The next day came. I swear there was no sun on this planet. It was a constant cloudy gloom. Zalud must have read some of the same books I had. Particularly in how to place a gulag. In utter desolation.
But why did it always have to be cold? At first, you’d think it would be great to not die in the heat of the sun, dehydrated and delirious. In the cold you could always put on more clothes right? Wrong. Especially when they don’t give you much clothes. When it’s hot you can find a shadow and just lay there sprawled out and generally be alright. In the cold, though, there’s no escaping it. Constant shivering. Endless nights. Sleep comes easy, but you wake up every fifteen minutes shivering. Makes a few hours of sleep feel like days of torture. Then eventually when it’s time to get up, there’s relief. Finally, the cold night is over.
Jalad and I pushed discretely through the crowd. Our crew mostly kept up. On either side of the column of slaves, the guards marched on in silence, barely noticing any of our existences. At the end of the fishbowl, we were each handed a pick then shoved into the hole to the mine – fun fact, hölle is German for hell. Despite the near pitch black conditions, I knew the layout well enough.
We pushed off in as straight a path as we could that lead to the deepest part of the mine. It was somewhere around there that Jalad said the bins were collected. I had wormed my way around to various other areas in the mine on prior days. As far as I could tell, there were no other ways in and out, just a series of dead end rock.
The expedition was already bearing fruit. We found the carts. All in a line. Quite a few of them, actually. One after another, our minions doled out the carts. Thus far, the guards had not made it in as far. When we were left with one cart they set to filling it as quickly as possible. They grabbed anything and everything loose and threw it in the cart.
Last night, after my heart to heart with Jalad, he gave a rather impressive speech to his crew. By all rights, they were his crew. He looked out for them. They respected him. His was not just a tall, strong figure. He was the glue that meant a peaceful existence for those in his pod. Yet, there was still a lot of fear in those hobgoblin eyes, despite their determined faces.
Only one spoke up after a long silence at the conclusion of the speech. But what if we get caught?
Jalad quoted a wise man who once said that they were all going to die here anyway.
That didn’t have much of an effect on the crowd.
I stepped up beside him. Without flinching, I told them I would take full responsibility if anything were to happen.
The room damn near erupted in applause. They caught themselves, though. Any noise noticed from the outside would result in disciplinary action. Turns out it’s easy to get people to do stupid things when they only stand to gain something and someone else take the fall.
The first cart was loaded. Everyone set out to start filling the second. I was to follow the first cart through the tunnel to see where it went. If anywhere. It could have simply dumped into an even bigger pit somewhere far away, never to be touched again, proving the futility of our toils. Fingers crossed. Another cart would be waiting as a cover during my return. If I returned.
I took the cart and pushed towards the hole. The cart was heavy, clinking on the metal tracks until it reached the conveyor. It wasn’t obvious at first how it was supposed to work. Looking at it, it just looked like more tracks into more darkness.
The wheels hit the conveyor. There was a click and a whir. A third of a moment later, the cart was ripped from my hands into the darkness. I had to run a short distance to catch up with it. The cart was supposed to be my cover, mostly for noise.
Overhead, the tunnel was tall enough as far as I could tell and hoped. There was no light so I couldn’t be sure, so I jumped on the cart staying low. Hopefully I wouldn’t smash my head on a rock. Not that it’d be the first time. Speed might be to my advantage. Not until then did I consider that there might be cameras. Other than the tracks and the lightning rods the guards carried though, the place seemed low tech. Maybe it wasn’t a priority. No sense in investing too much into a deliberately lost cause.
Before I could finish that thought, the sounds in the tunnel changed. I still couldn’t see anything, but I knew enough to know I was close. You know that sound right before you exit a tunnel? When I heard that, I bailed from the cart.
The cart clinked off into the distance.
There was an opening. I could sense it. Something about the air changed. I’ve been in enough dark places to know.
The planet started to rumble.
I nearly shat my pants as the cave around me shook and screamed. I’m not afraid of the dark. But I’ve had some bad experiences. Let me tell you. Not right now, though. Maybe another time when I’m in the right mood slash state of intoxication.
Blue light filled an archway in front of me. The roar became more focused, lifting. Higher and higher. A wave of heat blasted through the tunnel.
I moved to the edge of it.
And son of a bitch, I should have known.
It looked like a massive missile silo. Tubular and probably an eight of a mile wide and a mile tall, a rocket jettisoned up and away. On the ground, a ring of lights dotted the walls.
Snakeheads. Snakeheads everything. Unmoving, standing along the walls. Cables ran up the walls, disappearing here, reappearing there. They were charging.
Fucking.
Robots.
Easy to clean!
Easy to use!
And best of all, once you buy them you don’t have to pay them!
Just plug them in at the end of the day!
Buy the extended warranty for bumper to bumper protection!
In many ways it makes sense. People are fallible. They are only programmable to an extent. Robots, the ones I’ve known, don’t complain or don’t question loyalty. Well, Charles – you remember him – he was a bit whiney, but I think they programmed him that way to get under my all-natural dermis. Plus, they can typically transmit information over greater distances. Just saying.
Time to go. I found what I needed.
Stumbling blindly through the tunnel, I prayed another cart didn’t come, crushing me.
Sometime later, Jalad’s wet fish eyes beamed at me in the darkness. Did I mention he looked like a fish? I nearly pooed again. He was at waving me to hurry. Never mind that I just sprinted through darkness for what felt like a mile.
I exited the tunnel with less than a second to spare. The guard had arrived. Surrounding me, the others shoved the next cart into the tunnel. For the rest of the day we pretended it was business as usual.
There wasn’t much that could be done just as yet with that information. Jalad asked in hushed tones what I saw. I assured him I would tell him everything later. In the meantime, I had to do some more observations to finish formulating the plan.
The rest of the crew went back to work. I went wondering around the blackened corridors. To see what I needed to see I needed to see it. But seeing was the hard part. I needed to know the pattern of the guard bots. Bots or hive mind, it didn’t matter so much. Point was, there would be a pattern, a structure to their behavior. Every one of them, reasoning stood, was predictable. I just need to know how to predict them.
The damn things were difficult to see, though. Following the clinking noises, I knew I would find inmates, therefore, guards. The first one I ran into found me first. Rounding a corner on the ledges about the dig pits, it saw me before I saw it.
I think I felt it before I saw it. From my own momentum, I went stomach into the end of a stun club. Maybe my nervous system was getting used to the electrical abuse it had been taking, but it wasn’t as bad. It was possible that this unit was nearing the end of its charge. Doubting I would have time to watch until it left to charge, I doubled back to find the next unit.
The pattern formed quickly. I had an idea before, but it was all painfully obvious now. The mines were on a circuit. A guard stood over the pits with the digging teams. Between each sentry, a roving guard roved. Like clockwork. Back and forth between the two points, in perfect cadence.
Tiptoeing back to my group with only a vague recollection of where I was, I only knew that there were only a few more steps before the next guard. I was right. But it was just in time for it to reach the stationary guard. Any moment it would turn, see me, and then both would discharge its 9volt battery into my belly again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what two at once felt like.
Not in this particular situation, anyway.
It’s really hard to skid to a halt without making a lot of noise, on tiptoe or not. I suppose I did it. They hadn’t turned yet. So I did. Remembering I was in one of the deepest sections of the mine now, I realized it was not as developed. That meant, there was not a hole every twenty feet to jump into. Just jagged rock walls went back behind me without a curve or corner to save me. I was about to find out if their clubs could be taken from them. Or else I was a Christmas tree.
The roving guard stopped. So did my heart. I’ve fought a lot of creatures over the years. I’ve been electrocuted. Scared shitless in the dark. All at the same time. It was nothing new to me. Somewhere deep down inside me, though, I suspected the cards would run out. Statistically speaking, it was bound to happen. Play with your snake long enough and so on, as they say. Every time that voice gets a little louder.
And every time I say, “It’s a good day to die.”
There was nowhere to go back to. Committed. Close the gap. I’d rather the plan be shared with the rest of the prisoners than be carried out on my own, but here we go.
I assumed a sprawling stance. The club was the threat. Get the club or around the club, quick and unseen as it did a one eighty towards me.
The guard did a left face.
This did not match what my mind expected. It turned towards the pit of prisoners rather than turn around and march over me.
I clung to the wall like a salamander. Silently, wide eyed.
But I still heard footsteps of the sentry. They traded places. That was different. The static guard was marching farther down the tunnel. That meant another would come take its place.
Shift change.
They must relay replacements down the line to return to their charging docks. I could picture in my mind the battery life indicators. A full charge by the cart tunnel. Each battery a little less than the last on the way back. But how much life would they have? Did the diminished battery matter?
End of the line. I still clung to the wall just behind the snakehead. Chances were I could tumble into the pit and be fine. Worst case scenario, I take a bolt of lightning to the side.
I took a deep breath, preparing to shove the fork into the outlet. One, two, then I slide into home plate, that was in a six foot ditch.
Then a pair of wet gleaming eyes looked up at me for a brief moment. They disappeared and there was a sound of a rock clattering down the far side of the tunnel.
And the damn thing looked. It turned its head towards the noise just in time for me to scurry down into the hole.
Team work makes the dream work.
I always hated that expression.