So, I didn’t get to do that double day. I could, but I’d probably be up till 3am – so for now it’s more prison adventures. Once I hit 50k action will start rising quicker and quicker; Graham will discover secrets about the Black District that prisoners “like him” aren’t supposed to know… all leading up to his inevitable confrontation with the President and his venture into Cydia. You’ll see why he ventures into Cydia later – but I’ll hint now that it won’t be to get away from Talos, and it won’t be against his will either.

Word Count: 46,698

After an hour of lying there, sobbing and shunning himself, Graham mustered the energy to attempt to stand up. There was immense pain, and he wished he had some sort of propping device, but the only object in the room was the bed – there wasn’t even a toilet. The pain in Graham’s leg, however, was too much; he felt around the area to confirm if it was broken, and luckily could feel no broken bones. It would heal in a few days, he gathered, as would the pain in his chest. In the meantime, he would have enjoyed the company of a cane, remembering President Ford’s image from his dream.

It was several more hours before another knight passed by his cell. There was nobody to talk to in the Black District, not even people in cells across the hall – for there was no hall to cross. Outside of Graham’s cell was a narrow passageway that spiraled into nowhere, trapping him within solitary confinement. He could hear people in the adjacent cells speaking, but he did not know whom to, since there was nobody around, and cells were spaced too far apart to clearly speak with other prisoners. Several times Graham ignored the pain in his chest and tried to shout, from on top of his bed, out into the hallway in hopes someone would hear – but the other prisoners saw it as routine tortured screaming, and did not respond.

In the end, Graham wasn’t even sure if the prisoners heard his words. They must have only heard the garbled screaming of a madman who had lost everything; Graham was sure he would never see Ames, Wheat, Curie, his family – whether he loved them or not – ever again. Saddened, he wet his mattress with tears until lunchtime.

At lunchtime a black knight passed him by, followed by a bulky bipedal clockwork robot made with several organic components. The robot looked like a protective military robot, with no neck and heavy armor. Graham reckoned that if it had enough room to move around, it would be holding the equivalent of a Talos machine gun – or perhaps the machine guns were already built into the monstrous machine. The Black Knight tossed an object into the room. Graham, still weak and in pain, did not want to leave his bed to find out what it was.

He looked out into the middle of his cell and saw his salvation – a cane. It was a plain wooden cane with a bulb-shaped brass tip and wooden stick, with no rubber bottom to grasp hold of the floor, but it was his cane, and he crawled over to the cane, carefully lowering his body onto the cold floor once more. Once he had a hold of the cane, he used the bed to help him stand up, and the cane to help him remain standing, putting almost no pressure on his leg. He must have pitied me, Graham thought. That or he wants me to get well for another reason.

Graham did not know that the knights were working to keep him alive as long as possible; he was special to them, just as every prisoner in the Black District was special. In fact, every human being in Lanford, the city and the continent, was exceedingly special to the knights, for they served a greater purpose that Graham only began to learn as time went by.

During the middle of the day, when the sun was at its zenith and the hot air flowed freely into Graham’s room, a loud bell sounded and all of the cell doors opened automatically and immediately. Graham, who had began resting on his bed again, stood up with his cane and hobbled out of the room – or, he would have if passengers had not blocked his way. The narrow pathway only supported a single file arrangement. Prisoners tried to cut one another in futility; it was impossible to pass someone in the narrow halls. And yet so many tried that one would assume half of the prisoners died in the stampede – just to, apparently, get some lunch.

After the rush had died down, Graham hobbled out his cell and into the narrow hallway. Everybody had been traveling left from where he stood, which led down a slight slope. Around and around it spiraled, seemingly forever, until Graham reached an elevator that was just arriving. An elevator boy stood inside. “Are you getting in?” he asked. Graham was speechless, motionless, stunned beyond belief – this was the cheerful bellboy he had seen earlier! Only he was no longer so cheery; in fact, he now seemed downright dismal. Graham stepped into the elevator.

“Ah, yes… have I seen you before?”

“Not that I know of, sir. Why would you ask that?”

“Nothing, never mind.” And then both were silent as the elevator door closed.

The lift shot downward with incredible speed, making Graham clutch his stomach in agony. Without warning the elevator boy shouted as fast as he could: “You have seen me before! Three days ago, you got off at the Green District. I brought you down with several other people.”

The elevator stopped and the door opened. The elevator boy ceased his talking; Graham released his stomach and hobbled out of the elevator. He and the elevator boy exchanged glances, and the elevator boy frowned before the doors shut as quickly as they’d opened. He was gone.

The halls from there on were much wider, and he could see the mass of prisoners gathered into a large cafeteria. Tables here were made of stately wood, rotting away, a huge change of pace from the metal tables that Graham had only just begun to adjust to. In fact, everything in the prison was forged from disgusting, rotting materials, with the exception of his cell construction, made of rock-solid brick, brass, steel, and other metals that he could not at once identify. The window bars were clearly a foreign element, black in color, and when touched did not make the sound of any metal Graham had ever encountered.

He began to wonder if there were any prisoners talking of escaping, but that idea quickly died down as he saw how fearful every prisoner was – how hungry and starved they were. It was clear to everyone that Graham was a newcomer, for he was the only prisoner not shoveling food down his gullet, the only prisoner not completely immersed in his meal. He was the only prisoner, at this time, who did not even have a meal. Slowly he made his way to the cafeteria’s chef, who served him up a bowl of the most rancid stuff – unable to identify it, he almost refused to eat it, until a friendly advisor told him that he would not eat again for six days.

What, then, would lunch be used for on other days? The prisoner told him that he’d rather not say, and advised Graham to simply eat his lunch and enjoy it while he could.

Graham sat down next to the man, a tall, lanky male with blonde hair and a strange accent who did nothing but shovel down his food and then run up for more – the Black District, apparently, had no shortage of this tar-like gruel, and was in a rush to dispose of it. Graham began eating his food with great haste; the taste was so awful that he nearly vomited it back up, but the man with blonde hair shook his head. “You won’t be happy with yourself if you do that. Don’t do that.”

Graham recognized the voice from somewhere, as though he’d met this man before. “Joseph Wheat?” he asked. The man looked at him, shook his head. Graham couldn’t blame himself for trying – but somewhere in this prison was Wheat, and Graham intended to find him. Together they would form an escape plan of some sort, or do something to sustain them both. He did not want to die here, not before getting home. If he were to die, he would rather do so on Earth. On Earth he could receive proper burial, he would be mourned and missed by many – and even if this true number was only few, being missed was what really mattered.

He began to wonder if anybody had noticed his disappearance, even though it had only been a few days. He thought about his family, who he now missed unconditionally. He had never thought of his family much until coming to Talos; now he thought about them every moment. His two sisters, his mother and father – what were they doing now? Did they even care about him?

As the oldest, Graham had been the first to leave the house, and quite reluctantly did he do so. Graham was never the most self-reliant man, and it took his parents’ harsh love to expel him from their home several years prior. Since then Graham had grown considerably more independent, and as he did so his hatred of his parents for forcing him to leave festered and grew. He lamented that his sisters, both quite young, were still under his parents’ financial umbrella. They were wealthy, and he’d always hoped that this old money would come to him. Some called him spoiled, but he called himself fortunate.

It was unfortunate, then, when his parents removed him from each of their wills, leaving everything to his two sisters. From that point forward, he had nothing more to do with his family, and silently worked on his engineering for years and years, eventually acquiring a lofty job at a big-name engineering firm working for several clients on massive projects, most of which were in teams of ten to thirty different types of engineers, sometimes more. He had worked in split groups that when amalgamated amounted to hundreds of workers, all to scrape up his own cash when his sisters would be getting the free ride into retirement.

He had not spoken with any of them for at least a year. He was closer to his father than anyone, who he remembered lamented removing Graham from his will. If it was, indeed, as his father had said his mother’s plan, then he could forgive the man, if only he would live to see him once more.

If he could not return home to Earth, his chances of rekindling his family relationships were doomed – and now, more than ever, he wished to do that. He wanted to prove to his family that, through these experiences and through his work, he was indeed self-reliant; but he also needed them, too, as everyone needs love and companionship, and at the moment it felt like he had neither.
Curie was the closest friend he could remember having in a while.

“You should not lose your head like that. Finish your food, please.”

Graham, irritated that a criminal interrupted his thought process, shouted “Who the hell are you to give me directions? Why do you care so much?”

“Because I, too, am here unjustly. They will give you as much food as you require, but only on this day and one other day of the week, what day it is I do not know, but it is five days from tomorrow, so you had best enjoy your meal while you can, for the rest of your days will be spent living off water! I have had my sustenance for the week, so I can talk to you, but you should be listening and eating. You will have no trouble keeping yourself alive, but you must look healthy as well. They will make sure you are alive – just barely – but if you remain healthy then they can never touch you. Eat, sir, eat as much as your stomach can handle!”

Sitting at the wooden table, Graham realized the scale of the prison. The room extended for a mile or more, and was completely filled with prisoners, large and small, young and old, without discrimination. He saw a five-year-old child shoveling the black gruel down her throat as if it were the breath of life, not knowing that in several hours, or several days, or several weeks that she would be exterminated for some grand purpose that nobody knew about. And when it happened, not a soul spoke of it.

In truth, even the knights thought that their work was somewhat despicable. But their hatred of the unpatriotic prisoner scum was greater than their hatred of their work in punishing those foul beasts.

There were no Lamp Spheres in the room, only old-fashioned kerosene lamps, letting out soft glows from the fire contained within. They, perhaps, were the only other metals objects in the room – their bases were made of weighty bronze, sculpted with a slender curve from bottom to top. The glass vase-like encasement, wider at the bottom and thin at the top, caressed the glow of the flame as it spread the thin light around the room. It was just barely enough to see the man sitting next to you, but not enough to see those prisoners too far away.

At the end of lunch, in approximately one hour, the kerosene lamps shut off and prisoners were forced out of the room, some with spoons in their mouths. If a man protested and retained the spoon in his mouth a black knight would forcibly yank it from his jaw. In several cases, teeth were lost and scattered about the wood tiling, which gave the unlucky barefoot prisoners another sharp object to step upon – not to mention that the wooden floor had already given them innumerable painful splinters.

The elevator boy was long gone; Graham wasn’t even sure that the elevator he travelled up was the same one, and amidst the rush had no idea what cell he was in. Yet by the end there was only once cell still open, and Graham knew it had to be his; indeed, as soon as he entered the cell the sound of gears clicking and rotating filled his ears and the cage slammed shut. He was alone once again, sad and disoriented. He looked out the window and saw the city of Lanford, sparkling in all its glory – and knew at once that it was a farce of the highest order. There was nothing to gain by moving into Lanford.

After hobbling around in circles for a while, looking to pass the time, Graham stumbled upon a loose brick in the wall, behind which were a few small slips of paper and a used-up pencil. Instead of writing, Graham now began wasting his time with drawings – miniature drawings that brought him immense amusement in these dark times. There was nothing that came to his mind now that he did not draw; everything in his mind simply popped out onto to one of the pleasant little small pages. It was his one enjoyment, his one release from the dark world of the prison.

The next day, after an incredibly unpleasant sleep on the mattress – which was surprisingly more comfortable for sleep than he’d thought a prison bed would be, while still thoroughly uncomfortable – he heard a bell ring yet again, but this time his cell did not release its lock. He witnessed once again the trample of prisoners, but this time it was much slower, as though they were avoiding whatever it was that they were forced to see at the end of their despicable march down the hallway. When everyone had gone, Graham yelled for a knight.

“Hello? Hello!” he shouted in vain for several minutes, until he caught the attention of a crimson knight nearby. The night approached him, looked up above his cell, and then looked at Graham. “Why isn’t my cell opening? Why can’t I go with the rest of the prisoners to wherever they’re headed?”

The crimson knight looked up again, affirming what he had previously seen. “You are not to leave you cell. You will leave your cells at mealtime only – you are a special case, and we keep special cases in special cells. Don’t get cocky though; you’re only slightly less of an abomination than the rest of these prisoners. If at any time you think that you’re better than them simply because you get to avoid the Refueling, simply remind yourself that you are here in the Black District because you are scum of the worst kind. To say that one bit of scum is better than another bit of scum in no compliment indeed; now stay in your cell. You will be released next mealtime.” The knight scoffed and walked away.

Within the hour all the prisoners had returned to their respective cells, and it was obvious that the atmosphere had become much gloomier than the previous few hours. Unsure of what the Refueling was, and not sure if he wanted to find out, Graham called out to a prisoner who was late, walking by along trying to find his cell. “Where have you all been to?” Graham asked. “They wouldn’t let me out of my cell. Please tell me what happened.”

The man also looked up above Graham’s hemispherical cell; clearly there was some interesting market up there that Graham had neglected to see. In fact, Graham had not looked up above his cell at all – he was sure now that there was a number up there that would aid him in remembering how to return. He wanted to ensure that he had access to his drawings and to the blank paper always, even after he left his cell to eat, and to keep these items handy would require crafty hiding skills and the memory of which cell was his.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you. Please just leave me alone.” The man hurried away, almost sprinting, hoping to avoid any awkward confrontation with a man who, for some inexplicable reason, was exempt from witnessing an event that had turned half the Black District into living sticks of chalk. Graham would find out soon enough – but in the meantime he attempted to contact anyone outside of his cell. Several times one particular black knight hit him. Every time an officer or prisoner passed by his cell they would look up above the metal bars, clearly spotting something of great importance that changed their attitudes toward him considerably.

He began to wonder if there was marking above his cell that sentences him to a grim fate – was he to be executed? What crime had he committed?

But Graham knew that he had committed no crime; it was all the work of the knights, of the government, fabricating stories and propaganda to keep him jailed and silenced. It was Graham’s theory that he was jailed because he was so new to the city – and to the world of Talos – and the sheer obviousness of his cluelessness about the customs of Talos had brought him under suspicion. He was a fresh mind unacquainted with the world of Talos, and while they could not have known that he was from another planet, they could have known, based on his multiple actions and his general attitude, that he might develop opinions of his own and wish to change the government already in effect. And that was the most criminal act of all.