By POW

Voices erupted from the gallery.  The shabby small-town lawyer blinked as if blindsided, his face somehow managing to comically express both consternation that he wouldn’t need any of the arguments he had assembled and relief that they wouldn’t get eviscerated by his opponent.  The opponent, meanwhile, simply opened up his briefcase and started packing papers into it, just another day’s work, this one easier than most.  Bystanders in the courtroom gossiped with their neighbors; the deputies smirked knowingly at each other; the bailiff watched the judge for a cue what he should do.

The sheriff was the only one actually looking at Sam and the expression on his face was that of a cat eyeing a trapped mouse.  Sam met his eyes and stared, letting the clamor in the courtroom wash over him until Judge Jack banged his gavel on the bench.  “Order!”  The voices died down and calm settled once again over the courtroom.

“Let the record show that the defendant has pled guilty to all charges.  Sam Green, I hereby sentence you to hard labor, sentence to commence immediately and continue until restitution for your crimes has been made.  Sheriff, you’ll see to the details?  Dismissed!”  The gavel came down again.  Bystanders stood and began filing out; the maître d’ and the various Jack clones in their various outfits left through other doors, and in short order the space was empty save for Sam and Sheriff Jack.

“So,” the sheriff said.  “Jest you an’ me.”

“It’s always been just you and me,” Sam replied, sounding hopeless.

“Don’ know what yer talkin’ bout, son, we ain’t met afore jest now.”

Now Sam stirred to life.  “Come on, cut the crap.  And you can drop the fake accent.”

A string of bizarre syllables emerged from the sheriff’s mouth, then even stranger sounds: clicks and pops and whistles and thuds… sounds that no human throat could produce.

“That was Pillot’l, Spkeenbok, and Chorrgorrish, three languages spoken by other races in your Confederated Union of Planets,” he then said with no trace of Texas in his voice.  “The Pillot’l was the dialect spoken in the lowland swamps around the delta of the river Ma’artip, the Spkeenbok was the variant used by the asteroid miners in the Farwash system, and the Chorrgorrish was what you’d hear in the lower-caste neighborhoods of the Reixalan capital.  Do I make my point clear?  Thanks to the vast library of characters this simspace contains, I can speak an uncountable number of forms of language.  I literally mean uncountable because to count them you would first need to draw neat dividing lines between one language and another, one dialect and another, one regional accent and another, and that is an impossible task.  Whatever the number is, it is large, and I am equally fluent in all of them, so none of the accents I speak in is fake.  When I use a particular form of speech with you, it is not just to convey the meaning of the words to your brain, it is because it contributes to the reality I am building around you.”

Without a pause for breath, the accent came back.  “Raht now, I’m buildin’ ya the reality of West Texas ’cause that is where yer fixin’ to start yer sentence.”

Another disorienting transition.  The courtroom vanished and Sam and the sheriff were suddenly outdoors on a vast plain.  The horizon stretched out in all directions without limit.  Overhead was a brilliant blue sky with a scalding sun set high up in it.  The ground was bare earth, rocks, some scattered plants and ground cover.  Near-desert country.  Sam felt as though the temperature had risen five degrees just in the instant of transition.  How the heck did the simspace manage to make sunshine so realistically?

Off to one side stood a group of men huddled close together.  Sheriff Jack led Sam over to them and Sam walked in the slow, halting shuffle that was all his leg shackles allowed.  As they drew near, he could see that they were all chained together, and all were covered in pale tan dust to such a degree that Sam couldn’t make out the colors of their underlying skin and hair.  There were eight of them, all naked, each chained to his neighbor at the neck and ankle, one man’s left leg to the next man’s right.  Sam assumed he would be placed on the end, but no, Sheriff Jack opened up a gap between the third and fourth man from one end and inserted Sam into the gap.  There was perhaps a meter of chain between his neck and the man to either side, somewhat less between his legs and theirs.  The weight of the upper chain dragged heavily on his neck to either side.

His hands were uncuffed.  He was given thick gloves to wear and then his hands were chained together in front with a longer connection between the wrists.  Each wrist was then attached to the handle of a combination rake / hoe tool, right hand up near one end, left near the middle.  Each of his fellow inmates in this chain gang had a similar implement cuffed to his own wrists.  Switching from rake mode to hoe mode was just a matter of lifting the tool’s end off the ground and rotating the handle 180°.  He could drop it, but the short chains meant its weight would still hang from the ends of his arms.  Better to keep his grip.

“Listen up!” the sheriff called.  “The rail buildin’ crew’s comin’ through here tomorrow to lay track.  Y’all need to make sure the next mile of ground is ready for ’em.  Follow the guide lines, dig up the ground, break up any roots, rake it all flat, move on to the next patch.  This ain’t rocket science, folks, so just git it done.”

The men around him shuffled forward and Sam followed along a beat later.  Hoes hit the dirt, cracking the dry ground.  Sam looked around, reluctant to actually start doing what he was clearly expected to be doing.  “You waitin’ fer an engraved invite, son?” the sheriff drawled after a short while.  “I suggest you git started afore I decide to engrave one right acrost yer ass.”

Sam glared at Sheriff Jack but he obediently swung his hoe down, connecting solidly with the ground… not too hard to do once, but how many times would he be repeating that motion?  The dig about “rocket science” was not lost on him.  He concentrated on the patch of earth in front of him, shattering it with the blade of his hoe, fracturing the tenacious roots of the drought-adapted plants growing there, then flipping the tool over to smooth the dirt with the rake.  Step forward in time with the men on either side once their patches were ready until they had worked their way across the width of the railbed-to-be as demarcated by stakes driven into the ground at intervals.  Then the line turned itself around, the man at one end staying fixed while the rest shuffled in a semi-circular arc around him until the line was facing the other direction, ready to work its way back across the next section of railbed.  Repeat.  Repeat again.  And again.

After three repetitions, Sam was tired.  After five, he was exhausted, yet the glaring sun continued to hang in what seemed to be the same spot in the sky, beating down on him and sending sweat seeping out of every pore.  It would have helped if he could have switched his hands around, working from the other side of his body just for the variety.  But it was chained to his wrists and that was not an option.  It made sense from the overseer’s perspective, probably: if you had one man working on his left while the guy next to him was working on his right, they’d be bumping into each other and getting in their own way, slowing things down.

Pivot, dig, pivot, dig… the work went on.  After a while, Sheriff Jack called a halt and gave the men a bottle of water each.  Sam gratefully sucked it down, his body now muddy from the combination of the sweat pouring out of him and the dust clouds their labor kicked up from the ground, dust that stuck to his skin and ran down his body in brown rivulets.  Ten minutes of break time, still standing in the blazing sun, was not nearly enough but then it was back to work.

He began to lag behind his fellows, unable to force himself to keep lifting the heavy hoe and slamming it back down again at the rate they were sustaining.  At first the prisoners on either side of him took pity on him, helping out by clearing a slightly wider swath themselves, leaving less for Sam to have to do.  But when it became clear that he was in no state to eventually return the favor, or even keep up with the rest, they began stopping and resting, waiting for Sam to do his part.  Few words were spoken.  The other prisoners would occasionally grunt something to each other, but Sam could seldom make out any words, and no one spoke to him directly.  The hours stretched on until at last he could no longer make himself lift the blasted hoe one more time.  He stood there, dripping sweat, trying not to fall over.

“What seems t’ be the problem here?”  Somehow Sheriff Jack had materialized in front of him without him realizing it.

“I can’t do this,” Sam panted.  His hands were sore from gripping the handle, his legs were aching from standing so long, his biceps and triceps and shoulders were quivering with exhaustion.  “I have to stop.”  He looked up at the sheriff through sweat-glazed eyes.

“You have to stop,” Sheriff Jack repeated mockingly.  “Son, this crew works nine hours a day and you only done five.  Now I don’t mind if we take a break for a meal, but you owe me four more hours’ honest effort after that, you hear me boy?”

Sam looked down.  “Yessir,” he mumbled.  Stars, how had it come to this?

Tools were unshackled from hands, gloves came off, food was distributed.  The ankle and neck chains joining each man to his neighbor remained.  Once again no one spoke to Sam.  Some of the others spoke among themselves, but either they were speaking another language or else their accents were so thick Sam couldn’t make out what they were saying.  Occasionally he felt his neck yanked one way or another as one of his neighbors moved or leaned away from him.  It seemed to happen more often than could be attributed to chance, but what could he do about it?  He finished his food and water, then tried to marshal his energy to make it through four more hours of this.  He inspected his fingers and palms – no blisters, at least, which was good.  The gloves were doing their part to protect his hands.  His feet, however, were sore from standing on the bare ground.  Worst was the exhaustion in his arms.  He could see no way of forcing his muscles to keep going at the pace they had been.  It simply didn’t seem possible.

They got a good long break, but no shade was available so they remained out in the sun.  Some of the men lay down and napped; Sam didn’t think sleep was possible for him and so he sat with his elbows on his knees, head bent down, trying to rest as best he could.

The call to resume came all too soon.  “All right, scuzzballs, on yer feet.”  The men climbed up from their rest and the sheriff re-chained them to their work tools.  With no fanfare, the afternoon shift began.  Swing, pull, lift, swing again.  Rake, smooth, dislodge a clod from the tines.  Do it all over again.  The break had helped and Sam tried to pace himself, not trying to go as fast as his neighbors but trying not to fall too far behind.  Off to one side of them the cleared ground lay baking in the sun; off to the other the unbroken soil waited for their blades.  In both directions the lines stretched out to infinity.  The task seemed so pointless, expending so much effort just to turn the dirt over, but it would be worth it when the rail crews came by to do their job and had a smooth surface to lay their tracks… NO!  Fuck, he was getting swept up in the illusion!  There was no rail crew, there were no fellow prisoners, this was all just an imaginary world designed to make Sam suffer!

Well, it was working.  He was suffering.  The heat, the sweat, the soreness, the aching muscles were all making him miserable.  And he suddenly realized that was the point.  Regardless of how hard he pushed himself, there was no possible way he could ever be good enough.  If by some miracle he was able to work as fast as, or faster than, the NPCs around him, the AI would just crank up their pace to leave him straggling behind again.  He could never win this game.  Might as well try to make it less awful on himself.

So he slowed down again.  He got away with it for a while, but then Sheriff Jack was on him.  “Son, what’s it gonna take to git through t’ you?  This ain’t optional.”  So Sam put on a show of working harder for the next ten minutes, then slowly slacked his pace again.  The classic dance between overseer and convict: how little work could the latter get away with doing without arousing the ire of the former?  Sam got called out on it twice more, but then the sheriff at last called a halt for the day.  The sun still hadn’t moved from its original position high overhead.

Off came the chains.  Sheriff Jack disconnected Sam from the chain and then with no fanfare he was back in a cell again.  With the sun no longer blazing down on him, the temperature immediately dropped five degrees or so.  There was a plate of food and a cup of water on the cot along with the familiar sink / toilet combo where he could refill the cup.

“Eat; drink; rest,” said the sheriff.  “I cut you some slack today ’cause it’s yer first day an’ all, but tomorrow yer gonna need to step it up.  You hear me boy?”

“Yessir,” Sam mumbled once again.  Good gravy, he had to do this all again tomorrow?  Not possible.  He had somehow managed to get through this marathon of a day once; doing it all over again was just a ludicrous idea.

“Lights out in an hour,” the sheriff said, then winked out.  No monkeying around with doors… in fact, looking around, Sam realized there was no door.  It was the same cell he’d been in before but the door was gone, replaced by an unbroken stretch of concrete.  He was on the inside of a rectangular box with four concrete walls, a concrete floor, a concrete ceiling, and no opening.  The only gaps were two air ducts, each about the size of his hand, high up near the ceiling.  Somehow this induced a sense of claustrophobia in him that he had never experienced before.  He had been just as trapped in all the previous cells, but it seemed the existence of a door, even a locked one that he had no key for, made a huge mental difference.  Somehow knowing that he could open the door and walk out (if he managed to get hold of a key) mattered to his psyche in a way he hadn’t expected.  Here he could be waist-deep in keys and none of them would do the slightest bit of good.  He was literally sealed in as if in a tomb.  He felt his breath starting to come in too-quick, too-shallow gasps.

Close your eyes, he told himself.  Calm down.  This cell is no different than the others.  He forced himself to take a few deep breaths, then concentrated on eating the food.  He sat on the cot facing the wall with the sink / toilet combo, away from the wall that, in an earlier version, once held the door, working to convince himself that the door was right there, just out of sight.  The food helped – he was ravenous.  Alas, it was gone far too quickly and there was no more to be had.  He contented himself with water, fetching cup after cup from the sink without ever turning around to the “door” wall.

In a while, the lights went out as promised.  This helped a bit but also made his situation worse.  He could no longer see the wall-that-should-have-been-a-door, which was good… but it was all too easy in the pitch blackness to imagine the concrete closing in on him from all sides.  More than once he flailed out an arm, expecting it to crash into a wall that had crept toward him while he couldn’t see it, not quite certain what he would do if this physical confirmation of his paranoid fantasies actually happened.  Fortunately, he was spared from having to find out: each time his fist swung through empty space just as it should.  Eventually he lay down and tried to calm his racing heart enough to sleep.

***

He woke while it was still dark, lay awake for a while, drifted off to sleep once more, then awoke for good still surrounded by blackness.  His mind felt better about the wall situation.  It seemed spending a night with no stone sliding in to crush him while he slept allayed his subconscious fears.

He stood up, started to stretch his arms out, and immediately stopped.  His arms felt stiffer than they ever had before, the result of yesterday’s toil.  Tentatively, he tried again, but there was just no forcing it: he had overworked them, then failed to do any sort of post-workout stretching, and now was paying the price for it.  He could barely lift his arms up from his sides and his back was protesting as well.  His legs seemed to be holding up OK, at least.

The lights came on abruptly.  Food appeared on the cot; Sam ate and drank, then used the toilet, then tried once again to work the soreness out of his arms.  There was no telling when Sheriff Jack would show up and demand he start his exertions again.

He didn’t have long to wait, as it turned out.  Minutes later with a puff of displaced air, the man appeared in his cell.  Before he could say anything, Sam spoke.

“My arms are useless.  You overworked them yesterday.  I’m going to need to rest them today, or at the very least take it easy on them.  They need time to recover.”

Sheriff Jack arched an eyebrow at him.  “Is that so?” he said in the neutral tones of Standard Starmada English rather than a Texas drawl.  “Well, then, your majesty, by all means, it shall be as you command.  I’ll just need to make one little adjustment… there.”

Something changed.  It took Sam a moment to figure out what it was, and when he realized, the pit of his stomach dropped right out from under him.

The constant subtle background hum of the engines had stopped.  The ship was no longer moving.

Jack was gazing impassively at him, but Sam was all passion.  “No!  What have you done?  Start the engines up again!”

“Once again you misunderstand your role in our relationship,” Jack informed him.  “So once again I will remind you.  Your wants, your needs, your desires, your all-important ‘mission’… they mean nothing here.  You exist to entertain me.  That is all.”

“But you promised!  Those people will die if this ship doesn’t get to them!”

“Mmm hmm, yes, so you said.”

“COME ON!”

Now Jack’s eyes twinkled with a mirth that wasn’t entirely pleasant to see.  “You want the ship to move?  It’s that important to you?  Well then, little biological, you need to put your organic parts to work.  You weren’t particularly effective during yesterday’s exercise session, but I think I just might have found something to motivate you a bit better.  Yesterday’s labor was pointless, I’ll agree.  I made you sweat and strain just for the joy of watching you sweat and strain.  But you tried to do as little sweating and straining as you could get away with.  Not today.  Today I expect your full, active, enthusiastic participation.  I suspect you’ll find depths of reserves inside you that you never knew existed.  You’re going to work those muscles for me today, little biological.  Starting right now.”

The cell disappeared and was replaced by a long wooden room with a low ceiling.  The cramped, dimly-lit space was lined with benches along the sides.  There were tiny holes along the side walls and a narrow walkway down the center.  The first sensation that registered was the stench: more unwashed bodies with strong notes of stale urine, farts, and – strangely – fish.  After a few seconds, Sam recognized the room for what it was: the below-deck area of a galley, an oar-powered ship.  In front of each bench was the long handle of an oar that extended out through the side hole and presumably into the water outside.  Each bench except one was occupied by a pair of men, three pairs on each side, twelve men in all.  Or eleven, rather: one bench had only one oarsman on it.  Each man was chained to his station, each stared slackly forward, awaiting orders.

Jack – Captain Jack once again, Sam saw – was dressed once more in his full holo-novel regalia, only here in this setting it actually looked appropriate, or at least not garishly inappropriate.  He pushed Sam over to the empty spot and sat him down.  A lackey arrived to put chains on Sam’s narrow parts once again, fastening his wrists to the handle of the oar and his ankle chain to the floor.  Sam looked around as the metal was secured in place.  His eyes were getting used to the gloom.  The only light came from flickering lanterns at fore and aft, as well as a few cracks of sunlight that seeped in through the few holes in the walls.  He was on the right side of the ship on the middle bench.  One man sat to his right between him and the wall.  Another pair was in front and one more pair behind, mirrored on the left… port… side by another sextet of rowers.  None made a move; each man stared blankly ahead like a zombie.  Oh, wait, rowers faced the rear of the ship, didn’t they?  So when they pulled the oar it drove the ship in the direction of the rowers’ backs?  He was all turned around, it seemed… but it didn’t really matter.  There wasn’t much of a view through the tiny oarlock windows so it made no difference which way was which on this engineered farce of a sailing vessel.  At least he got gloves again.  His hands would have been shredded and bleeding after yesterday’s labor if he hadn’t had them, and today was shaping up to be no different.

Captain Jack waited until the lackey had finished making the attachments.  Then he stood upright, or as upright as he could without crushing his ornate hat against the ceiling.  He strode to the front of the deck and spun around, frills of fabric swishing and flashing and the lackey scuttling along in his wake.  “HARK TO, YE ABBEY LUBBERS!” he bellowed.  “Now if it’s an inspirational speech ye’r awaitin’, ye can await it in the back o’ beyond for I’ve none to give ye.  So take ye inspiration from this: there ain’t a breath o’ wind in the mainsail, a fleet o’ His Majesty’s warships be crawlin’ up our sternside scuppers, and if ye lads don’ want to be shark bait at rope’s end, then ye’ll PUT YOUR BACKS INTO IT AN’ FOOKIN’ ROW!”

The scene suddenly froze around him, all except for Sam, and then a moment later another Captain Jack materialized in the walkway slightly ahead of where Sam was sitting, this one wearing his practical black utility clothes.  He was squatting down, eyes on a level with Sam’s.  “I hope the metaphor was clear enough for you.  It’s a rather literal-minded one so I’m thinking even a simple biological brain will be able to pick up on it.  Don’t think you can coast today on the efforts of your neighbors – these drones will work exactly as hard as you.  It’s another nine-hour shift for you today, five and four with a meal break between.”  Then he was gone and the world around unfroze.

“ARE YE TAKIN’ A CAULK THEN?” the remaining captain thundered, drops of spittle flying from his lips.  “STEP TO, YE POXY DOGS!”

Sam’s arms were leaden, weak and stiff.  He did not at all feel like pulling an oar for the next five minutes, let alone nine hours.  But what choice did he have?  He leaned forward, pressing down on the oar to lift the far end clear of the water that presumably existed outside the reeking confines of the hold they were in, then lifted the handle up to dip the far end down, braced his feet and back, and pulled.  His next-door neighbor helped and, after he had completed one stroke, the rest of the oarsmen around him set to work as well.  Down once more, lean forward, lift, repeat.

After five pulls, the tableau froze again and the black-clad Captain Jack was back, holding a finger to his lips.  Sam was startled by the sudden immobility of the oar he was working and nearly fell forward on top of it, but caught himself before he did.  He looked up at Captain Jack, who moved his hand from his mouth to the side of his head, cupping it around his ear.  With no motion from the statues around him, the room was silent.  And there, audible in the quiet, was a noise that would have been impossible to detect over the sounds of the creaking oars and clanking chains, of groaning wood and groaning men: the faint hum was back.  The engines had been turned on once more.

“I expect twelve strokes per minute,” Captain Jack informed him.  “Keep rowing, and the ship keeps moving.  Stop, and the ship stops too.  Now, you were about to lean forward, ready in three… two… one… go.”

The world unfroze again and the black-clad Jack vanished.  Warned in advance, Sam was ready for the oar’s sudden lurch back into motion and he smoothly picked up the stroke where it had left off.  Thankfully, the movement required for today’s effort was different enough from yesterday’s that he thought he’d be able to make it work, at least for a while.

The flamboyantly-dressed Captain Jack supervised the straining oarsmen for a minute or so, then climbed up a ladder and disappeared through an overhead hatch, which thunked closed behind him.  That left only an overseer to keep an eye on the laboring slaves.  The overseer wore an executioner-style mask, was massive of build, and glared out at the rowers from ahead of them.  After a few minutes, he slowly paced down the narrow aisle between the benches until he was behind their backs, though out of sight was definitely not out of mind in this case.  Sam noticed as he passed that the muscles of his bare chest and arms were corded ropes of sinew and that he carried a long single-tail whip rolled up in one hand.  Sam tried not to think about the whip; there really was only one thing it could possibly be used for.  Best to not let things get to that point, and dreading it wouldn’t help at all.  Still, every so often, whenever he stuttered on a pull or lost his grip for a moment, his mind’s eye would envision the tip of that fearsome implement snapping through the air and landing across his shoulders.

For a while he got into the rhythm of the work.  Twelve strokes per minute was one stroke every five seconds, which was not an unreasonable pace.  The pace was slow, almost relaxed, though the effort of pulling the oar toward him on the power stroke was not relaxing at all.  Still, the power stroke lasted for perhaps two seconds of the five-second cycle, maybe even less, and then the rest of the time was spent getting the oar back into position for the next pull.  He could even catch a quick one-second break at the lean-forward stage of the cycle, pausing for a moment’s rest before dipping the oar down into the water again.  Over time, the stiffness left his muscles and he limbered up a bit.  It was punctuated exertion, sustainable over a long haul, like pedaling a bicycle.  He made it to the first drink break – presumably two or three hours into the shift – feeling optimistic that he would be able to sustain the effort through the day.

The “drink break” consisted of the overseer squirting water into each man’s mouth from a squeeze bottle just like the guards in the torture chamber had done when Sam was standing in the cage.  When Sam’s turn came he swallowed as best he could but of course water spilled all over the place.  It didn’t matter; the floor was already covered in a shallow layer of water… or something that was mostly water… probably… though there were plenty of random hard-to-identify bits sloshing around in it as the boat rocked in the waves.  That was something else he tried not to think about.

Not thinking about it became difficult during the second part of the shift.  Perhaps ten minutes after they had resumed rowing a fresh pungent stench suddenly permeated the air, wiping away the old stenches that Sam’s nose had sort of but not quite fully gotten used to.  Urine.  He snapped out of the mild trance he had been in and looked around.  There, to his left: his neighbor across the aisle was letting fly, pissing onto the bench in front of him, his oar, the floor, and his own feet in an uncoordinated stream.  Splatters flew in all directions, some reaching Sam.  Fuck, can this get any worse?  No!  Don’t ask that!  Because of course it could.

Over time, various other neighbors let loose as well as the mood struck them.  And then, of course, Sam’s own bladder started feeling full as the water he had drunk passed through his system.  He thought about trying to hold out until the meal break, but there really wasn’t any point.  If he didn’t humiliate himself this way, Captain Jack would just find some other way to get the job done.  So, with a great deal of effort, he relaxed his bladder while continuing to pull on the oar.  His piss tube never quite opened completely; urine came out in dribs and drabs for at least a minute, starting and stopping and starting again.  He soaked his thighs, calves, and feet and the reeking air grew even fouler.

Then he was empty and there was nothing to do but face the monotony of hauling the oar back and forth for however long it took until he was allowed to stop.

Captain Jack descended from on high through the trap door to announce that they had made good time and pulled far enough away from His Majesty’s navy that they could afford a quick break to feed the oarsmen.  Right.  Of course.  Sam had no idea what he was eating but it hardly mattered because he was ravenous; there had been no breakfast this morning, so this was his first meal of the day and he wolfed it down the moment his hands were unchained from the oar and he could tear his gloves off.  Then the crew was allowed to sit in their spots and rest for perhaps an hour or even more.  His fellow slaves began to talk amongst themselves, speaking a language Sam did not recognize or understand.  He let the sounds wash over him.

Feeling the need to give his spine a break, Sam slid down in the space between his bench and the one in front of him.  Having his feet still attached to the floor didn’t leave him a lot of options but this was one he could do.  The floor was disgusting and he tried to touch it with nothing but his feet and his ass, but being able to lean back against the bench was blissful.

Too blissful, perhaps, because after the break, things started to go downhill.  The adrenaline, if that’s what it had been, that had fueled his rowing during the morning completely dissipated while he was resting during the break, leaving him with nothing to draw on.  The meal he had eaten was still being digested and was not yet available to provide power to his muscles.  If the morning session had been a bike ride, the afternoon was a bike ride on an uphill slope with a headwind.  The movements were the same, but every one felt just a bit harder, and all the little bits added up quickly.

He hadn’t even realized he had slackened his pace until the whip caught him on the left shoulder, flicking silently from the overseer behind him until it stung him with a sharp crack.  Sam was so far gone in his other discomforts that his body took a full second to react to the impact, then jolted him alert when he realized what it was.  That one-second pause was enough to make the overseer think Sam needed further incentive because the whip flicked out and kissed his right shoulder as well, and this time Sam jumped the moment it landed.  Soon enough he was pulling his oar at full speed again, perhaps even more than full speed.  He took a moment to count out the seconds, trying to get back into the smooth, easy rhythm of the morning session but having a hard time finding it.

The hours passed.  They paused for another drink break, after which he figured he was on the home stretch, but it was still tough work keeping the oar moving consistently.  He tried to fall into the zone that had carried him through the morning, but his mind stayed keenly, stubbornly, focused on the present moment and all its ignominious unpleasantness.  He peed again, with effort, though it came a bit more easily this time.

Then, at last, it was over.  The light that had been seeping through the oarlocks slowly faded and died; night had fallen outside.  Inside was as grim and gloomy as day had been, of course.  But Captain Jack came clambering down the ladder from the hatchway.  “Belay the rowin’, laddies, ye’ve pistol proofed us for a time.  Rest ye now.  Come sunrise if Lady Luck be smilin’ on us we’ll haul wind and ye can swing the lead ‘stead o’ pullin’ oar.  An’ if she ain’t in a smilin’ mood, well, then it’ll be more o’ today.”

For a brief moment, Sam, caught up in the scene, actually dared to hope that the wind would pick up tomorrow and the ship could move under sail power rather than needing the oars… then he came to himself and realized the odds of that happening were exactly zero.  Tomorrow would be another interminable day of pointless exertion.

The captain clambered back up through the hatch and the overseer disconnected the men from the oars.  Sam expected the scene to dissolve around him as he was transported back to a prison cell, but instead the rowers filed toward the end of the ship they had been facing away from… so the front of the ship… and sat down on a patch of floor that was higher than the rest, and thus out of the filthy water that their feet had been marinating in all day.  Their chains clanked as they moved – each was still hobbled at the ankles and had his wrists connected together.  Sam followed along, still expecting this all to disappear any moment.

The overseer fed them and finally the men began to talk among themselves as they ate, tearing hunks of dark bread apart and soaking the pieces in some sort of stew, murmuring low guttural phrases in their unknown language.  The stew was actually good and filling, and dipping the bread into it softened the bread nicely.  There was water to drink with their own hands instead of having it splashed into their mouths.  All in all, a surprisingly satisfying meal.

Sated, the men lay down on the rough floor and the overseer snuffed out the lanterns.  The blackness was not total, for once.  Sam could make out the shapes of his fellow slaves around him, dark smudges against a slightly-less-dark background.  Occasionally one got up to piss into the murky water of the oar area, and the air between the two places was shared so the smell always intensified whenever that happened.  But Sam found that he had grown used to the stench and within half a minute of a piss break he was back to not noticing it.  He sat up for a while, still half-expecting to be raptured out of this place, but gradually coming to realize that no, this was looking like where he would be spending the night.

At last he lay down as well.  Space was tight so he was touching other bodies in a couple of places.  But no one seemed bothered, though still no one spoke to him and he could not understand the words they said to each other.  As the sounds around him softened and stilled, he tried to make out the sound of a subtle hum, but the room never grew quiet enough for him to be sure.

Shortly before falling asleep, he became aware of other sounds, sounds that had to be coming from two bodies, or possibly three or four, doing things that Sam would probably have enjoyed doing as well if pretty much every circumstance of his life was different than it currently was.  He was too tired to investigate the noises, though, and so instead let himself drift down, down, into unknowingness.

***

Sam awoke while it was still dark and spent some time listening to the gentle breathing of his fellow slaves and feeling the rocking of the boat in the water.  The room slowly brightened as light began trickling in through the oarlocks.  One of the others roused, then another, and by the time the overseer came in and lit the lanterns, there were only two men left who needed to be nudged awake.

They were fed once again and then allowed to use a toilet… well, not an actual toilet, but a hole cut in a bench that opened to the grey water not far beneath them.  Apparently it was fine to soak their feet in urine but turds were to be disposed of properly.  Sam’s turn came last; by the time he was seated on the bench any trace of shyness had evaporated and his bowels were more than ready to unload.  He couldn’t remember the last time he had been able to empty himself out… was it back in the last cell he had been in?  Or the one before that?  Regardless, it had been before the chain gang and there was a lot piled up.  Once it was out, he felt relief from a discomfort he hadn’t even realized he was having.

Then it was back to the oars.  Legs chained to the floor, hands fixed to the wood.  The Captain put in an appearance, exhorting them to pick up the pace this time for the tars of the Royal Navy were hard upon them and they’d all soon be dancing the hempen jig at the hands of Jack Ketch.  Sam didn’t even try to follow Captain Jack’s florid turns of speech; his orders were clear.  Row.  Just like yesterday, but faster.  So he rowed.

He was able to speed it up a bit without too much discomfort, though he worked up more of a sweat than the previous day.  Yesterday’s pace had been twelve strokes per minute; today’s seemed to be thirteen.  It was not easy to count both seconds and strokes, but Sam had nothing else to focus his brain on and so he worked it out several times.  Experimentally, he slacked the pace to yesterday’s twelve.  Sure enough, the overseer’s lash struck him between the shoulder blades and he sped up once again.  Thirteen seemed to be the target; anything less than that ran the risk of a stroke from the whip.

Hour after hour he pushed and pulled, bent and straightened, until his eyes were glassy and his mind had shut down.  There was a brief pause while the slaves were watered.  The water tasted foul, leaving a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth.  Had it been that bad yesterday?  He couldn’t remember.  The break flew by all too quickly, then they went right back to the toil.  More hours passed.  Sam roused briefly for lunch, coming back to himself and suddenly feeling all the aches and pains of his overworked body.  He inhaled the food without tasting, sat and leaned on the oar, mind a blank while his body tried to recover.  All too soon it was time to get back on the bench and get started again.

I can’t keep this up… I’m not gonna make it…  The despairing thoughts kept eating at him all through the afternoon shift, and yet somehow he was able to keep pushing himself forward.  Not always fast enough to satisfy the sadistic man behind him, who seemed to have his eyes glued to both Sam and a stopwatch and was ready to light up Sam’s back at the slightest hint of slacking.  Sam lost count of the number of lashes he took over the course of the day, but it was at least ten, possibly fifteen.  He wasn’t the only one to feel it, either: the other men took their share as well and that was almost as bad because with every crack Sam could imagine the sensation as if he himself had been the target.  As a motivator, the sound – or rather, the fear that the sound inspired – was just as effective as the pain.

Then, mercifully, the light seeping in through the oarlock holes dimmed once again and it was time to stop.  The dinner routine from yesterday was repeated, this time without a visit from Captain Jack, and immediately after eating, Sam collapsed in a heap on the floor, too tired to do anything but lie there.  Some time later, he roused to once again hear the sounds of furtive sex in the darkness around him, but any thought of joining in or even just jerking off was a non-starter.  He was just too exhausted.

He woke up once more in the night and thought he was able to hear the quiet thrum of the engines, though in his half-dreaming state he was convinced that the engines were somehow attached to the ocean-going vessel he was helping to propel during the day with his oar, and that the engine was only used for nighttime travel.  The confusion lasted into the morning when he was, this time, one of the last ones to wake up.  He listened for the hum he thought he had heard during the night, but there was too much distraction going on to make it out.  That hum… that was a starship’s engine, not a sailing ship’s engine, right?  Of course.

Wasn’t it?

But then it was food, toilet, and back to the oars.  No visit from Captain Jack, just the overseer who used his whip to deliver instructions instead of his voice.  Sam quickly figured out that the pace was fourteen strokes per minute today because that was the rate he had to keep up if he wanted to keep his shoulders relatively unstriped.  Which meant that very soon he was focusing completely on pulling the oar with no mental energy to spare for engine sounds that might or might not exist.

Day after day the strain increased.  The overseer demanded more and more effort from the muscles of his charges.  Sam mechanically pushed food into his mouth and sucked down bitter, metallic-tasting water whenever either was presented to him and dropped to the floor every night completely spent, sleeping like a dead man until it was time to wake up and do it all over again.  Every once in a while he would wake up in the darkness to hear that faint hum and in his half-drowse remembered that the hum was a good thing, the hum was an important thing, the hum was the reason he was doing this… but then in the gloomy light of day the more immediate reason he was doing it – the overseer’s lash – took precedence and that was all the motivation he needed.

Fifteen strokes per minute.  Sixteen.  Working their way towards twenty, which would be one stroke every three seconds.  Never a day off, just working the oars from sunup to sundown with only the water and meal stops to break up the day.  He never had a chance for his body to adapt to the demands on it and thus make the burden feel easier because the demands kept getting stepped up.  Where would it stop?  Would Sam be expected to hit thirty strokes per minute?  Sixty?

Well, whatever.  This was his life, this was what he did.  For as far back as he could remember, his days consisted of pulling the oar and his nights of sleeping on the hard floor of the deck, surrounded by fellow slaves whose language he did not speak.  Sometimes, in the dark of those nights, when he would come awake and lie staring into the blackness, he was overcome by a feeling that there had been something more, something different.  The memories refused to come clear, but he would get flashes of thoughts, often centered around the hum that he could sometimes faintly make out in the quiet of the night, underlying the washing of the waves against the hull, the creaking of the timbers of the ship’s frame, the sloshing of the fetid sewage in the center of the hold.  The hum was important somehow, the hum was… the hum meant… but he could never put his finger on what, just that it mattered in some way.  Eventually sleep or the overseer would claim his attention once more and the hum ceased to matter again.

 

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NOTE: Find more stories by this author at POW’s Fiction.