Inhuman
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. That is why they had built the Human Abattoir Space Station, HASS. The five kilometre wide rotating disc of titanium, Kevlar and high grade steel, orbiting the earth. At the focus of the disc was the singularity, which was encased in the gravitational suppressor, a five hundred metre deep layer of Osmium. The Osmium reduced the strength of the singularity’s gravitational pull to close to that of Earth’s. The Osmium allowed the residents to ambulate the perimeter of the disc and maintain their muscularity, rather that atrophying in zero gravity. The residents speculated on the origin of the singularity, its purpose, and what would happen if you ever approached it. Many fantasised that it connected their universe to one that housed the so called ‘New Moon’ - a planet habitable to humans, teaming with plant-life unscoured by the evil of man. James was under no illusion that the singularity would atomise you before you got the chance to even perceive it. Despite the complex engineering of the osmium layer, the remainder of the living quarters, or cells, were rudimentary at best. The cells were a tessalation of hexagons, two metres wide, with a single mattress, sink and toilet. The tessalate housed over one-hundred-thousand residents. The female and male cells were separated by a militarised zone. There was a training field one hundred metres wide, where the residents spent the entirety of their free time. The slaughter-room’s location was unknown, but its existence definite. The screams were a constant reminder of that. The men knew the date that they would walk to the slaughter-room - on their eighteenth birthday. For women it would be after their third child.