Discarded Colony by V.M. Gunn Read Free Book Online Page B

worse. He had gone from a confident even cocky person to a broken, shuffling shell. He was weak. Some days he vomited as soon as he woke and his skin was becoming hard and flaky.
    As he closed his eyes, wishing again for his final moments to come fast, he heard the buzz of a patrol mosquito hovering directly above his plot. He opened his eyes to look up at it as the drone let out a soft sounding ‘zwoop.’
    "Ahhh, the sound of joy," he thought to himself. It signaled the end of his shift. His deep reflection and self-pity had somehow made this day pass faster than usual and the crippling dehydration more manageable.
    "Associate XJ49352. Ryder, Dean. Please prepare for extraction."
    "Associate?!" That never ceased to make his blood boil. "I'm your prisoner, you cunts," he thought.
    Without hesitation, like a well-rehearsed soldier, he stood up and placed his hands behind his head. The small mosquito drone made way for a larger human transport. The transport drone was around six feet in diameter, black, metallic and somehow military in appearance, but nonetheless harmless. It dropped down, extended some arms to Ryder’s upper torso and quickly disappeared into the sky with him.
     
    ***
     
    "Wake up you fucking pukes!" roared the voice. The unmistakable sound of metal on metal clanged repetitively.
    Ryder pried open one eye. "Shit… I’m still alive… and here," he croaked. He knew that was his wake up call. Every day, without fail the guards got pleasure in performing this archaic routine. Even though there was more than adequate enough technology available to wake all the residents using programmed alarms or their nano implants. He saw a vintage clock hologram flashing on a nearby wall: 05:00 it read; right on cue. He sat up - there was no point delaying it. He was in his ‘living quarters’ which was, quite frankly, a poor excuse for a prison cell. It was a small box in which he was forced to spend almost half his time in. He had a small bed flush against the wall and a meager desk and chair next to that. They were all made of soft polymers for the same reasons as everything else he was allowed to touch. There was a hole in the ground in the corner for him to relieve himself. Drab. Depressing and cold. Just like the rest of the internals of this facility. It contained none of the nice, soft textures and organic elements that he knew could be grown in such place. "Designed like a prison," he thought to himself. "But at least people get let out of prison eventually."
    The door to the room was grey with a small slit which only showed the cold corridor outside. He was wearing, as always, his standard-issue outfit of flowing white pants and white slip-on loafers. He never wore his matching shirt which was strewn at the end of the bed; it was far too hot for that. The complete outfit resembled something that you would see people wearing on the Greek Islands back on Earth. "At least they don’t dress us in black," he thought. He had no hair on his body apart from his eyebrows as they had removed it all via a painful laser procedure before leaving earth. His outfit was starting to get a little dirty; perhaps he would be given new clothes soon.
    Water and his nutrient pill had appeared as always on the desk next to his bed. The tasteless, grape-sized morsel contained 2000 calories and would be all the food he would eat for the day. He forced it down his throat; nearly choking on it in the process. This day he felt a little weaker than the previous, but this was normal. The sickness was slowly killing him and he knew it.
    He approached the door, knowing that the guard would be back within the next 10 seconds.
    "RYDER!" shouted a voice from the other side.
    "Here sir," he replied.
    The door opened with a clink.
                  "Approach!"
    Ryder walked out into the dark corridor which was constructed out of hard metals and had many rounded rivets running along the top, bottom and vertically every few meters. Lights