((Author's note: None of this is available to any other players as IC knowledge without my expressed permission. Please, consult with me before using it in RP. Thank you.))Beautiful Songbirds
Eio Tanaka watched the sky as they flew overhead. Flying in from the bronze light of an evening sunset came his friends. The fluttering mass of white seemed to twist and turn among itself like a living organism of one, rather than the thousands of individual birds it was. It was all he could hear over the sound of his own thoughts as the symphony of wings and songs enveloped him. Even with how many times he had seen this before, the sight still took his breath away. Beautiful songbirds.
"... Get up."
He reached out to touch them, wanting so badly to feel the slight weight of those creatures upon his hand. Pursing his lips, he made a sort of kissing sound, calling to the creatures around him. As if the sound from his lips left shockwaves, the flock pulsed and reacted to his calls. One moved down from the flock, seeming to watch him with intend to land.
Eio smiled.
His body convulsed so hard he bit his own tongue. Pain filled his mind from every corner of his body as he shook like a madman... and before he even opened his eyes, it was gone. The taste of iron filled his mouth and his extremities tingled like ants crawling under his skin. As he looked up, he saw the security guard holding the shock-stick at the ready, looking quite exasperated.
"I won't tell you again."
Eio couldn't tell if the growl in those words came from the arcing shock-stick or the Civire guard himself... but the meaning was crystal clear enough to make every other thought irrelevant. Eio threw himself out of the bed despite the tingle still tickling his legs and quickly reached for his clothing. Satisfied, the guard moved on down the line, waking up every other groggy worker. Occasionally, he could hear the stinging sound of the shock-stick going off alongside the yelp of another still sleeping worker.
The room was cramped, too small for the amount of men crammed inside it. A dirty dark blue light permeated the ozone scented air. Corroded metal plating with worn off yellow paint reading "
Safety! - Quality! - Teamwork!" stretched along the walls toward the time clock. As he tied his shoes and reached for the worn and grimy hard hat, he looked to his left. Other workers were moving as groggily fast as they could to get dressed, just like every morning.
They'd all shuffle down the hallway, one by one pressing their hand to the dirtied handprint reader to clock in for the day. Even a quarter mile away, the deafening sounds of the plant machinery could be heard from here. The occasional cough broke the sleep inertia of the group as they made their way to the tram station. Eio looked up as the hallway opened up into the wide open station. Bathed in the rust colored light of the barren planet's sky. The constant dust storms would pile up reddish brown powder on the skylights as quickly as the winds blew it away. It was the only glimpse of actual sunlight Eio would see for the next twelve hours.
Climbing onto the tram, Eio held on to the handrails hanging above. There were no seats... it was a waste of space to sit when twice as many people could stand on a single car. Within the next five minutes, he was at the processing plant. A cacophony of noise assaulted his ears, though by now Eio was so used to it he merely inserted his earplugs and stared blankly ahead.
I wonder what it would be like to fly away with the flock, he mused to himself. His bowl was filled with sticky brownish grey oatmeal. Breakfast. Supposedly flavored with syrup, as if that would mask the taste of dry rot the stale grain suffered. He took a sip of his juice and stirred the oatmeal around before forcing himself to eat it. He'd need the energy.
ONISEKI HOLDINGS - GENCORP, read the yellow paint on the wall again. For two months, Eio Tanaka had worked for the capsuleer he only barely knew by name. He'd seen her picture. Pretty blonde girl, actually. Not that he'd ever met her, really... just a holographic photo of the woman on the brochure. He figured she was probably not so bad as the holovids say... after all, she was giving jobs away to
tyuui like him, right? Either way, he still found plenty of reason to hate her. Namely: She owned this fucking place.
The buzzer sounded almost as soon as Eio found his station, and the first compressed half ton block of scrap metal rolled into place immediately. He pulled a lever, closing the safety gate and lit the yellow safety light. A massive Brutor man moved up to the block and pushed at it. On messily greased rollers, the block slid down a ramp to the waiting MTAC drivers, where it would be hauled to a storage warehouse and wait for shipment to a smelting facility off-world.
The Brutor gave Eio a thumbs up and grinned a missing-tooth grin. Kazzan. Coffee-dark skin and shaved bald except for a long set of dreadlocks that hung from the base of his skull, he bore no tattoos anywhere. Brought here all the way from Cartel territory as part of some sort of transfer program Eio barely understood, Kazzan couldn't speak, read, or write. In fact, his tongue had been forcibly removed at an early age, so Eio never really knew much about his only friend. He had his own way of communicating through odd grunts, whines, and hand signals... but nothing remotely coherent to Eio's unfamiliar eyes.
Kazzan never seemed to mind that he wasn't understood... in fact, Kazzan didn't seem to mind anything at all with three square meals a day and good hard work to keep him busy. This is something that white-collar Eio beheld with a distinct sense of jealousy. He hated being here, and wished with so much of his being that he could enjoy himself again like Kazzan seemed to.
Eio was a convicted felon, released on a parolee work-transfer program to Gencorp. Two years in a minimum security prison for laundering money had given him a sense of hardness that allowed him to survive in this destitute environment. With nothing but the clothing he was given and the scrip he kept saving up, his only goal was to find his way back home somehow. Easier said than done... convicts almost never got rehired, and finding other work back home was the only way he'd get there. For now, he was stuck here with blissfully ignorant Kazzan until he could buy his way into a better job.
Red lights and klaxons blaring shook Eio out of his almost meditative autopilot. The whole line stopped, and ambulance carts whizzed down the line. Kazzan whistled an imitation of the sirens as he watched them pass. Someone got hurt again. Eio breathed out a sigh and leaned against the railing to enjoy these precious moments of rest... someone else's injury is his paid break.
Short lived as it was though, the cranky old voice came through the loudspeakers with orders to continue work. Buzzers sounded, and the line started back up. More of the same.
Lunch was uneventful. "Chicken porridge" (reconstituted chicken byproduct boiled in water, salt added) today. In other words, tasteless white slop in a steel bowl that stuck to his spoon like the oatmeal did. Thanks to yesterday's almost doubled quota, the managers also awarded some too-dry fruit gelatin to all the workers today. It was a three inch cube with a single chunk of the wrong kind of fruit for the flavor stuck within.
Back to work, Kazzan seemed positively ecstatic. He just couldn't stop mewling and flailing his gestures around about the damn gelatin. He loved that stuff. Work continued, and occasional announcements would remind workers of the shift production quota and threaten with reassignment if caught with contraband. Reassignment might as well have meant execution or exile, since those who were reassigned were never heard from again by those inside. There were no goodbyes, no letters to friends left behind, not even the slightest explanation of where they went. You'd come to work one day and find your buddy gone - and the only thing the guards would say was that they were 'reassigned'.
By the end of the day, his muscles felt like glue. He felt like if he moved his arm to pull that lever one more time, or took another step up or down that ladder he'd fall apart. Dragging himself to dinner, he could scarcely force himself to feed his starving body. He couldn't afford to skip the forty-five minutes he was allotted to eat.
Chunks of mystery meat served on rice with a thin gravy, mashed tubers, boiled greens, a cup of rehydrated fruit, and three slices of bread. All of it was carefully rationed. Eio gorged himself on this feast, savoring every last bite and washing it down with more juice from concentrate. Sitting back, he looked up at the ceiling and smiled, proud that he finished another day.
Another ride on the tram, and another nearly endless line of workers clocking out for the day. Undressing was a laborious affair, requiring such things like bending over and lifting arms above his head. As he made his way to his specifically numbered bunk, Eio climbed in with a groan and almost let his eyes close before feeling the now cold wet spot of the last user's drool against his cheek. He flipped his pillow over and snuggled in again, pulling the blankets over himself.
As the dingy reality around Eio melted away, he smiled, feeling himself pulled far far away... where the familiar warmth of the dreaming sun and sound of moving wings called him back.
Beautiful songbirds.
Author
Topic: Beautiful Songbirds (Read 5964 times)