Escape from Harrizel by C.G. Coppola

his tone, “though we highly suggest this time be spent with your own kind. It’s imperative for you to rebuild your civilization. There is
only so much we can do.”
    Just get me to the ground.
    “This way, more to show you,” Jeb leads us
back outside and down the corridor. “Food will be dispensed three
times daily in your room—before Rebuilding and during both common
hours before Leisure Time. You are to leave Rebuilding at the
dismissal when you hear it, eat in your room and report back at the
second dismissal.”
    “Can we socialize then ?”
    Jeb hesitates briefly, sensing my annoyance,
but continues. “Each human is assigned their own space for sleep
and privacy,” he slows, approaching a crimson door on the left.
“Yours is here.”
    The entire arch is broken into tiny blocks
of symbols, all unique to each other.
    “Each door is opened by a different
combination. Yours are here, here, here, here, here and here,” he
selects six different symbols, pushing the cubes back until they
lock into place. When they do, he nudges the arch open and we enter
a tiny burrow of solid black stone.
    I gulp.
    It’s compact—the size of a large closet with
a worn twin bed in the back right hand corner, covered in layers of
thin, navy rags. An empty chair sits under a small window that
hangs on the wall across from us, and a tiny square mirror sits
just below it. A few babeebs hover beneath the Gizella roots which
creep across the black ceiling like sadistic metal fingers.
    “If you forget the combination, the symbols
are right here,” he indicates to the back of the door where only
the same blocks are illustrated in their corresponding place. Jeb
steps to the other side of the area, where a white box outline sits
in the wall. “Your food will be deposited here.”
    “How will I know when the common hours
are?”
    “We will notify you. You’ll also be able to
navigate your way along with the others.”
    He steps to the side, allowing me to view
the food dispenser outline for myself. I nod, scanning it before
backing away and surveying the room again.
    “Leisure Time is tonight, so until then,
we’ll get you started working,” he heads for the door.
    “And it’s mandatory?” I eagerly follow,
“Leisure Time?”
    “Oh yes!” he spins, flabbergasted I’d even
ask. “ Everything is mandatory but especially that.
How do you expect your race to thrive if you don’t give it a
chance?” he leans in as if offering a vital piece of information.
“And there are ways of tracking when you do and do not
attend.”
    He’s looking for some kind of response and I
have just the one. Unfortunately, a swift punch to the face isn’t
going to get me on the ground any quicker. “You were going to get
me started on work?”
    “Yes—there’s no point wasting any more time
up here when you’re not contributing one way or another. Let’s head
down to your work stations.”
    Finally. Just a little longer and I’m out of
here.
    He leads us out of my bunker and back to the
evibola. We’re on the ground in seconds, his arms opened to the
checkerboard base of the Castle.
    “This is the Courtyard. You are also free to
use this area for your other socializing—for Leisure Time only, of
course.”
    Up close, the trees are much larger and
coated with tiny black hairs that cover them like fur. Their skinny
arm-like branches shoot up all around us but never touch one
another, or the other trees which lay sprawled out across the
Courtyard.
    “Now for your work,” he leads me to the only
entrance in the entire Courtyard—an archway on the north wall where
a main portcullis opens to the outside.
    Finally!
    When we emerge, the sun has disappeared and
the scent of rain immediately hits me, the grey-white sky sitting
heavily like it did before, threatening an eternal monsoon but
still, somehow, not a drop falls. The air is soaked with moisture
but the ground remains cracked dry. Dead.
    I eye the iron-gate across, searching for