Book One: First Arrival

  Disorientated and scared, Joseph Howlam’s new body seized up as unfamiliar muscles fought against their own nature to contort into a series of strange alien postures. Panicking, he flailed around on the ground for a couple of seconds before his mind slowly began to calm. Finally, after a minute of struggling to adapt, the future deputy simply stopped moving.

  “Home,” the lost soul mumbled through uncooperative lips as a deluge of water splashed onto his face.

  For the briefest moment, he managed to convince himself he was home. And all this water was just the Great River’s summer geysers during harvest time. Sadly, this hope quickly faded away. Because somewhere in the distance, a loud, piercing sound screeched so loudly that he clasped his hands over his ears in horror.

  “What the heavens?” He tried to scream, but the indifferent mouth failed him once again.

  Later, after his training, this sound would simply come to be known as a car horn. But for now, all his befuddled mind could perceive was the horrible sound and the pounding of bone-chilling water pelting against soaked clothes.

  Well, those things plus the memory of why he was in this state... Mevani.

  “Get in the car!” A voice close by bellowed over the raging storm, instantly derailing his train of thought. “It’s raining cats and dogs out here.”

  Cats and dogs? The words and the language were utterly foreign, yet his mangled brain still somehow managed to understand their underlying meaning. Although, he couldn’t for the life of him picture a world where animals rained from the sky.

  Putting that horrible image aside, he tried to open his eyes, but the constant pounding of rain forced them shut. Out of instinct, Joseph gargled, “Help me.”

  But as before, his confused mouth failed him entirely, and all that came out were soft gurgles and moans.

  “You know it’s raining, right?” The raspy voice asked in a tone that said, ‘stop being an idiot’. “Do you want to die of pneumonia? Hell, what am I saying? You probably don’t even know what pneumonia is.”

  Truthfully, Joseph didn’t know what the word pneumonia meant. But even in his present state of confusion, the meaning behind the unfamiliar word was painfully clear. Pneumonia was a sickness. A sickness that he probably didn’t want to get.

  Still, without the ability to respond properly, the stunned prisoner did the only thing he could. He rolled his alien frame toward the voice and hoped for the best. It wasn’t until after what seemed like an eternity that he was finally able to prop himself up on one side to look around.

  “Good job,” the voice said reassuringly. “That didn’t take you long at all. I’m impressed.”

  Ten feet away, he could just make out something that looked like an elongated pale blue box with an opening tore into its middle. Through the opening, he could make out a dimly lit figure sitting awkwardly on a bench seat. The figure looked annoyed as he stared at him with what looked like a stick hanging out of his mouth.

  Strange, he thought, to have a stick drooping from his mouth smoldering fire. Though, this fact paled in comparison to the circumstances that brought him here. No, not after the Arbiters came and passed judgment on him. Hell, the man could have been on fire from head to toe, and that still wouldn’t have thrown him off.

  However, there was something about the figure that he found very disturbing. It was the fact that this thing was utterly alien to him. Which was an accomplishment because his people came across hundreds of different species every cycle. However, here was a new one. Strange, he thought. Yet, even with the strangeness, he somehow knew this figure was an older man.

  “Son,” the old man warned him. “We can’t stay here forever. We’ve got to move.”

  Not quite sure what “move” meant, Joseph’s body instinctively still tried to push itself off the pavement. “That’s right,” the figure smiled encouragingly from the dry vehicle. “Your body knows what to do even if your mind is still playing catch up.”

  For the next minute or two, Joseph sputtered around on his hands and knees as he tried to get to his feet. Each try brought him a little closer to walking, and each fall sent him crashing painfully to the ground. Finally, around the eighth attempt, his alien body managed to string together a couple of unsteady steps before diving headfirst onto the Chrysler’s front seat.

  “I’ve got to say, son. I’ve seen a lot of people lay there for hours trying to do what you just did in ten minutes… impressive.”

  Once he pulled his legs inside, the old man leaned across his drenched body and closed the door. Then, his mysterious benefactor adjusted a knob on the vehicle’s control panel, and a rush of warm air wafted over his icy body. Joseph wasn’t sure what had just taken place, but he couldn’t help but sigh in relief.

  At this reaction, the old man smiled, yanked downward on a lever and the vehicle shot forward with the speed of a Tralon training skiff.

  “Son, first things first, this is your prison, and life here is difficult and dangerous.” His mysterious chauffeur took a long drag on what would eventually be known to him as a cigarette. “But after the crime you committed, this is what you deserve. Do you understand?”

  Joseph didn’t. But he soon would.

  The next few days seemed like a painful blur as his alien consciousness slowly began to grow accustomed to its new, human home. But much to the old man’s surprise, Joseph took to walking and other feats of dexterity like a duck to water.

  In fact, it wasn’t more than two days before he had mastered most of the old man’s lessons. Though, this initial success was tempered with failures in other things humans took for granted, like eating and speaking. But eventually, like the many prisoners before him, his now human brain found a way to adapt to its new programming.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  It was during this time that the chain-smoking arbiter continued to remark about the excellent progress Joseph was making. “You’ll be my quickest transition yet,” his teacher/jailor said almost fondly with every pat on the back. “Thank their God.”

  God? The word was completely foreign to Joseph’s still adjusting ears. But he did like to accomplish things. After all, for better or for worse, accomplishing goals was how his people measured their worth.

  This simple training continued until the end of the first week when the arbiter started to relate stories of aliens who had handled the transfer in maladaptive ways. How certain species had gone insane from the process, and how that insanity had cost the lives of many humans.

  “You can’t allow your transition to falter. If you react violently in any way, I will have no other choice.” For the first time since his arrival, the arbiter showed Joseph the grey device. “It would only take a second to erase everything you are and leave that body empty and hollow.”

  “What do you mean... erase?” Joseph’s grasp of the language was still not complete.

  “It means,” the Arbiter snapped his fingers for effect. “That you cease to exist.”

  Meant to be a deterrence, the arbiter’s warning had the opposite effect on his prisoner.

  “Do it.” A few times, late at night, Joseph would offer this plea to his teacher to just go ahead and get it over with. To use his little device and erase him from existence. He wanted the pain of living this unfamiliar life to end. “I want this to end.”

  But no matter how he many times he pleaded, the old man would always just smile and respond the same way. “Prisoners don’t get to determine the form of their punishment, son. They only get to choose when it begins.”

  Two days later, Joseph’s initial training was complete.

  “Here we are,” the old man said as he pulled the car into a small Greyhound station on the outskirts of town. Once he parked, the Arbiter handed Joseph a wad of twenties and said, “Buy a one-way ticket to wherever strikes your fancy, son. But don’t come back here. Because by the time you do, I’ll have already moved on.”

  “Sir,” Joseph’s English had improved immensely, though he still mixed up some of the words. “How long I will be stuck here?”

  “How long will you be stuck here?” The old man corrected him, laughing the whole time. “For the rest of your life, son. That’s the deal.”

  “Good,” Joseph sighed and slumped back into his seat, contently. “On my planet, I had just turned the corner on my adulthood. That means there’s more behind me than in front.”

  “Sorry about that.” The old man flicked his exhausted cigarette out the window then quickly lit a fresh one. “I guess you still don’t understand what it means to be here… to be human?”

  Joseph shook his head.

  “This new body you’ve got. It lasts for a long time.” The old man started rummaging around the car for his tablet. “What planet did you say you were from again?”

  “Solon, sir.”

  “Solon, huh?” He stopped looking for his device upon hearing that name. “If my memory serves me correctly, that’s the home of the Great Forge of the Galaxy. Right?”

  “Yes,” Joseph said proudly. “We build everything.”

  “Big boys, your species is, good workers too… and loyal to a fault.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And if I also remember correctly, not the longest lasting loaf of bread on the shelf.” He chuckled, then took another drag of his cigarette. “You see, on this planet, your species would live for about two years.”

  Joseph hung his head in confusion. He didn’t understand the meaning of Earth time yet.

  “Sorry, son. Everything else came so quickly for you. I thought you would have already understood how time works here. You see, years is how humans measure time.” He tapped the Timex strapped to his bony wrist. “Like on your planet, you measure time in cycles. Every pass is a day, every crop is a half year, and every two crops is a full year. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is that saying your people have? ‘I have four crops until I rest.’”

  “Yes, sir.” Again, with reverent pride, Joseph nodded. “Four crops or two cycles, then you’re done.”

  “Well,” the old man pointed to Joseph’s arm. “This body lasts for about 120 crops.”

  “120…?” Joseph’s initial feeling of joy quickly turned to dread as the math in his head started to turn on him. “That’s...”

  “I know,” the arbiter’s face softened just the tiniest bit as he spoke. “That’s a lot of years, son. Almost sixty if you take care of yourself. But like I said before, this is your punishment, and this is your prison.”

  Joseph tried to reconcile what he was told with everything he knew about his old existence. A hundred and twenty crops. That number was unimaginable. No one on his planet ever lived past four cycles and most never made it past three.

  “Are you ok?” The old man asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Two is one. One is two. One hundred and twenty.”

  “I knew this might happen.” The arbiter stretched his aging arm behind the front seat, seized upon a small plastic bag and with great effort placed it in the middle of Joseph’s lap. The confused alien slowly spread it open to find five black spiral notebooks waiting for him.

  “The human brain is a bit more complicated than anything on our side. It was built to store a shit load of worthless facts. And let’s face it, your consciousness wasn’t built for that many memories.”

  Joseph snatched up the first book and began flipping through its virgin pages. “What do I do with them?”

  “It’s simple, start writing stuff down. Things that happen to you… facts, figures. Use each book to sort through all the shit you’re going to experience during your stay. Because trust me, you will experience a lot of shit.”

  “Like what?”

  “Good things, bad things…” The arbiter winced with some hidden pain. “Horrible things. But remember, you brought this on yourself.” The arbiter’s face betrayed a slight hint of pity before reverting to merely stern. “Also, even though there are no innocents here, you still need to blend in. There’s a saying on this planet I’m quite fond of. It goes, ‘The protruding nail gets the hammer.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked, his mind still reeling.

  “It means, stick out and you’ll get smacked. So, my advice to you would be, don’t stick out.”

  Joseph wanted to argue with the old man, but he knew he couldn’t. There was a small pack of pens nestled at the bottom of the bag, so he tore open their plastic packaging and snatched one up. With shaky hands, he wrote the header Book One in the notebook’s white title space.

  “I think I’ll start with you.”

  “Most do. One more thing,” the arbiter burned through the rest of his cigarette in one long inhale. When he was through, he didn’t light another. Instead, the old man reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small piece of laminated paper.

  “Your new name is Joseph Howlam, son.” He handed over the ID and pointed at the ticket office. “I would wish you good luck, but that’s not really the point of all this.”

  Joseph didn’t know what else to say, so he simply grunted a depressing “thanks anyway” before getting out of the car and walking toward the terminal. But before he made it even five steps into his sentence, the arbiter’s voice bellowed out again, much in the same way he did that first night in the rain.

  “Son,” his rough voice seemed even more grave. “Remember, there’s only one way of freeing yourself from these shackles… death.”

  Joseph didn’t quite know how to respond. Death? Why bring that up now? Not after all the times the Arbiter flat out refused to erase his memories. And shackles? What shackles were placed upon him? Then, he remembered his crime, and a strange feeling hit him right in the gut. What was this feeling, he wondered. The earthlings had something called guilt. But Solon’s never felt that way.

  Death, however, required no contemplation.

  After all, he’d been preparing himself to die ever since reaching and passing the median of his life. But now, his future was limitless. And with that limitless future came time to remember. Remember what he did and who he did it to. Suddenly, that strange pain hit him again, only this time harder and more complete. Would he feel this awful emotion for 120 cycles?

  Was that much suffering even possible?

  In that instance, Joseph’s very human mind understood what the old man meant and what this place was designed to do. Shackles indeed.