NTPWE Chapter 6: In which Jacob makes friends

In the future there will be robots and a hologram called Jacob who didn't realise he was a hologram until he was sent to prison. There he makes friends with a sexbot who has broken her programming and now fights for women's rights and an alien called Nevi

For all the time that passed, the meal times that he ignored, the abuse he took and the terrible doubts that rocked him like a game of dodge ball in which somebody had superglued his shoes to the floor, Jacob’s thoughts could be summed up by one question:

 

What happened to the real me?

 

Of course, this assumption was based on the fact that there had been a human version of him to begin with. He didn’t understand the mechanics of a fully functioning, humanoid hologram - it’s mind-boggling. A being made of light? So what have I tinkled down the toilet all these years? How did I grow! - Nevertheless he felt sure he would have noticed earlier if he was never human.

 

Occasionally he heard chuckles from the Jabba-Huttian guards as they wheeled past his concrete cell.
What do they find so funny? My life’s been shattered and I don’t know if it’s worth picking up the pieces. I just want to be with Linda again.

 

On what he guessed was the third day, a transmission came without warning into his cell. The small, flat image of a bureaucrat floated in mid air after appearing with a bleep. It seemed totally out of place in his cold, grey cell.

 

“Jacob Kelly,” it announced, making him jump up from his bunk. “As of 10.32 am today, you have been tried and found guilty of extortion against your employers, Crashno Corp. thanks to the evidence presented by an indisputable source. Your sentence is 25 years imprisonment starting...” the bureaucrat raised a watch into the image, “.... now.” Then he disappeared before Jacob could object.

 

Tried? Found guilty? Extortion? I haven’t done anything and the justice process has been completed without any input from me!

 

As an experiment, but mostly because of a rage he had never felt before and could no longer contain, he punched the concrete slab of a wall, then winced as a shot of pain screamed up his arm just like he had expected it to. Through some incredible feat of engineering, or perhaps just out of habit, he could still feel pain. That was a shame, and also a bit twisted when he thought about it.

 

He screamed. Everything he thought, everything he did just raised more questions, and now this. He needed answers, and he needed to get his life back. That certainly wasn’t going to happen while he sat around here.

 

Could he walk out of here and survive what the police threw at him? Possibly, but as he had already discovered getting shot would still hurt and he wouldn’t be able to live a normal life as a fugitive.

 

No, I will have to be more cunning.

 

Somehow knowing he didn’t have a backbone at all made being brave a lot easier.
Jacob decided he should start forming a plan by learning the layout of the building. It looked like he would be going to dinner today after all.
 

* * *

Jacob squinted as the burning luminescence leapt through the hissing doors. He blinked, but saw only ghosts of shapes in the white expanse beyond. A fellow convict nudged him from behind and he staggered, and then almost slid on the stark, plastic surface. As the line of convicts precariously stepped around the outside of the hall, towards a service hatch in the far wall, Jacob realised that the slight shifts in pale tones his blinking eyes had detected were the plain tables and benches of the cafeteria.
He heard a click from somewhere near the ceiling, and then the soothing sounds of elevator music overpowered the incessant buzz of angry insects trapped in the strip lighting bordering the walls.
Almost slipping again, Jacob put a hand to the wall to steady himself and withdrew it just as quickly. It felt hotter than a frying pan on Pancake Day.

 

This made Jacob wonder why he didn’t feel hungry. Was it that his life had collapsed around him, the threats of abuse from his fellow inmates or the powerful disinfectant that quashed the spicy aromas of dinner like a boy squashes a snail?

 

On reaching the hatch he noticed the flickering images of four different meals. One was a curry, another a roast and two alien dishes he did not recognise beside them. Even at this range he could smell nothing but disinfectant. He watched as the prisoner in front of him reached into the image of his chosen meal, which silently rippled like a reflection on a watery surface, and emerged with a steaming plate of grey mush in his hand. Jacob did the same, but with the roast dinner dish, and he got the same pile of grey mush.

 

“Hang on. There’s something wrong here.”

 

“I’ve tried six different meals now and it all comes out the same.”

 

Jacob turned at the sound of the alluring voice to gaze into two of the darkest eyes he had ever seen.

 

“Yesterday, I just stopped trying,” she continued. “And believe me it tastes worse than it looks.”

 

Jacob’s higher brain suddenly deemed everything he thought of saying to this beautiful woman as unworthy or just too darn cheesy, which resulted in him staring silently. She even made the baggy, orange prisoner jumpsuits look like evening wear.

 

“Hi, I’m Alona.”

 

She held out a hand for him to shake, but a stirring below distracted him from receiving it. It felt good to know that, hologram or not, everything seemed ship shape down there, but now he looked even more of a fool to this woman. She didn’t seem to mind though. Her demeanour remained nothing short of friendly and as enthusiastic as a young child, which he later learned wasn’t far from the truth.

 

“Me? Jacob,” he managed eventually.

 

“Good to meet you, Jacob. Mind if I join you for a meal?”

 

“No, go right ahead,” he replied, smirking at the idea as if he had just been asked if he’d prefer a million pounds or a kick in the groin with a steel boot. She picked out her meal without even looking at the choices, and then he led her to a table. Alona sat down opposite him and brushed some dark curls out of her face before rescuing her spoon from amidst the muck on her dish.

 

After a moment’s silence, Jacob said, “Been here long?”

 

“Two days.”

 

“Just got here myself,” Jacob said, and then his brain froze. Apparently the dilemma of talking to a pretty stranger was still too much for him even when he was married.

 

That’s right, I’m married.

 

“What are you here for?” Alona asked, which distracted him from chiding himself.

 

“To tell you the truth, I think it’s all a case of mistaken identity.”

 

“Who did they mistake you for? Someone thought I was their baby yesterday, so I told them that babies are only so tall.” She held her hands about a foot apart.

 

Jacob smiled. She seemed so sweet, but he didn’t know how to respond to her witty remark. “We can identify a person from the smallest skin cell, even map the four levels of DNA and yet I am falsely arrested. One minute I’m…” Something about the woman’s exquisite figure made him not want to tell her he had a wife, “I’m relaxing at home after work, the next thing I know the police are dragging me downtown. I know it’s not their job to investigate anymore, but you think they would at least listen to me.”

 

“Maybe you ate all the doughnuts.” She tittered.

 

He laughed with her. Who was this beautiful woman? And how did she end up here, a place where the nicest thing that ever happened was that they stripped you before the ritual beatings so at least you didn’t have to wash your clothes afterwards?

 

He asked her, and she touched her hand to her chest as if she were so happy that he had shown an interest.

 

“Well, it’s a long story, as I believe the expression goes...”

 

She straightened up and smiled as she said this, then she began to recount her tale. Jacob watched the words fall from those luscious lips. He was so engrossed that he didn’t even question how a hologram could still taste the grey mush from his plate.

 

Author's Note

enjoy

Reviews

[Heartless Breaker]

Aw, as with most stories, there is a love triangle! hehehe