The Unquestioned

    Her eyes shot open, unrestricted this time.  Bright lights shone above, causing her pupils to shrink but she forced her eyes to remain open, they had spent enough time closed.
    All the events that had happened back onboard the Caduceus felt like an unclear dream to her, but Tabitha realised that this wasn’t the case when she felt an unfamiliar bed beneath her.  She wasn’t exactly sure how long she’d been out but she got the sense it had been a while because she’d dreamt.  She had dreamed a rather disturbing dream, it was all a little fuzzy but the main theme of the dream was incredibly dark.  In her dream, she had killed a baby.  Well, not really killed, she found a baby that needed help but she just left it to die.  Tabitha could’ve saved the baby but, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, she chose to let the baby die.  She found this recent dream disconcerting, but she just blamed it on this place, supposing that she was, in fact, now in Jotnar.
    She propped herself up to see exactly where she was.  However, the first thing she examined wasn’t her surroundings.  She initially looked down at herself.  Tabitha was now wearing clothes, it appeared to be a dark yellow hooded jumpsuit with a small black symbol, ‘’, on the left part of the chest and different symbol on the right, also in black.  This symbol consisted of an inverted V enclosed within a circle, which was the emblem of the world renowned Olympus Corporation.
That was the end of the list, this one item of clothing was all she had been dressed in.  She wasn’t even wearing shoes, Tabitha realised this when she glanced down at her bare feet and wiggled her toes to make sure everything was working as well as before.
    Her toes might be fine but her torso felt incredibly sore, just sitting up on the bed caused her chest and stomach to be wracked with pain.  After running her hands over these areas, she realised that they were even more tender than she had initially believed.  To discover why this was, Tabitha unbuttoned the jumpsuit she was now dressed in and looked down at herself to see if she had been bruised from falling out of her chamber back on the Caduceus.
    The real reason behind the pain was severely more distressing, her body was covered in surgical scars.  There were three large neat cuts, one along the right side of her chest, one lower down and another on her left side.  Tabitha quickly closed her jumpsuit, as if that would make them go away.  She buttoned it back up and hugged her knees.  As she slowly rocked back and forth, Tabitha came to the conclusion that she really didn’t like this place.  Either out of paranoia or reason, Tabitha began checking the rest of body to see what else they did to her.
    The only other scars she found were on her arms, a small needle mark high up on the inside of her left forearm, and a short neat cut in the middle of the inside of her right forearm, which had been stitched up.  These marks were fresher.  Tabitha pondered the meaning behind these various marks, which now covered her body, as she observed her new environment.  The bed that she lay on was of fairly neutral colours.  It was a black metal base attached to the wall, with light grey bedding of the same shade as the walls.
    She decided that in order to find a way out of this horrible place, she first needed to begin visually exploring the small room she now found herself in, and which she assumed was her jail cell.  Her bed was just a hard thin base that was connected to one corner of the room.  As she looked straight ahead, she saw the point where her cell ended.  There was just a lack of a fourth wall, not that far from the base of her bed, which was surrounded by a band of intensely bright red lights.  Just before the threshold of warning lights, a spherical silver camera protruded down from the light grey ceiling, it was staring at her, she stared back and slowly waved.
    To her left, in the other corner of the room was a simple drain in the floor and a shower built into the wall.  A dark grey partition blocked this area from the camera’s view and also from the view of any person by the border of her cell.  She felt that to be surprisingly considerate and stood up from her bed to inspect this area.
    As Tabitha took her first steps, she was amazed at how light she felt.  She looked down at the ground and figured that there mustn’t be any gravitone-plating present in the ground floor.  Gravitone was a wonderful substance that Olympus invented, it could be turned on and off remotely and would emit gravitons at a programmable intensity.  On ships, these plates were usually accompanied by ablative panels underneath them to negate the graviton emissions in the undesired direction.  This substance provided a gravitational ‘shadow’ by reflecting gravitons around them while still retaining its own force of weight.
Gravitone’s maximum range was limited to a few miles, this still meant ablative plating was also needed at the top of space ships to absorb any stray gravitons.  None of this information mattered in Jotnar, Tabitha only had the natural Mercurial gravity to anchor her to the ground.  She supposed that it would be quite expensive to provide artificial gravity for the entire prison.  Not only was gravitone an expensive substance to manufacture, it also required a lot of energy to power it because gravitone needed to be regularly bombarded with alpha radiation at a specific rate in order to emit gravitons at the desired intensity.
    She wandered over to this shower section, after examining the wall she found a toilet that folded out of the wall and a sink, which slid out of a drawer above it.  By the shower itself was a series of shelves built into the corner, which held fresh towels, a variety of soaps and shampoos along with a toothbrush and toothpaste, it actually seemed quite nice for a prison.  There was also a small rectangular mirror bolted to the wall just above the sink compartment.  She looked at herself, unfortunately her hair was still gone.  
    Tabitha moved closer to the mirror, inspecting her own face in great detail.  Tabitha found it difficult to recognise herself, of all the people that you know in your life, the most unfamiliar face is always your own, simply because it is the one you see the least, but she just blamed this on her new short haircut.  Tabitha had always kept her hair long and she had liked it that way.
    As she turned around, Tabitha noticed something on the back of her jumpsuit.  Below the hood was what looked like some kind of large barcode, completely covering her lower back, with a series of numbers above it.  The backwards numbers were hard to make out in the mirror, but she managed.  The serial number appeared to be, 019-284-400, she wondered what it meant.
    Tabitha walked back over to her bed as the cold tiled floor stuck to her bare feet; it wasn’t a long journey to make.  She noticed something now that she hadn’t done before; there was a shelf with a closed drawer next to her bed at eye level.  Inside the little nook in the wall was a spare jumpsuit wrapped in plastic.  
    Above this was a little rectangular cupboard inside the wall, it was closed.  She looked at the hinges, she looked at the thin handle and she also looked at the small circular green light above it, which was glowing.  Tabitha opened the drawer and found a white plastic bowel waiting for her; it was wrapped in plastic, just like the jumpsuit.  Next to it was a spoon, also wrapped up in plastic; Tabitha thought it was funny that people just assume that anything covered in plastic is clean.
    Tabitha removed these two objects and was shocked to see the base that they had been resting on ascend out of sight, just like some sort of dumbwaiter.  When she heard the sound of ascending cease, the green light above the drawer switched off.
    She removed the plastic from around the bowel and a warm smell spread throughout her sinuses.  The bowel was filled with a kind of watery broth, milk-like in colour.  Tabitha didn’t bother unwrapping the spoon; she was too hungry and just drank deeply from the bowel.  There wasn’t much of a taste to the soup, but she didn’t really care, it was like the taste had been intentionally removed and had left only a shadow of aftertaste that reminded the diner that there was once a flavour present.  Tabitha sat back down on her bed and continued her meal, while looking out of her cell in search of dinner entertainment.
    All she could see were two walkways, one by her cell and another across the way.  By this walkway, Tabitha could see into another cell and the edges of its neighbouring cells.
    This cell was of an exact same layout as Tabitha’s, the only difference being that it didn’t have her in it; it was now the home of someone else.  The occupant of this cell looked like a big woman, but apart from that, there was little else that she could describe.  The woman was lying down on her own bunk, still asleep, oblivious to the green light that was on by her bed.  Everything looked exactly the same as Tabitha’s cell, but there was something that she couldn’t see on her own cell.  On the thin parts of wall that separated the cell she was looking at from its neighbours, there were small control panels.  She guessed that these panels controlled each cell, but how could she tell which one was for which cell?
    When Tabitha finished her meal, she placed the bowel to one side and stood up, surreptitiously taking the spoon with her as she walked behind the partition in an attempt to shield herself from the camera’s view.  
    Once she was in what passed for a bathroom, Tabitha grabbed a nearby bottle of shampoo and poured some of it down the drain.  Then she forced the small metal spoon inside the container and placed it back on its shelf.  Tabitha wondered why they used metal spoons; it was probably because they wanted them to last for as long as possible.
    Tabitha stepped out from behind the partition and, for the first time, she approached the bright red border that marked out where her cell ended.  She stepped as close to the lights as she dared, Tabitha tried to see what would cause the unpleasant experience, which the voice promised.  Being this close to the front of her cell, she could now see a few storeys above and below her.
    The walls were honeycombed with red lined cells as far as she could see, Tabitha realised the scale of the complex, which she now found herself in.  Tabitha Roth’s philosophy of how to be happy was to just do whatever you wanted to do and nothing else, and it worked, up until now that is.  Now she was in prison, and she really hadn’t wanted that.  
    She noticed that if she craned her neck she could see to the side a point where the two walkways combined in the form of a double sky bridge.  Between the two bridges was a pillar with an aquamarine and turquoise symbol, ‘’, with writing across it, which said, ‘Tau-Block’.  Tabitha’s attention was then redirected back to in front of her.
    Tabitha couldn’t see what was so dangerous about these mild red lights, she thought how hilarious it would be if it was all an elaborate bluff to keep prisoners in their cells and there was actually no penalty for crossing the threshold, but she wasn’t going to risk it.  Perhaps if she grew desperate enough in the future, she might attempt it.
    That was it, Tabitha had seen all there was to see.  Now she began to wish that she hadn’t examined everything in her little cell, just so she’d have something to do later.  She paced up and down her tiny cell, there was no form of entertainment in these cells, not even a TV.  She felt that a television would’ve probably been a good idea for prisons because television acts as a mind damper.
    Your mind is most active when there is little or no stimuli present.  If inmates had something to do, it would keep their minds off what every prisoner thinks at least once at some point, escape.
    Tabitha went back to her bed to lie down, she started to feel so tired and the blackcurrant taste had returned.  She lay back down on the bed and looked up at the four strips of fluorescent lights, which covered most of the small ceiling.
    As Tabitha lay there, wondering what she should do now, she passed the time by staring at the still unconscious woman in the cell opposite her.  It was hard to judge time here, there were no windows or clocks, Tabitha didn’t even know what the date was.
    She only had to wait a few minutes before the only other human she could see began to stir.  Tabitha got up off her bed and walked over to the edge of her cell, she had been waiting eagerly for her fellow inmate to wake up so that she could get some information from her.  Tabitha wondered if she was also new, or if this woman had been at Jotnar for a while, she hoped it would be the latter.
    Tabitha really needed someone to talk to, as both a way of finding out some details of what was happening and also for just some human contact.  She wished for the woman she was watching to be that person, Tabitha quietly observed the woman sit up on her bed and look around.  Tabitha just stood there, centimetres away from her threshold while waiting for the now conscious prisoner to take notice of her.
    Eventually, the woman stood up, looked over her cell and then turned to Tabitha.  She approached her own threshold and gazed in confusion at this woman who was watching her.
    “Hello there!” Tabitha called.  “Are you new here also?”
    “What’s going on here?” the woman demanded.
    “I’ll take that as a yes,” Tabitha muttered to herself.  “My name is Tabitha, what’s yours?”
    “What is this place?” she said.
    “I think it’s Jotnar,” Tabitha said.  “I also think that there’s some food behind you if you’re hungry.”
    “What are you talking about?” she said.
    “The green light,” Tabitha clarified.  “At least, I think that’s what it means.”
    “If you don’t tell me what’s going on here, I’m going to kill you!” she screamed.
    “I think you might find that difficult,” Tabitha said, coming to the conclusion that this woman probably won’t be very useful.
    “Shut up!” she shouted.  “I’ll do it.”
    Tabitha realised the stubbornness of this large woman and began to think of a way that she might have a use, after all.
    “What’s stopping you?” Tabitha taunted, in hope of seeing just exactly what does happen if you cross the threshold.  “The bridge is just over there and there doesn’t seem to be any guards in sight.”
    “Screw you!” she said.  “You’re dead!”
    “I’m sorry,” Tabitha said sarcastically.  “I can’t quite hear you from all the way over here.”
    The woman screamed out in rage and ran out of her cell in the direction of the bridge, Tabitha was both horrified and mesmerised by what happened to the woman.  She barely got two feet from her cell before she began convulsing while still on her feet, then she slumped to the floor and gurgled softly as froth seeped from her mouth.
    Tabitha was fascinated by this technology, she had no idea what could have caused that but she needed to find out if she was to escape.  As a child, Tabitha had heard stories of how impossible it was to escape from Jotnar, but she just thought that was because it was so far away, she never dreamed of this bizarre way of containing people.
    As Tabitha continued to stare at the twitching lump over on the other walkway, she admitted to herself that she did feel slightly guilty for goading the woman into leaving her cell.
     After a few moments, Tabitha saw three men walking towards the unconscious woman from somewhere down the walkway.  All three wore green trousers and a matching tee shirt, with a thick black vest over it.  They also had black caps with ‘Olympus’ written on in yellow, with the O of the word containing an inverted V within its boundaries.  They also had a golden metallic badge, in the shape of the Olympus symbol, pinned to each of their chests.  All types of Olympus uniforms bore this mark somewhere about them.
Tabitha assumed that these men were guards, mostly because of the fact that they all carried compact shotguns, which hung from their shoulders by a thick black strap.  Each guard was also equipped with a retractable stun baton attached to their left hip and an oddly shaped type of reflective silver pistol on their left, so shiny it was almost mirror-like.
    One of the three guards, clearly in charge, told the other two something too quiet for Tabitha to hear from her cell, across the gap in between the walkways.  Then the other two guards picked up the seizing inmate and carted her away to places unseen.  Tabitha stared at the third guard, who chose to remain.
    All of Tabitha’s muscles clenched when the guard leader’s gaze shot over to her, causing her to be rooted in place.  She felt frozen as he causally walked over the skywalk and continued towards her cell.  Tabitha remembered herself and backed away a few steps from the border of brightly lit red lights, which she now feared greatly.  She rested her back against the dark grey partition as the tall guard stood on the other side of her cell’s red border.
    Tabitha was amazed at what the guard did next, she thought herself to be safe as long as the red lights were on, but this assumption was wrong.  The guard then proceeded to cross the luminous threshold and approached Tabitha, who was busy wondering how he did that.  He stopped inches away from Tabitha, making her feel very intimidated.
    “Hello Tabitha Roth,” he said.  “My name is Eric Lancer, I’m the patrol supervisor for the Tau-Block of the female wing.”
    “Hi,” Tabitha said quietly.
    “You see that camera,” Lancer pointed out the silver sphere attached to the ceiling.  “We can hear everything on it as well as seeing.  Somnus told me what you did.  I think you’re either going to be a lot of trouble or a lot of fun.”
    “What do you mean?” Tabitha said.
    “Get some rest while you can Tabitha,” Lancer said with a smile.  “Your first day is going to begin much sooner than that unfortunate other woman.”
    Tabitha had no idea what he meant and he left before she could ask him.  Eric Lancer once again crossed over the entrance of her cell, Tabitha couldn’t work out how.
    Tabitha Roth never did what she was told, and she never would, not even now.  It was true that after this encounter she did go back to sleep on her bed, but that was only because she wanted to.  It didn’t count if that was what she was going to do anyway, there wasn’t much else to do, for now that is.
    She awoke some time later, which was as specific as she could manage, it wasn’t a gradual waking, it was more forceful than that.  Tabitha was thrown back into the conscious world by a sudden barrage of loud and heavy music.
    Tabitha’s head shot up from her pillow and spun around in an attempt to locate the source of this noise.  She looked around and saw that high up on the back wall was a few slits, which looked like part of the air ventilation system.  She jumped out of bed and rushed over to it, but soon discovered that it was not responsible for the intrusive noise.  
    The next place she checked covered everywhere outside her cell, she stood by the inexplicably dangerous red threshold and looked over the outside.  She stretched her neck to the extreme in order to see the speakers, which were placed at the top of every other wall in between the cells.  Tabitha hadn’t noticed them before because they were just small squares, barely noticeable against the walls and nowhere near as obvious as the ones back on the Caduceus.
    Tabitha saw that the cell opposite her was still empty as she continued looking about in order to determine what this pounding music indicated.  As the seconds peeled away, the music intensified if anything, all the time Tabitha spent looking out of her cell.  Eventually, she saw a group of guards passing by on the other walkway; they were pushing a large group of prisoners along it.
    This was soon followed by four guards passing by Tabitha’s own cell, they seemed to be ignoring her and if there were any bars, she would’ve been banging on them.  Three of the guards kept on moving with their own group of prisoners, but one stopped by the wall just to the left of Tabitha’s cell.
    The guard continued to ignore her as she removed a key card from her vest and swiped it in the control panel, what immediately followed was a complete shut down of the fiercely glowing lights, which had previously surrounded the exit of her cell.
    Tabitha took note of the fact that the computer panel to the left of her cell controlled the mysterious security field, this information could be useful to her escape plans.  The neutral expression of her jailer didn’t change as she beckoned for Tabitha to leave her cell, which she did completely willingly.  Tabitha had no idea where they were going, but she didn’t care, she just wanted to go somewhere else apart form her cell.  She hadn’t even been in it that long and was already sick of it, Tabitha wanted a change of scenery just for the sake of it and also for some information about the layout of the rest of the Jotnar Centre.
    As she took her first steps out of her cell, Tabitha scanned all the new visual information and stored it for later use somewhere in the back of her mind.  There were so many things that she could see now, it was hard to know where to begin.
    The first thing Tabitha noticed as she was ushered along by the guards behind her, in the same direction as her fellow inmates, was the device that was situated directly above her.  Overhead was the walkway for the next level and on the underside of it was a single rail, which seemed to run along the entirety of the walkway.
    It was the same across the gap as well, a single rail along the underside of the walkway.  As Tabitha looked ahead of her, she could see what was connected to these rails, they were small gun turrets that travelled along the rails at tremendous speed, suddenly stopping occasionally to inspect as inmate.
    From Tabitha’s position, she could see several of these turrets per rail and, as one passed overhead, Tabitha saw that there was a small camera attached to the barrel of these portable turrets, which were constantly scanning every convict as they left their cells.  Tabitha was moving along the walkway, and passed the turquoise pillar, in a procession of many other prisoners.  Ahead of her, the front guards were letting more and more prisoners out of their cells and forced them to join the solemn march to an unknown destination.
    Tabitha furtively tried to get as near to the front of the linear crowd as possible, all the time keeping her head lowered as she remained under the constant scrutiny of the accompanying guards and the robotic gun turrets, which whizzed by overhead.
    She raised her head just enough to see a guard let another prisoner join the parade just a few cells down.  As soon as he did, a hysterical woman rushed out and grabbed the guard, screaming that she didn’t know what was happening.
    “What’s going on?” she said while flailing at nearby guards.  “Who are you people?  I want to go home!”
    Several guards surrounded her, shotguns firmly at the ready as Tabitha silently asked herself what that woman was thinking.  The guards cornered her against the railing of the walkway, the woman looked behind her and contemplated jumping, but she would’ve taken a while to land.  Two guards pointed their shotguns at her face as one of the robotic turrets suddenly appeared between them.
    “This is your last chance,” one of the guards warned.  “Keep moving.”
    The frightened prisoner looked around desperately for a way out, realising escape to be impossible, her face slid from a shifting portrait of alarm to a sullen mask of despondent fear.
    “I just want to go home,” she said softly.  Everyone in the vicinity heard this woman’s last words.
    Tabitha couldn’t help but feel slightly sympathetic, but this feeling quickly turned to astonishment when she saw how this woman died.  The guards didn’t shoot her, as expected, this woman was killed by the robotic turret hanging down from the rail on the ceiling.  However, what it fired wasn’t bullets, it was a laser turret.  These automated weapons could program the intensity and range of the laser beam before it fired, depending on the situation, as to not damage anything other than the intended target.
    A narrow constant stream of incandescent blue light instantly appeared from the turret.  The shaft of light’s tip was slightly bulbous where the energy beam ended in dispersal.  It looked like a long blade of coloured light had just emerged from the turret and arced in the direction of the prisoner within a mere fraction of a second.  The light was so intense at the centre of the beam that the brightly shining glow caused everyone around the woman, including Tabitha, to avert their gaze.
When the beam disappeared in a flash, Tabitha looked at the woman, who was still standing, but not for long.  Her head rolled back from her body and fell over the railing, deep down into the chasm below, she had been decapitated.
    Tabitha witnessed with a disgusted fascination as the now headless body’s knees gave way and fell to the ground, blood emanating all around it from the red stump, which was once her neck.  The laser hadn’t burnt, only cut.
    “Contact Eric,” one of the guards ordered.  “Have him send someone to clean this up.”
    “Can’t we just use some of them to take care of it?” the other guard said, gesturing over to the all the other prisoners who had seen the woman’s unexpected execution.
    “No, most of this lot are new.  I don’t think they even know where the incinerator is.”
    “Fine, you take this group to the Pit.”
    Tabitha was forced to keep on moving, along with all the other yellow-garbed bare-footed individuals.  She was commanded to walk past the still present headless corpse in order to progress further, when she hesitated the computerised turret appeared at lightning speed in front of her.  It just hung there, waiting.  She had seen what happens to people who disobey, Tabitha shot a look of contempt at the turret’s scanner and stepped over the lifeless body of the briefly lived Mercurian.
    Tabitha cringed as part of her heel touched the edge of the dead woman’s blood pool, but soon recovered and continued walking in the direction that the guards drove her in.  All the other inmates were also herded past the dead prisoner and directed further down the walkway.  These reluctant cattle were lead all the way to the end of the walkway where there was nothing but a dead-end and a set of stairs, which Tabitha was violently shoved up, along with the other prisoners.  They all ascended this wide set of stairs positioned at the end of the walkways.  These stairs filled the gap in between the skywalks and were present on every single level of the complex, as far as Tabitha could see.
    All around her, Tabitha could see inmates from other levels joining the stairway and the yellow crowds above and below her grew in number.  On almost every single gantry she passed, stern faced guards stood to one side by the railings, and regarded her with their disdain.  The prisoners silently climbed the stairs until they reached a level where there were no more cells, no walkways, just a huge assembly hall, which the guards ‘encouraged’ the prisoners to take their places in front of a pair of enormous metallic double doors.  Tabitha looked around at this room, the stairs continued up to an even higher level but that was the only feature within this immense and empty hall.
    It resembled an empty warehouse, which had a series of huge industrial-scale mesh shielded fans mounted in the floor behind the crowds and were used to help ventilate the levels below.  The huge crowd of prisoners clustered together within this massive rectangular hall.  All the guards efficiently split into two groups, one of which lined the walls of the hall to keep the prisoners in line and the other collected around the large doors at the front of the hall, they kept all the prisoners at a distance while they waited for something.  To either side of the doors were small portholes, Tabitha stood on her tiptoes in an attempt to see what was through them.  She saw the outside, but it wasn’t the kind of outside that she was used to.  Tabitha deduced that they must be at the surface level of Mercury.
    This lull was broken by the appearance of a guard from a higher up level, Tabitha recognised him as being Eric Lancer, the sergeant of the guard in this cellblock.  He descended the stairs and the guards pushed prisoners out of his way as he approached the doors.  There was a control panel to the right of these massive doors, which Eric swiped his key card in as his detachment of Jotnar guards saluted him.
    An echoing metallic thud signalled that huge heavy locks had moved out of place, and then the doors opened.  They didn’t slide open as expected, they swung open inwards, slowly.  When they reached a ninety-degree angle, they stopped opening.  Tabitha could see huge symbols, which were painted on in red and covered the exterior parts of the doors.  On the left door was the female symbol, with the same elongated letter T on the opposing door, ‘’.
    As the doors opened, a blast of warm air flowed over everyone within this gathering chamber, but this refreshing change quickly turned into an uncomfortable sweltering heat.  The guards lining the walls closed in on the large clump of prisoners, forcing them outside, Tabitha could remember seeing Eric’s smiling face as she left the complex.
    When all residents of Tau-Block had been successfully transported outside, the half of the group of guards who had remained by the doors also exited the block.  Tabitha looked back to see the doors swing shut once again and then looked forwards to see something much more amazing, the yard of the Jotnar Detention Centre.
    The female wing of Jotnar was completely built into the south wall on the central dome, she looked up to see that it only stood three storeys high, but she had seen many levels of jail cells within, she reasoned that they all must have been underground.  On the second storey was a balcony, which ran across the entire length of the women’s wing and was filled with guards operating mounted machine guns, which they were readily pointing down at the crowds of prisoners if they showed any act of defiance.
    Above this platform full of sentries, which protruded out from the second floor, was another level with no windows and, as Tabitha squinted, she could make out small cylindrical silver cameras attached near the top of the building, constantly scanning the convicted masses below.  The top of this building was the same height as the solid thick metal walls, which encircled the entire central complex.  Even higher than this was the transparent dome that covered the facility, which had to be highly polarised to block most of the heat and light from the vast Sun above.  The natural Mercurial rock underneath Tabitha’s feet felt very strange but it also felt quite nice, at least it was warm.
    Tabitha noticed that her block was situated towards the end of the colossal wing, located closer to the westerly wall of the central courtyard than the east.  She could see the huge western gate that lead to the separate smaller dome, where the governor’s mansion stood.  It was hard to make out the details from where Tabitha was, but if she could, she would’ve seen two towers built into the walls on either side of the gate, in which snipers were positioned, who looked out over the rest of the prison’s exterior.  On the gate itself, the symbol of the Olympus Corporation was painted on in bright green.
    At the other end of the huge courtyard, far to small for Tabitha to see, was the eastern gate that lead to the Jotnar Quays.  This gate had a stylised picture of the symbol for the Caduceus, the Wand of Hermes, in bright orange.  Next to this gate was just a small guard checkpoint.  Arcing up in the sky, above the gate, Tabitha could see the incredibly high docking tower through the polarised dome.  To Tabitha’s left, she could see five other massive sets of double doors, which stretched off far into the distance until they reached the western limit of the facility.  These were the doors of five other blocks and they all had their residents being let out as well.
    As Tabitha looked straight ahead, she saw the men’s wing off in the distance, the sole contributor of the Mercurial skyline.  It was of the exact same size and structure as the women’s and all the prisoners from the last six blocks of it were also coming out into the central courtyard of the Jotnar Centre.
    The reason why so many inmates of Jotnar were leaving their cells was obvious when Tabitha looked at the centre of the courtyard.  There was a massive hole in the ground, it looked like some kind of mine.  As Tabitha and her fellow prisoners waited by the entrance of their blocks with their minders, she saw large mesh access lifts raise up all around the circumference of this gigantic man-made crater.
    The lifts kept descending down into the depths of the hole, always returning full of dirty and tired looking prisoners.  When they reached the surface, these inmates would always cover their eyes from the bright light above.
    The lifts attached to the southern lip of the wide gulf were filled with female prisoners and male prisoners for the northern lifts.  All of these miserable humans were then all escorted back to their blocks, the men going to the first six blocks of the male wing, near the entrance to the Quays, and the women went to the same part of their wing.  All these huge processions were escorted by large numbers of guards.  This exterior yard was so large that some of the guards were having to use buggies to travel from one end to another.
    All the prisoners, however, had to walk back to their respective blocks.  When every single inmate who had returned to the surface was safely back inside their own blocks, on both sides of the gender divide, the guards that waited with the women of Tau-Block ordered them to head for the Pit.
    Tabitha didn’t know what to think, the voice had said that they would have to work, but what kind of work was this?  Tabitha looked to her left, where the other five processions were also making their gradual way to the huge pit at the centre of Jotnar.  The same thing was also happening over at the men’s wing, six blocks worth of inmates were being escorted to this giant chasm in the middle of the No Man’s Land halfway in between the two wings.
    For now, Tabitha just followed the huge crowd of yellow jumpsuits that she was currently a part of and obediently followed the guards as they lead them to this mine.  Some of the guards had gotten into a couple of buggies, which had been waiting for them by the entrance to the block and now slowly accompanied the grim march forwards.
    Tabitha was hot already, her mouth was dry and sticky at the same time, she was incredibly thirsty.  The procession towards the centre of the courtyard never stopped until they arrived their, but there was something that stalled it for a second or two.
    A few people ahead of Tabitha, there was an old woman, she looked at least eighty but any extended period of time spent at Jotnar could’ve made anyone look like that, even Tabitha.  She lowered her hood and approached a guard who was walking with them nearby and grabbed his arm.
    “Please,” she gasped.  “I can’t go into the Pit again.  I’m so tired.”
    The guard easily shook off her grip and regarded her coldly.  “Then rest,” he said, before firing his shotgun at her chest.
    The old woman flew backwards and collapsed, the guard pointed at a couple of prisoners and said, “You two.  Take her to the incinerator.”
    They nodded and quickly did so.  Near the eastern gate, there was a large gap between the Alpha-Blocks of both wings and the gate to the Quays.  What partly filled these gaps were two buildings of separate functions.  Next to the women’s Alpha-Block was a small infirmary and facing it over on the side of the men’s, there was a similar sized building, which contained the incinerator.
    This building was where they burnt the many bodies that accumulated at Jotnar.  The incinerator was also built directly into the barrier between Jotnar and the Mercurial exosphere, but it had an exhaust pipe that pumped out the fumes from the Jotnar Centre and into Mercury’s atmosphere.  You couldn’t pollute a planet’s air if it doesn’t have any.
    After these two small buildings nearby the eastern gate, was when the two wings began, they were both semi-circular in shape and completely built into their respective walls.
    Tabitha walked past the pair of inmates carrying the old woman away to be burnt without even glancing at them.  She just focussed on getting to the ‘Pit’, she was curious.  When they reached the Pit, Tabitha looked down the central hole.  Even though their was a huge star above it, Tabitha still couldn’t see all the way down it.  The guards pushed as many inmates as they could fit into each access lift and then sent them down into the dark Pit, only for them to return to the surface, empty.
    As Tabitha waited in line for her lift, she looked over at the eastern part of the Pit, there was a set of vertical conveyor belts, bringing up large piles of a strange dark substance in compartments.  When it arrived at surface level, there were groups of prisoners ready to pile it into mining carts and push along a pair of tracks in the direction of the eastern gate and into the Jotnar Quays.
    Eventually it came to be Tabitha’s turn, she was pushed by a guard into the large lift.  The inmates were pressed in tightly near the back of the wide lift as several guards stood by the front, scowling at the large group of cowering prisoners.
    Tabitha stared at one of the guards at the front of the lift who returned the stare even harder.  It was a long descent down to wherever they were going, Tabitha looked out of the mesh lift to see a series of dimly lit shafts.  She couldn’t see much, just the occasional silhouette of a person’s movement between narrow beams of light.
    The lift descended at an incredible speed but it still took a few minutes of travel before the lift came to a mechanical halt.  One of the guards pushed open the folding lift door and instructed everyone to get out.  When the lift was empty, the guard swiped his key card in the slot of a nearby control station and the lift returned to the surface, ready for another group.
    Tabitha took her first steps out into the dark mines of Jotnar, she looked back up at where they came from only to see that the massive hole had turned into little more than a tiny tear in the ceiling far above her.  A long pillar of light cascaded down from the entrance to the Pit like a mild waterfall, only to have the light dissipate less than halfway down the massive vertical tunnel.
    Tabitha, along with the rest of her group, was then pushed in the direction they were meant to go in.  The guards ushered them down a crowded corridor, where she was handed a mining pick and a canteen from another guard by a rack of equipment.  She placed the canteen’s strap around her neck and examined the tool she had been given, it was just a simple pick with a rubber handle.
    Wherever she looked, Tabitha saw teams of prisoners chipping away at the walls.  She was escorted through a series of winding passageways, Tabitha lost count of how many different tunnels and mineshafts she saw on the way.
    Off in the background, Tabitha heard the constant sound of metal grinding against metal as her group was taken down into a lower tunnel.  There she saw a small group of prisoners hacking away at a wall, the rocks falling onto a small conveyor belt below them, which took the debris through a small channel to a place Tabitha couldn’t see.
    The guards told them to get to work, some of them started digging and Tabitha took her place in the line and just started copying what everyone else was doing.  The guards that had brought them here then stepped out of the entrance to the small tunnel and spoke to each other out of earshot.
    Tabitha stopped digging and looked around, behind them, there was a spherical silver camera built into the wall, just like the on back in her cell, just quite a bit dirtier.  While taking in all these new sights, Tabitha had almost forgot how thirsty she was and took a swig from her canteen, shortly followed by her spitting it out.
    “Are you okay?” a woman next to her asked in a friendly manner as Tabitha started coughing.
    “What the hell is this stuff?” Tabitha asked in between splutters.
    “It’s called ichor…” she said.  “…by us prisoners at least.”
    “I thought it was water,” Tabitha said.
    “It is…mostly,” she said.  “It’s just got a lot of glucose and supplements added to it to keep us going.  Is this your first time in the Pit?”
    “Yes,” Tabitha said.  “I just woke up in this weird cell and then I was carted off to here.”
    “Yeah,” she confirmed.  “You’re new.”
    “How long have you been here?” Tabitha asked.
    “A few years,” she said.  “My name is Jane Williams.”
    Tabitha was glad, she finally found someone who knew something, she had found someone she could use.  Jane was both taller and slightly older than Tabitha and her black hair was longer, almost at her shoulders.  Tabitha realised that she could simply tell how long an inmate had been at Jotnar by the length of their hair.  On Jane’s chest was a different symbol.
    “I’m Tabitha Roth,” Tabitha said.
    “It’s nice to meet you,” Jane said.
    “What does that mean?” Tabitha asked and pointed to the character on Jane’s jumpsuit, ‘’
    “It means I’m in Psi-Block,” Jane explained.  “And yours means that you’re in Tau-Block.  The men’s and women’s wings are each split into 24 blocks.  Six blocks from each wing share the same shift in the Pit and we’re part of the same shift, each shift is eighteen hours long so get used to this place, you’ll be here a while.”
    “Eighteen hours?” Tabitha repeated incredulously.
    “That’s right,” Jane said.  “Eighteen hours of work followed by six hours of rest back in your cell.  When you do get back, be sure to make the most of your time.  Grab a shower, get some food and then sleep for whatever time you have left.”
    “How is six hours long enough for that?” Tabitha said.
    “You should be grateful,” Jane said.  “When this place was built back in 2120, they only gave a four hour break.”
    “How could they do that?” Tabitha asked
    “They worked on the reasoning that humans only need four hours of sleep a night to stay healthy,” Jane said.
    “That’s insane,” Tabitha said.
    “Perhaps,” Jane said.  “At least we get more now.”
    “You’ve been living this way for years?” Tabitha said.  “How can you be so lively?”
    “The alternative’s not very useful, is it?” Jane replied with a smile.
    “Does this mean we only get one meal a day?” Tabitha asked.
    “Yeah,” Jane said.  “That’s right.”
    “How can people survive on that?” Tabitha said.
    “It’s a good meal,” Jane said.  “It’s full of all the necessary minerals and nutrients to keep us alive for one more day.  Can I ask you something?”
    “You want to ask me a question?” Tabitha asked.
    “If you’ll let me,” Jane said.  “What did you do with the spoon?”
    “What do you mean?” Tabitha said.
    “The spoon they gave you,” Jane said.  “What did you do with it?  No one actually uses the spoon for eating.  Most people just scrape them on the tiles in their bathroom to sharpen them up to turn them into a makeshift weapon, which they then use to attack the guards and that just gives them one more reason to execute you.  I’ve got a theory that it’s all a psychological experiment being conducted by Somnus, because it’s bored and it wants to just see what we do with it.”
    “Who’s Somnus?” Tabitha wondered.
    “It’s the super AI that regulates Jotnar,” Jane said.  “Its mainframe is underneath the Governor’s house at Tannhauser.”
    “What’s Tannhauser?” Tabitha asked.
    “You know where the doors are to your block?” Jane said.  “The western gate is near there, through them, there is a tunnel that takes you to a separate smaller dome than this main central one.  Those grounds are called Tannhauser, it’s where the Governor lives and where the Solar Farms are.”
    “What are the Solar Farms?” Tabitha said.
    “They cover most of Tannhauser,” Jane said.  “It consists of a field of solar panels, which provides power to all of Jotnar, just another way for Olympus to cut costs.  They’re beautiful, you know.  I’ve been there, a long time ago.  I wish I could go back one day.”
    “When were you there?” Tabitha questioned.
    “Near the start of my sentence,” Jane said.  “Not every inmate works in the Pit, there are other tasks that need to be done.”
    “Like what?” Tabitha asked.
    “If you’re lucky you might get some cleaning duty in the guards’ quarters but the best work is tending the Solar Farms,” Jane said.  “All you have to do is just check each panel is working properly, then you can relax all day, it’s nice work.”
    “How do you get that work?” Tabitha said.
    “There’s a work rotation depending on how long you’ve been here,” Jane said.  “But there aren’t many positions outside the Pit and, as you can imagine, there are a lot of inmates here.  Trust me, you’ll most likely never get any other work.”
    “How did you get it?” Tabitha said.
    “When I first came here, I didn’t like working in the Pit,” Jane said.  “I asked for work anywhere else and I got the Solar Farms, when my turn was over in two weeks, I asked again and they gave me cleaning work, then I asked a third time and I got to load the mining carts at the surface.  When I completed my service at all these positions, I asked another time but they wouldn’t give me another, there were no more ‘soft’ jobs left.  I had used up all my options, now all that’s left for me is the Pit. ”
    “You got them just be asking?” Tabitha said.
    “Well…I’m related to a person of influence,” Jane said.  “They felt obligated to help me out.”
    “Wow,” Tabitha said.  “Who are you related to?”
    “Another time, Tabitha,” Jane brushed her off.  “You never told me what you did with the spoon, or what you’re planning to do?  Did you do the old classic and hide it in a shampoo bottle?”
    Tabitha didn’t answer, she thought herself to be so clever when she hid the spoon in her shampoo bottle.  Now she wouldn’t be surprised to find it gone when she returned to her cell after a staggering eighteen hours had expired.
    “Why haven’t you asked me the obvious questions yet?” Jane asked suddenly.
    “Like what?” Tabitha said.
    “I know that when I first arrived, there were some things that I definitely wanted to know,” Jane said.  “Do you taste the blackcurrant too?”
    “Yeah,” Tabitha said in a grateful manner because Jane had provided reassurance that Tabitha wasn’t imagining it.  “What is that?”
    “It’s a side effect of Hypnotropin,” Jane said.
    “What’s Hypnotropin?” Tabitha asked.
    “A drug that Olympus invented,” Jane said.  “It was the goo you were covered in when you first arrived.”
    “The green slime?” Tabitha said.
    “Actually that was more of a Hypnotropin solution,” Jane said.  “It’s a very powerful sedative that places you in a coma and keeps you well preserved over long periods of time.”
    “Is it like suspended animation?” Tabitha asked.
    “Not really,” Jane explained.  “You still age, it just keeps you healthy.  Hypnotropin knocks you out and, as long as a controlled dosage is regularly administered, it will keep you unconscious.  That’s why you were naked when you woke up, remember?  When you’re immersed in that green liquid, having no clothes increases the rate of absorption through your skin and makes sure that we don’t wake up during transportation.  Not only does Hypnotropin act as a sedative, it also accelerates healing because it’s designed to keep you preserved and perfectly healthy over long periods of inactivity.  The drug does this by temporarily turning you into a partial chemoautotroph, you actually gain nourishment from the drug itself and break it down to make energy.  They also saturate the batch of Hypnotropin with a solution full of efficient nutrients to complement your energy supply, these artificial food-products generate no waste products when metabolised by humans.  When you’re in a Hypnotropin-induced coma, all body functions switch off apart from your heart, lungs and brain, but only their basic functions.  This limits the amount of energy you need when you’re under to an absolute minimum.  When you’re in this coma, your brain only needs 15% the amount of energy as it usually does.  Theoretically, they could just leave us in those pods forever and we’d probably have a longer life expectancy than out here in the waking world.  Fascinating, isn’t it?  What did you think of the reanimation experience?  Personally, I rather liked it, it was like getting a second chance at birth.”
    “How do you know all that information?” Tabitha said.
    “I just asked,” Jane said, smiling sweetly.  “I’ve been here a while, the law of averages states that I must’ve met at least a couple of friendly guards during my time and I talked with them occasionally.  I also know what those scars are all over your chest.”
    “You do?” Tabitha asked.  “I’ve been worried about them, what are they?”
    “Those scars on your torso will never go away,” Jane said, unbuttoning her jumpsuit to show that she too has the exact same scars.  “They’ve healed as much as they can.  They’re reminders…that you’re the property of Olympus now.  Don’t worry, they’ll stop hurting after a few days.”
    “But why do we have them?” Tabitha asked.
    “Standard procedure,” Jane said.  “When every single prisoner first arrives at Jotnar, they instantly undergo surgery.”
    “What kind of surgery?” Tabitha asked.
    “Organ removal,” Jane said.  “They take your left kidney, your right lung and most of your liver.”
    “Why?” Tabitha said.
    “Profit,” Jane said.  “The Olympus Corporation sells them back on Earth to people awaiting organ transplant surgery.  Artificial organs might last longer and be more reliable but they’re incredibly expensive, only the richest can afford them.  Olympus harvests the expendable organs of all their sentenced slaves and when we drop dead of exhaustion, they’ll take the rest.  This facility is expensive, they have the Solar Farms providing power but they need every other method to cut costs, such as selling our organs to the poorer of the infirm.”
    “That’s horrible,” Tabitha said as more of a reflex than anything else.  “But why do they do it when we arrive?  Why didn’t they just take them back on Earth?”
    “They can’t,” Jane said.  “All of Earth is governed by the continental Unions, which all have strict human rights laws.  The Parliamentary rulings are even in affect within the space surrounding Earth, but once the prisoners arrive on Mercury, the only governing body that is left is the Olympus Corporation and they can do whatever they want to here.  They use medical robotic arms to efficiently cut us up with surgical lasers, take what they want and send it back to Earth on returning transport ships in containers filled with Hypnotropin to keep them preserved.  Olympus makes a lot of money from marketing the organs of the wicked.  When they’re taking out your organs, they also use the opportunity to give you brain surgery, if you need it, to remove any mental implants you’ve previously had installed.”
    “What kind of implants?” Tabitha said.
    “Synaptic implants,” Jane said.  “Never heard of them?  I’m not surprised.  Even though you couldn’t tell who has one, they still weren’t that popular.  They’re little enhancements that allow a person to access the Internet without a computer.  They were invented by Olympus in the early post-war economy.  Personally, I don’t think the risk of brain surgery is worth the slight convenience of not having to carry around a computer, especially if you take into account how small a computer you can get these days.  They take them out of new prisoners because the Earth Internet can be accessed from here via High Justice, the communications satellite that’s in orbit above Mercury.  They couldn’t have inmates with that capability.  Then the prisoners would have access to entertainment and would be able to contact people on Earth.  This could lead to all sorts of unfortunate consequences.  After you’ve been carved up with whatever procedures you need, they store all the new arrivals in the top floor of the wings in vats of Hypnotropin with an oxygen heavy air supply to help you heal faster, so they can put you to work as quickly as possible.  They usually leave the new people in those tubes for about a week.  Do you even know what the date is?”
    “No,” Tabitha admitted.
    “It’s the 14th of May,” Jane said, smiling broadly.
    “How do you know that?” Tabitha said.
    “I ask a guard every few months or so and keep a mental note,” Jane said.
    “Do you know what these marks are on my arms?” Tabitha asked.
    “They do that after they bring you out of the healing tubes,” Jane said.  “That small cut on your right arm is where they put your sensitivity chip.”
    “What does that do?” Tabitha said.
    “That little chip prevents you from leaving your cell,” Jane said.
    “How does it work?” Tabitha asked eagerly.
    “The Sensitivity Field is a radio signal that covers the entrance of your cell,” Jane said.  “The sensitivity chip is attached to a nerve in your arm and if it detects the frequency of the Sensitivity Field, it sends an electrical impulse up to your brain, which causes you to have a seizure.”
    “Can’t I just cut it out,” Tabitha asked.
    “Don’t try,” Jane said.  “They insert it just under your radial artery, I once saw a woman attempt to dig it out with a spoon, not very precise as you can imagine.  I swear, the blood went about ten feet into the air.”
    “What’s this thing on my other arm?” Tabitha asked.
    “Needle puncture,” Jane said simply.  “After the bring you out of the vats they also draw a pint of blood from you and test it up in those medical labs on the top floors of the wings.  They just check for any illnesses or drugs that they need to be aware of and then they also send that blood back to Earth to be used by again by someone else.  Olympus are very passionate about recycling, like all that plastic that you see wrapping everything.  They’ve been using the same plastic for thirty years and they just reuse it.  Oh, and they also test your blood to see if you’re pregnant.”
    “I hadn’t thought about that,” Tabitha said.  “What happens if you are pregnant?”
    “They make you un-pregnant,” Jane said.  “Pregnant women don’t make very good workers.  They didn’t use to check for pregnancy you know, back when Jotnar was newly built.  In the early twenties there was a woman who turned out to be pregnant.  No one noticed for a while, these jumpsuits are pretty baggy you know.  When it finally did come to their attention, they called in the infirmary doctor who gave her a Caesarean and delivered a healthy baby boy, this was back in 2121.  After that day, they started testing for pregnancy to avoid another embarrassment.”
    “What happened to the baby?” Tabitha said.
    “He became a ward of the Olympus Corporation,” Jane said.  “The first few months of his life, they just kept him at Jotnar, not really knowing what to do with him.  Then, they took him back to Earth.  The story is they trained him from infancy to become an operative for the Olympus Corporation.  They didn’t give him a real name, he was just known by a code name, ‘The Pink Lotus’.  Apparently, he was used as a spy during the Corporate Wars for Olympus.”
    “But he would’ve just been a teenager,” Tabitha pointed out.
    “That’s right,” Jane said.  “He was a child soldier who was conditioned from birth to both fight bravely on the battlefield, and also be adept at gathering useful intelligence for the Company.  In the early days of the war, he was captured by the Tersa Corporation and sent to that ill-famed interrogation facility, ‘The Maiden’.”
    “Never heard of it,” Tabitha said.
    “It’s the place the Tersa Corporation took all their POW’s,” Jane said.  “It’s a subterranean gulag hidden somewhere in Siberia.  They kept him there throughout the war, torturing him every day for counter-intelligence.  Olympus thought he’d been killed so no one went to look for him.  I don’t really know the details all that well of what happened to him after the war.  He returned to Olympus for a bit but he’s been missing for years.  He became a professional torturer after his confinement, hiring out his services to criminals.  Now, the Lotus is a pretty infamous figure in the underworld.”
    “You learned all that from gossip?” Tabitha asked.
    “It’s a powerful tool,” Jane said.  
    “Have you ever seen those medical labs you spoke of earlier?” Tabitha asked.  
    “On the top floor of the wings?” Jane said.  “I’ve been in those of my block once or twice when I was asked to clean them.”
    “What can you tell me about the rest of the wings?” Tabitha questioned further.
    “Well,” Jane began.  “The guards’ quarters are one floor down from the medical level.  Below that is the assembly hall where the prisoners gather before working in the Pit, and even further below that are the dungeons where the cells are.  The guards quarters are probably the nicest part, did you know that they have a lift can take them down into the dungeons?  Yet, they make us prisoners go up all those stairs, it’s not really fair.  There’s something interesting about the guards’ quarters on the second level, all the guards’ quarters throughout the entire wing are connected to one another so every guard can actual travel between them without having to go outside onto the surface.  I’ve gone into some of the other blocks to clean the guards’ quarters but I don’t think I’ve ever been in Tau-Block before, though.  What’s your level like?  I’m guessing it’s full of new people, like you.  That’s what they do when a new shipment comes, they stick them in the least populated levels of the least populated block.  I think it’s nice to be around people of a similar situation to you.”
    “What’s the incinerator?” Tabitha asked.  “I heard a guard say something about it.”
    “It’s in the morgue,” Jane said.  “A small building attached to the men’s wing, near the Portcullis, that’s what we call the eastern gate to the Quays.  That’s where they take all the dead prisoners to be harvested of any useful materials and then burn them.  It’s in the same position next to the men’s Alpha-Block as the infirmary connected to the end of the women’s.”
    “Thanks for all the information,” Tabitha said.
    “No problem,” Jane said.  “It’s what I wanted when I first came here.  Now let me give you some advice, when you get to go back to your cell, there’ll be some food waiting for you.  Try not to eat it all.”
    “Why?” Tabitha wondered.
    “They put sedatives and mind suppressants in the food,” Jane said.  “They even put minute traces of Hypnotropin to keep us healthy and place us within a quasi-coma like trance.  It’s bad enough that they put us in this physical prison, there’s no need to put yourself in a mental prison.  If you take less than everybody else, it won’t affect you nearly as much and you’ll keep your mind for longer.”
    Tabitha felt herself to be lucky, she’d found someone that might actually be able to help her.  She had enjoyed just chatting with Jane while everyone around them worked, but then that all changed.  Jane suddenly glanced behind her, saw something that concerned her and then picked up her pick once again and returned to digging.
    “What is it?” Tabitha asked.  “What’s wrong?”
    “Behind us,” Jane whispered between frantic pick strokes.  “Keep working, a guard is coming.”
    Tabitha looked behind to see one of the guards at the mouth of the tunnel receive a message from his earpiece and started heading this way.
    “It’s the camera behind us,” Jane said quickly.  “Somnus sees and hears everything through them.  It must’ve told them that we’re no working.”
    Tabitha began working again, hacking away at the rock but seeing no real purpose in what she was doing.  A guard came towards them, shotgun tightly gripped in hand, he checked over the prisoners of this group and then walked back to his post at the mouth of the tunnel to chat with his friend, just like Jane and Tabitha had begun doing again.
    “Jane?” Tabitha said.
    “Yes?” Jane said.
    “What are those weird pistols that they have strapped to their waist?” Tabitha asked.
    “The shiny ones?” Jane said.  “They’re tranquilliser guns, they fire darts filled with concentrated Hypnotropin to subdue any prisoner who gets out of hand but I’ve never seen a guard use one in all the time I’ve been here.  They prefer to just use their shotguns on us, it’s easier.  In fact, I think it’s encouraged to free up as much space as possible.”
    “Hey Jane?” Tabitha asked.  “What are we digging for?”
    “Nothing here,” Jane said.  “We’re just meant to be widening this shaft so that they can fit the heavy machinery down it.”
    “And what will they be digging for?” Tabitha pressed.
    “The official function of the Pit is an iron mine,” Jane said.  “That’s what it started as.  Jotnar’s location was chosen on the parameters of finding the part of the planet, which held the most natural resources.  When Olympus personnel originally landed on Mercury to build Jotnar, they were the first humans to set foot on the planet.  They figured this gave them the right to rename the provinces for their Archives.”
    “They want to mine for iron?” Tabitha asked.  “But there’s loads of that on Earth.”
    “Not like this,” Jane said.  “What their probes found in the Jotnar basin was a special isotope of the element, Iron-60.  It’s extinct on Earth but the Olympus Corporation love it, I think they use it in the engines of their larger ships.  You saw the huge hole at the surface, right?  The opening of the Pit?  That was caused by the first ship to land on Mercury, the Jotunheimer.  It was a mining ship and its massive drill delved deep into the planet’s crust.  When they made that first incision, that ship was dismantled and parts of it was used to build the Jotnar Centre around the Pit, along with the building supplies they brought with them.”
    “Do we get to operate the heavier machinery?” Tabitha asked.
    “No,” Jane said.  “They don’t trust us with that.  The heavy equipment are like the surface buggies with caterpillar tracks and a drill stuck on the end.  They’re all robotic and operated by the Somnus computer from Tannhauser.”
    “Does Somnus also control the laser turrets inside the dungeons?” Tabitha asked.
    “Yep,” Jane said.  “They’re called C-beam Projectors.  They’re named after the fact that Cerberus computers using motion sensors controlled the first laser turrets.  However, Somnus controls these lighter more mobile models and it can hear everything we’re saying about it right now.”
    Tabitha found herself felling a sudden surge of unexpected loathing towards the Somnus computer.  So much so that she needed to take some breaths to calm down.
    “Anyway,” Jane continued.  “The main export from Jotnar is Iron-60 but they also make us open up shafts to get at pockets of precious metals or stones that they sometimes uncover.  Right now, we’re pretty close to the centre of the Pit, but the true extent of these mines is immense.  The shafts run for miles in every direction, they cover a huge area and even extend outside the central dome over the Pit.  By using convict slave labour to help get the rare iron along with whatever else they find down here back to Earth, Olympus further cuts the cost of Jotnar.  When you combine that with the free energy from the Sun and the money they get from selling our organs, the Jotnar Centre practically pays for itself.”
    “Is it a good idea for us to be talking so much if that camera behind us can hear everything?” Tabitha whispered.
    “There aren’t many places where there aren’t cameras,” Jane said.  “The only part of Jotnar I can think of is Tannhauser, there aren’t any cameras among the Solar Farms.  All the cameras in Jotnar are the latest generation of scanning technology, they were replaced when Alison Riley arrived about ten years ago to be the new Governor.  She helped in creating the Somnus super AI and it came with her to Jotnar.  Before Somnus, this place was just run by the old human Governor with human guards being the only ones monitoring the cameras’ images and it was nowhere near as organised as it is now, not that I was here back then but I’ve heard stories from veteran guards.”
    “If Somnus runs this place, what does the Governor do?” Tabitha asked.
    “I have no idea,” Jane said.  “I’ve never seen her, she spends all her time within her mansion at Tannhauser.  I think she needs to make sure that Somnus is always working properly, she did build it so she must know how to do that.  When Jotnar underwent this renovation, Olympus saw an opportunity to modify the cameras, before Alison Riley came, they were just cameras, now they’re all scanners.”
    “What’s the difference?” Tabitha said.
    “Somnus has the genetic information of all the prisoners here,” Jane said.  “Our DNA, fingerprints, retinal scans and faces.  Taking DNA samples off people is against the law on Earth because the Parliaments still fear that this information could be misused in genetic experiments without the person’s knowledge.  On this planet, however, Olympus can do as they please.  They take the sample when you arrive and they already have the rest of your information from your life on Earth.  The cameras constantly scan every prisoner’s retinas as soon as they see them and it brings up all their information.  If you’re too far away for them to focus on your eyes, then they just instantly scan your facial nodes against the database.”
    “What if my back’s turned?” Tabitha said.
    “That’s why we have barcodes on our backs,” Jane said.  “It’s so they could scan them and see all of your information just from your presence.  This means Somnus always knows what it’s looking at.”
    “This is a bizarre place,” Tabitha noted.  “So what do we do now?”
    “Our time is far from over,” Jane said, her bright smile had now vanished from her face.  “Look out for me in the next shift but, for now, we have to keep working.”