by Ben Lovejoy
Philippa nodded.
“Which gives us a problem,” she said.
“It does,” I agreed. “We’re willing to do it.”
“Right.”
“But without the faintest idea how.”
“Right again.”
Chapter 19
“Ok,” said Philippa two days later, “let’s summarise what we’ve learned from studying the very outline procedure guides provided by your magic key. Prisoners are kept in solitary confinement at all times. Each cell contains a basic toilet, shower and exercise equipment. They leave the cell only in exceptional circumstances, such as our interview. If medical care is required, the necessary equipment is taken to the cell together with a robonurse which takes care of most of the treatment. An ill prisoner leaves the cell only if surgery is required, in which case they are sedated in the cell and taken to the colony’s own operating theatre in a bed version of the chairs we’ve experienced first-hand. There have been no successful escapes we can emulate, and no unsuccessful attempts from which we can learn lessons.”
“Right.”
“And there have been no releases of any prisoner ever: for the colony, life means life, without exception.”
“Right again.”
“We’ve spent two days researching, thinking and discussing, and in all that time we’ve come up with precisely zero ideas.”
“Not even,” I said, “something which might, in a poor light, and from a considerable distance, be mistaken for one.”
“Well, maybe that’s not quite being fair. There was the death thing.”
Philippa was referring to one of my first thoughts: there was precisely one circumstance in which prisoners left the colony: when they died. I wasn’t naive enough to imagine that a death could be convincingly faked, but I’d been briefly enthused by a vague memory of a holovision show in which a prisoner had been injected with a drug which genuinely stopped her heart. She did in fact die. The bad guys then collected her in a hearse and resuscitated her in the back of it.
“Given that prisoners are cremated within the colony walls and only leave it inside a small steel container in ash form,” I said, “I think calling that one even the glimmer of an idea gives it far more credit than it deserves.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Ok, our sober brains have let us down – we need to get seriously drunk.”
“Works for me.”
Chapter 20
We started with champagne cocktails. Philippa’s line on this was that if we started with a celebratory drink, that obliged us to come up with something to celebrate by the end of the evening. I wasn’t going to argue with the logic.
This was followed by an extremely expensive Chateau Lafite which was once the property of an extremely wealthy and equally unpleasant chap whose path I had once crossed. It was technically still his property, were one to get pedantic about such matters, but I had no plans to do so.
After that, we needed something to wash it down with, and could think of nothing better than a second bottle of the same. We were notching up an impressively large – and thankfully entirely notional – bill for our brainstorming session. All without result.
Since our unwitting benefactor had proven to have excellent taste, it was once more to his former cellar that we returned for a Louis XIII de Remy Martin Rare Cask Grande Champagne Cognac. And it was during the second glass of this that I had my idea.
“I need to consult some maintenance manuals,” I said. Meant to say, anyway: what I actually said was closer to ‘need consul smu mainnunc manz.’ I figured I’d better type my request into the system.
Philippa merely waved her cognac glass in my general direction by way of acknowledgement.
I made much use of the backspace key, but finally managed to pull up the information I required. Bingo. It would require considerable planning and work, but we could pull this off, I was sure. I shared the good news with Philippa.
“We ca do i,” I informed her.
“Greh.”
That was the extent of the discussion that evening. Morning, I realised. Sleep first, work later. Much later.
Chapter 21
Prisoners in the penal colony have few rights, but they are allowed the belief systems of their choice, and if those beliefs require them to be vegan or kosher or any one of a myriad of other dietary variations, the penal colony will accommodate them. Should those diets require supplements for good health, those supplements would be provided. Prison systems ironically provide some of the best medical care for no other reason than the amount of paperwork required when prisoners die of preventable causes.
“Computer, connect to the penal colony’s dietary database.”
I inserted the key so that it was able to provide the required authorisation.
“Display ten sample records of diets that are considered to require supplements for good health.”
The computer did so. I studied the format. It was very straightforward.
I needed to generate a second authorisation to add an entry to the database. The work took less than a minute. The penal system database would now show there was a religion known as Zarkinism, a religion I had invented on the spot. Furthermore, it provided details of the special dietary requirements demanded of Zarkinism adherents, requirements I had likewise created. Finally, it indicated that a supplement known as LTH-VII was essential to the good health of any prisoner following this diet. It provided a link to the sole commercial supplier of LTH-VII, a company which did not yet exist but would within a few minutes.
Six minutes in, phase 1 was complete.
By eleven minutes, the pharmaceutical company that made LTH-VII capsules also existed, completing phase 2. LTH-VII did not exist, but the drug we would actually provide was real. Very, very real. It was one I had used only once before – on myself – and hoped never to use again personally, but it provided the only solution here. The drug itself would be surrounded by a standard delayed-release capsule, so that it would take several hours before it was released into the bloodstream. As soon as it was, however, it would act instantly.
At the fourteen minute point, the government had a procurement contract with said company, marking the completion of phase 3.
By nineteen minutes, a second company existed – one which provided maintenance contracts for one particular piece of machinery used in the colony. I sent the details to Philippa. Phase 4 complete.
I like short phases: they make me feel delightfully productive. It was time to see how Philippa was getting on with phase 5.
Chapter 22
I sat down at the end of the day with Philippa to compare notes.
“How did you get on?” I asked.
“No problem,” she said. “With your key, I amended the records for the machinery to show the maintenance contract with the company you specified.”
I nodded.
“Connecting to the maintenance system and logging a fault code in the equipment is trivial,” said Philippa. “I identified several that would indicate complete replacement rather than repair, so as soon as we are ready, I can enter one of those. Once I do, it will be logged as having failed and requiring replacement – by us.”
“Excellent. So that’s phase 5 complete. Now I just need to email to our mysterious client on the part he needs to play.”
“Hope Ms Simpson is good at taking hints.”
“Me too,” I replied.
My email was short and to the point:
‘Miss Simpson needs to take up a religion known as Zarkinism. That religion exists in exactly one place: the penal colony’s database. It requires a special diet, which the colony will provide. They will also provide a food supplement known as LTH-VII. She should take this when it is provided. This is essential to our plans. I appreciate that all holo-visits are monitored, so you will have to tell her that her friends are very much hoping she will return to the Zarkinism faith by the Festival of the Holy Zark – which, as you’re sure she remembers, is the 1st of
the month. You need to ensure she takes the hint. Confirm when this is done. One last thing: you should know that this plan is not without risks. These are unavoidable. Confirm your acceptance of this also.’
The simple parts of the plan were complete. It was time to tackle the one element that was very far from simple: the machinery.
Chapter 23
The cremation machine used by the colony was fully automated. One button was pressed and a platform slid out, onto which the body was placed. A second button was pressed and the platform slid the body back into the machine, the doors closing behind it. At this point, it provided an automated check that life was extinguished. The check was exceedingly thorough: there was no possibility of error.
Once it had satisfied itself that life was extinct, it would fire up a high-power laser array that would literally incinerate the body. Within a matter of minutes, the ashes would be sealed into a capsule which would emerge from a slot in the end of the machine. A self-cleaning cycle would then run, and a few minutes after that the machine would be ready for use again.
The machine with which we would replace it would function rather differently. We would dispense with the checks that life were extinguished, though the display would indicate that these had been performed. We would skip the incineration part – that being inconsistent with our desire that Ms Simpson leave the colony very much alive – merely dispensing a preloaded capsule of ashes.
The tricky parts were the life-support functions we needed to build into the machine. The drug Simpson would receive in the supposed LTH-VII supplement capsule would not only slow her heartbeat and respiration rate to one indistinguishable from death, it ran a high risk of illusion becoming reality unless the antidote was administered swiftly. We were counting here on the efficiency, automation and utter lack of sentimentality of the penal colony.
The complete secrecy surrounding the procedures used in the penal colony meant that we were working in the dark, but we had obtained those for other high-security prisons, and we had to hope the same ones – or better – were employed in the lunar colony. It made sense, but we couldn’t be certain. That was just one of the risks we had to run.
In other high-security facilities, the vital signs of all prisoners were automatically monitored 24/7. If a prisoner died, that fact would be instantly recorded, an alarm sounded and a medibot despatched to the cell. I knew from personal experience that the effects of the drug would fool a medibot, which would duly declare death. Prisons don’t sit around and mourn when a prisoner dies, they simply get on with the tasks that need to be completed. One of which is to transport the body to the cremation facility for disposal. There would be no reason to delay this process, so it is carried out immediately. The rest of it – the generation of the paperwork – happens in parallel.
This meant that Simpson should, if procedures were the same, be loaded into the cremation machine within five to ten minutes of the drug being activated. We had 20 minutes to administer the antidote. This would be done alongside a second drug which would leave her unconscious: she would have no idea what was going on, and the last thing we wanted was our supposedly dead body banging on the inside of the machine and demanding to be released.
Oh, and the machine needed to not only look identical to the real thing, it also had to have the exact same dimensions and weight. I set to work programming the file needed by the replicator. We would again need to use an external company with a sufficiently large one. The contract would again appear to be a government one, where their job was to run the file we provided and not ask any questions.
It was going to be a long day.
Chapter 24
The email reply from our ‘client’ confirmed that he had delivered the message during a holovisit with Simpson, and he was confident it had been understood.
Our machine was also complete. It had been delivered by robot transport and installed by robots as required by the penal colony’s security arrangements. We had monitored the installation remotely, but there wasn’t really anything to worry about where that was concerned: all the robots had to do was remove one machine and replace it with an apparently identical one. There were many other things to worry about, not least among them how our client would react if this all went horribly wrong, but watching the robots do their job wasn’t one of them.
Whether or not it worked was something we were going to discover on the second of the month – one day after Simpson notified the authorities of her new religion, and the supply of LTH-VII reached them. Four days to go.
Chapter 25
I had failed.
My freedom – and perhaps my life – depended on my ability to consider every possible way in which my plans could go wrong, and to create contingency plans for each. On this occasion, there was one possibility I hadn’t considered.
We would know that the machine had done its job because it was programmed to do one more thing after performing its fake cremation and silent resuscitation of Simpson: throw the same identical fault code. That would again trigger a replacement by our fictitious maintenance company, which would this time swap back in the original machine.
It was on the day it was due to happen that my failure became apparent to me. There was one thing I’d forgotten. One way in which the whole plan could go terribly, irretrievably wrong: if another prisoner died during those four days. It hadn’t happened yet because our maintenance company hadn’t received a call-out, but there was still time. If one of the other prisoners died before the supplement was issued to Simpson, or before the delayed-release capsule had released the active ingredient, it would be the wrong prisoner who was resuscitated.
That was my failure. I confessed it to Philippa.
“That’s what you’ve been concerned about?” she asked. “The reason you’ve been sat there with that stunned and, might I add, rather unattractive expression on your face?”
“Yes.”
“But the odds against that are astronomic,” she protested. “There are a few hundred prisoners there. A death can’t occur more than once every few years. The chances of some prisoner happening to die in this year and on this particular day are–“
“Let’s call it one death every three years, which means the odds of one occurring today are one in one thousand and ninety five,” I said. “I work on plans for eventualities with probabilities a couple of orders of magnitude lower than that. Worse, if that one in a thousand chance occurs, I have not only failed to get her out, I’ll actually have killed her.”
“You’re way too hard on yourself.”
“I’m still alive for that very reason. A state Ms Simpson may not enjoy for much longer today.”
“What do you always say about worrying?”
“Hmph.”
“Worrying in advance is useful,” she quoted, “doing so once the dice are rolling down the table is an inexcusable waste of mental energy.”
“Hmph.”
Chapter 26
Philippa was right: I needn’t have worried. The maintenance company received the callout less than 20 minutes later. The robot ship was despatched with the real cremation machine, did the swap out and returned with our customised version. Emma Simpson was still unconscious but very much alive.
Also, very much confused when she came to.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“Earth,” I said.
“Earth?”
She sat up and looked around the apartment. She tentatively put her feet on the ground and stood up, briefly and unsteadily, before sitting again.
“Certainly feels like Earth gravity. But how? And why? Not long ago you were interviewing me about some other supposed crime, and now you’ve brought me to Earth?”
“It’s a bit of a long story,” I said. “We’re not actually police officers. And your removal from the penal colony was, shall we say, not arranged through official channels.”
Philippa handed Emma a glass of water.
“We’ll talk you through it all,
but we do have a few questions of our own first, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“I certainly appear to be in your debt,” she said, looking around again as if still unable to believe that she wasn’t still in her cell in the penal colony.
“Your record says you were convicted of a mass homicide, but you don’t appear to have committed any such crime.”
“I didn’t,” she said.
“Yet the government appears to have gone to a great deal of trouble to take you out of circulation. Why? And why go to all the trouble of sending you to the lunar colony when they could simply have arranged for a more permanent disappearance?”
“You want the short version or the long version?”
“Let’s start with the short one,” I replied.
“I’m an investigative journalist. I’d been working for some time on a story – a huge one.”
“Which was?”
“The ruling party won the last election by fraud,” she said. “It hacked the voting system.”
“Do you have proof?”
“I didn’t, for a long time. That’s why my news service wouldn’t let me run the story. I had multiple sources alleging it, a lot of circumstantial evidence, and a number of IT experts who said that the information provided by my sources was plausible – but there was no way to prove it.”
“You said ‘for a long time’ – that suggests you got your proof in the end?” I said.
“Yes. One of my sources introduced me to a man who was directly involved, and who said he could provide the proof if I could protect him. I never met him, never knew his identity. He called himself The Numbers Man. He was asking a lot: new identity and a sizeable amount of money for a new life. Not things we were going to agree to lightly. I said we needed the proof first; he refused. We had a stalemate.”