R.W.W. Greene cut his teeth on Robert Heinlein's juveniles (Have Spacesuit Will Travel, The Rolling Stones, Rocket Ship Galileo) and proceeded to read every science-fiction book he could get his hands on. Nowadays, he lives in New Hampshire with writer wife Brenda Noiseux, two cats, and a hive of bees ... and still reads every book he can find. His fiction has been published in Something Wicked, New Myths, and Fiction Vortex, among other places. He Tweets about it all @rwwgreene.
The impact hurt his hands, but the door was too thick and too well-insulated. No one outside can hear the pounding, he thought.
Captain Photonic snarled and spun in place, hammering his left heel again and again against the bottom of the door.
The door stood. The captain dropped onto the thinly padded bunk and stared at the smooth contours of the ceiling, blinking away tears of frustration.
They’d gone too far this time. In the past they’d confined him to his quarters, where he could take comfort in familiar things in spite of his lack of freedom. This time, they'd imprisoned him in an escape pod, a smooth blister on the side of the ship, with a computer lockdown to keep him in place. He shook his head. “Computer, open the escape-pod door.”
The synthesized voice responded promptly. “I am unable to comply.”
“Computer, I want to make a call.”
“Your comm access has been suspended.”
The computer's calm tones made him look around for something to throw at the speaker. There was nothing. Even the thin pillow was tethered to the bunk.
His next idea was desperate, but the thought of the shame waiting on the table hardened his resolve. They would rue the day they’d locked him away. “Computer, launch this escape pod.”
“I am unable to comply.”
They’d thought of everything it seemed. Captain Photonic limped to the small kitchenette on the other side of the pod, his cape slapping against his legs, and slumped onto a bench. He slid his hand across the table to the pen at its center and began to write. The pen made a scratching sound, and each letter eroded some of his pride. He read the words aloud through gritted teeth as they appeared. “I will not —”
He hurled the pen away and leaped to his feet, shaking his fist at the sensors he knew were recording his every move, logging his every breath. “I won't do it! You can't make me do it!”
He threw himself on the bunk again. “Computer, turn off the lights. I want to sleep.”
“I am unable to comply.”
Captain Photonic threw an arm over his face to block the glare. Seconds ticked by. He sighed heavily and turned to lie on his side. He growled and kicked his feet like a drowning swimmer, then twisted to his other side.
A scream leaked through his tight-set lips as he rose and stalked across the room to retrieve the pen. He carried it at his side in one fist as he went back to the table, and he stabbed it at the paper, writing eight more words. He flung the pen away.
“I did it!” he shouted. “I did what you wanted!”
The pod door slid open and his jailer walked in. “Let me see it,” she said.
Captain Photonic’s expression was blacker than the empty space outside the pod's walls as he handed her the paper. She read it aloud and handed it back to him. “Good start. Now do it forty-nine more times.”
He gaped at her, jaw dropping. “That's not fair!”
She pointed at him with a long finger tipped with a chrome nail. “Do it in the next twenty minutes, or you'll be eating recyclables for dinner.” She blinked. “And change out of that costume. Halloween’s been over for two months.”
She turned and walked out the door, leaving him to his humiliation. He stalked back to the table and sat down with the pen. He wrote the next line.
“I will not try to throw my sister out the airlock.”
He snarled and started the next. Forty-eight more to freedom.