I had begged Gohak to submit me for the surgery on multiple occasions. I did everything I could to convince him I would rather dedicate myself to maintaining Nort's output levels around the clock.
His response was always the same: He'd listen politely, thank me for my willingness to sacrifice my sleep requirements for the good of the mine, remind me that there was a waiting list for the procedure, and promise to add my name to the list and let me know when the procedure would be available to me.
Another “little joke” of his, I suspected, since my turn never seemed to come. I knew why, of course. He must have been well aware of my recurring nightmares, and determined to continue to subject me to them, as nightly reminders of the price of disobedience to the Pax.
And it worked. God, did it work.
So once again, when I put my head to the pillow and succumbed to sleep, I was instantly returned to the first year I spent in the N-7 mines alongside my husband Daniel.
The banging and clanging sounds were always the same, probably because they weren't part of the dream – they invaded my brain from the outside world, as the mining equipment continued to pound and hammer and smelt, every hour of every cycle. But I knew it was a dream because the faces around me were different, largely because almost none of the original slaves I'd arrived with were still alive. The shafts were much lower as well. They hadn't been hollowed out as much yet, and the effect was extremely claustrophobic. The shadows gathered around us eagerly on the rock walls, like a gang of robbers preparing to close in and smother us.
Knowing what happened – how it ended – some might think the worst part of the nightmares were their bloody and inevitable conclusion.
They weren't.
The worst part was the beginning. Seeing Daniel again, close enough for me to reach out and touch. The way he smiled through his pain and fear, trying to comfort me. The hard edge in his eyes which promised he'd never be beaten or broken, and that he wouldn't let such things happen to me either.
As though he'd had a choice.
Yes, that was the worst part. Being made to forget, even for a moment, that Daniel was gone forever. That the cruelty of the universe had snatched him away from me, leaving these gory nighttime phantoms as a ghastly consolation prize, an abomination of the love we had for each other.
But then came the rest. There were words, but they didn't matter – they were drowned out by the endless noise of the machines, creating a flickering silent horror film I could never escape. Gohak’s predecessor Mershel, sneering and brandishing a crackling electro-lash at me because I wasn't working fast enough for her. Daniel stepping in front of me without a moment's hesitation to protect me, raising his forearm so the slithering length of electricity wrapped itself around it instead of striking me.
The surprise and humiliation on Mershel's face at his audacity. The contempt. I'd never seen such unbridled spite on the face of any living creature before in my life.
Then one of the Vence guards was summoned to hold me in place, laughing in my ear with breath like rotting meat as I was made to watch what happened next: A centaur-like Coovooan, leading the biggest, hungriest, most vicious Nk'athen in the mine –the one they called “Big Blue,” due to the diseased discoloration of its thick and veiny hide.
The Coovooan unhitched the muzzle from the beast, withdrawing his hands with lightning speed to keep them from being bitten off. Then Mershel shoved Daniel toward the monster, cackling heartlessly and wincing away from the sprays of blood and gobbets of flesh.
On Earth, long ago, many kitchens had sinks which were equipped with things known as “Dispose-Alls.” They were aptly named, to be sure – any soft matter fed into the maws of these devices was rapidly shredded to nothingness by the rows of grinding blades inside. Some careless humans had even managed to accidentally lose fingers and hands in accidents involving the machines.
The mouth of the Nk'athen was very much like a Dispose-All. And that's exactly what it did; disposed of all of my husband in a wet roar of tearing skin and cracking bones, crunching and swallowing and crunching some more, so quickly and efficiently that Daniel barely had time to scream before the creature's gizzard closed around his head. There had been a final, terrible snap as Daniel's skull was compressed, allowing the Nk'athen to swallow it.
Then came the moist blue tongue, flicking out over and over as it cleaned the last few drops of Daniel from the fine hairs on its muzzle.
It took three Coovooans to get the harness back on the Nk'athen's head, but Mershel's point had been made eloquently. The Pax Alliance had already taken my freedom. With a snap of their hairy white fingers, they could take anything else they pleased if I didn't do everything in my power to prove I would never resist them.
And no matter how hard I worked, a voice inside of me relentlessly insisted that they still could. The collar around my neck, the displays of respect and favoritism from Gohak and the other overseers –in the end, they meant nothing. I could still be extinguished without a second thought and replaced within half a cycle. The voice told me that Gohak hadn't been joking after all. That I'd never see Earth again. That for all I knew, the Earth I'd grown
