Prison initiatives of the past have been marked by failures in crime prevention, reformation, and productivity on the part of the criminal. Project Arcadia is paving the way for a new era in carceral practices, harnessing the basic impulses of human nature to break the boundaries of traditional penal methods, in the service of a visionary new system that anticipates and fosters rehabilitation, while reimagining vital aspects of the experience. Project Arcadia looks forward to a brighter, greener, more united future on both sides of the wall.
Project_Arcadia.final.final.9.postmeetingspiel
*
“Know what you’ve done?”
Prison walls: imitation brick. Floor: plastic, pocked. Everything a fecal brown. The man in grey sat on the other side of the table. He was smoking.
“Well?”
The prisoner said nothing.
“Property damage, two counts,” the warder said grudgingly, finally. “Machine-murder, three counts – five robots, two had to be scrapped altogether, one they might be able to salvage the processors on. Reputation-murder, six counts. Guilty on all charges.” He paused again, but the prisoner just stared at him. “Well, what’s left to say, right?”
The prisoner nodded. Or maybe it was a spasm.
“Thirty years in solitary, if you’re lucky. Can’t be too careful with reputation-murderers these days. Long time, thirty years. Down there, they forget your face after ten years, you know; I’ve seen it. You come out, and they can’t remember you. Who’s he? Nobody knows.”
“Thirty years?”
The prisoner was hoarse as a crow, or at any rate as hoarse as one of those black things you saw flying over the prison. Maybe they were robots now. Who knew?
“More or less. Could be more these days, corporate lobbyists everywhere. Now mind you –” The warder looked behind him. Then he looked once to the left, and once to the right, and finally up at the ceiling.
“What?”
“I might be able to get you twenty years. Maybe.”
“You?”
“There’s this program. Volunteers only. They get shipped out – no one knows where – reduced sentences and everything. I’ve heard it’s not even a prison, they say you can see the sky. Well?”
“Do I have to pay for it?”
“You haven’t got any money anyway,” the warder said. “I know. But I’ll do it. They give me a bit on the side if you volunteer, finder’s fees. Put you down for it?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” The warder stubbed out his cigarette on the table, so blackened already that the mark hardly showed. “Ever see a garden?”
“Sure.”
“I had a houseplant once,” the warder said. “Can’t remember what I did with it. Sign here. Ok, third door on your left, watch your step, see you in twenty.”
*
Land. Rocks. High grass choking the rocks. The kind of place with its back up against anything that moved. The sky – not grey, not blue, shifting, vacant, full of clouds like bulging sea creatures.
He had five fields to himself, surrounded by an electrified fence thirty feet high. There was a house too, low and rounded. Plastic, it was, made to look like stone, in reality more like a cheap tomb.
There was another fence around the first one, which he could see when the wind blew down the grass on the horizon. Otherwise the land rose and blotted it out.
Twenty years solitary. Sentence commuted to constructive labour. In twenty years, they’d come and pull him out of the dirt, dust him off, and blink. He’d have warts, or vegetables for eyes, then. Roots. What’s this? No, put it back. Chop it up. Throw it out.
He marked the first day of twenty years, deep into the plastic wall. Not much use. Nobody knew how long years were, here, not yet. Probably would never bother to find out, not that it mattered.
*
The first year might have been ten, might have been five, couldn’t have been any less than three. He had nothing but hand tools and a rusted plough. Almost all the crops failed. The instruction modules that came with the house were useless.
Winter was long, cold, rainy. Not a hint of snow, just endless rain and fog. He ate mush and read novels in the evenings, social comedies, satires. He couldn’t picture so many people in one room anymore. One or two he managed fine, but after that his imagination failed, and all the other characters were grey, insubstantial, speaking just too quietly to be heard.
In the second year half his crops were viable. A harvester came in the autumn, then, clunky, patched with bits of scrap metal. There was a security drone overhead, too, the first he’d seen.
Exiting the building is prohibited at this time. In case of emergency, keep hands visible and move at a relaxed pace.
Three hours, four hours, then, wondering if he could escape. The gate opened slowly, the harvester was large enough to hide behind or under, another robot was probably operating the drone.
Any attempts at escape, sabotage, etc., will be met with lethal force.
Escape to where? What did they even call the planet? There were three moons, but their phases made no sense, and half the time clouds covered them anyway.
The harvester worked through the night, and the drone whirred overhead, back and forth across his prison. When he woke in the morning his fields were bare and there was no other noise but the wind.
Your labour is a contribution to the furtherance of human and machine society. You are part of a visionary new system. Take pride in your work!
*
Round about the fifth year he had an astronomy craze. Went out studying the stars every clear night, charting the moon phases, calculating the length of the planetary year. It was maybe five hundred days, give or take, provided the harvester didn’t come on the same day every year. Days were maybe twenty hours. The three moons had irregular phases, some of which occurred twice in one night.
He came across his notes five years later. He’d left them on a shelf, meant to revise them, but he never did, and the dust grew thick. They were more mold than paper by the time he found them again.
*
One year blight took everything, and all he had was the reconstituted mush which came out of a pipe. Not eating what you grew was in the modules, of course, ten times, twice underlined. He missed the vegetables all the same.
That was the year, too, he thought he might be going insane. Later he was sure about it.
*
There were no trees near him. Once he spent long days coaxing a clump of stalks to grow taller, watered them, talked to them even. Sat under them. He didn’t know why. They did grow, though, taller than his house, ten feet high before a wind brought them down.
Probably there weren’t any trees native to the planet anyway.
*
Years and years of nothing. No one. Where does your food come from? It’s grown by an insane farmer on a remote planet and nobody knows where they are or when they are or how long the year is. Nobody knows if there’s anything out there; for all anyone knows there isn’t. We’re all the last person on the face of the earth here, and isn’t it wonderful?
*
He lost count of the days when he was sick one winter, floating through fever dreams where he lay suspended in the air above his black fields. Then he gave up count altogether. House to field to house to field, to fence and back again. The intricate phases of the moons bored him. He gave up novels and read the modules, back to front. He tried it upside down once and just gave himself a headache.
They forget your face after ten years, you know; I’ve seen it. You come out, and they can’t remember you. Who’s he? Nobody knows.
There was a mirror just above the sink, so he could see his face. Sometimes, though, he found himself forgetting what it looked like, and then he dropped his tools and came back to the house, so he’d remember.
*
One year the harvester didn’t come, though his crops were the best they’d ever been. He ate what he could, and the rest rotted in the field. The gate stayed shut.
*
Another year, another time. He was in the house, and he heard the gate open. But no noise followed it, no groaning, whirring, complaining.
He looked out the window to see nothing. There was no harvester, no drone, nothing but the open gate.
He stayed inside for hours, staring at it.
At the completion of your sentence a transport will arrive to take you to your next destination. Please remain in your dwelling while landing is in progress. Further instructions will be issued at that time.
Sky: clear. Slightly cloudy. Damp. Wind: average. Conditions: typical.
Still nothing came. The gate stayed open all night.
*
In the morning he skulked out of the house. It took him an hour to sidle up to the gate. The fence still hummed, electrified, but weaker now. Probably had been going on for a while. And now he noticed the rust on the wire. The failing hinges.
He was at the gate. Nothing. He reached out a hand to the other side. Nothing.
No sound now, not even the wind, just blood in his head. The sick pounding in his chest. No one was coming. They’d forgotten. They were dead. Nothing was coming.
He edged a foot across the invisible line. Imagined what was on the other side.
Well, and? They’re gone, and? The world is yours. No one to follow you, no one to look at you. No one to know anything at all. You are what you are.
No one was coming. No one was watching. The clouds bellied past, unconscious; the grass kept on dying.
There was another world past the gate, past the next gate – miles on miles of land, over the ridge, down to the next prison cell – and whatever lay beyond the cells. Anything and nothing. Nothing?
Prisoner No. 143587, how do you plead?
Prisoner No. 143587, the court finds you guilty.
Prisoner No. 143587, you are hereby stripped of your possessions and all benefits previously claimed by you or your family.
Prisoner No. 143587, twenty years solitary.
He never went further than the gate.
*
One year later, the gate was still open. He might have gone through, might have done it a thousand times. He couldn’t. Never would. He could barely bring himself to look at the thing. In another year, ten years, forty years, his bones would lie on the ground. Nothing to pick them here, nothing to gather them up, no one to bury them. Not another living soul.
No one was coming. They’d all forgotten, or they were past forgetting, and nothing lay beyond the fence anyway.
He was here. Didn’t need to wait. Nothing ever changed.
Twenty years solitary.
*
Archeological Survey #143954 Summary
Planet: Asphodel V
Population: 0
Status: Habitable
Native culture/language: Nonexistent
Thought to be previously colonised on a small scale. Evidence of subsistence farming, clearly delineated territories, conjectured culture-specific isolation. On certain charts referred to as “Arcadia”. Reason unknown.
Nice! Asphodel is a plant connected with the dead and the underworld.
(my WIP novel also has a planet with that name)
Very cool! Reminds me of Russian fiction from the early 19th century.