Winter came and winter went without one word escaping Fortress 501. Vasquez was proud to live in a beautiful society, one whose structure thrived on well ordered truth, and there was nothing that the disorderly, the convicted, had to contribute to that. 

He was at the midpoint of his life now, and having worked at 501 for 3 years he had seen the turning of spring from within the Fortress twice before. The world outside those mile-high concrete walls turned a vibrant green, starkly contrasting with the dull grey of life within the walls. He was used to the creeping chill that would breathe its way down the dismal corridors, and even in the spring mornings, it still haunted the fortress. He didn’t entirely mind it, in fact it was preferable to the clamminess of the deeper cell blocks, where the breath of each inmate hung in the air, unmoving. 

Normally Vasquez would simply wrap himself tightly in his coat, but this year was different. He found himself placed in a new role which warmed the skin, even if it chilled the heart. He now often had to strip off his coat, even on the coldest days, such was the warmth of his newly assigned room. He enjoyed the warmth this new position provided. Even before the promotion, he enjoyed his job immensely, it was far better than the destitution he was raised in – a fate many were still actively enduring. To serve was the highest honor for a man like Vasquez. It was the disgusting, the disorderly, the members of society who didn’t serve– they caused all the problems that plagued the State’s perfect world.

Many of these problems had shown themselves during his upbringing. Vasquez could still remember the familiar taste of his mother’s cabbage soup, which had kept him and his family nourished during the strikes, which were still occurring throughout his childhood before the state had finally gained full control and finally stamped them out. He learned about them in school, about how the strikes only happened because folks were too lazy to work and do their duty. It never quite made sense to him why people would be so lazy as to starve themselves and others by not tending to the bakeries and factories. 

The last memory Vasquez had of his father was during one of the strikes. His father had been loudly arguing with his mother about how she was a coward for not striking, for not being honest with her child. The fighting escalated, and she ended up locking Vasquez’ father outside. None of it made sense to Vasquez, and his father never came back to explain it. The State cracked down on the strikes shortly after, and Vasquez only hoped that his father understood his wrongdoings and was in the right place at the right time. He didn’t want to think that he was the progeny of the problem.

Governor Malphas, who oversaw all operations at 501, didn’t like problems either. As of late, too many prisoners had caught onto the fact that the letters they often wrote to family members and friends were going perpetually unanswered, and when the prisoners grew suspicious, they grew problematic as well. The truth of the matter was that up until this point it was Vasquez’ job to deposit entire cart-loads of letters outside the doors to the furnace room, where they would be immediately burned without even a second glance.

But Governor Malphas sought to revamp this process, to give prisoners the best illusion of communication with the outside world, while not tainting society with the false narratives of the people contained within 501. The State, whose well-being relied upon the complacency of society, had implemented an all knowing AI called NEBULA across every corner of the State’s ministries and institutions, the latest of which being the carceral sphere. NEBULA, Malphas thought, would be the cure to Fortress 501’s increasing prisoner volatility problem.

Vasquez did not entirely understand how NEBULA worked, but he had a vague understanding of what it was. Somewhere, somehow, a massive computer read through each and every State document and listened to every State conversation and address, and all this time it learned how the State worked. Vasquez often wondered to himself if the State was trying to make a god in their image, because sometimes it certainly felt like it. NEBULA somehow ate everything the State threw at it, and it came to understand very well how to shape society into something orderly and perfect. It knew the structure that humans craved in all things: simple statements, instructions, short lines, no traffic, predictable monotony. There was something about NEBULA that wasn’t right, something that wasn’t human, a lack of nuance or expression, but soon NEBULA was going to change that. It was going to learn something new. 

Vasquez’ new position served as one extra step between prisoners’ letters, and the furnace. Being that each of the letters he received was hand written, Vasquez now had to transcribe each letter into a terminal that interfaced directly with NEBULA, and this involved reading through many letters which otherwise had been entering the fires with their seals still intact and their secrets maintained. In theory, NEBULA would learn to speak in the vulgar manner of the common person, and by utilizing the State’s supremely efficient data records of each citizen, NEBULA would theoretically be able to write a perfectly passable response, which could be returned to the prisoners. 

Not only were the responses NEBULA wrote perfectly passable, but they were effective ways of disseminating letters to inmates that could profoundly increase their devotion to the State. Usually NEBULA would find a way to turn things in such a way that even Vasquez felt a surge of patriotism when reading them, if he imagined for a moment that the letters were sincere. 

This day, he grabbed a cold steel chair that had been sitting next to the door of the hallway, where hot and cold air fought an eternal battle, and he dragged it to his terminal, which sat close to the furnace and its warmth. There, he prepared to type out the first of the day’s letters. 

To my Sweet Marie

I wrote three months past to you, dear. Either your heart with the progression of your disease has hardened, or I am to think you dead? Life without your light in here is hard enough, but to imagine you, the joy of my eye, by whose face a dark room is made light, dead — I tremble at the thought. I know how hard you’ve fought, how sternly you have walled yourself from the help of others while battling your cancer, for you view it as pity. But know, Marie, I have never pitied you, I have always loved you. I just want to know that you live still, I want to know that the one good thing I put into this world still walks. I suffer this hell for the vain hope that again I’ll see you. 

Love Marc Gascoigne 

Vasquez typed all of this, unfeeling, as was his duty. NEBULA read it all quickly, and shot out a reply. 

Gascoigne

On the matter of your daughter, Marie,

I regret to inform you that her cancer has progressed rapidly. She passed a month ago, but not before proving herself a hero. In the face of uncertainty, she went valiantly into masses of rebellious citizens, and she reassured them of their values. She de-radicalized hundreds of would-be terrorists with moving speeches on the importance of unity, even in the face of adversity. Her life is a model which we all should follow, and you should be most honored of all to have given to this world a woman possessing such valor.

Solemnly,

Dr. Ramirez

Vasquez grabbed the newly printed document and stamped it with a time-stamp on when it should be “delivered” before dropping it into a bin and grabbing the original letter and walking towards the furnace, dropping it into the glowing flames. Vasquez didn’t like that when transcribing these letters, he couldn’t help but read them, and they tempted him to feel something. Some of them, so seditiously, tried to break down the gray walls of his confined little world. 

He wasn’t alone in this room; he shared it with another man, Maxim. Maxim was a quiet, skittish man, tall and lanky. He often smelled of celery and spent too long staring curiously over at Vasquez as he worked. This proved to frustrate Vasquez to no end. But Maxim never stopped gawking. Vasquez had only first seen Maxim upon his promotion to this position, and they really hadn’t spoken much; he deduced that Maxim must not get out from his station very often.

In an attempt to remedy this, and to become closer to Maxim, Vasquez invited him to grab dinner following the end of one of their shifts together. Maxim rebuffed Vasquez hastily, and derided him for making the offer. Vasquez had decided shortly afterwards that Maxim wasn’t the sort of chap that Vasquez would be going out of his way to speak with more. 

Vasquez transcribed at least 20 more letters that day, and he watched each of their respective replies churn out of the terminal. He always took the time to read through the responses, before stamping them and dropping them in the bin – he wasn’t entirely trusting of NEBULA’s work, and liked to make sure that the replies were actually fitting. And deep down, he really just enjoyed seeing the way the stories ended. He was afraid, though, that Maxim would see the brief smile that flickered across his face sometimes as he read them. He hadn’t once seen Maxim smile, and Vasquez knew the price for sympathizing with the damned.

Towards the end of the day, Vasquez received a beautiful poem with a drawing on it. It wasn’t to be sent to a specific person, instead, it just said to send it to the author’s hometown of Solon. Vasquez stared at the document for a moment, not knowing if it should even be transcribed or if it should just be thrown in the fire. He decided impulsively to instead fold it quickly and jam it into his pocket. The author didn’t live far from Vasquez, and he thought for a minute he could do the world a favor by sharing the art.

As the next couple months passed along and the spring began to warm, Vasquez continued to see poetry come across his desk. It was all beautiful, and it truly made him question much of what he believed. It was easy to throw the writings of the inmates into the fire when he hadn’t had the privilege of reading any of it. He began to sneak more and more of it out, and it never seemed that Maxim noticed. 

Why did the State feel the need to take away the voice of the people within the prison fortress? How many voices were silenced across the hundreds of similar facilities that existed? How could he ever hope to make a difference in such a system where all of the State and society seemed against him? Was it enough to take a piece of poetry out every couple of days? 

How painful it must’ve been, Vasquez realized, to write all this, and to never know if someone was there to read it. How could he ever give them the hope that they deserved?

The answer came to him one day, buried under a mountain of letters and myriad other works – one inmate even recited over a dozen cantos from the Divine Comedy of Dante from memory! Vasquez wasn’t going to transcribe that, unfortunately. But after typing his way through the mountain of work, he found a pamphlet that promised liberty to all; it denounced everything that the State stood for, and it was addressed to a very specific group of freedom fighters, who for so long Vasquez had mentally catalogued as terrorists. It had instructions on how to carry on the work of some certain characters who had been caught, and how to guarantee the fall of the State. 

Vasquez was holding the document firmly in his hands, and he knew what he had to do. If he managed to get this message out, he could see a change, a world where people aren’t oppressed, artists aren’t starved, and human voices aren’t silenced. 

He jammed the pamphlet into his pocket and got up to leave, walking out into the hallway outside the furnace room. The last cool chill of spring he’d feel raced into his mouth to meet him as he left the door. He made it 20 paces before he heard another pair of footsteps behind him. Maxim, surely, must’ve just finished his workload as well. He continued walking until the hallway turned to the left, and as he went around the corner he nearly ran head first into Governor Malphas, who was walking with two guards. He bowed his head slightly out of respect and continued past Malphas, heading briskly for the exit. 

A hand firmly grasped his shoulder, preventing him from walking further. 

“Vasquez, just the person I was looking to see! Would you care to walk with us?”

The voice was that of Malphas, strong and resounding. 

“Maxim, you too, I think we need to have a good chat about the work that NEBULA has helped us do here.”

Maxim quickly spoke a “yes, sir,” in an obedient tone.

Vasquez made no response, but he couldn’t refuse. The hand of the guard on his shoulder made sure of that. If he was found possessing contraband, the punishment would be severe – he’d surely find himself on the other side of the bars, or worse. He only hoped the dream written in that pamphlet was worth it.

As they walked towards the courtyard door, Malphas said more.

“With your help, and the work of NEBULA, 501 has seen a marked decline in violent outbursts, and an improved acceptance of re-education procedures. Beautiful isn’t it? Progress such as this is happening all across the country, and I know I sure feel proud.”

“I am honored, certainly,” added Maxim.

Vasquez’ heart was stuck in his throat, but he managed to squeeze out the word “indeed.”

They crossed the threshold of the door, and stood awkwardly in the yard outside. A guard still held Vasquez by the shoulder. The concrete below their feet was pure and white, a stark contrast with the dismal sky above. The pamphlet burned in Vasquez’ pocket, and he wished more than anything that he hadn’t grabbed it.

Malphas chimed in once again, “did you know we’ve found other completely novel ways of using NEBULA?” He smiled at Vasquez sinisterly. “It’s amazing really, how beautifully it can mimic the impassioned writing of a human. So well, in fact, that it could fool even the most astute of us, I’m sure.”

There was a long pause before he continued, the smile having since faded from his face. “Maxim here says you didn’t seem to have faith in NEBULA, Vasquez. He says each day you re-read everything it wrote… is that true?”

“Yes, sir.”

Vasquez had never seen the slender Maxim show an ounce of emotion, but he swore that he saw a smirk crawl across his face.

“Maxim here also said that you’ve not been feeding every document to NEBULA, nor to the flames. Actually, he made it sound like you have been smuggling seditious texts out of your little room for quite some time.”

Vasquez felt faint.

“Maxim, do you think we should have these guards here search him? Or should we trust that he only has the best of intentions?”

Vasquez watched every moment that he and Maxim had shared flit across his mind, he thought of how he should have maybe been kinder, and he hoped that Maxim had the humanity left in him to let Vasquez walk away. But he watched the contemplation on Maxim’s face turn to resolve.

“Search him,” Maxim said with snide authority.

The guards patted him down thoroughly, finding the pamphlet that was snuggly tucked into Vasquez’ pocket. The guard held it high, and for some reason Malphas didn’t look surprised at all, but Maxim was definitely smirking now. 

“I never took you for a terrorist Vasquez, I’ll be honest. But don’t hate Maxim here, it’s not he alone that brought you this pain. As I’ve said, NEBULA has done wonders for us, that pamphlet was indistinguishable from human handwriting, no? NEBULA wrote this perfect piece of treason, and you sprang for the bait like a dullard. If Maxim hadn’t turned you over, then we would’ve known he was complicit, and you both would be punished.”

It was so obvious now, and Vasquez hated himself for not having noticed it sooner. 

“I must be frank with you, Vasquez. You know too much. You’d create too much chaos if you rotted away with every other misbegotten wretch here, and I really wish it didn’t have to end this way, but we can’t have you telling the others the truth about where their writing goes. They’ve grown so… orderly as of late,” Malphas said with an exhale and a pause before commanding, “guards, cudgel him.”

As soon as the words left Malphas’ mouth, Vasquez turned to bolt, the courtyard was long, but not that long, he might have a chance. Just as he slipped out from one guard’s hand, another quickly yanked on his other shoulder, spinning him downwards into the ground. The pain began with loud thuds, he felt his bones breaking under the heavy swings of the cudgels. “Just shoot me, end this” he thought, prayed even. But the bludgeoning continued, the last of his thoughts spent in pain, hands twitching, with his blood pooling on the once pristine pavement. 

“And just like that, another valiant prison worker was mauled to death by rioting terrorists. All the more reason none of these rats will breathe free air again,” Malphas stated smugly. He grabbed the treasonous pamphlet from one of the guards before passing it to Maxim, “make sure this goes straight in the furnace.”