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15:45 Friday 27 September 2069
The heavy metal door may have been electrically operated but it still made a loud jarring noise when it slammed shut. It had been designed that way so as to increase the despair of the inmates. Everything that happened within the walls of Holding Centre HMP666 was designed to demoralise the inmates. It was known as the Devil’s Block but didn’t really warrant any special attention. The designation number of the holding centre was coincidental and all other centres were designed in exactly the same way and operated under the same rules. The holding centres were where offenders were sent if they had committed crimes that didn’t warrant State Termination. It wasn’t so much the length of detention that provided the punishment, but rather the humiliation and lack of dignity of the registration, processing, and internment of the inmates that provided the deterrent against reoffending.
It was a very cost effective system too. A new inmate would be strip-searched by a warden, and then subjected to being scrubbed clean with soap and a scrubbing brush. This Victorian process was totally unnecessary; the most sanitary and efficient way would have been to bathe the prisoner in a beam of green light which removed all dirt and foreign bodies from the offender’s body. Of course, it still had a manual element to it, the source of the beam was a flexible hose that was manoeuvred around the body by a human operator, but this was a painless process that hurt only the dignity of the prisoner. However, this more humane process was only used for VIP prisoners and the bulk of inmates wore the scars of overenthusiastically applied scrubbing brushes.
Once checked in by her captors, Caitlin was frogmarched into a bare room where seven other women were standing in a line. A plastic container, as yet empty, was positioned in front of each one. There was one box with no prisoner behind it. A tall wiry prison guard, with sergeant stripes on his sleeves, pointed to the empty space.
“You, Makepeace. Stand behind that box.”
Caitlin looked around her. She was the only other person in the room who wasn’t either a guard, or a prisoner standing behind a box, but the sergeant couldn’t have been talking to her; her name wasn’t Makepeace. The guard strode up to her and looked her right in the eye.
“I said, Makepeace, stand behind the bloody box.”
Caitlin did as she was ordered, muttering that her surname was Boone, not Makepeace. She looked along the line. Behind each of the women was a guard, a male guard. A female guard took her place behind Caitlin. The guard spoke again.
“Right ladies. You are here to complete sentences of various lengths, according to your crimes. There is no remission for good behaviour. Bad behaviour does not exist here. You’ll see why shortly. Now, what I want you to do is to strip naked, and when I say naked, I mean naked. Not down to your bra and panties. Naked as the day you were born. Then you will be searched by the guard standing behind you.”
One of the women in the line, an overweight woman in her mid-fifties, took umbrage.
“Why does she get a woman to search her? It’s not right. I want a woman to do my cavity search too.”
The guard in charge motioned to the man behind her and he struck his charge across her shoulders with his baton.
“Stop whining. We’ve had special instructions to assign a female custodian to her.”
Another woman, to Caitlin’s left, spoke up.
“She’s right. It’s not fair. We should all have a female guard, or she should be made to have a male guard like the rest of us. What’s so special about her?”
The sergeant went over to her and stared into her eyes from point-blank range.
“You, prisoner, should think yourself very lucky. Do you know how much the guard behind you paid for the privilege to search and scrub you down? Half his yearly salary, that’s what. He’ll probably be a bit gentler with you, ‘cos he obviously fancies you.”
The sergeant went back to his original position.
“OK, ladies. Showtime. Take those clothes off.”
Nobody made a move, which earned each of them, including Caitlin, a rap across the back with a guard’s baton.
“I said now, ladies. Or do you want another slap.”
Two of the women started to gingerly undress.
“Come on the rest of you. You don’t want to upset me, do you?”
The rest of the women, including Caitlin, followed suit, tossing their clothes into the box in front of them.
“Now for the fun part. Bend over and touch your toes, or as close as you can get.”
Reluctantly the women bent over as instructed.
“Gloves on, gents and lady. And search.”
The overweight woman complained again, understandably.
“Is this really necessary? Or do you just get your kicks by abusing us women?”
“Both. We have to make sure that you have no foreign objects on you or in you.”
The cavity search completed, the other seven women were marched into a side room. Caitlin was led into another room where she could see a flexible metal hose hanging on the wall. The female guard in charge of her looked at her with a wry smile on her lips.
“Somebody must like you, dearie. A female guard to do your body search and now the beam-cleaner. You’re a right princess you are. Stand still, spread your legs and this’ll be over in a minute or so. And it won’t even hurt, not like your friends in the adjoining room.”
She over-dramatically cupped a hand to an ear.
“Can you hear their screams? That could’ve been you.”
Caitlin was resigned to her fate now. There was no point in struggling. She was alone and nobody could help her.
The cleaning process completed, the women were taken to a cell block. At least, it had been a cell block in a previous age. Now it was a repository containing about fifty transparent tubes, half of which were occupied by unconscious naked women covered in a thick viscous green gel. The sergeant returned.
“Now ladies, this is what we call the stasis chamber. This is where you will carry out your sentence. You won’t notice it though because when your time is up, it’ll feel like you’ve just had a long night’s sleep, whether you’ve been in there for two months or two years. The beauty of this system is that we don’t have much to do except keep an eye on the stasis pods and check that they’re functioning properly. You’ll be fed via the placenta, that’s what we call that green muck that you’ll be covered in. It’s actually a cocktail of nutrients designed to make sure you don’t do something stupid, like die on us. Don’t ask me how it works. I don’t know and I don’t care. I do apologise for the next piece of information; you’ll have a couple of tubes inserted – I’ll let you guess where – to take away any waste products. It shouldn’t hurt though. That’s it then, until your release day.”
Caitlin asked when her release date was going to be. Nobody had told her anything.
“You Makepeace? You’re here until we decide to let you out. I don’t know what you did, but you must have pissed off somebody very important. A government minister, perhaps?”
The pods were opened and the waste tubes were attached to each prisoner. They were uncomfortable but not actually painful. One by one, the women stepped into their designated capsule and the others watched as each pod was sealed shut. A liquid jelly-like substance was pumped into each chamber, causing mild panic amongst the women, until they fell unconscious from the sedative that formed part of the substance that now engulfed their naked bodies.
Everybody safely trapped in their tubes, the sergeant followed his team out of the cell block and the door closed loudly behind them.