Jack Parker - Volume 1

Episode 1 - Breakout

I've been on this ship for 730 days now. I take out the fork I stole from the cafeteria the first day and scrape a line across several marks from the days before to finish a set of five. "730. Damn." After I put the fork back in my pocket, I begin to hear steps coming up the hall. The guard walks by my cell yelling out "Dinner!" to everyone in my hall. When he reaches the end of the hall, he begins to type on the screen on his forearm. After he finishes typing, the doors of the cells slide into the walls and the green light above each cell becomes red.

As we exit our cells, our I.D. bracelets make a beeping noise and turn red just like the cell lights did. We all get into line by order of our cells and, after the guard says to, begin walking to the cafeteria.

As I enter the cafeteria, I smell something disgusting. I look at the trays of the people already sitting and immediately notice what is in the center. It is a gray, jello-like substance in the shape of a cube. So far, I have not been able to identify a single food they have served here except for the pretzel sticks. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't appetizing. It doesn't matter to the guards how I feel about the food, anyway; I have to eat it regardless. Too bad they wont let me just eat pretzel sticks for the rest of my sentence.

I grabbed a tray off of their conveyor contraption. The food workers put the food together in an assembly line and it is moved by a large conveyor belt. I brought my tray to the table in the corner of the cafeteria where I always sit. After several hard swallows, I managed to choke it down. It tasted like almost nothing. It had a very faint flavor similar to a mix of a banana and a bell pepper. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Honestly, it doesn't matter whether I actually enjoyed the food or not, anyway. There is something new every day. I have never had two of the same foods the entire time I have been locked in here.

After finishing my food, I got up to throw away my garbage and put the tray back. I sat back down and stayed quiet for the rest of lunch. As I sat, my eyes began to wander around the room. I stopped when I noticed something small protruding from the edge of a large window on the ceiling. One of the window's bolts was only partially screwed in. I left it alone knowing what would happen if I were to mess with it with guards watching. While looking at the bolt, I also happened to catch a blinking light in the distance with the corner of my eye. It was too close to be a star, but too far away to make out what it really was.

Before I had  a chance to get a good look at the light, the guard from earlier told us to line up again. He marched us back to our cells and locked all of us back in. I could hear as everyone's bracelet beeped when their doors closed, but I was still startled when mine went off because I couldn't stop thinking about the bolt. It was my only chance of escape. This thought kept me awake most of the "night"( We use the Origin's passage of time for organization purposes).

I woke up next day with a pain in my neck. I had slept in a weird position last night. "Wake up! Time for breakfast!" The guard yelled as he opened our cells. We all get out of our beds and do our morning routines. After everyone is ready, the guard tells us to start moving. I walk with the crowd all the way up to the cafeteria and grab a tray just as I have been doing the 730 days before. I sit in the same spot in the corner and begin eating the "food" on my tray.

After several minutes of choking down food, I decided to look up through the window. I was surprised to see that the light was still there. Something I noticed this time, now that I was able to get a better look, was that the light wasn't blinking at a constant rate. It would take longer sometimes and other times it would blink quickly two or three times in a row. Then, it would stop for a couple seconds before starting again. After a couple minutes of observation, it finally hit me. It was Morse code!

 I had to go back to the Commander's Academy days for this. I asked a guard for a paper and a pen, but he refused. I was forced to break up my pretzel sticks and make the letters on the table. I waited for the blinking to start over and then began placing my pretzel sticks down. M - O - N-- "What are you doing? Lets go Parker!" The guard was screaming at me. I shoved the pretzels in my mouth as fast as I could and quickly took care of my tray. I couldn't let them know what I was doing or I could lose my chance to escape. I just hoped the light was still there at dinner.