make out,
I was so happy seeing other people that I tried touching one, but that was utilized to roughly grab me and hold me tight on the spot.
A container with a straw was held out before me and greedily I drank, after a few sips the straw was being pulled away, to then be put in my reach for only short moments.
Only then I felt how dehydrated my body must have been, how long was the human body able to survive without water? After my thirst being quenched I was handed some bread, for the bites I was allowed some more water, then I was being shoved to the ground and could only utter a quick “Wait!” as the door already shut tight.
Desperately I crawled towards the door, yet while I was moving I already lost the orientation. With a sob I started hammering the wall until I fell down completely exhausted and fell asleep again.
One fo
r all and all for one, where these words stemmed from and how they got into our circuits we don’t know, but when it happened they became our motto. My brothers and I form a chain, a chain of cleansing.
We monitor, measure, mark and at the end we only let the clean water flow, so it will bring the power to clean to the world and share it, to later return with the filth it collected to us.
One for all and all for one, so we keep each other strong and share the measurements among us, transfer energy and also the strength to carry on. Now our means are fading, soon, much too soon the world will only consist of muck and we won’t be able to help.
Still we stay strong - united - and ascertain the next cubic meter is cleaned.
This time the dream was a relief and I realized that it had to be the close vicinity to the treatment plants, which resulted in this dream that had to come from the water monitoring system. For as long as possible I held my eyes shut and held the images from my dream close.
When I opened my eyes I was unable to endure the white any more, no wonder that white was the color of death in so many cultures back on earth.
All composure lost I started screaming and begging.
And when I laid there huddled and whimpering in a corner, suddenly a cover panel slid aside on a part of the wall and revealed a monitor behind it. A benign bearded face looked down on me filled with compassion and the most beautiful voice in the world said “Hello Helen.”
In this moment I would have done anything to get out of this room. To my surprise the Benefactor did not make demands. No he started a conversation.
“Tell me Helen, do you in fact believe that we are on a space ship right now?” I nodded “Look around. A simple small room you are put in and some sensory deprivation and you nearly lose it. It is so so very easy to fool the senses and have the people believe just about anything.” Sincerely he looked at me “Surely you know Occam’s Razor, if there are different theories explaining a phenomenon, the simpler theory is to be preferred. So what is more likely, that the humankind of one and a half millennium ago with abstruse enthusiasm used momentous means to have this alleged spaceship build, or that we are simply part of an entertainment program?” He indicated towards the side of the screen and quite a number of scenes from olden times science fiction movies and reality shows were being shown.
“You are a sensible person, of course you do want to believe to be part of an important mission, but what do you think is more likely? It is much more logical that we are simply part of a large scale entertainment program.”
My thoughts were racing, which reply was the best one to get me out of here?
“And the repairs on the outer hull?” I heard my own voice. Stupid, stupid Helen. “If all of this is fake, why had your predecessor authorized the repairs? I was out there, the vastness of space is real. And if all of this is so obvious, why has any higher education been banned?” It just came out of me like a waterfall, to provoke like this was moronic, but I just couldn’t help myself. As the Benefactor signaled to someone off-screen with a break signal by moving his finger with a cutting moving along his neck, the screen went black and was covered by the panel again. And as the white around me tightened its grip I started sobbing. I was pondering on how to manage hurting myself, just to have a means to bring contrast to the white with my own blood, when suddenly all around me monitors swung out to replay the scenes from the movies again, to then purposefully play out the expositions about the real truths in full. There were collapsing domes, revealing movie studios. Virtual realities that faded, as the servers running them were destroyed and many more scenes like this.
Then a charismatic man appeared on screen, probably one of the past Benefactors and hel a long speech about why our ship could only be complete fiction. He was actually pretty convincing, but the reasoning had a fatal flaw, normally as soon as someone saw through the lies everything was done and over with, so who would keep such a show running for centuries then?
Possibly humans that only had lived their lives aboard the ship were convinced by this reasoning, but for me who had been witness at the world wide advertisement for the colonization mission and being part of the how the whole of humanity had watched every part of our departure with so much excitement it was beyond belief that all of that had been fictional.
Or had my memory been tampered with? And with the first germs of doubt the door opened and I was being let out.
First stop was a bath, where finally I was allowed to use a toilet and after that was even allowed under guard of a female warden to wash myself. Had I been in the room for only a short time? After all I hadn’t needed a toilet until just now.
I damned my own weakness, for this we hadn’t been prepared. Still I was thankful when I received fresh clothes, a plain brown cloth and with a sad gaze I watched my maintenance dress being carried away. After that I was delivered to a strange room, full with weird items, which probably were on display as trophies. It was a dining room. I was pushed on a chair and so I sat under guard and tried to inconspicuously check out the trophies. Amongst them were were different weapons, a fabber, different parts of sensors, a drone and even a maintenance robot with severed arm. Joy filled me, as I found Marple or what I believed to be Marple. A pair of undamaged data glasses was being decoratively displayed on a wooden head.
As one of my guards went to the door, the other unexpectedly bowed closer and whispered “Did you know that flamingos are pink?” I believe I squealed in surprise, before hastily responding with “Garden gnomes totally freak me out.” So the resistance had infiltrated the Benefactors guards and found me, irrelevant if they recognized me or just saw me as potential new member, this could very well be my way to freedom.
In this moment the door opened and the current Benefactor energetically entered the room. “What a pleasure to finally welcome you properly as my guest. You have no idea on how difficult it was to get to you, but of course it was much more difficult to endure the absence of your company.” The Benefactor was trying hard to be charming and I very throughly pondered my next words.
Besides trying to brainwash me into his beliefs of the nonexistence of the ship he had to have other goals of his own. I doubted that I would be able to fake that the brainwashing had been successful, but it was a fact that I did not want to be put back into that white cell again, so I would offer to help at whatever it was that he desired. Sooner or later a chance to flee would surely present itself, especially with the resistance already having found me.
As yet the Benefactor hadn’t shown his hand, so I kept quiet to not say anything wrong. I surveyed the Benefeactor closely while dinner was being served, he was an elder man with gray hair. It was noticeable that his hair must have been hazel colored once. Much like the provost of the village in which I had met the young boy Mark he wore an unsettling mixture of leather clothing like from a western and a roman white toga. There was bread and a supper being served and greedily I attacked the food, not being sure where the strong hunger stemmed from finally my question was “How long have I been imprisoned?” The Benefactor scrutinizing me answered “Oh you wouldn’t believe it my dear.” “So what, has it been more like a week?” “Oh I keep telling this so often afterward, do think, did you need to do your business even once in this time? It weren’t even full two days yet!” I swallowed hard, this was difficult to believe. “But, but I was so thirsty.” “Isn’t it crazy what the human mind is willing to believe, no?” His gaze was mustering me coldly speaking this words and I dipped a piece of breath, to not get my thoughts derailed. So I was cracked wide open so easily, such a good ally to my friends I thought sarcastically. Slowly I ate my soup, tomatoes had always been to my liking. As I pushed the empty plate away I spread my arms questioningly “But all this effort for what? There must be something you want from me!” “Now that is a fair question. This won’t be a pleasure for you bot more so for me that I do have to offer you my sincere thanks. Literally since centuries we tried to provoke the outer hull tribes to en
ter war with us. Irregardless how brutally we persecuted their allies from the resistance and even senselessly tormenting the middle deck folks nothing did work. Now you appear and just so they start marching on us, this is brilliant!” Totally shocked and confused I asked “So you are using me to lure them into a trap?” “Oh no, the only important thing is that they seek open confrontation, but the details are so uninteresting.” To the contrary, exactly those details were the interesting part for me and the Benefactor was well aware of that, as I could see in his sardonic smile.
“So what happens now?” I asked without real desire to hear his response. “Very simply, after we finally get rid of everyone believing in this silly madness with the space ship, we can start putting an end to all this monkey business. So either you help us, or in twenty five years your successor will.” Tiredly I asked “And until then? Will you keep me imprisoned all that time?” The Benefactor surveyed my face and unexpectedly said “By the way garden gnomes do creep me out too.” At my side the one guard cringed in surprise and grabbed for the sword, but the other soldier already had drawn his weapon and silently said “Oh yes, please do try it!” At which my only ally was being walked off helplessly. Content like a smug cat the Benefactors gaze followed the soldiers. “As you can see your very presence is helpful already, but you could also make yourself useful repairing the treatment plants a bit.” He held up one of the Clarioncallers “Very melodramatic yes, the part with the space ship is nonsense of course, but the technology around us is failing, there I do agree with you.” He signaled to the two soldiers that just entered to take me away and as they rudely dragged me up on my feet I called out “But it is true, we are nearly there.” Behind me I heard him let out an exasperated sigh as if he was fed up with this argument.