2. Lexi - Prison
After two awful weeks spent in the hospital, I was finally well enough to stand trial.
Forty years.
That’s the sentence the judge gave me for breaking into the warehouse and stealing the carburetor—the one Saul ran away with. He is probably living his best life right now while I’m convicted to be rotting away.
I pace around my tiny cell while thinking about how to escape from this hellish place Saul condemned me to. All the fucking love I’ve ever felt for him has turned into hate. After everything I’ve done for him, this is how he repays me? Fuck him! No matter if I’m old and wrinkly when I get out of here, I’ll go after him.
The drone assigned to guard me lazily hovers above me. It may look like it’s not doing anything but in reality, it’s analyzing everything I do. From the way I blink to the way my heart beats. If I do even the smallest thing that might put me or others in danger, it will shoot a laser beam that will electrocute me so hard it will paralyze me for several minutes. In the case of me trying to escape, it will kill me.
This drone is the only thing sitting between me and my path to freedom.
The tricky part of taking it down is it not realizing my intentions until it’s too late. It will take time before I come up with the perfect plan. Rushing things would only lead to my brains being fried by the drone, as it happened to Holly when she tried to sneak inside an escape pod. I was the one who had to clean her bodily fluids from the floor. After that experience, I couldn’t eat for several days. At least, it saved me some credits.
I stop in front of the bed. I’m one of the lucky ones who was assigned to a cell with a small porthole. Most of the time, nothing can be spotted, but there are moments when the lights coming from ships bringing supplies from one of the Confederation’s farming planets are visible.
When Earth became part of the Confederation, three parts of the global food went to the senators, who grew even fatter as time passed. They claimed it was for feeding the army, but many conspiracy theories led to strikes all over Earth, as people were dying of hunger, but more food was demanded to feed the troops fighting the So’oks. A global ecological disaster a hundred years ago led to the loss of much of our vegetation and animals. It almost ended all life on Earth.
Human and alien organizations have been trying to clean the land of the poisonous substances that led to this catastrophe, but it will take another hundred years before the Earth will be cleansed.
Because it was impossible to send any food to the Confederation, Earth started exporting soldiers.
Expendable people. Dead meat walking.
The last war started fifty years ago. Since then, many have died. Soon, there won’t be anyone left to fight, making the So’oks the absolute rulers of the Universe.
The So’oks are one of the three primordial alien races ever to exist. It’s believed that all the other races came from them. At first, they lived in harmony and helped each other. They advanced together in all things.
But everything would change when greed made its way into the hearts of the So’oks.
The other two races, equal in power and intelligence to the So’oks—the Zets and the Stets—disappeared soon after a war started between the three of them. Why and how it started, no one knows, but what is clear is that it went on for hundreds of years. Until the Zets and Stets—who were on the verge of being annihilated—fled from one point of the Universe to the other so that the So’oks would never find them again. Out of all three initial races, the So’oks have always been the most brutal but also, the most cunning ones.
Lights from an approaching ship flicker in the distance. I watch them approaching the space dock while daydreaming of all the things I could’ve done since I was brought here.
If I don’t find a way to escape, I’ll go crazy.
A static voice lets those on the CCC know it’s the start of a new week. Since receiving my sentence, I’ve lost my appetite, but I have been forcing myself to eat since I’m not into starving myself to death. I’m not ready to give up on my plans of one day having a farm.
My father had an old family photo album. It contained images of when the Earth wasn’t so technologically advanced, and the Confederation was yet to contact us. In the album, there was the photo of the great-great-great-something parents of my father in front of their farmhouse. They looked so happy. Well fed. Next to the house was a field full of sunflowers. I’ve never seen sunflowers in real life. For some reason, they became my favorite flowers. Maybe because it reminds me of the photo of a happy couple.
Once I have my own fertile land, I’ll have to raid the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to get my hands on some sunflower seeds.
Not long after the war claimed my father and three brothers, I made a promise to myself. That, one day, I’ll be the one smiling to a camera with a field of sunflowers behind me. It’s my lifelong dream at this point.
The cell door opens, and I step out into the hallway, which quickly gets crowded with hundreds of inmates living in Sector Six, considered one of the most problematic areas on CCC. Only women are sent here, but fuck if I don’t miss men. All the guards and other staff are women. Fucking depressing.