Chapter 6

“Tell me about the Portal...”

“ ... Robert...”

I was looking at Jake when CO Morley spoke, and man, he was totally cool. Didn’t blink, his bland smile stayed perfectly stuck to his face. I tried to emulate, but probably failed spectacularly. If Jake could read me like a book, others probably could too.

“Well Prisoners, we know you take a certain amount of time to get this job done, and to get that equipment back to the Engineer. You’ve been pretty good about it for years, then all of a sudden, your work time doubles or triples. What’s a good CO going to think about that?” Morley spoke, keeping it at conversational levels, and intentionally avoiding using the term ‘inmates’ as he was known to do sometimes (just to piss us off).

He held out his hand for the camera “If you would...” again with the polite pleasantries, making me way more nervous than any amount of screaming obscenities, or calling us inmates could. Taking the camera and stepping back (out of range, my new training mentality helpfully supplied) he fiddled with it for a few moments, eventually handing it back to Jake, with a video loaded up to play. “Imagine my surprise when I’m reviewing the camera images to find this...”. Jake pressed play, I watched the COs instead of the screen as I’d made the damn video and then been too stupid to turn it off or delete it. I could hear the rushing of steam in the pipe work, whistling and howling. I was just able to make out a few grunts, I didn’t even know I made those sounds when I crawled around. The sound of a thick piece of plastic pinging off of pipe work, then rolling and sliding on the floor was pretty clear. I knew without looking that in the next few seconds you’d see me reach out to grab the lens cap and then for apparently no reason, suddenly disappear.

The video would play on, probably for about 4 hours until it showed me suddenly reappearing in the same spot, pointed in the opposite direction and grab the camera. Silence (relative silence, we were still in the bowels of the machine elevation) descended again.

“We need to get to work Boss...” Jake said pleasantly, ignoring the disclosure of the fact that a prisoner had a Weapon at all times. “We need to talk first ... back to the office” Morley ordered. The others hadn’t said anything yet.

We all trooped back to the interview room (Not Morleys office). “Please sit down,” he gestured to two seats, bolted to the floor at least 6 feet apart. Too far to pass a weapon ... safely. We waited for them to open. We had little to offer in exchange, any advantage we might have had would be eroded by speaking first. “The whole prison is going into lockdown...” Morley finally started. “Armed prisoner procedures dictate this. We don’t really have an option, unless you weren’t actually in the prison...” he let that drop.

“I’m being released?” I asked, like an idiot.

“Don’t be an idiot ... those types of things take time. I’m looking for an immediate solution. If I put the entire jail in lockdown for the week or so it takes to put your transfer through, there’d be riots. In the same vein, I can’t just put you in the Hole ... you ain’t done anything ... yet”

I said “I can just give you my weapon, you can lock it up and I do the rest of my time...”

Morley actually laughed at this one. “You must think I’m really stupid. Did you know that they tried locking one up in a bank vault, flying the guy across the world to Australia? That MeTuber pulled his weapon as easy as anything.” He looked serious for a moment “Only option I got here is to lock you up by yourself. Now it’s my choice how to do that, I could put you in the hole and just have you rot there, but prisoners in solitary take a lot of paperwork. Paperwork I don’t want to do and explanations I don’t want to have to put down on paper, so here’s my offer:”

I waited ... nothing else to offer or say.

“You go into that portal, I lock it behind you. You stay in it for 9 & 3/4 days. You come out, I repack your supplies, you wash up, and I send you into another portal for another 9 & 3/4 days. We repeat this cycle for as many cycles as it takes to sort this mess out. That’s my deal.” Morely leaned back and crossed his arms in front of him.

“What’s the other portal?” I asked.

“This isn’t a negotiation, this is a selection between the two. Those are your options. Personally, I don’t care. In the hole or some portal, you aren’t my problem. Outside you are ... Choose.”

My choice was made already. COs thought I’d die in there, oh well, not my problem they’d say. “I’ll need a fair bit of water, there isn’t anything potable there, also I’ll need a blanket, food...”

“Whatever.” he cut me off. “I have a bag packed, vitamins, cooking pot, some dried stuff. You’ll get a big bottle of water too then. Timms!” he talked over me to one of one of the other COs. “Get him shipped out, oh, and show him...”

I glanced over to the previously unnamed CO. Just for a second a short sword and a huge shield flashed into existence, then dissipated. The grim look on his face gave me the impression that he might actually like it if I tried something. “Where to Boss?” I asked. There were more than the normal reasons to be polite to this one...

“Quartermaster office” he grunted. And we were off.

The ‘Pack’ was a laundry bag full of stuff ... and some ramen noodles. The water bottles were two used bleach bottles, rinsed and filled from the janitors closet. I snagged another one that had only a cup or so in the bottom and tied it on to the strings at the top. Threw my arm through the strap, snatched up the two full bottles and waltzed off towards the portal at the steam drains. I knew better than to ask for help from a CO.

“What’s the portal like?” Asked my watcher, CO Timms. He was letting me lead the way (never put your back to a prisoner) and, it seems, picking my brains on the way. “Small islands in a swamp, with big rats. They are a problem for me, but with your size and a sword ... Anyways, there are bigger Males, and smaller Females ... I went on to tell him everything I knew, including my discovery of the new and different type of female rat. I described the islands, using a stick to get between them as well as the tendency for the males to meet you right at the edge of the water. We got to the steam drains crawl space, and still I kept talking. We spoke for about an hour and a half. “Thanks for all that. I think it’ll be a cake walk, but I may bring some gear, and spend a few days inside. I’ll maybe wait for the cold of January though ... it’ll be the cheapest holiday I ever took!” he laughed. As I turned to crawl under, dragging my bag and the water bottles with me, he stopped me. “Wait a second...” and dug around in his pockets and vest. After a few seconds, he came up with a book of matches, a pair of thin leather gloves, and a black wool toque. “Look, the Captain might not care if you live or die in there, but us Hunters gotta stick together eh? Take care Robbie” and he stuck out his hand.

In prison, the COs never shake your hand, they rarely use your name, and they’d never put you on an equal footing as them. It was really something that this guy was offering me his hand.

“Thanks Boss, you’re alright ya know? I shook his hand. “I’d like to give you this...” and I handed him a few silver. “I can’t use it much in here, and I don’t make enough in the marsh to buy anything at the Store...” Never a bad idea to have a CO on your side.

I crawled under, dragging all my gear to the portal. There was a new gate around it, made of sturdy steel bars. A swinging door was currently open, with a huge padlock hanging on it. I glanced back at Timms. He was crouching at the crawl space entrance. “I’m to lock it after you go through. Captain wasn’t kidding about you not coming back for nearly ten days!” I nodded. “Thanks! See you in ten days” and crawled forward to an unknown future.

The first thing I did when I got to the start room was call up my Status page.

Ok, ten days, 280 experience to get to level 1.

Second thing I did was unpack my gear and look it all over. It wasn’t very valuable stuff by any normal sense of the word, but value is also a function of the needs of the moment.

I recall the very first time I pictured my death. We were in a social studies class in grade six. Our teacher was talking about the value of money in history. We laughed as a class when we were told that some simple sea-shells had great value to the indigenous peoples of the center of the continent. Hearing our giggles, she went on to explain that money was an abstract concept, and that things only had value because we perceived that they did. Our perception of value could change too ... a man living in the desert values water more than the man living next to a lake. “And anyways...” she said, as a kind of closing and throwaway line... “In the end, every single one of us would trade everything we have for one more breath...” and turned back to the board to explain interest rates, stock exchanges and taxes.

I didn’t hear any more of that class, my minds eye on myself, in a hospital bed gasping for breath.

You couldn’t have sold the contents of this bag for $10 in a yard sale, but a sturdy little pot to boil water, two blankets, pillow, small bar of soap, half-full bottle of vitamins, ten Ramen soups, tin cup, and a large plastic sheet was worth everything to me. Indeed, besides the contents of my inventory and the clothes on my back, it was everything I owned.