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CHAPTER 01 – Rita Shor – Auria
The stars look like dull old diamonds now, not like when we were young and would lie on the high desert dunes, feeling the chilly northern winds sweep the day’s heat away. We could trace the swirling ribbon of the universe across the sky, asking each other why God would care about this hot little world on the edge of the Milky Way. How easy it used to be to find the star that, even in total darkness, could guide us back to the Ishti capital, far across the barren sand.
Since the forced migration, since entering the walled, foreign Empire of Isulum, I’ve lost sight of the stars we used to know. All I can see when I look up at the skies now is darkness saturated with artificial light and smog.
On nights like this one, when the rolling blackouts sweep through the ghetto and the buzz of the neon ads outside my grimy windows temporarily click off, I can climb up to the roof of my apartment. And up there, if I’m lucky, I’ll catch a glimpse of a dim, winking star or two.
I can look up at the stars and wonder, wherever you are, whatever star your soul resides in, if you’re surprised too by how far we’ve all gone from heaven.
Tonight, the rolling blackout silenced my rumbling air conditioning unit, allowing the stale, hot air to smother my home. A Waseda android waits with me in the darkness and oppressive heat. She waits for the dark to pass and for the police to take me away.
The purple Bors mark below her left eye that branded her as inhuman glowed dimly, illuminating shadows in the room. Blood covers my body, the sticky sensation regretfully soothing on my fingers.
It is a strange time to atone, my dear friend Auria, but I know that if my prayers have never before reached the ears of God, you’ll happily receive them. You see, I’ve been staring at my husband’s dead body for an hour now, his Waseda here beside me, and I’ve been too terrified to move.
Yes, I’ve been frozen here for one full hour, that’s what my husband’s Waseda told me. She’s a relatively new model, one he leased by stealing my paychecks and gambling his way to winnings, for once.
Out in the distance, the luxury high-rise apartments of Central Isulum remain lit. In recent months, when I’m all alone, I’ve tried to count those glimmering windows lit with orange light.
They say over seventy percent of the Central Isulum apartment units sit vacant. The units are home to artwork or personal seed banks for the Kani, our wealthy oligarchs. Most Kani live out their lives on superyachts for tax reasons, unbothered by what occurs on solid ground.
I like to imagine filling my lungs and shouting in those empty apartments, to experience the only true sound of opulence, the sound of emptiness, of an echo. But my Isulum-given tattoo that marks me as Taliit would never grant me entry into such an apartment building.
This Isulum tattoo on my forearm reminds me of my place in this world. Numbers that encode my class, sex, race, and upbringing. Children’s Home, Diegan Blocks, and Ward 8 were the names of places that sealed my fate. The Isulum Waseda army men who brought me to the Diegan Blocks orphanage taught me that education was the “way out” for Ishti folk like me. But even with an education, people like me are not destined for real jobs, Auria, no. After all, there are no decent jobs anymore with the rise of the Waseda androids.
Isulum has become inhospitable, especially for women. Ever since the mass adoption of Waseda Inc.’s female model, men have regressed into barbaric animals. The Waseda female is exaggerated in its womanly shape, unachievable in beauty, and abiding in all that their owners say.
And so, many men have developed unrealistic expectations for human women, demanding subservience. Male violent tendencies have gotten worse and also more accepted.
The Waseda Inc. female has a range of pitches and tones for their voices. They can laugh (or feign laughter), and they can feel pleasure (or simulate it), but no Waseda is yet capable of a scream.
Not a true one, not a deep, guttural scream. They can’t yet successfully imitate terror or produce tears. So that’s what sex workers are here for.
Sex workers like me, Auria, or what I used to be. It was the only viable choice I had to pay off debts, to keep a home, and to survive.
The type of men who come around don’t want human women for sex anymore when Wasedas can so readily fulfill man’s deepest desires. They pay for the act of screaming, crying, begging. To bleed and to bruise. That’s what these men love most about human women: to take something so full of promise and make it flinch.
My youth and low position obligated me to mold myself to the pleasure of Isulum men. My shame caused me to alienate myself from my community. For five years, I lived off white lies to neighbors, wrapping bandages around my thick scars and burn wounds until I was stiff, shapeless, and without substance.
And after five years, I paid off enough of my student loans and hospital debts to have the courage to leave the streets.
I took a job at a grocery store, where I was paid the bare minimum—just enough to keep my bank account running on empty and my stomach full with the foods produced in the Isulum processing plants that started the Bovar pandemic in the first place. But working at the grocery store was a good change of pace. And that’s where I met my husband.
The Diegan Blocks are still tonight. The Bovar pandemic is over, and the blackouts no longer bring moans of hopelessness.
For months, the Bovar virus swept through the Diegan Blocks, quietly taking the children and elderly in their sleep. And the following morning, wails would ring out over humanity’s last ghetto, echoing down every alley, filling each empty playground and park as the sun made its burning ascent.
I used to start and end each day with a prayer for every scream and wail. But my prayers were always rehearsed, a habit rather than heartfelt. My faith has failed me, Auria, because no Isulum God has ever set foot inside a ghetto. If he had, he wouldn’t have allowed his people to call us Taliit, the “wretched ones.”
Soon, the virus came to my bed and took my two daughters and son in their sleep. I awoke with them still snuggled up against me. Their lips were blue, and their noses caked with dried blood, the simple sign of a child’s sudden Bovar virus-induced death.
The android Waseda doctors climbed my tenth-floor apartment walk-up and gently inspected my children. My neighbors had called the police, fearful of my hysteria and repeated screams of, “Oh, what did I do? God, what did I do?”
One of the Wasedas tried to comfort me, saying, “There’s nothing you could have done, Ms. Shor.”
I used to cry in sudden, public outbursts, inconsolable for weeks after. Human commuters would move away from me on the tram, disturbed by my emotions. Only Waseda commuters would stay close to me. They did not fear my heartbreak, as their programming compelled them only to comfort.
Each time they’d move to touch me I’d flinch, a human instinct. But when I’d look up into their eyes I could see a heartbreaking truth, that they understood what that flinch meant.
A few weeks back, as the commuter tram taking me to my work lurched to a stop, I was thrown into a childhood memory of you. You were standing upon the highest dune in the Ishti Nation long before the forced march to Isulum, declaring, “They’ll have to kill us before they take our power.” You were always so brave and bold. I guess that’s why the elders gave you that name. Auria, after the class M planet that holds the colony of brave individuals who dared to leave this planet behind. Auria, that perfect place not yet tainted by human greed.
Auria, the Ishti experienced the most loss of life from Bovar, but it wasn’t just the virus that killed us. The first vaccine was rushed to market for Isulum’s essential workers. It was called the “Central Vaccine” and was given to Taliit like me. And it left those who weren’t killed by Bovar barren.
Naturally, conspiracy theories around the Central Vaccine have bloomed, distrust in the empire is high, and metaverse personalities like Prophet Sokolo spread misinformation and malice into every crevice of this walled city.
Auria, I’ve been too tired to hope and dream, but that memory of you gave me the strength to sit up, to feel less guilty for trying to live again. It was a mix of your determination, grit, and Prophet Sokolo’s abhorrent hate speeches that drove me to action. I can thank him, truly, because, for the first time since before my three children’s deaths, I’ve felt something other than sorrow. I felt angry.
As if in a hypnotic state, I found myself logging into Isulum’s metaverse to say everything I’ve been wanting to say.
I created an avatar called Iota to talk about grief, my absent, abusive husband, and the incomprehensible loss of my children. I created groups to talk about the anger that oozed up out of this city like the hot, rancid steam.
What can be done when a society reaches a breaking point? Where women are no longer treated as humans anymore? To many, especially Isulum politicians, women are worse than machines. We are simply vessels for birthing, for growing humanity’s dwindling numbers.
My followers in the metaverse tell me about the male companion androids created by Waseda Inc.’s competitor, Cognocom; a company for women, by women. With Cognocom’s male and female “Guardian” android Wasedas, women and non-heteronormative people have reported feelings of love and nurturing for the first time in their lives. Shouldn’t that mean something?
As the avatar Iota, I’m able to touch people in the Metaverse. My followers tell me their stories that sound all too familiar. They share their stories about being Ishti in Isulum or about abuse from a spouse, and I can share my own. I can comfort them, hug them, give them nurturing words, and they do the same for me.
My followers have told me that I empower them and that I make them feel like they could change things about this world. They say I give them courage, Auria.
As I continue to preach in the DeepNet, my following grows.
I was getting better, Auria. And, while there will never be a day that passes where I don’t wake and think of my lost children, in the DeepNet I was getting to a new state of normal.
And then? Tonight came.
It was such a strange sensation to open my apartment door and see my husband sitting on our couch. Two agonizing years had passed. The Bovar pandemic had come and gone since I’d last seen him, and yet here he was, drinking and watching porn on our Vert media set. His Waseda woman was on the floor, curled up around one of his boots like an animal. Neither looked up as I stood there, staring from the doorway.
I had lived in fear and dread of him returning, but now? I felt nothing.
What fools we women are for spending our lives searching for the good in bad men. What complacent passengers we are when we believe in their false character. When my husband finally demanded to know where his children were, briefly looking away from the blaring Vert porn, I actually believed I saw a flash of worry cross his face. But before I could finish telling him what had happened, he leaped up and began hitting me.
“What did you do? What did you do to them? You were supposed to protect them, you stupid whore. You are no real mother. You killed my children!” he screamed, his neck veins bulging.
In the early years, I spent long, hot days wrapped in his arms. I’d search those mischievous brown eyes that glimmered with endless possibilities, loving him, never wanting the good days to end.
But as he screamed and bellowed, spittle flying into my face, I no longer felt sadness for him or a compulsion to care. I no longer felt the need to find tenderness in a man who would kiss the bruises he’d make.
Of course, I’d let go long ago of that beautiful image of the man I dreamed my husband to be and the life I had hoped to live. There was no insult, no punishment, no beating I hadn’t endured by his hand.
He’d critiqued my smile, my breathing patterns, my laugh, and even the way I fell to the ground from his cruel hands. He’d always been successful in taking me apart bit by bit, but he’d never be able to separate me from that one precious thing I coveted most. No matter what, Auria, I will forever be a mother to my children. God knows I failed them, but no one could take my motherhood away from me.
I rushed toward the kitchen knife, the one he’d used to threaten me far too many nights, and drove it into his shielding arms. The knife only cut his forearm, splitting his Isulum tattoo, but I thrust it into him again, driving it deep into his upper arm, his shoulder, and his face. I stabbed his stomach when I got the angle, then his chest, then his groin, his groin, his groin, his groin.
It became so easy to drive the knife into him, lubricated by his blood and powered by my steady hand. All the rage I’d felt ignited, bursting forth. I could feel my eyes bulging and my upturned lip raised in a wild, greedy grin. His Waseda tried, half-heartedly, to stop me. I pushed her away, and for all her android strength she didn’t even try to stop me again.
As my husband’s body wilted, he grunted, stumbling back with a final shout for help. I doubled down on my efforts and leaped on top of him, stabbing the back of his neck repeatedly. And with one final stab, I plunged the knife into his ear.
The Waseda said I stabbed him thirty times and that I would be found guilty of murder and would live out the rest of my life in the Abu Jahim prison.
She’s right, of course. But while I did kill my husband, I don’t understand how the act can be seen as murder when I’ve been living my life in preparation of self-defense.
Looking at my bloody hands, I can see the fabric of women’s oppression. I was meant to die a martyr to domestic abuse and will be found guilty of wanting to live. My crime is seen as grotesquely unfeminine. And while a man might only get five to twenty for the crime, women serve life, especially an Ishti Taliit woman like myself.
After the Waseda told me the charges I faced, she draped a blanket around my shoulders and tended to me. She tried to give me food and water, but I couldn’t tolerate either. For a long time, I just stared at the wall, trembling.
Oh, Auria, I wish to be forgiven. I pray that, wherever you are, whatever beautiful afterlife you’ve chosen, please help grant me a place in a blessed, Ishti heaven.
One hour and still no sirens. Even the Waseda police avoid coming to the Diegan Blocks. My husband’s body is slumped and motionless. There is a surreal amount of blood pooled beneath him, but still, I fear he’s alive and faking it.
After a while, the blackout passed. The dim lights in my apartment flickered on, and my air conditioning rumbled back to life. I stood shakily, holding on to my apartment’s narrow kitchen counter. “Can we go to the roof, Waseda, so that I can look for the stars one last time? In prison, I’ll never see the stars again.”
“No,” she said sternly, but I was tired of that answer. I bolted for the door and ran up the stairs, the swift, soft steps of the Waseda at my heel. But with one forceful push, I’d opened the roof’s rusted door. It screeched open, and I took a gasping breath of air, staring up into the night sky as the android grabbed my arm. I stubbornly sat as she tried to pull me back to the stairs.
“You must wait. You must wait for the law. You cannot jump.”
“I never said I would,” I told her. I stretched my leg out to stop the Waseda from dragging me away from the night sky. “I want to see the sky again one last time.”
The Waseda relaxed her grip then let go completely, and I moved to lie down on the rooftop. As we lay together, I told her about you, Auria. I told her about the Assini Valley and the nomadic Ishti camp we were raised in, far beyond this Empire’s light-polluted walls.
My ears perked at the sound of wailing police cars and hospital trucks in the distance, but I kept my eyes focused on the heavens.
I could see the dull twinkle of a star or two against the light-washed sky, polluted with all colors of neon, glittering light. The brightest stars burn through the haze, penetrating the skies of Isulum to give me some last comfort before I descend into Abu Jahim prison.
I pointed up at the dark sky. “See those stars?” I asked the Waseda. “The brightest always shine through.” Those few glowing orbs gave a last glimmer of hope, reminding me that there’s always a light to guide us, even through the darkest of nights.
The Waseda said softly, “Those aren’t stars, Rita. They’re low-orbiting satellites.”
A lump caught in my throat as the police siren’s lights danced across the Diegan Blocks. “Ah,” I said with a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “So that’s why they wink at me.”
CHAPTER 04 – Rita Shor – Anatomy
A whistle blows in the dead of night in Abu Jahim prison. I stand at attention and listen to the desperate sound of bathroom haste echo throughout the corridor. Guards hit their batons with a clang, clang, CLANG against every cell bar.
The artificial lights are shut off for over sixteen hours throughout this prison. All energy is diverted and gobbled up by the assembly line that runs a mile long and half a mile wide on the ninth and final floor of Abu Jahim.
All life convicts from floors one to eight are brought down to the bottom assembly hall, taking their shifts between 5 pm and 9 am. We enter in shackled rows, two by two, through large, iron-gated doors that read Waseda Inc.
Our floor, block, and cell numbers are printed on our jumpsuits. My floor, floor seven, works alongside floor eight. With one arm, I’m shackled to the assembly position, and with both legs, I’m shackled to the person to my left and right. All this ensures accountability and teamwork.
And for the next four hours, we aren’t to leave, sit, yawn, or miss a single piece of an android as it comes down the assembly line band.
Large, fiery, machines spit out arms, legs, and heads of varying colors, shapes, and sizes. Each severed end looks like a clotted, bloody nub.
With time and experience, our fingers work faster, reaching into the blood-red ligaments. Most days, my line connects wiring in the forearms, wrists, and hands to one another. The wet, red dye stains our fingertips, as there is not enough time before our shift ends and starts again to scrub clean the android blood thoroughly.
On some shifts, I’m on the skin line, covering bloody wiring and the white of artificial bone with skin ranging in shades from porcelain-tainted pink to darker than my own. The assembly line moves slowly, allowing time to force the tough, elastic faux skin over the connective tissue.
Vents whip frigid air that congeals the components. The concentrated wind tunnel blows onto our working fingers, bringing them near to frostbite.
On other shifts, I’m placed at the end of a separate assembly line, using machine hands from above to assist in ripping bodies apart, casting the defective, aged, or unsold Wasedas back into the fiery furnace from whence they came.
We are reminded by a blaring loudspeaker every half hour that these are not real people. None of this is real. These are Waseda androids. Their insides do not contain actual tissue, ligaments, organs, or bone. But there is always at least one prisoner each shift left shrieking, their echoes screeching somewhere down the assembly line, a mile or half-mile away.
Last week, a man from floor eight collapsed in my row. Each worker to his right fell like dominos, including me, six people down the line. We struggled to stand. Men and women yelled at one another in fear of the punishment we would receive for a missed assemblage.
I could only watch as the man shrieked in animalistic agony. A noise I’ve only known men to make during the height of Bovar in the Diegan Blocks.
The man was clutching a Waseda’s leg, severed just below the knee. It was a perfect color match to his skin. He cradled it, smearing its wet, blood-like substance onto his cheeks. He bellowed, rocking in his half-seated place, “God, wash me in your cleansing blood! Purify my soul! Oh Lord, I repent. Do not abandon me here.”
Waseda guards ran down the line toward the man, their heavy steps marching in perfect precision. The assembly line halted, and beneath each of us who had fallen, a red timer began to tick. 20, 19, 18, 17… The worker beside the man punched and kicked at him, shaking him, screaming, “Motherfucker, get up! You’ll kill us!”
“Get up! Get up!” the woman across from me screamed, looking down at me. Her eyes were large, watery, and terrified. But my legs were bound and pulled down with the others.
An old man to my right locked his arm in mine, calmly cooing, “Come on, honey, we got this.” I reached to do the same with the woman at my other side, and we all tried to pull ourselves up with the red clock beneath us counting 10, 9, 8.
Down the line, a Waseda guard lifted the sobbing man, tearing the android leg out of his grasp. His lip was swollen and bloody from a beating, his face dripping with artificial and human blood.
The clock stopped at five, and the assembly belt began again. All the Waseda limbs on the long band had been assembled by prisoners who had kept their focus continually on the work in front of them.
The assembly band stayed lit with the dollar amount the delay had caused.
The line of workers on either side of me muttered either prayers or cursed threats beneath their breath. All workers had fifteen “freebie” seconds, but if another delay occurred, those of us who had fallen would be forced to receive a required beating and a “treatment” consisting of “mental conditioning.”
I’d met a few of the workers who had received the “treatment” at one point or another. They were the workers on the line who were quick to violence, never flinched, and could often be observed taking a moment to smell and sometimes sneak a lick into the Waseda limbs.
A veteran on the assembly line began to joke as soon as production started up again. It was something about the money Wyn Robinson had lost by the brief pause.
Another cracked a joke about artificial blood that got even the man still covered in blood, spit, and tears to crack a smile. Though we weren’t supposed to speak during shifts, workers could sing their words, comments, and jokes, all in an attempt to make light of the darkness that faced us, all to keep their minds sane.
But after the assembly line had gone quiet for a while save for the churning machine, the man’s soft tears returned. He began to whisper then mutter to himself desperate, begging prayers.
“No talking,” the Waseda guard who held him up bellowed, shaking him. “No prayers.”
“God, I can’t…” the man cried as he hooked his fingers into a Waseda limb’s bloody ligament.
“Shut up,” the man beside him hissed in a tone-deaf song. “Be a man. God isn’t going to save you here.”
It had been weeks since I’d spoken more than a “yes” or “no” since entering my imprisoned life.
With a cracking, wavering voice, I sang, “God will not abandon you here, sir. For when you fell to your knees to repent, you forced others to fall with you in prayer. He knows that his manufactured, artificial heaven is assembled in the depths of hell. God forgives and sees that while your hands are sacrificed for the empire, your open palms will save you from an eternal cell.”
My face grew hot. My heart pounded in my chest. Fearing a strike by a guard to the back of my knee, I leaned into the production line, keeping my head down. After a moment, I jumped at the sing-song voices around me.
Looking up, the other inmates and even the broken man, through his tearful face, sang, “Your open palms will save you from an eternal cell.” Then in a new rendition, the voices added, “One day we will drag Wyn Robinson to his eternal cell.” And they sang it again and again and again until the Waseda guard declared no more singing for the remainder of the shift.
Four suicides and fourteen accidents. Those were the monthly averages since I’d been admitted to Abu Jahim prison. At least twelve out of fourteen casualties would require amputation of either a hand or limb. Amputees were given a mechanical arm, limb, or finger and put back into the assembly line, though quite a few were considered a “monetary risk” and graduated to become floor guards to work alongside Abu Jahim’s Waseda guards instead.
No outsider knew the true conditions of this for-profit prison. Visiting hours were heavily monitored, but they needn’t be. What would come from discussing the assembly with outsiders when the chancellor was in charge of operations?
At 5 AM, our shift ends. Our minds numb, our fingers blood-stained, our bodies aching and tired, unsure of time beneath the fluorescent light, we are returned to the darkness of our cells and await the impending artificial light of a new day.
“We thank you for your service,” says a recording of Wyn Robinson, CEO of Waseda Inc., as we depart the assembly floor through the iron gates. “We thank you for your service.”
Some inmates go back to sleep in their cells; some stay awake and pray. When I return to my cell, I return to my daydreams. I am with my children, listening to their laughter.
My daydreams trace over every inch of my happy little angels, from their bright smiles to their perfect tiny toes.
Certainly, there was some semblance of life before them, but there is no life after them, no life without them, no life in which my children do not exist within me.
I wrap myself in my memories before and after my shift for Waseda Inc. The good memories are what keep me alive.
Each day, all across the Empire, Isulum’s great tech visionaries are discussed. Their inventions, their scandals, and their faces are splashed across every news channel and seared into our brains.
Some people revere them, some despise them, and everyone has an opinion to share. So few know the people behind the company name. Fewer still know how their products are made.
But we do. We do.
CHAPTER 09 – Sana Đumić – Abu Jahim
Built into the northern wall on the outskirts of the city hugged Isulum proper’s only prison, Abu Jahim. Wasedas and human guards scanned my papers, reporter’s badge, and identification before I reached the final iron gate.
A Waseda guard retreated to hand crank the gate ajar. The iron wall slowly lifted, emitting deafening dreadful moans. With each arduous crank, the gate’s shrieking, tortured cry rattled my heart and filled my stomach with a voracious, gnawing doom.
Finally, the wall lifted. With the path presented before me, I took one wary step, feeling all hope at once fall away as I beheld the sight of the prison known as Abu Jahim.
The prison was shaped like a dome bunker, rounded against Isulum’s northeasterly wall. Its slick, low-lying shape was alien and uninviting. I followed a gray path that grew narrower and narrower until it stopped before a guarded, obsidian door.
“Sana Đumić,” the towering Waseda guard barked. “I will be your guide until you reach the Seventh Ward’s Far Block, the one that holds Alvira Cree.”
I nodded and followed him through the shimmering, obsidian door.
The door shut behind me, snuffing out all sounds of life. Inside, an eery silence plugged my ears and choked out any thought in my mind. I followed the Waseda, glancing over at the far wall, which was filled with security footage of the different cells below.
“This way,” the guard said, and I followed him, our steps echoing as we rounded a corner and moved down another grand hall. “Our press rooms are only reserved for low-risk offenders,” the guard began. “Your interview must be conducted beside the terrorist’s cell with Waseda guards present. We will have to walk through the main cell block on floor seven to the far blocks.”
“Is Cree being kept separate from the main cell block to negate Ishti extremist recruiting?” I asked.
The Waseda glanced down at me. “She is not isolated, Ms. Đumić, but she is considered high risk.” We were quiet for a moment then the Waseda added, “Your walk to the far blocks will not be a pleasant experience. I hope you have prepared for that.”
The Waseda guard and I passed a group of Wasedas working diligently on a virtual wall, tapping various codes and assignments into the automated prison’s security system.
At the end of the hall, my Waseda guide and I came to a series of elevators. There were three elevators before us and three more behind. The elevators were guarded by another male Waseda, whose towering, muscular form was even more impressive than my guide’s.
“Hello,” the Waseda said to me, though his gaze was fixed directly ahead.
“Hello,” I said politely.
The Waseda looked at me, narrowing his eyes. With a twitch, I could see a change, a recalibration of thought. “Hello,” he tried again, this time kinder, gentler.
“Hello,” I said again with a small smile.
A ping and yellow light announced the arrival of our elevator. I followed my Waseda guide in and turned to look at the guard who watched me in anticipation. “Goodbye,” I said.
“Goodbye,” the Waseda guard repeated, his face contorting to twitch a feeble, tight smile. And with that, the elevator doors forcefully shut.
My guide and I descended, deeper and deeper into the earth, passing floor upon floor of condemned Taliit. “The floors are separated by the type of crime,” the Waseda said as we passed a floor where screams could be sharply heard before fading out, making room for the next floor’s distinct sobs and moans. “The woman’s ward is on the east side of the dome, the man’s on the west.”
“This is not an emergency-safe structure. It must violate so many codes, mustn’t it? To have this many people in a security structure of this size beneath the earth?” I shouted, suddenly realizing how noisy the world below the ground floor had become.
The Waseda was silent for a moment. I looked up at him, but his eyes stared vacantly at the elevator doors. “Abu Jahim meets and even excels in Isulum’s required safety standards. Abu Jahim was awarded the Building Excellence Awards when it first opened.”
The elevator was slowing as we reached the bottom floor. I could hear it as we descended, the sounds of women chanting as one.
I took a sharp breath in as the elevator stopped and the doors parted. The chant echoed throughout the multi-level compound, calling, “Cree, Cree, Cree.”
The Waseda guard walked with me in step, sweeping me down the long corridor to the far side of floor seven. A hissing noise came, soft at first, but soon it caught between the teeth of every woman. The hiss serpentined between cells, meeting me in each new face. Women pressed themselves against their metal bars, hissing as I passed. Their eyes were maddeningly wide, showing the whites above their pupils.
I looked up to the higher floor to see arms outstretched through their cells. I felt the water, what I hoped was water, rain down on me. A prisoner from above cackled wildly just as something hard hit my head.
An alarm from the level above sounded. Doors slid open, boots stomped, and then the sound of battering thumps. A woman screeched and moaned, but the sounds of protest soon subsided.
The Waseda whisked me to the far end of the corridor, stopping at a security check to stare into a facial recognition plate. I stared at the blank wall but could hear the creak of a bed to my left and the shuffling of a woman’s feet. “Chot,” came the click word through the left cell’s bars. I instinctively snapped my head to stare at her.
The prisoner smiled wryly, pressing her tongue against the roof of her mouth, revealing her missing lower teeth. “Chot,” she said again with a click, pressing her face against the bars. It was an Ishti word, a sexually and racially charged word. A word that, in a cleaner sense, meant the oppressor’s woman.
I felt my blood boil, bubbling red shame into my face. She hocked and spat, but the Waseda’s palm was faster, catching her spit and, in one clean motion, shoving his hand into the prisoner’s face. She recoiled and stumbled back, clutching her nose.
“She’s a spitter,” the Waseda explained, urging me forward, but I couldn’t break the woman’s gaze. She slid her hand away from her face, revealing a bloody, broken nose.
She smiled, letting the blood drip and pool on her lower lip. A gurgling sound emanated from the back of her throat. Her cackling laughter shot blood and spit out at me. The concrete doors lifted for entry and thumped shut behind us.
The security room between the two corridors was cramped and quiet. The Waseda moved around me to the second security plate. “Wait,” I said, wiping the woman’s blood from my face. “Is this prison housing mentally unwell people in cells next to criminal offenders?”
The Waseda turned to face me. “Define mentally unwell.”
“What was that woman’s crime? What put her in this prison? She’s mentally ill and needs psychiatric care. Was she dealing donnavitin? That’s the crime of this floor, isn’t it?”
The Waseda furrowed his brows. “The crime of this floor is murder in any degree. It is one of our more populated floors on the women’s side.”
“Who’d she murder?”
“Her unborn child,” the Waseda replied. “Her father turned her in for aborting his baby.”
“His baby?” I asked. “And what floor is her father on?”
“He’s out on bail,” the Waseda said, monotone. “He was released early for good behavior.”
“That woman is mentally unwell. She needs counseling.”
“Those who cannot afford care come here and we care for them,” the Waseda declared. “Our business model is so successful that we’ve had to expand our operations. We’ve experienced delays from Bovar, but Abu Jahim’s addition is nearly complete.”
“This isn’t a business, Waseda.”
“This is a for-profit prison, Ms. Đumić, owned by businessmen. Every oligarch wants to invest in this lucrative operation.” the Waseda blinked rapidly, adding, “You are losing oxygen, ma’am.” He knelt, allowing the reader to scan his eyes. The door lifted, and I took a deep breath, leaning against the small room’s wall. “Follow me,” he said, and I did, the door sliding shut behind me.
The Seventh Ward’s Far Block was far smaller than the previous floor, with only a dozen cells, though most sat empty. Unlike the other cells of Abu Jahim, the far block was spacious, fitted with comfortable-looking beds, desks, and even limited-frequency Vert sets.
At the end of the far end of the block, I could see Alvira Cree sitting in her cell with two Wasedas guarding it on either side. “Tonight, an exclusive with Alvira Cree,” she called, rising from her plush, velvet chair. She wrapped her long, delicate fingers around her cell’s bars. “An interview brought to you, oh fine people of Isulum, by the one, the only, Sana Đumić!”
Alvira clapped in delight as my Waseda guide and I stopped before her. “Let the record show that daddy’s little girl didn’t follow in her family’s footsteps. She’s an honest, hardworking reporter. Available for all eyes to ravage her here on The Daily, channel 1.”
Alvira smiled, draping her elegant arms out of her cell as I moved closer.
“I’m not a news anchor. I just write the articles that are sent into Parallel.”
“Well, that’s no fun, but then I’m not one to follow Isulum news.”
Alvira slapped her hand into her Waseda guard’s side. The Waseda guard carried a steel chair over to me. It looked wretchedly heavy, with a long steel chain wrapped around one of its legs, binding it to the wall. Alvira watched in amusement as I took a seat.
I glanced at the plush, velvet chair that engulfed her body. “Your chair looks far more comfortable than mine,” I said with an awkward laugh.
Alvira watched me. “A prison is still a prison, Sana Đumić, even if there is an illusion of comfort. But as a citizen of Isulum, you know plenty about that.”
“Shall we begin?” I asked Cree, flipping my digital paper to a new page.
Alvira’s upper lip turned up, revealing a glimmering, thirsty smile. “With pleasure,” she growled.