The Gallente Federation
“Brother's leaving!”
There was a buzz of expectation, kept carefully quiet – everybody wanted to see, nobody wanted to earn themselves the wrong end of a shock prod.
Seen from the end of the Row, it was like the walls had sprouted arms as the Condemned came to the bars. Young arms laden with tattoos, old arms with wrinkled, mottled skin. Pale arms, tan arms, dark arms, arms with the sleeves of their black jumpsuits rolled all the way down to the wrist.
There were six guards for the dead man. Four flanked him, forming the corners of a square, holding the plastic-coated cable that guided him just loose enough to allow his shackled ankles freedom to move, but tight enough to trip him in an instant if need be. One more took the lead, glaring warily at the inmates, his shock prod gripped ready to beat back at any arm that reached too far. Another brought up the rear, cradling a shotgun in his arms. The weapon had a triple-lock system. It would only fire if held by one of the guards, and if another guard, watching from behind the cameras, authorized it.
The Condemned were a brotherhood. Outside allegiances vanished when you came through the gates here. Gang members who would have been vicious rivals outside were instant, inseparable brethren in the fraternity of the Row. It kept the place peaceful – brothers didn't stab each other with makeshift weapons. Brothers didn't pounce on every opportunity to bring each others' ends about sooner than the scheduled day. In many ways, the Row was the easiest shift a guard could pull. The Brotherhood of the Condemned weren't a violent lot.
As the departing brother passed each cell, he was bid farewell. “Bye, brother”, “See you soon, frere”, “Do us proud, brother”.
Then the long walk was over. Doors opened and closed, and the brother was gone, leaving behind his surrogate family to try not to dwell on the day they would be leaving.
The room was simple. Round, with a hemispherical viewing gallery behind several layers of crystalline carbon glass. In this star system, the legal means of execution was lethal injection. Others preferred hanging, or the firing squad, but here the dead man was strapped carefully to a table in the middle of the room. An autodoctor – resembling nothing so much as a chrome octopus bolted to the ceiling – extended its limbs to press instruments to his throat and chest, to peer into his eye and to wrap gently around his wrist.
The only sounds were the whirr of air conditioning, the gentle humming of antigravity units as camera drones jockeyed for position so that they could share the man's death with the viewing public. Behind them, commentators were recounting his crimes. In front, the official read the sentence aloud, then asked the condemned if he had any last words.
“Get it over with.” he said.
They did.
The Caldari State
Prisons in the Caldari State are rare. Prisons are a drain on finance, and corporations do not like financial drains. An elaborate system of fines, of penal work gangs, of psychological, pharmaceutical and cybernetic rehabilitation, and the ever-constant threat of social censure and pariah status did the work that steel and concrete would otherwise have done.
Except for here. Here is where those people come who have no other options. Here is a true prison of the State, and it is here that people came to redeem themselves.
The prison is light and airy. It is comfortable without being decadent or excessive. The prisoners are cared for as well as any wealthy executive. They receive the best in medical care, shy of cloning. The guards conduct themselves more like servants or assistants. There is not a lethal object anywhere in the building. Even the security drones that thrum through the corridors and courtyards are armed only with stun weaponry. At the first sign of violence, all participants are put to gentle sleep, waking later in their beds.
An inmate could, if they wished, live a comfortable and tranquil, though dull, life here until finally even the very limits of Caldari medical technology could no longer sustain them.
There is a room tucked discretely away from the main courtyard, through an ornamental garden in which there is a trickle of water though sculpted greenery into a lake full of fat mouthing fish. The simple door stands next to a hissing sand waterfall, and the interior is traditionally and tastefully decorated. All of the modest tools of the State's various religions are kept readily to hand, and the room is tended to by a person robed anonymously in white – the Tea Maker.
The Tea Makers have a simple job. They are models of discretion and sympathy. They exist to make tea as tradition demands it, and do so immaculately. For many who raise the steaming beverage to their lips, it turns out to be the best cup of their lives. For all, it is the last.
The logic is simple, and tied to the precious notion of honour, and the approbation of the ancestors. For a person to recover their honour and to redeem themselves demands that they take responsibility for the ultimate consequence of their crimes. The objective here is not punishment, but repentance.
In all the long years since this prison was built, very few persons have lasted more than a year before opening the plain grey door to the Tea Maker's room and passing with dignity out of the world.
None have ever died of old age.
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Topic: Methods of Execution (Read 2491 times)