The Prison Barge – Part 1: Transport

The hotel called the floor the barge, a corridor of grey steel doors, flickering overhead lights and a long, sloping ceiling pipe-work, with a mess hall at one end and a row of "cells" at the other. It was a themed immersive suite experience, and for the night, the staff had agreed not to knock.

Aurelia stood at the airlock with a clipboard. She was forty-four, a project director with a taste for the dramatic and a deep, level voice, wearing a black uniform tunic with a silver rank bar on the collar. Jonah was thirty-eight, her partner of three years, a podcast producer, anxious and funny, who had told her over a bottle of wine that a small, secret corner of his mind longed to be a prisoner on a ship with someone in charge.

They had done the careful part in the mess hall, over steel mugs of tea. She had printed a manifest. Terms of Transit. His limits and hers: no marks, nothing painful, no real humiliation, nothing beyond the floor, no one else. The cell door was fitted with a push-bar release on the inside, which he had tried six times. The word was Dock.

"Say it."

"Dock."

"If you say it, the Commander stands down. I am Aurelia. We order room service and watch the stars."

"I understand."

"And at each watch, which is every half hour, I will ask whether you wish to continue. You answer truly."

"Yes, Commander."

"Not yet." She drew on a pair of black gloves, one finger at a time. The overhead lights dipped to red. Her voice dropped, cool and level. "Prisoner Okafor. You are in transit to the outer penal colony. Your sentence is thirty years. You will behave."

"Yes, Commander."

"You will not speak unless addressed. You will walk where I tell you. You will keep your eyes on the floor."

"Yes, Commander."

"Good." She turned and walked away down the grey corridor, her boots ringing on the steel. "Follow."

He followed. The corridor hummed. At the end, a cell door stood open, a small grey room with a narrow bunk and a single bulb behind a cage. He went in. The door slid shut with a heavy mechanical thud. He put out his hand, found the push-bar, and pressed it a fraction, and felt it give.

"Are you content, prisoner?" came her voice, through the speaker grille.

"Content, Commander."

"Good. The journey is long."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Dock.