Jeb woke in the alley before sunrise. The bartender had put a small blanket over him, not that he needed it, but it was kind of her.
Jeebz, time. 5 a.m. You have thirty minutes to get to the dock.
He got up and checked his credit chip, making sure he wasn''t rolled in his drunken stupor. Everything was there. He looked around and found the nearest hose sticking out of the wall. Rinsing his face off, he decided to head out.
After several attempts, he finally got a hovtax. He was at the dock on time, barely. Exchanging the chips, he left the hovtax and stepped into the security step-in.
He placed his sword and blaster pistol in the weapons slot. Everything else was fine as he walked through. When he reached for the bin his weapons were in, he was stopped by the stench of crap. It was Gaedon.
“You made it. Barely in one piece, though.” Jeb looked down at himself; it was true, he looked like hell. He stayed quiet. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll be getting a Sac at the ship. No one goes to a PP in a Doll.”
A PP. Prison Planet. This was different. Jeebz noticed the surprise in Jeb’s emotion. We will be transporting a criminal to a PP.
Jeb didn’t reply. “Okay. Lead on, boss man.” He waved his hand as an indication for Gaedon to walk ahead of him.
“No, I’m not going on this one. I have another. Just go to bay fourteen. The criminal has already been put on the ship.” Then Gaedon did something odd, he smiled. “Have a safe trip, Jeb.”
This was not going to go well.
After several hours, Jeb found himself on a table next to a Sac, a fully biological body. Far more frail than a Doll. Though all of these were genetically engineered to still be strong and fast. The one benefit of a Sac is that they heal on their own, no replacement parts needed unless a limb ended up being lost. The last time he was in one of these was several thousand years ago, early on in this memory stream.
Another short Doll came in with an electroboard, a sheet of clear plastic, touch screen for notes.
“A couple of questions, Jeb. Where do you want your AI installed?”
“My inner ear with a contact on the lobe for hard connection from a clip if needed. Otherwise, wireless is fine.”
“Okay, and what do you want the body to look like?”
Jeb didn’t really care, but decided to make it as good as he could. “I want good endurance, lean, lift about four hundred pounds. But mainly I want speed and regeneration. Green eyes, black hair, long.”
After taking the notes, he walked over to the computer console in control of the new blank. A few injections and some flashing lights over the Sac, and it was done.
“Give it a few hours. Make sure to feed it, it’ll be weak for a few days.” Jeb nodded and closed his eyes. This part was always a bit weird.
A few minutes later, Jeb was disoriented. He’d been put in Sac’s before, for various missions, including espionage in slave cities, but usually just transferring to an upgraded Doll.
A greenish light shone over his head said and he began to feel a bizarre sensation of being tugged. “Relax.” The doctor said, but the voice seemed distant and soft. Soon he was looking at his own face, faded and nearly black and white, and very dim. Then his perceptions flipped and flickered, he couldn’t tell which way was down or up. It was almost as though he could see in all directions but did not have the attention to take it all in at once, so it would flicker from point to point.
The light seemed to carry him for some time and then he noticed the Sac’s head. A few minutes later, he could feel a thumping in his chest and sensation in his chest of rising and lowering. Then the pain began. His head felt like it was on fire. It felt like an eternity, blackness and a flutter, then the pain was gone.
He opened his new eyes. The vision felt, different. The light was irritating his eyes, so he raised his arm shakily to block it. After several seconds his eyes adjusted.
The Doll doctor came back over and started scanning him back and forth with what looked like a long rod. “Everything seems to be working. Remember, take it easy in this thing at first.” Then it walked off.
Looking around, Jeb found his uniform and put it on. It was lightly armored, flexible, and atmo-conditioned.
Jeebz, you there? After some buzzing and tuning, Jeebz responded that it was. The sensation was a bit different. More auditory than digital.
Jeb, my data storage is limited. The Sac’s electric field that contains the data is significantly smaller. I can only keep about a thousand years of memory. The rest is still stored on the main storage drive, in your Doll. I’ve chosen what we would need for this kind of mission, and then some. We should be fine with what we have, though.
This was the first moment he felt startled. He had forgotten about the memory limitation. There was no longer a power source to maintain the electric field. Now,Jeebz could only retain his combat training, and his engineering. What was most lost was the visual and auditory data portions of his past missions, which would not be needed on a simple mission like this.
After several more hours of prepping the ship, he noticed no one else was coming. He was the only crew on the small speeder. In the cockpit, he connected Jeebz with the computer wirelessly and began his countdown with the control tower.
Flipping a switch, he felt the cyclotron kick on, powered by the electromagnetic energy collection field, or EECF for short. A field that absorbed the full spectrum of energy that was ambient in the space around him from nearby stars. It operated as a well point that energy, much like static attracted dust, it would absorb a myriad of wavelengths to charge its batteries. Going through space it would collect all the power it needed, as the field would be expanded thousands of miles, and at the speeds they would go, would collect all it needed.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
After a few more minutes, the cyclotron was spun up and he could feel the mild vibration of the ship. It was a small ship, with a needle point and no wings, but slight nubs sticking out the sides from front to back. All in all, the ship was sixty feet long and about twenty feet in diameter. A small transport speeder.
Jeebz, the prisoner?
He’s asleep in the holding cell.
“Good enough for me.” Tossing aside the checklist to verify the prisoner was fully secure, he called up the control tower. “Speeder forty-seven, good for launch. Over.”
“Speeder forty-seven, you may launch.”
Jeb hit the throttle with a few touch-sensitive buttons. The control of the vessel was two control balls and some pedals, though the ship’s computers linked with Jeebz smoothed out any bumps by controlling thrusts and power to accommodate need. It was a responsive craft, limited in weapons but nimble.
Jeb found himself in the nearest space lane, a path made of rings hundreds to millions of miles apart that created an electromagnetic pull from ring to ring. It was similar to the old coil guns in the museums.
Over a period of a few minutes, he had fully accelerated and the stars became huge. Everything seemed to stop for a split second, then he saw himself walk backward away from his seat, and then it all vanished, as though his life had been rewind for a few seconds.
He had just broken the speed of light. Once the speed of light had been surpassed enough, everything went back to normal. The ship left the space lane of rings after an hour, safely out of the solar system, and his own thrust continued to accelerate him.
Jeebz, distance to destination?
Two point three million light-years. Current acceleration, we’ll be there in approximately fourteen days, two hours, and eighteen minutes. Deceleration starts in seven days, one hour, and nine minutes.
With a nod, he pulled up the galactic map with a wave of his hand over the visual receiver. A hologram showing Prime 1, the Core Capital of Systems, and all of its thousands of space lanes. Taking his two hands, he pinched the galaxy down until the nearby galaxies were in view. His destination: Drakudai. A large galaxy with minor inhabitants. Mostly primitives, from the little he’d read in the last few hours.
A rim world for a PP? That’s strange. He thought to Jeebz.
I was analyzing the data on the galaxy named Drakudai. There are few records referencing it as Drakudai. The PP, the system Sol, was selected because it is far enough away, but still within a few hours of a PP relay station. Though it’s been there for a long time. There isn’t a lot of information on Drakudai itself other than telemetry data. Though it’s said this prison planet is old. Founded about five hundred thousand years ago. There are indications that it was once controlled by another intelligence before then.
Jeb leaned back, pondering this. An old PP in a new galaxy. The numbers glaringly didn’t add up.
Is there a file on this PP?
Some. The files poured out onto the hologram overlaying the galaxy. From what I have studied of it, there isn’t much there. It’s... It’s been empty for seventy-five million years, per our excavations and recon of the galaxy.
Looking through the files, Jeb noticed that there was an acquisition date on this PP. About five million years ago, besides some data on gravity and minerals it was surprisingly empty.
He decided to stop thinking about it and waved the file and map away. He wasn’t a scout, nor was he doing a survey.
Jeebz, I’m going to check out the rest of this little ship.
Acknowledged. Jeebz ringed within Jeb’s inner ear.
Jeb unlocked the armored door that connected the cockpit to the rest of the ship. The ship had been modified from a regular speeder into a transport speeder. Going through the rest of the ship, which was quite small, he found the privy, captain’s quarters, an exercise room with some weights, a small kitchen, crew quarters with a set of bunk beds, and a door that went to engineering, which he didn’t want to go through. That left only one more room: storage, which had been altered into a prison cell. The ship had been clearly modified for Sac’s.
Jeb found himself staring at a man sitting cross-legged in a Sac, with his eyes closed. It looked like he was sleeping, but to Jeb’s trained eyes, he knew when someone was aware or not, and this man was aware.
His prisoner seemed interesting for some reason. After a few moments, his curiosity got the better of him and he hit the intercom button next to the door.
“Prisoner, what are you charged with?” Jeb asked.
Without opening his eyes, the man seemed to smile for a split second. “For being free.”
This piqued Jeb’s curiosity even more. “Ha, what do you mean by that?”
Opening his eyes and looking through the porthole, he made eye contact with Jeb. “It’s hard to explain freedom to someone who doesn’t have anything to compare it to.” He shook his head slightly, as though letting it go. “Once I got a taste of freedom, I could see what it wasn’t.”
Jeb frowned, trying to understand. He knew the definition of freedom, but what this man was saying seemed like gibberish. Sure, following the rules was important. Yes, Jeb had altered his own AI to avoid the Thought Police for out-of-line thoughts, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t free.
“So what is freedom compared to not freedom then?” Jeb egged him on.
“To think without being arrested. To do without being arrested. To be without being told what to be.” The criminal closed his eyes once again. “It comes down to the power of choice.”
Jeb stepped away shaking his head. Obviously, the man was a criminal, but he couldn’t see the crime. He stepped back up to the glass. “Okay, fine, but what did you do specifically?”
The man didn’t answer for some time. Finally, he got up and stretched, an interesting motion, and Jeb realized the doctor had told him to do some as well.
The man was scrawny and small. Prisoners were always put into weak Sac’s. Everything about him showed weakness. Everything but his eyes.
“You want to know what I did?” He shrugged. “Okay, I sold information to the enemies.”
And there it was. His crime, which happened to be high treason.
“Ha! So, all that about freedom.” Figured. Jeb walked off with the criminal shaking his head.
Jeebz, I’m gonna go take a nap. Wake me up when we get there.
Affirmative, replied Jeebz.
Jeb went to the captain’s quarters and looked around. Pretty basic. A desk, a chair, a small recliner for comfort reading, and a bed. Though the bed was more advanced and designed for Sacs. It had a glass chamber that could come down over it and put the body into a deep sleep. Several injections while asleep kept his body from being stiff and kept him regenerating properly.
He relieved himself in the privy first and then ate and drank. Turning about in the cabin once again, he decided to do some stretching, which caused his muscles to burn slightly and then his bones to pop. A very strange sensation.
Looking around, he found a note on the desk which he had missed earlier. It was emblazoned with the Core’s Seal. He opened it up and read its contents:
Standing Order 4721Handling of PP Agents & Prisoners
It is hereby a Standing Order that all Prime Dolls, whether in Sac form or Doll form, never reveal that they are from another world. Doing so is chargeable with high treason.
Jeb tossed it in the trash, the lasers immediately disintegrating it into carbon and then flushed it into space.
After he was ready, he verified with Jeebz that all was good and then went and lay down. The chamber coming down, he fell asleep.
His last thoughts before falling into deep hibernation couldn’t help but be about freedom.