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.

The slaughter-rooms on earth had been demolished after the trial of Dr Lukas Weber. The screams had been too distressing; the slaughter-rooms were an inconvenient reminder of the truth. In 2901AD the government had tried to mislead the public into thinking the animal populace had not become extinct. Human pectorals and quadriceps were smoked, seasoned and vacuum packed to be served on the shelves of supermarkets. The change was gradual and so it went unnoticed.

In 2953 a source had leaked pictures of the slaughter-rooms to the press. Graphic images of the reality of the origin of the meat that was being sold in supermarkets. The Secret Service identified the source as Dr Lukas Weber, Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Oxford, a scientific advisor to the Minister of Health. What ensued in days following ‘SlaughterGate’ could only be described as the deterioration and destruction of modern human society. Peaceful protests quickly turned into violent riots, police shootings became a daily occurrence, and the people on earth became divided. The government imposed a forceful stance against any opposition to the cannibal movement. A zero-tolerance policy from the police, and then military, saw protestors shot dead in the street, or worse, sentenced to the ‘Nutrition Camps’, where they would await a cattle bolt to the forehead.

The cannibals soon began displaying strange behaviour. It started off with tremors, and mood disturbances, and then progressed to bouts of uncontrollable laughter, the ‘Laughing Sickness’ or Kuru as the medical professionals called it. It was transmitted by ingesting a protein in the brain matter of the deceased, and took years to incubate before symptoms began to show. By the time the tremors started, the majority of the earthling population were infected. Most died from a prolonged period of unresponsiveness and malnourishment. Those who survived returned to their normal selves, but with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. And so, the HASS was the solution to maintain a peaceful society of cannibalism on earth. Dr Lukas Weber had not been seen since.

James White was HASS resident 151.2, he had lived for 17 years and 364 days, born in 2991AD. HASS was where he was born, and where he was supposed to die. He never knew his parents. He acquired knowledge of the history of earth, and the HASS, from overhearing the drunken Marshals. He heard stories of the exclusive banquets the government officials would host on earth - seven-day parties of eating, drinking, and killing. Each night during the banquet ten HASS residents were chosen to attend. They were auctioned off to the highest bidder who could do with them what they pleased. If all the bidders were in unanimous agreement, which they almost always were, they would organise a hunt. The ten residents would be cast off into the field, and the bidders would track them down in a drunken frenzy with various weapons of their choosing, before capturing the resident. They would then burn the residents alive and smoke the meat overnight to be devoured the following evening. The residents were chosen at random to attend the banquet, and declining the invitation was not an option. James had been lucky so far not to be chosen, however he sometimes thought it a better fate than entering the slaughter-room, at least he would be able to walk on the earth, and meet the perpetrators of his fate.

James had also learnt of the disappearing residents. It had now become at least four every week. James had no idea what their fate had been, he imagined they had likely accidentally stumbled into the slaughter-room and met a premature end. James learnt that his father was killed immediately after James’s conception, and sold for a high price as the young lean specimen he was. If he was anything like James, he would have fed multiple families. James was six-foot-four, and had become lean and wiry during his adolescent years, on the strict diet of protein and vitamins he was fed in three daily bowls of The Formula. His training regime of muscle hypertrophy had built his quadriceps into slabs of bulging hard sinew, and his arms were swollen and vascular. The training classes were the only time he was able to interact with the other residents there. He had become close to Bradley and Stephen, two other residents his age. When the Marshals were out of earshot they would tell jokes and talk about unrealistic dreams. Lead Marshal Gabriel was what James imagined as the epitome of cannibal lifeform. His face had been disfigured at birth, resulting in a gaping hole in his cheek revealing his incisors, and emitting a stench of rotten teeth. Such was a consequence of breeding on the space station in a limited genetic pool. Occasionally a mutant was born. Mostly the mutants were non-viable and were served as a delicacy at earthling banquets. Rarely, however, a viable mutant was born, and they were enslaved to a life-sentence on the HASS, serving as a Marshal, or if they had favourable qualities, they were put to use in the military. Gabriel was the former. He had a round bulging belly, thin wispy dark hair that was receding to reveal brown-spots, permanent damp patches under his armpits, and that constant stench of rotten teeth. James hated Gabriel with every fibre in his body. He had seen him kill two of the other residents for disobedience during a training class. He would use his lead baton to thrash anyone who showed a hint of stepping out of line. He carried that baton with him everywhere he went, swinging on his hip as a reminder that he could end their short lives in a cruel thrashing on a whim. The memory of him brutally murdering Bradley was still etched into his hippocampus.

Bradley had fallen in love with another resident Susan, resident 56.6, after multiple fleeting encounters on the training field. The two groups were never supposed to see each other, but occasionally the training classes would overlap, and they would be able to see the female cohort from across the field. They were only supposed to meet on the day of conception, when they were eighteen, just prior to the final walk to the slaughter room. James thought Susan was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He had only ever seen her from a distance, but he could make out her slender athletic physique, and her plaited dark brown hair that clung to her pale neck. He was happy that Bradley and Susan had found something so special in each other, but he was wary of trying to foster something good in such a horrid place. Bradley had managed to cut a copy of the key to his cell from a sleeping Marshal and was able to sneak out at night when the Marshals were too drunk to notice. He would make his way stealthily to the female quarters and talk to Susan through a crack in her door. They would talk about escaping together, travelling to the New Moon, and living in the countryside together, starting a family and living off the fruit that grew there. At first Bradley had been furtive and was careful to remain hidden. However, as time went by he became brash and foolish. A year ago in the training field, James could feel Gabriel storming around, seething at any resident who dared look at him, his baton swinging threateningly against his hip. James had tried to warn Bradley ‘Be quieter, Gabriel looks murderous today’. Bradley shrugged him off ‘I don’t care about Gabriel, one day soon he won’t matter, I’ll be on the new moon with Susan and my new family’ he laughed. He was telling James and Stephen about a list he and Susan had constructed of potential baby names. The list fell out of his hand onto the astroturf. Gabriel’s hawk eye caught the glimmer of white and he marched over to pick it up. His frown turned into a grimace as his read it, exposing his rotten incisors. Bradley looked up at Gabriel, blood draining from his face ‘Sir..’ Bradley began to reason. His sentence was cut short by the baton whipping across his maxilla, bone splintering into his mouth. Bradley crashed to the ground, stunned, blood pouring into his mouth and down his throat. James and Stephen leant over Bradley to try to protect him from further melees, but they were restrained by the Marshals. They made sure James could see the beating, a reminder that no disobedience would be tolerated, that no dreams of leaving this place would ever come true, that this place is all they would ever know. James watched on in horror as the baton rained down on Bradley’s skull, then his chest and abdomen. Bradley was curled up in a ball, arms covering his head, helpless to the onslaught of the baton against his hardened body. Bradley’s cries began to fade, until his body became limp and lifeless. Gabriel continued to thrash Bradley’s corpse for what felt like a lifetime, until the rigor mortis set in. Bradley’s body was stiff and cold, and the darkness had begun to set on the training field. Beads of sweat trickled down Gabriel’s forehead, and he panted in triumph. James noticed the glint of gold and red coming from the belt buckle at Gabriel’s hip, usually hidden by his baton. A key. It was in that moment, as James stared at Gabriel, drenched in sweat and Bradley’s already congealing blood, the dawn light casting a long silhouette of his monstrously obese body across the field, that he swore to himself he would escape this place. He owed it to Bradley, and to all the others who had perished under Gabriel’s baton, and to all those who had not seen a day after their eighteenth birthday.

James awoke on the morning of this last day on the HASS, his eighteenth birthday. A thin beam of light casting a streak of orange above his door. James reflected on the dream he had awoken from. He was younger. His parents, Bradley, Stephen and Susan were sat around him laughing together. They were surrounded by stretches of green fields interspersed with fruit trees. There was a bounty of ripe oranges, bananas, and strawberries at a table in front of him - all things he had heard about, but never tasted. In his dream he could smell the sweetness of the strawberries, so tangible it made his salivary glands contract sour juices into his mouth. He heard a voice in the dream, eerily peaceful, as though it were the wind whispering to him, ‘find us James, we’re all waiting here. You are the one to end all suffering. Follow the vibrations and enter the unknown, we will be waiting on the otherside’.

A piercing siren awoke him from his reflection. The cell was filled with a high-pitched alarm, and a flashing red light, and then the voice from outside his cell, ‘Come on 151, its time’. James got up and put on his grey overall and brown-laced boots, and looked out of his window one last time. The beam of light cast from the window had migrated with the rotation of the HASS and was now illuminating his pillow. He lifted the pillow, as if expecting to find something that was meant for him, to find a folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it and read the scrawled black ink ‘Follow the vibrations and enter the unknown, we will be waiting on the otherside’.

‘Last warning 151, time to go!’ the Marshal bellowed from outside his cell. James quickly folded the note and placed it in his breast pocket. The Marshal burst the door open ‘For fuck’s sake 151, I said it’s time to–, oh what do we have here? A little love letter to your mare, your life’s work? Your final meal request?’ he chuckled, pleased with himself. He snatched the note from James’s pocket and opened it still smiling to himself.

‘Sir I just found it, I don’t know who put it there!’ James said nervously.

‘You found a blank piece of paper, well done 151. Ain’t you clever. Here, you can have it back. Come on, best not to keep your mare waiting eh!’ He thrust the note against James’s chest. James took the note and stared at it blankly – there was no writing. Had he imagined it? Was he starting to lose his mind? Perhaps that is what happened when you knew you had hours left to live. The Marshal ushered him out into the hallway. As James stepped out into the corridor, still perplexed as to what he had seen on the note, he looked to his left and saw Stephen being dragged out of his cell. ‘Stephen!’ James exclaimed.

‘That’s 152 to you dickhead’ said the Marshal.

‘Stephen where are you going?’ James shouted as Stephen was dragged down the corridor by his overall scruff.

Stephen managed to cast a look back to James, and he seemed to be smiling, almost elated. ‘Don’t worry about me mate, I get to see the world! Have a great last day buddy, see you on the other side!’

‘Didn’t he tell you maggot? 152’s got the big invite to the fancy banquet, lucky prick’.

James’s heart sank. Stephen was going to the banquet to be auctioned. It showed how abysmal their lives were that Stephen was so happy by the prospect.

‘What are you looking so glum about maggot? You’re getting a very nice birthday present indeed’ the Marshal chuckled, ‘yeah they’ve given you that nice little one, 56 or whatever’. 56? James pondered, who was that? His heart sank even further. Susan was resident 56. He would be made to meet with Susan before he was killed, to procreate and produce another resident to be raised until they were an age fit to be slaughtered.

James was lead down the corridor for what felt like an eternity. They turned left before the training field, walked another kilometre, and then approached a dead end. The Marshal reached into his pocket and produced a ring of silver keys. The Marshal clumsily aimed the key at a lock in the black door. James could smell the stench of alcohol from the night before, or from this morning. The Marshal managed to finally unlock the door, and used his weight to push it open. Air rushed in behind James, until the pressure equalised and the air was still again. The Marshal ushered James through the doorway, and locked it behind him. It was dark, and cold. The Marshal clicked on his torch, revealing a staircase leading down into the darkness. ‘Come on then maggot’. As they descended the stairwell the air seemed to drop by a degree every ten steps. Soon James was shivering, and the hairs on his arms was standing erect. They descended for an hour before the Marshal had to stop for a rest. James noticed in the dimly lit torchlight that the Marshal was sweating, despite the cool air. He reached into his lapel pocked and pulled out a hipflask, unscrewed the metal lid and took a swig of a brown liquid. ‘Ahhhhh’ He belched, ‘that’s better’ he sneered, and gestured it towards James. ‘Here maggot, have a tipple’ James was taken aback. The Marshal noticed his hesitation ‘I said’ his face contorting into anger ‘have a tipple, it’s gonna be the last thing you ever taste’. James reluctantly took the hipflask from his big hairy hand and took a sip, quickly swallowed it and felt the acid swirling down his oesophagus. The Marshal cackled ‘That’s Glenn Fiddich, should loosen things up for ya! Right, almost there now, couple more kilometres and you’ll get your mare and we can be finished with ya, for good!’ They continued down the stairwell, the Marshal swigging more frequently at the hipflask. When they arrived at a flattened opening in the stairwell, the Marshal reached once more for his keys. He struggled this time, his manual dexterity failing him under the influence of the scotch. Eventually he unlocked a big black door to the left of the opening and pushed it open. They walked into a small dark room with padded walls. The Marshal flicked on a switch and the room was lit in a lustreless red light. The light started to warm the room and soon James was no longer shivering. ‘Why are we here?’ James asked apprehensively.

‘Why do you think? For your mare!’ he snickered, taking another glug of whiskey. ‘Here - you’re supposed to take this,’ he presented a blue pill in his palm before spilling it onto the padded ground ‘Shit’ he mumbled, and leant forwards to try retrieve the pill. He lost his footing and fell onto his round belly. He began squirm around, his hands flailing around in search of the pill. ‘Shit, Gabe’s gonna kill me if I fuck this up again’. As James watched on at the pathetic Marshal, he felt pity for him, driven to a life of fear under Gabriel’s ruling. As the Marshal was writhing around on the ground, he began to groan ‘I think I’m gonna be sick’ the groaning turned into retching 'shit I think that scotch has done me in’ he laughed nervously, suddenly going turning pale. He began to projectile vomit over the padded room, wailing in between bouts of green bilious undigested stomach contents. It reeked of acid and alcohol. In the commotion the keys fell onto the ground. James instinctively leapt onto the floor, snatched up the keys, and wrestled the torch from the Marshal’s sweaty hand before backing towards the doorway. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ the Marshal hissed, bile spraying over the ground. James darted around the door into the hall and slammed it shut and used the silver key to bolt the door locked. The Marshal slammed his fists against the inside of the door ‘Open the door you slimy prick, Gabriel’s gonna make a lesson of you when he gets here!’ James allowed himself a smile. The Marshal must have finally passed out in his alcohol intoxication for the attempts at breaking the door down stopped, and the shouting ceased altogether.

Moments later he heard footsteps approaching from the stairwell from above him. James tucked himself into an alcove coming off the side of the hallway. He knew who it was by the smell of rotten teeth. He was suddenly filled with fear, and anger. He recognised the other figure as that of Susan - small, and slender. Gabriel grunted acknowledgement as he realised they had reached the end of their journey. James remained hidden from his line of sight. Gabriel reached into his pocket and offered a red pill to Susan. ‘Here, take this. It will make things a lot easier for all of us’ Susan hesitated ‘I’m not asking you’ his other hand reached to the baton, she took the pill and swallowed. ‘That’s a good girl’ he smirked. He then turned back to the door and noticed it was locked ‘Looks like we’re early to the party, should’ve known, that fat fuck is useless.’ He pulled out his keys, the gold and red one catching James’s eye once more. He unlocked the door and pushed it open, leaving the key in the lock. ‘What the fuck?‘ Gabriel yelled as he noticed the Marshal lain strewn across the padded floor. James grabbed Susan’s arm and yanked her behind him, and then shoved Gabriel in the small of the back into the room. Fortunately, Gabriel was not braced for the attack, and he tripped over the Marshal’s body and tumbled forwards. Susan ran back into the room and was on top of Gabriel, firing punch after punch at his disfigured face. Gabriel reached for his baton but James grabbed it before he could get a hold of it. ‘Susan leave him, come on lets go!’ James tugged on Susan’s arm, but she was in a frenzy, battering away at any part of Gabriel’s body she could lay a hand on. James had to wrap his arms around her torso to pull her off, and out of the padded room. James pulled the door closed and locked it with the keys Gabriel had left in the lock, bolting it closed. They slumped onto the corridor floor against the wall, side by side, breathing heavily. Susan rested her head on James’s broad shoulder, her soft brown hair tickling his neck. There hairs on his forearm were suddenly erect again. Then a thought occurred to him ‘Shit! The pill, what have they given you?!’ he asked worriedly. ‘Don’t you worry, I spat that fucker out as soon as Gabriel hit the deck’ she pointed to the undigested blue pill laying harmlessly by their feet. She began to laugh, quietly at first, and then her chuckle began to echo up and down the long stairwell. James began to laugh too, and soon they were both clutching their bellies with uncontrollable laughter. ‘Wow what a birthday’ Susan said to him, looking into his eyes for the first time. Hers were a hazel brown, with an inner orange halo that reminded him of the beam of light he had see that morning. He stared back into her eyes, ‘yeah happy birthday to us’ he smiled back. That was the first time he had felt hope. His usual realistic pragmatism had yielded itself to a feeling of hope, at the possibility of something good. Susan’s eyes glanced downwards towards his breast pocket ‘what’s that?’ she enquired.

‘Oh just a piece of paper from my room, I had the weirdest dream that I heard this voice and then-’

‘What does it say?’ she interrupted, not taking her eyes off the paper.

‘Oh nothing, it’s blank’.

‘Don’t lie 151’ she said in a mock Gabriel accent ‘I can see the writing’.

‘What?’ James looked down and grabbed the note from his pocket. Surely his mind was playing tricks on him again - the black ink scrawl had returned. He shone the torch onto the note and read it aloud ‘Follow the vibrations and enter the unknown, we will be waiting on the otherside’. He looked back into Susan’s hazel eyes, unable to explain himself. But something in Susan’s eyes told him he didn’t need to explain himself. ‘I’ve heard that before’ she said ‘In a dream, after Bradley was.. you know. I had a recurring dream where I was..happy and surrounded by love. And a voice would whisper into my ear, saying exactly that. I never knew what it meant’. They stared back at the note, and then James stared down the hallway into the darkness. Who knew what was down there? ‘Oi you little fuckers, open this door right this moment or all hell is gonna pay!’ Gabriel had roused and was slamming on the door. James could picture his disfigured face engorged with blood, contorted in rage. James noticed he was not scared anymore, nor angry. He was just hopeful, and he knew this had to mean something. He continued to stare into the darkness, and he allowed his ears to attend to the low hum emitting from within the darkness. A low-frequency vibration. He reached to grab Susan’s hand, looked her once more in the eyes, and she nodded in acknowledgement. Together they stood up and strode down the long hallway, into the darkness, now brightened by their torchlight, and toward the vibration. The sound of Gabriel’s rage diminished behind them, and the low hum became louder, until they could feel their skin buzzing in sync with the frequency of the sound. They walked two hours, down the stairwell. They no longer needed the torch. An orange light in the distance guided them toward their destination. ‘We’re approaching the focus!’ Susan shouted, raising her voice to be heard over the loud humming

‘You mean the singularity?’ James responded.

‘Well you’ve heard the theories, right?’ She shouted. ‘Better finding out, than dying from a bolt to the head, even if we do end up getting ripped apart’ she reasoned. As they reached the orange light at the end of the tunnel, the humming was so loud, they had to turn towards each other to lip read. Susan was frantically gesturing toward something beneath the orange light ‘we need the key!’ she mouthed to James, pointing at a gold and ruby lock. The key that was now nestled in his breast pocket. He brought out the large golden key with the ruby gem and held it under the orange light. In the loud humming he could make out words speaking to him, whether real or not, he could hear them clear as anything. ‘Follow the vibrations and enter the unknown, we will be waiting on the otherside’. Susan tugged at his arm ‘what are you waiting for?’ she mouthed to him, smiling, excitedly. James came to and regathered his senses. James raised the key to the lock, and felt three distinct clicks in the mechanism. He turned the key clockwise and felt the air pressure change. He looked at Susan, in shock and realisation he mouthed ‘the gravity depress-‘ The door flung open and they were pulled into the dark void beyond it, clinging onto each other’s hand so tightly his nails were digging into her skin. They were tumbling through the darkness, accelerating towards the unknown so fast James could feel his consciousness slipping away. As they were hurtling through the void James was acutely aware of how intact their bodies were. They had not been ripped apart. Somehow, they were protected from the immense gravitational pull they were experiencing. They were approaching something distinct. A beam of brilliant white light on the horizon, so bright it burnt James’s retina and he had to close his eyes. When he opened them again the beam of light was upon them. They were hurtling towards it, into it, and there was nothing they could do to prevent it. James closed his eyes. He was hopeful.

A bright light was warming his skin, soft grass was prickling his arms as he lay on the hard ground. A soft breeze blew the scent of sweet fruits into his nostrils. James opened his eyes slowly, a beam of brilliant white still scarring his vision. As the halo of light faded, he was able to focus his senses on his surroundings. He was in a lush green field, a clear blue sky above him with two bright suns beaming down from the horizons, one just about to set, the other had just risen on the far side of his new environment. ‘Susan?’ he thought to himself ‘where was Susan?’ He stood up quickly and became lightheaded, his legs became weak and jelly-like, and he collapsed to the ground. James regained consciousness, and this time the silhouette of a man was obscuring his view of the blue sky. He allowed his eyes to focus on the bearded elderly man standing over him, offering a hand to help him up.

‘Who are you?’ James uttered; his voice hoarse from the shouting ‘where am I? where’s Susan?’

‘Don’t worry James’ the elder said calmly ‘she’s safe’. James accepted his hand and stood up slowly, taking in the elderly gentleman, dressed in a ragged grey overall, the number ‘one’ printed on the breast pocket. James then looked around, and noticed the crowd of people gathered around him, looking on expectantly. There were women, men, and children, all wearing varying levels of worn grey overalls, all with different numbers embroided on the breast pocket. He noticed some had disfigurements, mutations. He recognised a few. There was a newborn baby, being breastfed by his mother. He turned back to the Elder. ‘My name is Dr Weber’ the bearded man said. ‘Lukas Weber. And this my friend, is the New Moon. We’ve been expecting you. You are the one to end all suffering.'