developments that had taken place since, simply did not work . And while it was tempting fate and courting disaster to tell a human that some things should not be meddled with, this seemed to be a lesson the human race had taken to heart, just this once.
There was really only one reaction, as far as Contro was concerned, to finding out you were going to a place like that.
“Yay! Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World!”
GLOMULUS (THEN)
The brig of Astro Tramp 400 , as the crew rather charmingly called the battered modular, had cells that were about fifty feet by thirty. Spacious to the point of luxury, by prison cell standards, to be sure. And yet even the most comfortable cage became ever more noticeably a cage, the longer you lived within its walls.
Glomulus Cratch had been living here – no, not living: languishing , that was a great term, because it had anguish right there in the middle of it and even if you didn’t know the word was there, your mind did – for the past four years and eleven-and-a-half months. As a matter of fact, he was beginning to get rather excited to see what his jailers would come up with to celebrate his having spent half a decade in ‘prisoner transit’ since his apprehension on Judon. Any excitement was a blessing, he supposed.
He’d asked, perhaps three months back, whether there was a record for prison sentences served in a modular brig. Apparently it was nine years, served by a notoriously unlucky convict whose prison transfer orders had been misfiled not once, not twice, but seven times, requiring him to bounce excruciatingly slowly back and forth across the inhabited worlds of the Six Species in the same ill-fated starship before finally arriving at his destination. Surely, Glomulus thought, after that sort of ordeal you were entitled to a lighter sentence, or an extra fabricator ration, or a T-shirt.
Seriously, the uniform you had to wear as a mandatory guest of AstroCorps hospitality, it was ridiculous. Standard Corps one-piece with no accessories, but made from the lowest-grade material capable of coming out of a printer and staying in one piece, and coloured a glaring diagonally-striped green and white? With his complexion it made him look like a giant peppermint.
Still, five years was a milestone. They had to give him something . Maybe they’d finally admit they had no intention of ever handing him over to the AstroCorps authorities, let alone returning him to Aquilar, and that they were just tootling around space looking for some convenient way to get him killed and his carcass dumped into the recycling system like an eejit that accidentally opened his own head in the lander bay lifting gear.
There were eight cells in the brig area. The cells were arranged into a grid, four on a side, with a broad corridor running in between. Each cell contained a bed that doubled as a cleansing pod that in turn doubled as a toilet, its water and gas inlets and its waste outlets alike molecular-scale microtubes running through the solid crete-mass. Like the atmosphere feed in the ceiling, it was porous but impenetrable unless you happened to be capable of turning yourself into a gas. Glomulus Cratch, patently and regardless of what the more sensationalist media sources might have said about him, was not.
It was all very secure, and very efficient. It was also more than a little nasty. In AstroCorps starship brigs, the old adage about not shitting where you slept became something of a dark joke. This, Glomulus had come to believe, could only be intentional.
He smiled, turning his attention back to the Molran – Blaran, technically – standing outside his cell. It had been talking for a while and was now waiting expectantly.
“Please, tell me again,” he said, settling back on the bed and crossing his legs. Aside from the bed, there was a small desk at one end of the space and a screen on the wall at the other. The bed also doubled as a chair,
There was really only one reaction, as far as Contro was concerned, to finding out you were going to a place like that.
“Yay! Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World!”
GLOMULUS (THEN)
The brig of Astro Tramp 400 , as the crew rather charmingly called the battered modular, had cells that were about fifty feet by thirty. Spacious to the point of luxury, by prison cell standards, to be sure. And yet even the most comfortable cage became ever more noticeably a cage, the longer you lived within its walls.
Glomulus Cratch had been living here – no, not living: languishing , that was a great term, because it had anguish right there in the middle of it and even if you didn’t know the word was there, your mind did – for the past four years and eleven-and-a-half months. As a matter of fact, he was beginning to get rather excited to see what his jailers would come up with to celebrate his having spent half a decade in ‘prisoner transit’ since his apprehension on Judon. Any excitement was a blessing, he supposed.
He’d asked, perhaps three months back, whether there was a record for prison sentences served in a modular brig. Apparently it was nine years, served by a notoriously unlucky convict whose prison transfer orders had been misfiled not once, not twice, but seven times, requiring him to bounce excruciatingly slowly back and forth across the inhabited worlds of the Six Species in the same ill-fated starship before finally arriving at his destination. Surely, Glomulus thought, after that sort of ordeal you were entitled to a lighter sentence, or an extra fabricator ration, or a T-shirt.
Seriously, the uniform you had to wear as a mandatory guest of AstroCorps hospitality, it was ridiculous. Standard Corps one-piece with no accessories, but made from the lowest-grade material capable of coming out of a printer and staying in one piece, and coloured a glaring diagonally-striped green and white? With his complexion it made him look like a giant peppermint.
Still, five years was a milestone. They had to give him something . Maybe they’d finally admit they had no intention of ever handing him over to the AstroCorps authorities, let alone returning him to Aquilar, and that they were just tootling around space looking for some convenient way to get him killed and his carcass dumped into the recycling system like an eejit that accidentally opened his own head in the lander bay lifting gear.
There were eight cells in the brig area. The cells were arranged into a grid, four on a side, with a broad corridor running in between. Each cell contained a bed that doubled as a cleansing pod that in turn doubled as a toilet, its water and gas inlets and its waste outlets alike molecular-scale microtubes running through the solid crete-mass. Like the atmosphere feed in the ceiling, it was porous but impenetrable unless you happened to be capable of turning yourself into a gas. Glomulus Cratch, patently and regardless of what the more sensationalist media sources might have said about him, was not.
It was all very secure, and very efficient. It was also more than a little nasty. In AstroCorps starship brigs, the old adage about not shitting where you slept became something of a dark joke. This, Glomulus had come to believe, could only be intentional.
He smiled, turning his attention back to the Molran – Blaran, technically – standing outside his cell. It had been talking for a while and was now waiting expectantly.
“Please, tell me again,” he said, settling back on the bed and crossing his legs. Aside from the bed, there was a small desk at one end of the space and a screen on the wall at the other. The bed also doubled as a chair,
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