The Interplanetary Prison Center

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.”

I didn’t really think much of it when the burly bald headed police officer said it to me while he was leading me onto the spaceship. I was too focused on thinking about slipping out of the handcuffs that were loosely placed around my small wrists.

“Go ahead, try it.” The officer said to me in a whisper.

I think he purposely put the cuffs on loose just to see if I had the balls to attempt an escape. I didn’t, I just stared down at the feet of the prisoner in front of me. The only sound in the air was the shoes of the prisoners and guards clanking against the steel of the ramp.

The numbers on the back of the prisoners' shirts slowly disappeared as they entered the spaceship and with each entry, the sound of the steel got lower and lower. I was number 87. I didn’t know exactly how many other prisoners were going on the ship but I guessed it was about one hundred based on the amount of people in line behind me.

I was a part of the first group that was sent to the Interplanetary Prison Center. During my sentence hearing, my lawyer said that the judge was giving me a choice.

“You can either go to a state prison here in Mississippi or be sent to space prison.”

“Space prison?” I asked, thinking there is no way I heard that right.

“Our prison system is way too crowded. you remember when they colonized that planet a few years ago?” My lawyer asked

“Uhh, yeah, they all died within the first couple of months” I responded.

“Well, you see, when the government spends that much money on something, they will be damned if it just goes to waste. They can’t send another group of civilians up there so”

“They built a prison” I interrupted, now understanding my choices.

“You got it. So once again you do have the choice. You can go to state prison or space prison. Which one will it be?” He asked again.

Sometimes, I wonder if they already knew what my answer was going to be. I was thinking, while In the cramped dark rocket ship, packed like unopened sardines, I didn’t see any other prisoners that were over the age of 25. In my high school psychology class, I remember my teacher saying it takes men until the age of 25 to have a fully developed frontal cortex in their brains. The part of the brain that is responsible for decision making. Did they even ask anyone under 25 or did all the people they asked over 25 say no because they had a fully developed brain? Maybe If I was a year older, I would have taken the other option.

Either way, space prison was my new home and has been ever since.

When the spaceship finally landed, I had no idea what to expect. I had never gone to prison before, let alone a space prison. We were given our space suits and told that when we were outside of our buildings, we must have the suit on to survive. That was the first and last time I have been outside my building.

The space suit was different from what I envisioned. I always pictured a Buzz Lightyear type suit, but this was nothing like that. It was basically a gas mask connected to an oxygen tank. More like what you would see a scuba diver wear, not an astronaut.

After putting on the space suits, one by one the prisoners stepped out onto our new planet. As the last prisoner stepped out, I turned to see the guards quickly shut the spaceship door as they prepared for takeoff. The human officers handed us off to the armed robots that would be our guards at the new prison. One prisoner, number 52, thought he could outsmart one of the robot guards and tried to take their weapon. He was quickly shot and left for dead. The rest of the prisoner line was forced to step over number 52. I realize now that he was the smart one but back then, there was no chance I would have followed his lead.

It was much colder than Mississippi but I expected that. It was all the news channels talked about back home when the group of travelers first tried to inhabit this planet. They did not expect the cold. They were told, from all the space scientists, that this planet was similar to Earth but, when they were greeted with the chilling cold, they quickly realized they were under prepared to survive.

They spent their time on the new planet building shelters in an attempt to stay aliive with what they had but ultimately the cold climate was too harsh. After just a few months, every single one of them died and the whole mission was a complete failure.

Between that mission and when the planet was turned into a prison, the government was able to heat the shelters to a livable temperature and filter in oxygen. The shelters were scattered across the planet and they all looked like Patrick’s house from Spongebob. A show that I used to stream reruns on Youtube when I was a kid.

Each of the shelters were equipped with a bathroom, comfy bed, tablet connected to WiFi and an open communication line to the kitchen. At first, I thought they sent me to the wrong place. This is prison? I was living like I was on vacation. It didn’t bother me at all that we couldn’t leave our rooms. I had everything I needed. If I got hungry, I phoned the kitchen and ordered whatever I wanted. For a poor kid from Mississippi, it was a weird feeling not having to worry about where my next meal was going to come from.

My first night in prison, I ordered a cheeseburger and a chocolate shake. Within fifteen minutes, a robot looking thing drops the food into my door slit. By the end of the week, I was ordering lobster. A meal I never would have gotten if I had stayed in a Mississippi prison.

I must’ve gained thirty pounds within the first month.

After about a month of luxurious eating, watching endless Youtube and sleeping whenever I wanted, I realized that they definitely did not send me to the wrong place. This was not a vacation.

That was when I started to really think about what the officer said to me on launch day.

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.”

Why did he say that?

Then for the first time, I thought about my last human conversation.

“Where are you from?” Jackson asked as he turned to me, peaking around his seatbelt straps.

Jackson looked like he was about sixteen years old. He had a clean face with rosy red cheeks. I don’t think he even knew how to use a razor. I knew he had to be at least eighteen to be sent to space prison but his curly black hair with the side of his head shaved down to the skin told me he couldn’t have been more than a year out of high school. That was the style for the young kids back then.

Now there aren’t any such things as hair styles. We have two options in space prison: shave your head bald or don’t cut it at all. For my first five years here, I chose to shave it every two weeks. We had to phone the kitchen for a razor and the robot would bring it to us. The last time I called for a razor, I thought about cutting my own wrists but the robots are all programmed to stop any type of violence. So my attempt was met with a swift butt to the head by the robots weapon. When I awoke, I was attached flat to the ground by metal handcuffs around my wrists and ankles. I laid there like a star on the ground for the next three days. No food, no water, nothing.

After that, I stopped shaving completely and have been letting my hair grow ever since.

“Mississippi and you?”

I responded back to Jackson. Our conversations had to be kept to short, three to four word responses. The air was thin in the spaceship and it was hard to breathe and talk at the same time. We were packed so tight in that hot space ship, I don’t even think I could have added anymore to the conversation anyways.

“Montana,” Jackson said. I knew Montana was a state but until I watched a Youtube video about it, I never actually knew where it was. I guess that's what I get for dropping out of high school.

“Cool. I’m Micah” I lied, my name is Fred.

I never liked my name and I figured space prison was a new start for me so I wanted to go by Micah. Plus, I didn’t know what the space prison was so I wanted to keep as much information to myself as possible. To be honest, when I was sitting on that space ship, I could swear we were headed to space to be some kind of slave to some aliens or something.

It was nothing like that, but looking back now, I kind of wish it were.

Then Jackson told me his name and the conversation was over. We sat next to each other for six months and those were the only words we said to one another. A month into my stint in space prison, I regretted not talking more to Jackson.

Now, 10 years later, I still replay that last conversation in my head at least thirty times a day. Jackson has to be close to thirty years old by now. I thought I saw him once, about five years ago. There were two robot guards walking with a prisoner. That was the first human I’d seen since I was thrown into this room. I screamed. He didn’t look. I screamed again, this time at the top of my lungs. Still nothing.

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.”

It all made sense now. I realized that the police officer wasn’t trying to get me to escape so he could beat me down to a bloody pulp. He knew where I was headed and he was trying to warn me. He wanted me to escape from this place before I even stepped foot onto that spaceship.

Since that moment, I have been planning. Planning my escape or at the very least planning a way to die. Anything to get me out of this torture.