Moving Along

During the train ride, Officer 487 did the following: read Kopper’s file, made notes about Kopper’s file, completed his report regarding the power drain, completed the report about Kopper’s arrive, wrote a recommendation for Florin’s penance, and started a recommendation on what to do with Kopper. Although Kopper was sitting next to him, looking out the window, she was enclosed in some sort of field device that the officer had activated and put on her. He gave her one sharp glance after he read her name and after that did not talk to her. The scenery passed in front of Kopper without her actually seeing it. She wondered what was in her file that made people look at her so funny. But she didn’t have the guts to ask this officer what was so amazing and had been waiting to ask Florin since she hadn’t thought their time was limited.

She was confused. What was this council of Trent and why did they determine her fate? Mostly her feelings were confused. It was relieving to know that the world was still as big as she remembered it being; it didn’t just consist of just the station where she had landed. For a while she had wondered what great catastrophe had reduced the Arts to only having one person at the station. It was relieving to hear that there was still some government in place and they were the reason that there was only one person to meet her. On the other hand it was disturbing that the world had changed so drastically that none of what she had been familiar with was the same. The government, or was there still multiple governments, functioned in an entirely different manner than she remembered the democratic and open Art society. She was also not even remotely familiar with how a religion works; Arts were permitted to practice religion privately, not communally.

While the scenery passed in front of her eyes she tried to figure out a way to organize what she knew. After the regular, unvaried data that she had received on the sun catcher did not equip her to deal with the incomplete and random data with which she was now presented. Her schooling hadn’t prepared her either. She had left for training before classes had turned to really teaching her how to work with incomplete data. There was a vague feeling that she had been brainwashed to some extent. Not only was her age at the time advantageous for spending the thirty years in space, it meant she was intelligent enough to do the tasks, but still reluctant to totally leave the comfort of letting others make decisions. Faces of past fellow students began to pass in her mind while she wondered what each one of them had gone on to do. Each, she was sure, had done something, had grown up. She however had remained a child, she thought. She had yet to make a life altering decision for herself. So she wept over this silently, her face pressed between her hands and on the window. Officer 487 never looking up to see.

By the time the train reached the station they were getting off at, Kopper had recovered her composure and cleaned up her face in the washroom. At least she was permitted to go to the washroom alone, she thought despondently about if these was because she was no threat or because she didn’t matter too much. At the station they walked briskly to a bus where she was again seated by a window that held pictures she did not see. Desperately she tried to think of a way to start a conversation with this “officer” and find out what was going on. She would have settled for even knowing what they were to be doing next, but no explanation was offered and Kopper could think of no way to interrupt this busy man–he was now finishing up his recommendation on what to do with Kopper. He was pleased with the amount of work he had accomplished on the journey back and was thinking how nice tomorrow’s work day would be. He wouldn’t have to devote any of it to writing up reports on his trip, even though it was more eventful than past one, and could instead return to his data crunching. The data from this trip would prove interesting in his simulations and predictions.

After several handfuls of stops, the officer got up and Kopper assumed she was to follow and they climbed off the bus. There was a government building in front of them, Kopper could tell it was government, but if you had asked her why she couldn’t have said. There was no sign anywhere and there was no guard outside the door, as Kopper was used to seeing. She found herself automatically, obediently following the man inside. At a desk was a heavily built woman with a scowl on her face.
“What do you require of this facility?” She snapped at the officer and Kopper drifted further back from the officer, her walking decreased to almost a halt and the clean, nondescript floor suddenly became fascinating to her. The possibility that she might learn something forced her feet into hearing range of the conversation, but did not get her head and shoulders into a less submissive position. However the conversation did not yield any information she did not know.
“This,” the officer said without even pointing, “is a returned sun catcher crew member that will be sent to the council of Trent. Here is her file and my initial reports. You will send her on the transport tomorrow morning with threat risk gamma-4 security measures in place.”
“Very well,” grumbled the woman, “Please scan your ID badge here to acknowledge drop.”
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small plastic strip that he waved over the desk after the woman typed a few things into the computer terminal.
“I will be returning to my office next door for the next two hours to finish filing paperwork related to the trip, please inform me during that time if there is further information that you require. If I do not hear from you, the files will be sealed and sent to the council at Trent and my duties will be complete.” There was no wait for a response, he just turned and left. He hadn’t said a single word to Kopper, ever.

Kopper knew she was to say here because by the time the officer turned to leave, a uniformed man had appeared out of a side door with an eye directly on Kopper. She just stood there waiting for some kind of instructions.
“You, in door,” the guard pointed at both you and door. Kopper immediately felt like she was being treated like a person of low intelligence and abilities. No other possibilities appeared and so she moved toward the door, slowly. The guard didn’t think she was moving fast enough so he came up behind her and propelled her forward by her elbow. Fortunately the door swung away from Kopper easily when she was pushed into it. Once she was all the way in the room and the door had ceased swinging, the guard, quickly and deftly, put her wrists and ankles in holders on the wall. While he was doing her wrists she noticed that the hood and cape of his uniform had concealed a few things from her earlier looks. He was wearing a thin, clear breathing mask similar to what Kopper remembered the poorest Arts wearing (if any of them could be called poor). A pair of clear, well shaped safety glasses covered his eyes while his hands were covered with a thin plastic film along with the rest of his face. After she was secured to the wall, he reached into one of the containers on his belt and withdrew two items. The first item he used to turn off the field device and discard it into a hole in the wall. These tongs were then sent into an adjacent hole. The second item was scissors, which were used to cut away all her clothing.

Kopper wanted to scream at him and yell and struggle. At this point though, she was too tired. It seemed she was no longer a person here and this wore on her more than the physical fatigue. So she just closed her eyes and tried to remember something, anything and ended up envisioning herself bathing in her ‘Squilla with the bots running all over her. She heard the guard finish his job as he stepped over to deposit the scissors in the same hole as the tongs. Another door was opened and Kopper noticed that a larger field seemed to have been enclosing the area as he passed through it. Kopper looked around and saw that there was a control room above her with a glass window that showed one more guard.

While she was looking up, the floor dropped away from her and her shredded clothes slid down a chute she could now see below her. The restraints jerked her to a halt before she followed down the chute and this time she did scream with pain. Had any warning been given her she might have not screamed, but it didn’t matter, the control room did not hear her. The room was then irradiated with something that she could feel but couldn’t exactly see for what seemed like an hour. After this, several rinses of various cold water solutions were poured over her and went down the chute. Then a voice came to her, “Close eyes!” So she closed her eyes and felt that something else was being sent at her; electromagnetic radiation, particles, fluid, she could not say what. Toward the end she began to shiver. It was somewhat painful to do so since it caused the restraints to rub her skin. She couldn’t tell how long this lasted, but at the end she was released from the wall suddenly with no warning or command to open her eyes. The drop was too sudden for her to scream but she did open her eyes to find out what was happening. It appeared that she was sliding down a chute which was different than the one that had accepted her clothes and the water. It twisted a few times and came to a level point where she stopped. No instructions had been given to her and so she curled up into a naked ball trying to warm up. She sat like this for a while before she realized the air further down the chute seemed to be warmer so she started to crawl further down. A light blazed up around a corner and she slipped out into a small room. Once in the room a door slid over the chute that she had just exited and startled her with its clang shut.

The room was white and square. It had a gray bed along one wall, a small gray, square table in front of it, a reading tablet on the table, a pile of what looked to be clothes, a toilet in a corner, and a door with a slot in one wall. The room was warmer than the chute, but it still wasn’t what Kopper would call warm. She went over to the pile and found that it was clothes, although ones she wasn’t used to. There were undergarments fairly close to what she had been wearing before, but instead of trousers and a shirt there was just a large tube of material with sleeves and instead of shoes there was only a pair of rubber clogs and no socks. Dressing made her slightly warmer, but the rubber clogs were going to do nothing for her warmth so she crawled under the rough wool blanket and promptly fell asleep.

She woke up because the door had been opened and a tray of food had been placed on the table. The food was a chunk of bread, some water, and a squashy pear. All of these, even the water, tasted slightly funny to her and she thought it wasn’t just because she hadn’t been eating much in the way of actual food until recently, there was something very bland about them all. But she was hungry and so she ate it. Halfway through, her stomach grumbled about it all and Kopper wondered if her bag of supplies from Florin had been destroyed. Florin had packed her some medicine to help her deal with the food a bit better. The blank white walls gave no hope to Kopper that anything Florin had given her had survived.

Soon after she finished the food and had made use of the limited facilities, the door opened again. A man came a half step into the room. He was obviously some sort of guard since he wore a uniform similar to the one who had “greeted” her yesterday, but this time Kopper looked for and did not find evidence of any mask or plastic coating. He waited until Kopper looked at his face, although Kopper did not make it to looking at his eyes, before moving or saying anything.

“We will depart in half an hour. At that time I will come get you and we will travel by bus to an air transport. I will accompany you on the air transport to Trent where your trial will occur. I will be your confessor and guard. Please bring the reading pad with you when we depart since it is now yours and you will not be issued another. I cannot discuss your status currently since I have yet to be given your file and the recommendations of the other officers. I will do my best to direct you in the next days as it is my duty to God,” he said and then didn’t wait for a response to retreat and close the door once again.

At least she was a real enough person to deserve some warning about what was going to happen to her. She sat on the bed and picked up the reading pad. Maybe it would contain some information on what in the world a confessor was and what her trial would be like. Before she started reading she realized that something was familiar about the guard/confessor. She put the pad back down and tried to concentrate on why this would be so.

She didn’t know anyone, hadn’t known anyone really before she left on ‘Squilla. Besides, those people would have changed so much that she likely wouldn’t recognize anyone that she had seen back then anyways. Well, he was only vaguely familiar, so it could be someone from then. On the other hand, maybe it was just the guard that had stripped her, she hadn’t gotten a good look at his face, she had been concentrating on the equipment she was seeing. No, that couldn’t be, that guard had treated her so differently.

Tired, she was still tired. Florin had said she didn’t need to do much, that the whole thing was planned and her participation was just for show. Why bother with all this thinking and worrying then? So she lay down on top of the bed and slept for the half hour.