Written Wonderland

OOC: few things

• This turned into a whopper once Andra suggested describing the room. If I went overboard or details don't align with vision, I can chop them.
• I tried to carry on the idea that they've designed this station to expressly use very little mining automation and use inmate labor for things that might even seem silly to do that for.
• As Hamish is a guard I don't necessarily expect much interaction here. I think it's safe for the inmates to carry on and either engage or not, or engage briefly and then continue with their own thing, maybe they just notice him at the moment and he's not relevant till another time. And to that end, I can work small observational posts in without needing to be in a rotation.
• Incongruous or problematic thoughts and positions are intentional or at least in-character

The murmur of voices in the processing plant rustled past Hamish's ears as he surveyed the room. His eyes scanned, unfocused, washing across the bodies and observing motion without seeing much detail. Occasionally an inmate would move in a way that caught is eye and his attention would linger on them, inspecting.

The inmate shift was in the midst of turning over in the processing plant. Inmates trudging out, more inmates shuffling in. All in trickles due to the lift capacity. He found it interesting to watch the change in demeanor over the course of a shift; how the inmates came in generally fresh, and rarely left that way. He'd noticed that different shifts and cellblocks seemed to have different over-all demeanors as well and wondered about it. When he'd pointed this out to other guards it was shrugged off, mostly unnoticed or perhaps of no consequence. But it reminded him faintly of how kids from different tenement buildings behaved when he was growing up; like each building had a flavor.

The room had a high ceiling, compared to most of the the rest of the station at least, providing enough space for the guard station to be elevated by it's 1 meter, as well as the overhead equipment with it's cables dangling down into the workstations to power the tools.  The workstations in this room were round workbenches with stools attached to the underside by an arm that allowed it to swing forward and away from the bench. Some stations had higher or lower stools to accommodate the gloms and humans and hybrids but he'd noticed they didn't always gravitate to the ones he would guess they'd want to sit at. Carts of various types were placed in designated areas between the workbenches. This was the medium processing room where inmates worked on chunks of asteroid small enough to set on the workbench in front of them. Getting the chunks from the inbound carts onto the workbench generally required use of a HoistMate, a dumb robot the inmates pushed around the room that had a bit of software and some heavy duty hydraulic arms. iObey was able to tap into it if necessary, which basically could be said for any system on the station, but he had yet to see that happen.

The inmates were meant to carve and extract the goods that they could easily identify (which depended on the asteroid that had been brought in), depositing them into one cart and the cut away bits into another. Those carts were then taken either to a "final goods" chute, or to the small processing room where inmates using finer tools and sometimes magnifiers would perform the same service, sending their bits off to the micro room with its intense magnifiers, crushers, sifters and other specialty tools. These processing rooms were all well and good, but the large, giant and mega rooms made him nervous due to the machinery accessible to the inmates. This room had small hand pick-axes, but the sized up rooms had real ones. They were chipped and tracked by iObey so there wasn't supposed to be anything to worry about but, well, he didn't relish the idea of facing up against an inmate wielding one of those if it came down to it. Those rooms also had much larger final goods chutes. Once again, these were monitored so that anything chipped passing through the chute would be identified, but... whenever Hamish was assigned to those rooms he felt hypervigilant, they just felt riskier all around than these rooms where most of the tools would largely become inert if detached from their cables and inmates couldn't fit into the chutes that took away the final product.

In truth, he didn't need to be physically standing in the room. The automated prison security system saw to managing most of the activities and many of the issues. He would be alerted only when it encountered a situation it couldn't handle. But he liked this routine. He liked observing his domain, standing on the platform in a power pose, his feet shoulder width apart, jaw parallel to the floor. One hand rested on the hilt of his collapsed shock-baton, tap tap tapping it against his thigh. He'd read about power poses in the training material available on ChainLync, the professional networking site for prison guards.

He liked knowing the inmates saw him too. He knew he must cut a figure, looming over their milling. The platform, mainly just the stoop for the guardroom for this part of the processing plant, was only about 1 meter up. But it was enough. With stairs on either side and a brief railing, he could vault down in seconds and leap to action. He knew it, and they knew it. And that was satisfying.

Hamish hadn't received an alert, something that needed human attention, in at least a week. Although the shift before his had. Alerts were rare enough that it was pretty common to share them as a point of interest amongst other guards. Two weeks or so ago, he'd had the fortune to share a particularly memorable alert. One of the new inmates, fresh off their transport, had been unable to relinquish their personal belongings because they'd arrived without a stich of clothing on them. Protesting the clothing industry or some other such nonsense. The prison's intake system wasn't programmed to account for this possibility, apparently, and with no items placed in the receptacle it had alerted the guards to her non-compliance. Under just about any other circumstances, it made sense for the system to not accept an empty receptacle. He and Gerald had assumed, as the system had, that they were in for a struggle with an ornery new inmate. Instead they found a doe eyed hybrid, stark naked and shrugging at them.

Hamish wrinkled his nose as he thought about it. On one hand, he had some pity for her, having traveled for weeks in the transport without anything on, arriving naked and traipsing across the campus to her new cell. That must have been wholly uncomfortable, possibly cold too although it was hard to say with a hybrid. But on the other hand, she'd been arrested that way, nude and civilly disobedient. That had been her choice. Who protests nude anyway?

Hamish couldn't really fathom participating in that sort of activity. Disrupting business, transit, and peoples' lives; being noisy, ... sometimes even destructive. And for what? To push an opinion that the majority obviously don't support, because if we did, we'd have voted that way. So many of the protests he'd seen, on the feed mainly, were about things that he'd just as soon support. Things that paid the bills or enriched the lives of himself and his neighbors. Well, his neighbors before he took on the guard job. Selfish. And, he thought, probably self righteous.

The warmth creeping down Hamish's neck onto his shoulders made him realize this train of thought was getting his blood boiling. He could feel that his calm and cool expression had twisted into something sour. He tried to relax the muscles in his face. Implored his skin to chill out. Renewed his attention to the room and its occupants.

Exiting the full lift, prisoners began to fan out as they claimed work stations. The large bay door behind which was a spoke that connected to the central shaft of the station loomed over the large room, securely airlocked.

Anya spoke, glancing back up at the platform on the wall opposite the bay door. They were well out of earshot considering the murmers of conversation by the arriving prisoners, but she still kept a mildly hushed tone;
"Ugh, I still can't believe he doesn't have anything better to do. He can't resist an opportunity to stand there and gawk at us? I swear he does that just to feel superior." Anya flashed a smile cocked sideways toward XJ and leaned in slightly, "Look at that silly pose; 'Oh, I'm so important, look at my zap stick, isn't it just sooo big??' I wonder if he's ever zapped himself while tapping it like that." Anya let out a giggle while she looked back up at him, and then continued walking toward some empty work benches with her tail swishing behind her.

Dolly paid the guard no mind, ignoring the comments about him. She headed straight for the cart that seemed to contain the largest rock and hauled it over to an empty work bench.

Anya tinkered with the lights on another, before waving her hand toward the workbench across from her own. "Your new office, Roomie. We're so sorry, but the executive suite was taken."

XJ looked around at the enormous room and all the workstations and all the people and found herself getting overwhelmed, although she was grateful that there was a lot of space here. It felt like she could actually breathe, even if it was just recycled air. Ugh.

As the other inmates started to fan out as though they all knew where they were going, XJ panicked a little. Was someone going to actually teach her what was going on here? Wasn't there some kind of onboarding process? She shuddered as she thought about the re-education situation. Yeah, she did not want something like that again.

Surveying the work space, XJ took note of the only humanoid guard present, looking imposing as she'd ever seen a man look. Sheesh. He wasn't kidding around. Anya seemed to notice where XJ was looking and made a comment, which relaxed XJ immediately. Oh good, they were in the dirty joke territory! Something clicked into place, and XJ felt like she was starting to actually understand and make friends with this girl. And, yeah, it did feel good to think about the guard zapping himself. If XJ were a guard, she might even... whoa, whoa whoa. Stop there. Not a lifepath she wanted to fantasize about. Gross.

Dolly started moving away from them, and XJ still wasn't sure what to do with herself, though she tried to blend in as well as she could for the time being. She needed to know the lay of the land first before she tried to stir anything up. But even that much was still a mystery to her! She was grateful when Anya led her to a workstation and made yet another joke to lighten the mood. In that one, though, XJ could actually hear the resentment. Yeah, Anya was not any more happy about the situation than Anya was. The girl had been putting on a good face, was still was putting on a good face. And XJ respected and was grateful for that. It certainly made all this just that much easier.

XJ wanted to come up with some witty reply to Anya's comment, but she was too overwhelmed by all the tools on the workbench and the rocks and the fact that she still did not know what she was supposed to be doing. Was this a part of the re-education sims that XJ had missed? Why was everyone else going about everything like they knew what to do?

Just as XJ was about to ask Anya to repeat what she had said in the cafeteria, a blue holo screen popped into view in front of XJ on top of the workbench. XJ saw that there were similar projections over several of the workbenches. When she surveyed the screen, it had an overly happy man on the front in a jumpsuit waving in XJ's direction reading the text on the screen. The sound was low so that only the person at the workbench could hear it, but the dude's voice was still obnoxious. There was a "First Time" button and a "Skip Tutorial" button. While XJ wanted to just jump in and get going--she really needed extra food credits--she knew she would regret doing something wrong, so she watched the tutorial video.

The pacing was painfully slow, but the vid explained the way XJ should chip away at the meaningless pieces of asteroid and what she should be looking for in sorting them out. It named all the tools she would be using and talked about the conditions under which an inmate would get access to the laser tools.

I gotta get that job, XJ thought. XJ followed along with the vid, picking up her first chunk of space rock to process it just like the vid suggested, sorting each material into the various bins in front of her. She was embarrassed to still be watching it, but she needed the practice, and there was a lot to understand. Overall, though, the room was bustling in an impressively organized process; XJ had to give it that. Extensions of Oh-bee were everywhere, moving and emptying bins into their appropriate places. If not for the guard sinisterly overseeing the work, XJ might have thought it was a beautiful dance.

The work itself wasn't all that bad. XJ enjoyed finding the glittery materials, even if she had to give them up to the bins. But, she found it difficult to understand the difference between the shades of gray and made several mistakes, which made the bins beep angrily at her until she got all the pieces of the wrong material out. Every time that happened, XJ looked nervously over toward the guard, hoping that he would go easy on her because she was new. XJ was positive--but still hoped that it was only her imagination--that she was doing the worst out of all the newbies. If only she knew what they used the different gray materials for! Then it would be easier to make sense of this whole process.

After about an hour of work, XJ looked over at Anya and said, "So, like, how long'd it take you to get good at this?" XJ hoped that her desperation was not showing in her voice, but she was already getting tired of sitting down and staring at the rock, even if she did get to hold a miniature pickaxe while doing so.

Anya looked up from her own holo screen at XJ's question. On the screen, Anya had not brought up the video, but a simple chart of the various types of materials.

"Good? Me? Ha! Never! I'm not good at this!" As Anya talked, she continued to sort materials, and a bin screeched at her as well, a red led flashing. Anya grumbled as she reached for the piece of metal to resort it "Hrmph... I just...it's so boring! I lose focus. There's nothing to think about in here and they've disabled the audio on our chips: no music! I suppose when you don't make mistakes for a while you can get into a groove once you memorize the bins and stuff. That took me a few days, I guess." Anya cleared her table, putting a large amount of the now processed materials into a hand held bin, separate from the ones where sorted materials were to go. She then picked up the bin, and walked toward Dolly's workbench. A loud "Crack!" sound came from nearby. Dolly had a full size pickaxe and was breaking up some person-sized rocks into smaller, more manageable pieces. Bands of metal similar to the magcuffs clung to the tool in various locations. The rock split like butter away from a hot knife, and Dolly hefted the pickaxe in a circular motion back for another strike with ease. "Dolly's the one who's good at this, but she was always good at it." Anya smiled toward Dolly, placing the bin of processed materials on her workbench, and then began picking up some of the smaller materials that Dolly had broken off of the larger pieces. "We figured out that I was better at the small stuff, though, so Dolly usually does the big stuff, and then I give her some of the finished materials. I'm sure you could probably do the same. Not very many folks like doing the bigger stuff, but I think Dolly likes it. Or at least hates using the small pickaxes enough to want to do the big stuff instead. I guess it helps to work as a team instead of alone. Since we started doing that, I almost always hit good numbers, and Dolly says her hands hurt less too." Dolly continued to crack open the raw rock as if it were a fortune cookie, precious metals spilling out like fortunes, only they were already bought and owned by someone else. Anya began picking away at the raw materials that she brought back to her own workbench with her hand pickaxe. "So did you do work back home? I bet it was better than juggling rocks all day."

The bins beeped angrily at XJ again while she was listening to Anya talk, and while Anya said she wasn't good at this, XJ couldn't help but notice how Anya's bins--and everyone else's bins--were filling up so much faster than hers. She scrunched her face in frustration, nausea building in her stomach. How was she supposed to do this for... what? The rest of her life? ARGGGGGGGGGGHHHH.

Dolly's always been good at this, teamwork, few days... XJ tried to listen, but sweat broke out on her face, and she desperately wanted to cry.

Finally, Anya asked a question that was a welcome reprieve from thinking about what they were currently doing, even if the distraction caused the bins to screech again.

Home... home...

What work didn't XJ do back home? She didn't want to sound like a show off, but...

She smiled, which felt out of place in the prison, but she didn't care, "I had a little bit of a DJ career before I joined in with some anti-caps. One of them spent some time to show me the ropes on hacking--it's not all that different from remixing once you get the hang of it, and I was cracking away, doing my little part for their operation." XJ paused to hack away at a piece of rock, sorting it before continuing. She had to put down her pickaxe to think. "Took down a couple of megacorp accounting systems before the team got busted up." XJ smiled whimsically now. Ah, the good ol' days.

"You?"

Then she picked up her pickax, and her nausea came right on back, so she put it back down, a little angrily. She knew she would have to start again soon, but that could wait. She needed a break. Already.

Anya smiled at the story of another's life. She reveled in learning about people's passions and lives. "Nothing that cool! I was mostly into commune life. We farmed and lived intentionally in the forest. A few of us worked for corporations to get money, but me and the rest of us worked on our land to produce our own things. It was freeing. I only ever went to protests and talked to people who shared ideals with anti-caps, but wow! You actually hurt the big baddies! Were you behind the whole J.D. Norman Race Bank scandal? That was wild! I remember reading the anti-bank manifesto that came out that day, it was legit! So you were like remixing tunes and remixing the dollars of the powerful. That's rad! Still just absolutely criminal that the big cats in their fancy offices never went to jail for their corrupt and illegal exploitation schemes while... uh..." Anya's voice halted, and she hesitated as the realism of the yet completed statement hit her for the first time. She hadn't talked about these kinds of things from the inside before; from the perspective of the actual, tangible victim that her sentence had been about to refer. It had always been so abstract a concept before, but now it was her; persecuted for voicing beliefs and living in ways antagonistic to the capitalist ideal. She thought too about how it was Dolly, detained for the unfair system forcing her into bad situations beyond her control. She thought about how it was also XJ, maybe even more so than anyone else. XJ, at least from Anya's perspective, was one of the people fighting to bring justice to those goons who had gotten away with exploitation for so long, but society's thanks for fighting for what was good and right was isolation and confinement.

Anya dropped her own tools, looking around for a bit, reality setting in about where she was, and what had truly come to pass. How many of these folks were here simply because they had lacked power? How many of them would have been here no matter what they did? And how many were, like XJ, here because they had dared to do something about the shitty situation the rest of us had all been in? Her eyes fell upon XJ who had also stopped work, and was looking quite downtrodden. Anya felt immense sadness for XJ who had done good things for the world, only to face this as a reward. She also felt equally immense gratitude, and a need to express it; but she didn't have words. She hesitated to reach out, unsure if it would be okay, but with a knot in her throat that prevented asking. As emotions boiled over, she knew she had to do something or else break down. Anya hopped over her workbench and threw her arms around XJ, warm and salty water wetting the corners of her eyes as she did. She squeezed, unconsciously attempting to impart the gratitude and emotion that words failed to impart. She added what little verbal communication she could muster, "You know...you did good. So good. I just want to say... Thank you."

Though Anya's enthusiasm about the whole crime and jail situation thing might have grated on XJ's nerves, XJ was genuinely happy that someone else was impressed by her corporate sabotage. Sure, she had flaunted it here at there to take a girl home from the club, but getting props for all that in prison? That's another level for sure. Is Anya a person she would have tried to impress at a club...? Hmmm...

XJ gave a wide smile hearing the phrase "remixing the dollars of the powerful" but also had half a mind to tell Anya to shush it. Like, weren't the guards listening? On the official record, XJ hadn't fessed up to anything. But, you know, they'd thrown her in here anyway. Did it really matter? What, was she going to get more time than she already had? Unlikely.

And then Anya slowed down. Slowed down and stopped. If XJ hadn't known better, she might have thought that, in fact, Anya was actually a robot and had run out of power. But, no, those were emotions welling up on her face, and before XJ knew it, Anya had leaped over the workbench between them and had her arms around XJ thanking her and telling her she had done a good job. She had done a good job.

And, she had, hadn't she? Despite getting caught? It wasn't like she had given anyone else up, despite the periodic vids they played during transit to try to trick her into it. Despite being arrested and forced to throw away some of her best club clothes. Despite the fact that Nix had clearly tricked her. Despite the fact that she was in prison breaking rocks and had to go through terrible brainwashing and felt like an idiot and...

Though the sensation of Anya's arms around her were very pleasant, XJ burst into ugly tears. Thankfully, she wasn't terribly loud about it, though a couple of the prisoners from a table or two away turned to look at the spectacle. XJ grabbed fiercely onto Anya's wrists, grateful for the contact as she attempted to get herself under control.

Finally, as the tears subsided, XJ said, "Thank you. Really. That was... really kind of you. You've been so nice to me, and... I promise I won't let you forget that."

After another moment and a subtle rocking from side to side, XJ added, "And, no, it wasn't the big fancy bank. Ours was a group that sprung up after that incident. Small-time stuff. But, when they get you, they get you. You know? Yeah, you know." XJ finished with a sigh and heavily pressed back into Anya's arms, content to be there until she moved or someone yelled at them to stop.

A roaring Hawhaaauffuuu echoed from the guard station behind Hamish, drawing his attention. He checked over his shoulder to find Karen recovering from a sneeze. She had buried her nose in a tissue now, eyes puffy and red and gooey. Likely she'd taken an alert that had to do with a hybrid recently. Was she doing a double today? Gerald was out with a stomach thing. Karen had the misfortune of being allergic to hybrids, or some of them at least. Very very allergic. It was the darndest thing. He wondered briefly why she hadn't left it for someone else as he returned his eyes to the processing floor.

He watched as, wouldn't you know it, a hybrid took some of her processed material across the room and swapped it with another inmate's. His lips pursed in mild disapproval, corners of his mouth drawing down and brow wrinkling. It wasn't so much disallowed as ... confusing. He'd seen these two behave this way before but couldn't grok it. What was the goal there? What was gained and why? Was this some sort of tribute, like a show of obeisance and deference? Was there an organized group he wasn't aware of?

Hamish pinned his eyes on the tall one. Was she the ringleader? Physical prowess was often, though not always, a means of gaining and keeping status. She might have that. Though the body language... And she was extremely new to the place too, if his memory got it right. If she was working her way up the food chain, if she was already in a position of status, well she was damn good at obscuring it. Perhaps he was fortunate to have even noticed. He made a mental note to keep an eye on her. Giving her a good once over for good measure and locking her into his mental catalogue of inmates.

He watched the hybrid traipse back to her selected station and return to her task, chattering with another inmate while she worked. That was that hybrid wasn't it, the nude protesting one? He couldn't be sure with the prison jumpsuit on, but he thought so. He lingered on her for a moment, cataloguing her as well. She might be only an underling in this organization, maybe even under the boot and being taken advantage of, but whatever was up he wanted to remember who was involved.

His eyes begin slowly sweeping the room again. Karen blew her nose, loudly, behind him. It made his own nose tingle and twitch, his mustache bristles trembling and tickling his top lip. God damn it Karen, he thought in irritation, she was going to make him sneeze.

An abrupt movement averted this fate. His eyes were drawn back to the hybrid and her gossip buddy. They were... hugging? Hamish's nostrils and flared, eyes widening in astonished appall. There's no hugging in prison. Or at least there oughtn't be. The intent of this place is punishment. But also, he conceded, removal of unsavory types from the general populace and day to day doings of society. He supposed it wasn't exclusively punishment, but that was an important component. He didn't fathom hugs were a part of that program.

But was it prohibited? He glanced back at Karen, wondering if she'd caught this on the monitors or if iObey was blipping on it. She was leaning her head on her palms, elbows on the console, puffy disgusting eyes closed. Useless. If iObey was pinging this, it wasn't doing so very noisily... yet. His stomach twisted with indecision, but some part of his brain (or gut?) had already come to a conclusion.

"Oye!" his mouth exclaimed before he'd processed what he was doing. It was the perfect, practiced, tone of authority. He'd watched videos on this too, but it had taken little effort to master. This was a tone he himself was all to familiar with being on the receiving end. It had been a rush when, on his first week on the job, he'd found reason to use it. And now, well, it came naturally. This was his role. He was the authority... an authority.

"No.... touching." he stumbled with considerably less conviction. Was there no touching? Certainly when it was violent touching. He'd seen shows on the feed where this was said to prisoners frequently but, that was usually in the context of visitation. His mind raced through the videos he'd studied on ChainLync and the officer employee manual site. His eyes darted to the left, not precisely looking at anything, but averting as he realized this wasn't actually a thing. Not here, in this way. They could touch, ... probably. Although shouldn't they be working and focusing? But quotas were what was meant to drive that, not specific fraternization policies. Why though? What were they doing even?

Internally he bubbled with uncertainty. He was losing, had lost?, his composure. That would not do. That was one thing his training had been quite clear on. Whether he was entirely right or not, the appearance of confidence in his words and action must be firm. He had to fulfil his role properly or lose respect and thus control. And without control, his role would be ineffectual and he feared it was a slippery slope from there to chaos, or worse... job loss.

Hamish set one hand on the railing, the other grasped the handle of his shock-baton. He set his jaw and locked his eyes on the... couple? ... making an effort to clear the doubt from his face and wondering how well accomplished that was. It was a hard thing to practice in a mirror. How do you put yourself in that type of situation when you're alone? He'd have to think on that. But for now...

XJ jumped and fliched as soon as she heard the shout from the direction of the guard station, instinctively pushing Anya away, although she didn't want to. While some part of XJ wanted to make more of a scene, she didn't think it would do much of anything to draw more attention to herself now. Best to save that kind of energy for when they were actually trying to escape. And, they would try to escape, space prison or no.

"No touching" was a pretty weak command, though. It was like he didn't even know what a hug was called. Good grief.

Wherever Anya settled next, XJ would mutter under her breath, "we gotta get out of here. I'm going to find us a way out of here," even though images from her brainwashing session were coming back into her vision in full force. She picked up her small pickaxe and got back to work, looking up only once to glare at the back of the guard's head the second he turned around.

((OOC: If Anya/Hamish/Gerald/Dolly have more to do in this scene, we can stay here. Otherwise we could timeskip to meal time and/or hanging out in the shared cell? My thought is that there might be a rumor around about Kai being in solitary and having useful technopathy powers, which they will probably hear at mealtime.))

Anya used the force of being pushed away to help throw her hands up above her head as she jumped back slightly, arms bent and hands open. She took care to land quite close to XJ for her next trick, as she waved both hands innocently at the guard, giving a big toothy grin that only partially covered for the wetness on her face. "No touching, yeah, sure." she mumbled to XJ. Turning around to go back to her station, she flicked her tail against XJ while continuing to hold her hands up before walking back to her station and getting back to work, taking care to not look back up at the guard to find out if he noticed or would respond.

When XJ spoke, Anya didn't look up. She quietly responded, "I'm in. No man's gonna tell me what I can and can't do with my body...But I'm not leaving Dolly."

((OOC: I can understand if Hamish wants to respond, but I'm good to move on at this point.))