The Triad

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

I find it ironic that I get to find out if that is true. If you would have told me, five months ago, that I would be using robots to build off world spaceships, I would have laughed at you. I’ve concluded that needing a place to live, and a job to pay the rent for that place, changes everything.

My name is Natalie Freeman, and this is my chronicles of working on the Triad Space Station network. Or what me, and my family, affectionately refer to as the space ghettos.

I sit in the processing station not far from where my family lives on earth. I am the youngest of three children, with a son who is grown, and already doing farming work on Triad two moon colony. His name is Quentin, and he has already told me that I can stay in his guest room on the moon. The thought of actually going to the moon, and sleeping there, I honestly still haven’t wrapped my mind around yet.

As I sit in the processing station on Earth, I am watching a tech insert my Bitcoin microchip into my right hand. It is small, round, and almost the size of a quarter. The tiny microchip has two cute little Bs shining on the top. The Bs stand for Behemoth Banking Corporation, which is Earths first off world banking system. While it is not mandatory for humans to get a microchip in your hand yet, it is a given if you want to work for the Triad, you have to agree to get one so you get paid. The laser cauterizing my skin snaps me back to reality.

The processing station tech working on me, is a young looking woman with beautiful pale skin, and a purple mohawk . She has golden cat eyes, which is no doubt the result of the contacts that she wears. Her lips match her hair, and she smells like lavender. I find as an older individual, a yearning to see more ordinary looking people. It seems the younger the person, the more they are inclined to alter themselves. Thankfully, there are laws for young people under eighteen preventing them to get tattoos, piercings, and biological alterations. I find myself shuddering lightly thinking about what my son may have done to himself on the moon. Our last video conversation, he had bright blue hair that stuck up like a little troll doll from the 1990s. I watch the tech put a clear bandaid across my new Bitcoin microchip. She hands me a piece of paper that details the caring for and use of my new microchip coin.

“All done hon. Let me scan your badge real quick for labor tracking. Then just go over there to wait for your work detail”.

I pull the badge suspended on a plain plastic black necklace with my left hand to be scanned. With a quick beep of her hand scanner, my tech is done with me. And on to her next processing patient.

I notice as I walk to the work detail waiting room, my incision that was red is now clearing up under the clear bandage. I am guessing the clear bandage does much more than to be clear enough to see thru. By the time I walk in my work scrubs over to work detail waiting room, all the redness is gone. I find myself admiring how my Bitcoin shines when the light hits it.

I discover that there is at least a dozen of us in the work detail area. I find that again I am asked for my badge. This time the person scanning my badge is a slender man in a suit that looks to be built from a synthetic alloy. I am guessing he must be involved with security, as he had that don’t mess with me look. As I hear his hand scanner beep, I notice the light reflects from his metallic suit with a purple sheen. I find my fascination with his suit is met with hard blue eyes, that reminds me of cold blue winter skies.

“All right. Go suit up in changing room four. Be quick about it. Your ride leaves in fifteen minutes.”

The processing area is small light green room that reminds me of an airport. There is amazing air conditioning, lots of restrooms, chairs, benches, and a vending machine area. The entire room is full of people in various stages of processing and waiting to be processed. The waiting areas are a study of various associates like myself who are all focused on their phones. There is even a couple engaged in hologram calls while they wait. There is a huge window that reveals our imposing ride. It is in that moment I stopped to look thru the window on the way to suit up, that it really hit me that I was about to leave Earth.

The rocket was huge, and several stories high. It had a extension to board passengers, similar to what they use for boarding planes at an airport. At the bottom of the rocket, there looked to be at least a half a dozen people on the ground, and in carts, preparing the rocket, and loading on the last of the baggage. It reminded me of something from a science fiction movie, except this is my life. The vision of the rocket was even framed by a glorious sun set framed by a light preflight trail of smoke gently wafting from the bottom of the rocket engines.The terse voice of the security man in the purple suit snaps me back from my awe of viewing my first rocket into space.

“Alright people! Your ride takes off in ten minutes! Suit up!! Times a wasting!”

The changing room I enter is rather small. There is enough room to go to the back wall and read the sign that says stand in the blue circle, turn around and look at the red circle on the back of the door. Within fifteen seconds of doing that, I hear a loud sound of machines clicking and whirring from the walls. Within thirty seconds, I feel the pressure of machines fitting me with a custom size suit. Each piece of the suit is carefully fitted to my body by a series of robotic hands that seem to come out from everywhere. Within a minute, the clicking and whirring cease as a great big helmet is built carefully to fit my skull. It is at this point, I taste and smell the tang of manufactured air being coldly, and methodically pumped into my spacesuit. The hisss is almost deafening.

A female human voice starts chiming in reporting my levels are functional for survival. I feel the twinge of at least a dozen small prick pins entering in from my space suit to monitor my life levels. Spacesuit is the only word that seems best to describe what just happened to me. The automated female voice ends to the clicking on of levels being projected onto the inside of my helmet. Then I noticed a loud, and fast, slamming up of a piece of metal coming from the bottom of the floor up to the roof between me and the red target on the back of the changing room door.

This is the point where I piss myself. I hear a huge kajung, and feel me inside my suit being hurled up in a fast motion. There wasn’t even a warning or countdown. I discover during the motion my urine gets sucked into a tube, along with my vomit, and sweat into the suit someway. It is clear based on the centrifugal force I feel, I’m being moved somewhere.

I feel like a toy being stuck in a box. I am inside my suit, which is clearly inside a metal box. There is no way in hell I can move or even think of getting out of the box my suit is in. It is very obvious the metal hands that built my suit around me also serve to hold me into place. At this point, I hear a loud clank over my head, and the whirring of yet another machine. I know feel like me, trapped in the box, is being moved like a prize in a arcade game being grappled by a metallic three prong arm. Instead of being deposited down to be collected as a prize, instead I feel this machine moving me to the side. The motion is completed by the loud sound of metal against metal. It is clear based on the whirring, and the faint smell of processed air, that I am at last on the spaceship.

I find in this moment being upset over the fact I had originally thought we spaceworkers would at least be allowed to suit up ourselves, and walk to our places on the ship. I was definitely wrong about that. So much for my civilian rights.

Just as I was feeling my anger pickle my stomach, there is a crackle, and a image of a man with an orange whip of hair on the top of his head with no hair on the sides. The man is clean shaven, and has an even nose with striking green eyes. He is clearly wearing a spacesuit as well. His tone is masculine, even, and to the point.

“Hello work patrol H198F5. I am AlphaH192B6. We are about to lift off to Triad 1 space hub in one hundred ninety seconds. The trip will take approximately twenty eight minutes, and seventeen seconds. To ease you on your space journey, we will be playing the movie you selected at the processing station into your visor. Looking forward to meeting you all face to face at Triad 1.”

Before I could even open my mouth to say anything, I start hearing the loud sound of the rocket engines firing up, and the force of the rockets launch pressing me against the inside of my suit, which is encased by a box. I hear the rattling of metal against metal. Just when I think I’m going to die, the movie I picked at the Earths processing station clicks on. I picked the sound of music. The memories of that movie from my childhood always brings me a comfort. My thought was if the rocket blows up with me in it, at least I can die listening to Julie Andrews voice.

I noticed ten minutes into the rocket ride, the centrifugal force changes, and suddenly I feel this weightlessness. I immediately feel this panic overtake me. For the first time in my life, I’m actually in outer space!

I come to realize that it’s probably for the best I don’t have a window to look thru, as I have already begun hyperventilating inside my box. I feel a slight sting from what feels like a needle being stuck into the top of my right shoulder inside my suit. I see a readout while Sound of Music plays inside my visor telling me I got 100 ccs of relaxer drug whose name I can’t even pronounce injected into me. The effects of the drug is immediate. I feel like I’m wrapped in cotton, and my insides feel like liquid sunshine. As the drug circulates thru my body, I find that I don’t care that the movie I picked is actually not the full movie, but the highlights. I find it no surprise that the time flies by as I fade into the sweet nothingness of sleep. The sound of music trails off into a sweet darkness. I am fade to black wondering what else will the Triad switch up on me.

My last thoughts before sweet oblivion inside my container is my mothers fear that my son may die on the moon due to some stupid accident or situation. I imagine his moon cottage getting burned up by a grease fire. I could just see my boy Quentin frying up burgers and catching his blue hair afire. I base it on the fact he once caught his hair afire as a teenager smoking cigarettes with too much hair treatment. I recall as I black out having to take a wet towel and throwing it on his head. I remember all his hair being fried to a crisp. I think he still has scars from that.

I think it’s funny what could be the last thoughts of my life are about my son Quentin accidentally setting his hair afire. If it wasn’t for him choosing to be a space farmer on the moon, I definitely wouldn’t be a space worker in a box.

As the sweet blackness hits me, all I can do is have faith in a higher power I don’t understand to get me thru. Hopefully, taking the mark of BBC to work didn’t damn me to hell like many of Earth have already preached about. Truly if we are saved by the Grace of love, I will wake up.