The Bridge: A Science Fiction Survival Story

Chapter 7: Porters and Punches

Each morning I started with an hour of exercise, which was required of porters.

I would arrive in the heavy room slightly after breakfast, feeling my spine compress as I walked across the threshold, adjusting my posture slightly as I walked inside. Waiting was weightlifting machinery- an arrangement of dumb bells and plates designed to help increase muscle capacity, all at twice the weight they would be outside the heavy room.

There I would pair up with the others who had been assigned to be porters, many of them for life, their chests bulging from under their shirts and the veins in their necks popping. Most of them were those who could not succeed at gardening, though some were placed there for punishments like myself, for crimes such as hoarding water or striking their neighbors.

"Tom want first breakfast," Said my partner as I watched his form. As usual it was impeccable, near robotic, not a single mistake as the weights were cycled through lifts and rests. But for all his skill with strength conditioning, Tom had troubles outside the heavy room, where his difficulty in grasping the intricacies of planting seeds and grammar had dragged him down the societal ladder to porter.

"Fine," I answered, "I'll take second, then."

We ate in shifts, as porters. It meant that there were always some of us available to cart away waste, or move bundles of vegetables, or shift furniture around living spaces. But there was a perk to being a porter, one that was required by the sheer physical requirements of the position- we were rationed portions and a half, of both food and water.

"Good," Answered Tom, dropping his weights so that the heavy room shook, "Tom done then."

And he lumbered away, sweat staining the back of his shirt, his physical stature larger than almost any on the ship. In his absence I racked the weights, then retrieved a cart at the end of the hall, one that was to be transported to the kitchens and was filled with potatoes.

At first, the going was hard, since being so near the heavy room making the cart difficult to push. But after my first week of being a porter, I had learned inner layout of the ship, hidden from the main corridors, where the light halls were and how to connect them.

I'd been in light halls before, of course. Before being required to work, I'd often played in them, running up the sides of the walls and jumping from end to end of the corridor in a single bound, much to the annoyance of any traversing porters at the time. For just as the heavy room added weight to my frame, the light hall removed it, making transporting overfilled carts as easy as those that were empty in the normal, more occupied areas.

The light hall I used that morning was dark, the glow lights much lower than in other areas of the ship, and ran behind a row of living spaces that emptied their waste into the hall for porters to collect. As soon as I finished crossing the hall, there would be hardly another hundred feet before reaching the kitchens, and I could switch duties with Tom as he finished breakfast. The thought had my stomach growling, especially since the new chef Eliott was already known for his skill in dish preparation.

And that morning I was so hungry, and so focused upon completing my task, that I never heard the footsteps behind me.

"Stupid porter!" Said Nean's voice as an oversized hand gripped the back of my neck, pinning me to the wall, "Think you're smarter than all of us, look where you are now. If it was my decision, you'd stay here."

"Get off!" I shouted, my muscles sore for the heavy room, adding to the agony of Nean cheese grating my nose against the rough metal.

"All I want to do is make sure you've learned your lesson. Help the chief out. He asked me, you know. Well, not him particularly, just the future chief."

"Stop it!" I shouted, but Nean ripped me away from the wall, driving my forehead into the hard edge of the cart so hard that the room flashed. I fell, feeling his shoe contact my ribs on the way down, and once more as I curled on the cold floor, struggling to draw in breaths. Then Nean leaned over, his face so close to mine that I could smell his breath.

"Segni says if you try to humiliate him again, you won't just be a porter. He says I can hit you hard enough that you think like them too. Right here."

Then he spat, his phlegm mixing with the blood on the side of my head, before his running footsteps receded down the light hallway, and he was gone.

Ahead, I heard a door open, spilling more light into the space as a tall figure walked out, his voice angry.

"I swear by the hand, if you kids are playing this early in the morning I'll have your rations personally cut so much that they'll stunt any form of development," He hissed, coming closer, "I'll- Oh God, God, boy, what happened to you?"

Above, a face materialized, a face surrounded by beard, one that I could now match to the voice when the anger left it.

"Fell," I answered, as Pliny reached a hand downward, pulling me to my feet.

"Bullshit," He answered, before leaning inside the door that he had come through, "Clea, we're going to need a doctor, please fetch one. Yes, right now, hurry!" Then he turned back to me, his voice low, "Boy, what happened to you, who did this?"

"I fell." I repeated, gritting my teeth as pain started to set in.

"Like I said, bullshit. God son, you look awful."

I turned away from him, and started pushing the cart, limping towards the exit before his hand caught my shoulder. "No you don't, boy. The doctors are already on their way. They'll be here in under a minute."

And he looked into my face, studying it again, with the same curious expression as he had during the test.

"Tell me, boy, can you think straight?"

I nodded, though my vision blurred, and heard footsteps down the hall, doctors that had nearly arrived.

"Then if you understand this," He said, and started to spell, "M-E-E-T-space-M-E-space-H-E-R-E-space-T-O-M-O-R-R-O-W-space-N-I-G-H-T."

"Why?"

"Because the ship needs a historian," He answered as the doctors arrived, carrying me with them to their designated rooms, where herbs and bandages awaited.

***

Don't forget to vote on the chapter!