431/ part 2

431/ part 2

fiction
Edward w Pritchard


It's hard to tell the night from the day from the perpetual darkness near Pluto. My jailers take every precaution to extend my life so I may complete my 431 year sentence. Mechanical birds sing near dawn simulating circadian response rousing me from sleep to keep myself the prisoner in appropriate health. With the pills and shocks and prison routine the decades roll past.

If a prisoner does oneself in perpetual obscurity is initiated removing all record of ones existence.

Friendless and alone prisoners are encouraged produce gainful activity. After long periods of forced sleep and sunlessness malfunctions in the psyche garbles continuities between events and occurrences disrupting one's ability to concentrate or plan.

The mechanical psychologist jailers observe myself from time to time from afar and initiate compensating post hypnotic suggestions and tweaks to keep myself the prisoner balanced to fulfil the remainder of the jail time.

Often I wake with the urge to check for letters or notes or myself initiate response from and to people gone from Earth centuries now past; the urgency of my longings to connect suggests that the mechanical jailer psychologists may have planted compensating thoughts in my subconscious as I entered the deep monthly sleep cycle here in my cell.

Later awake I remember communication is now psychically initiated anyway; it's been a long time since I was removed from the population.

Although every precaution has been followed to insure absolute silence in my surroundings sometimes at 3:14am I strain to hear sounds back on Earth. A baby's cry cannot be heard from Earth to Pluto where I complete my time and a baby cannot stay a baby for several hundred years. I either imagine the sound of the baby or my jailers have simulated the noise using standard protocol to rebalance myself the prisoner so I may continue and complete my 431 year sentence from my temporary Home near Pluto now classified as a Moon not a Planet.

Sometimes I try to still myself the prisoner's Mind. There is nothing to think about and nothing to remember.

Afterward if I develop urge for activity I suspect my jailers are using compensating suggestions to balance my psyche to insure myself proper health to extend my life so I may complete my 431 sentence in the proper and customary manner.