At the young and foolish age of 167, I got caught up with some unsavory elements on my home planet of Howzernick.
I did some things I'm not particularly proud of (that may or may not have involved a stolen Frykkian cargo ship and several hundred pounds of the purest bavlat in the known multiverse), and I eventually got caught. As a result, I spent the next six intergalactic standard years incarcerated on a series of prison planets and interstellar corrections vessels. My life became an intense day-to-day struggle to survive.
But a few short weeks ago, I made it out of the system. Six months late, on account of the warden's poor math skills. Those were by far the worst 6.5 standard years of my life. I was lonely, hungry, overworked, and constantly haunted by the fear of inadvertently offending one of the Gwalgian guards. But, it wasn't a total loss. I did learn a few things, which, although they may not serve me well out here in the real worlds, might at least be spun into content for an intergalactic clickbait article. Which (hopefully) will earn me enough credits to get my prison tattoo removed.
Without further ado, here are the five most important lessons I learned as an inmate in space prison.
1. You are now property of the Intergalactic Corrections Corporation.
And they are going to make good on their investment, whether or not you feel like cooperating.
Here's how it works: on certain planets whose governments have contracted with ICC for corrections management, all convicted felons are rented, or (in the case of life sentences) sold to the corporation for amounts of currency that vary, depending upon a number of factors. The inmate's species, life expectancy, risk-and-endangerment score, and ability to withstand extreme temperatures while performing backbreaking manual labor, are all taken into account in price negotiations.
In conducting research for this article, I contacted ICC's records division, as well as my attorney, and several Howzernickian and intergalactic criminal justice agencies, in an attempt to find out just how much the corporation paid my home planet for the privilege of renting my able young body for a period of six galactic standard years. Unfortunately, that portion of my record is permanently sealed, and no amount of snooping or bribery could gain me access. However, with a little journalistic ingenuity, I did discover that ICC's annual rental expenditures on temporary inmates (those blessed to not have life sentences) is just over 75,000,000,000 credits per standard year. Divided by an estimated 500,000,000 inmates, that comes out to about 150 credits per inmate, per year. Which, as we all know, is enough to buy a nice, mid-range toaster oven. It's nice to know that you're valued.
Once a deal is reached and credits have changed hands, the inmate is picked up by one of the corporation's prison transport ships (basically an interstellar mining rig but with less breathable gases), and is then carted off to one of ICC's 567 prison facilities. Most of the prison compounds are located on small but undesirable planets, where no being in its right mind would vacation, let alone set up a domicile.
I ended up on a lovely planet in the Troglodyte System. Death-by-All-Consuming-Darkness is its official name, but we inmates called it "The Trip". Because that's what you did, constantly, while trying hopelessly to maneuver through its impenetrably dark caverns and tunnels. The whole surface of the planet is infested with a species of brainsucking supermosquitoes that has proved immune to any and all attempts at eradication. So the prisoners are kept below the surface, in the blackonium mines. Blackonium is a substance so black that light cannot escape it. And because every wall, ceiling, and surface in the prison was lined with it, even headlamps and flashlights (which we were not allowed), would only provide a dim four inch beam, enough to see the tip of your nose. For most inmates, this meant that you could never see your hand or tentacle in front of your face, but somehow the people at ICC still expected you to dig out shards of the stuff with a tool resembling (as much as I could tell by my sense of touch alone) a spoon. Some prisoners didn't have it so bad, due to strange adaptations that I can't even begin to understand, much less describe.
The only time we were exposed to light was during meals. Which was not as much of a respite as you might think.
2. The food is worse than you could possibly have imagined.
My first day at The Trip, I arrived at the cafeteria, weak from hunger, knowing that the food was going to be disgusting, but willing to eat just about anything to stop the rumble in my stomachs. I waited in line for the automated food dispenser, which gave me false hope. I mean, most automated food dispensers are stocked with pretty decent choices, right? I was thinking maybe I'd get an actual decent meal. Maybe not a Ynkrelian ribeye, but at least something halfway wholesome and filling, like a plate of Gorfinese buttergrubs on toast.
But alas, it was not to be. As I neared the front of the line, I sickened from the horrific smell that was emanating from the direction of the food dispenser. I wondered, briefly, if it was the food, but no, they couldn't get away with feeding beings stuff that smelled like it was scraped from the inside of a Gwalgian's intestine. There was probably a gas being in line, wafting his sulfurous plumes all over the place.
If only I had been so lucky. I made my way to the front of the line to find that the unbearable odor was, in fact, coming from the slop that squelched out of the automatic food dispenser when you pressed the little red button labeled "Dispense Feed Substance". The slop was a sickly brown, glistening with oil, and approximately the consistency of a Mowlokian's renal extrusions.
I didn't eat that day. Or the next. Or the next. But eventually, hunger got the best of me, and, holding my olfactory organ, I swallowed down the vile stuff.
Actually, it didn't taste half bad. It was kind of like that nutritional slurry they give you at the hospital when they're about to cut open your second abdomen to express your overflow colon. Like a mild custard, with a hint of nutmeg. But the somewhat pleasant flavor of the feed substance was nullified by its overpowering odor, and it was always difficult to get an entire bowl down without projectile vomiting out of at least two of my mouths.
3. Inmates are segregated by species. FOR REASONS.
Well, not strictly by species, but by classification type. For instance, since I was the only Howzernickian incarcerated at The Trip, I was housed with other multi-headed, oxygen breathing, carbon based lifeforms. Of course, hydrogen breathers, gas beings, and silicone based lifeforms had to be housed in different accommodations for purposes of not subjecting inmates to instant death, but even in the O Block ("O" for oxygen), we were pretty heavily segregated.
Apart from the multi-heads, there were the waspbodies, the furbeasts, the tentacleds, and the hairless apes. We were all housed in separate dormitories, assigned to segregated work crews, and we only mingled with other groups in the cafeteria. To say that the tentacleds were known for violence would be an understatement. Every other inmate steered clear of them. But on the rare occasion when some poor soul accidentally stumbled into their enclosure on their way to the bathroom, everyone in O Block knew about it. The sound was horrendous. Imagine being flogged by 180 tentacles, simultaneously. In the dark. While you have to pee. Usually, it'd be weeks before we saw the victim again in the cafeteria, still covered with bruises and with their antennae missing. But sometimes, they just never came back.
And Flark help you if you pissed off a waspbody. Those guys were mean. At least they didn't gang up on you for no reason, like the tentacleds. You actually had to do something to offend them, like stepping on their stingers or spraying hot sauce in their general direction. But if you did, your whole body would be so swollen for the next three days that you wouldn't be able to do anything. One guy intentionally got stung so he could get excused from mining duty for a few days. But he regretted it once he discovered that the swelling prevented him from opening his mouth, digesting his food, or using the bathroom.
But, really, I suspect the main cause for inmate segregation was those damn hairless apes. The humans. They were small, twerpy little things, and not really dangerous. But they were so annoying. They never stopped talking in their ear-splitting voices. And--get this--they spoke out of the same mouths they used to eat. WTF, right? And they were so whiny. Like little pink flesh sacs of anxiety. Just listening to their bitching for five minutes would cause even the most peaceful inmate to blow a gasket and start cracking heads. Thankfully, we only had to be in their presence during meal times. Remind me to never visit one of the human-controlled planets.
4. When you go to sleep, you never know if you'll wake up in the same place.
ICC inmates are rarely left in one corrections facility for the duration of their sentence. Modern criminal justice research supports the frequent transport of inmates from one dismal prison planet to the next in order to cut down on a number of risk factors. Apparently, if you never allow the inmates to become accustomed to their surroundings, they are much less likely to attempt escape, band together in gangs, or stage revolts. So, it is the policy of ICC to keep all inmates as confused as they can possibly be, while still retaining their ability to perform mind-numbing labor day in and day out. This is also why all inmates are required to report for weekly disorientations. I would tell you what those consist of, but I can't remember.
To further confound prisoners, all transports take place in the middle of the mandatory sleeping period. Each inmate wears a tracking bracelet at all times, which doubles as a sleep-inducement device. If you don't fall asleep on your own by the start of the official sleeping period, the bracelet injects a sedative into your bloodstream, putting you out like a light in thirty seconds or less. In the event that an inmate is selected for transport, his bracelet is programmed to continue injecting the sedative a preset intervals until he has arrived at the new corrections facility and undergone delousing.
This happened to me after just a couple of standard months at The Trip. I laid down in my pitch black bunk and the next thing I knew, I woke up chained to a steel platform that was built over a pit of swamp pigeons. That was on the planet Vorcluck, where ICC has an inmate-operated poultry farm and processing plant. It was there that I learned the ingredients for "Feed Substance". It wasn't the pigeons.
5. But your best hope for surviving your sentence with all your heads intact is to get sent to The Freezer.
After Vorcluck, I was transported to 8 other planetary incarceration facilities, and two interstellar junk barges. Each destination was worse than the last. I kept hoping, as do all ICC inmates, that I might one day receive the famed "freezer summons".
The freezer summons was the stuff of legend. It was said that sometimes, an entire facility would be shut down due to intergalactic statute infractions. If that happened, and there weren't enough beds in other facilities to accommodate all the displaced inmates, ICC would put every last one of them into cryogenic freezer banks aboard one of its state -of-the-art transport ships. If you were fortunate enough to receive a freezer summons, you would spend part of your sentence--any where from a couple of weeks to a few years--floating idly in unconscious sleep. There were even rumors that some inmates--those with fame, or money, or connections on the outside, could wrangle a cryobunk assignment for their entire sentence.
In all my six years under the watchful eye of the Intergalactic Corrections Corporation, I was never so lucky to be sent to the freezer. But I guarantee, if I ever get caught again, I am going to pull some strings and spend the duration of my sentence in cold, cold, blissful unawareness. I'm already saving up credits, just in case.
Jonfwir Legginstock is an ex-convict, struggling to find work on Howzernick. If you have any leads, please contact him by ansible.
Thank you for reading!
Hi! I'm Leslie Starr O'Hara, but my friends call me Starr. I live in the mountains of North Carolina and I write funny fiction and satire here on Steemit. FOLLOW ME if you want to laugh your britches off!
Stay tuned for more! I publish Intergalactic Clickbait fiction every Wednesday. I know, I know, today is Thursday. I couldn't finish the article in time to post it yesterday. Sorry. Also, I didn't post an Intergalactic Clickbait piece last week, as I was vacationing on Gwalg for research.
