S.G. MULHOLLAND

       Far out at the dirtiest end of the grimiest part of the human territories, sits Elysium. To those who have never set foot on the dirt black soot ridden earth of Elysium, the name of the filthy backwater planet may indeed be entirely misleading. To the founding fathers it seemed like a good idea at the time. It was all the rage in the golden age of colonisation, to name planets, even the more mundane ones, with overdramatic and hopeful sounding titles and, to be fair, it was with all good intentions. That intention had been hope; the hope of a new dawn, of a new home, of a new time of greatness and, it could be argued, that that time did indeed come but no-one would ever have suspected that it might end as well.

      Elysium was named for a portion of the Greek afterlife and there was a partial truth in its naming. Most people who lived here also died here but there was nothing heavenly about the dirty factory world; it was the antithesis of everything spoken about by the great poets.

Hesiod may have spoken of the absence of pain and sorrow, but that was the Elysium of old; in this Elysium, pain and sorrow were the boon companions of the average citizen and none knew that better than the girls of the Stainsby Exhibition centre.

      Jasenka wrapped her arms around her naked chest and stared out onto the Elysium Skyline. The dirty golden sun was on the rise and its rays gave a muddy hue through the great mustard fog that hung permanently across the planet’s surface. From her window, she could make out the silhouettes of the vast processing machines that hammered and churned day and night without end. When she was a girl she had given them names and spoke to them with all the familiarity and childish innocence one could expect from the permanently quizzical, for at that age Jasenka learned to be curious about everything.

     It was only as she grew older, when the harsh realities of her home became abundantly clear to her that she learned the value of ignorance and that what you knew and did not know could make the difference between life and death.

     She looked up at her friends and sighed with world weary longing and blew them a small kiss before closing her window and seating herself on the messy and stained sheets of her bed.

     The young man currently dressing himself was a new recruit for the Elysium Guard Force. He could not have been more than sixteen and had the rare and sweet distinction of being a virgin to boot. The guards were a common sight here; veterans often brought in new recruits to have fun with the girls of the Exhibition Centre, it was a male bonding thing that Jasenka never understood but knew well enough never to turn down.

     She looked the boy up and down properly for the first time since he had come in. He was a pale young lad, wiry, as he was still yet to grow into his body but would break hearts once he did. He had the most ridiculous sandy blonde curtains that looked as though they had been cut by his mother and perfectly matched his teenage wisp of a moustache that grew on his top lip. His uniform looked as though it was a hand me down from one of the dead officers, at least two sizes too big for him and possessing several bullet holes.

     He fumbled with the buckle of his oversized gun belt. The Moordenaar pistol at his side was too large for his hands let alone his waistline and sagged, mournfully, on his right hip.

She gave a sad smile and snatched his shirt from the floor where it had fallen late last night. She held it out for him to take which he did gingerly and gave a nod of appreciation.

     “Thank you” he said timidly as he pulled it over his shoulders and began to button it up. Even now, in the cold light of morning, after everything she had taught him last night, the young lad still had trouble looking at Jasenka’s pale naked body. She suspected he was a late bloomer, perhaps one given to romance as opposed to the typical Guard Force thugs she usually serviced. She could see his mind at work as he gave her awkward sideways glances. He was clearly still in the idealistic phase of his life in the Guard Force, he was looking for a hundred and one different ways to save her, to rescue her from the life of servitude she had been forced into, to make her free and to give her a life away from this awful place. She had seen it before a hundred times and wished for it to be true a thousand more but there was one truth she knew above all others. That idea, that thought, that dream was a lie. The only truth was that she was a whore, a Stainsby girl, useful for one thing and that was to be used and tossed aside. She may as well have been a toilet only toilets have more value in the eyes of their owners.

      But, for now, she decided to let the dream live, if only for a moment. She walked to him as he buttoned up his shirt clumsily and brushed some of the carpet hairs from the crumpled material, for which he thanked her again.

     “How do you feel now Martin?” she asked softly as she did up the cuff links his mum had bought for him. Martin took in a deep breath and sighed shakily, as though last night had never happened and that he was still a boy instead of the man he was now supposed to be.

     “It’s strange. I should feel different but I don’t. Like it’s just a part of me now you know?” he explained. She nodded and gave one of her beautiful, heart melting, smiles before kissing him tenderly on the cheek.

     “You were very sweet” she offered kindly as she gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m sure the rest of the girls would have loved to have ushered you in. I’m so glad it was me.”

He gave her yet another awkward look, his novice approach to Exhibition courtesy was shining through and she again felt the impulse to set his mind at ease. Wrapping an arm around his shoulders, she guided him to the door and gently opened it.

      “It’s alright, it was all taken care of last night at the desk in the lobby” she said as she gently nudged him into the corridor. “Promise me you’ll be careful out there, I’d like to see you in here one more time at least.”

      Whatever he may have said as a response would be silenced by Jasenka gently closing the door on him. She allowed herself a moment to feel good about the one client out of the last hundred that was actually worth seeing.              Martin had not been the usual drunken miner or refinery worker, nor had he been the typical Guard Force officer demanding free and, usually, rough sex. He was kind and, on Elysium, kindness was a rare commodity.

      Once the moment had passed she walked into her small en-suite bathroom and showered quickly. Jasenka had always enjoyed bathing, it was the time of day where she felt at peace, where the weight of her wretched nightmarish life faded away and she was able, if only for a moment, to believe that, once the water ceased, she was able to step into another life; a life where she was not used in so vile a manner, where she was not so abused, where she was not a victim.

      In this dream of another life she had the strength to change her fate and to be who she wanted to be.

      Stepping out into the cold reality she lived in she sat at her vanity monitor and combed her long golden hair. She applied the faintest wisp of powder before adding cherry red lipstick and the black lines of eye shadow. She dressed herself in a tight figure hugging red one piece and strapped on a pair of matching red stiletto heels. For the finish she hung the gold pendant of ownership around her neck, an OG symbol that made other pimps aware who she belonged to.

      Most of the leaders of Elysium’s sex trade burned their own personal brand into their girls as a mark of ownership, luckily Jasenka’s owner had a more capitalistic view of his property.

      ‘Punters don’t want a girl whose faced is fucked from a branding iron’ she had heard him say to a client one night.          She had to be grateful for that much. Olyphant Geronimo may have been one of the vilest human beings ever to come into existence but at least he did not believe in damaging his own property.

      She pulled her hair back into a high ponytail and activated the vanity monitor. Every girl at the exhibition centre possessed a Vanity Monitor; they were a relatively common and inexpensive piece of tech that allowed the girls to keep track of what clients to expect from day to day.

      Jasenka looked at herself, her eyes heavy with sadness as she brought up the view screen and accessed her drop down menu and selecting the folder marked appointments. She scrolled down and breathed with more than a little relief that Ollie had not booked anything in for her yet so, at first glance, the day was her own at least.

     There was a gentle knock at the door and Jasenka knew that the consequences for keeping someone, anyone, waiting outside her door would have been dire. She pulled the door open and standing, waiting as patiently as ever, was Byron.

     “It’s your appointment day today,” he said in a soft voice.

     “I’ll just get my coat,” she replied before retrieving a short leather jacket from the wardrobe.  She stepped out into the narrow corridor, Byron’s dark and ominous figure hovering along behind her as she walked toward the elevator at the far end. She winced awkwardly as the over exaggerated sounds of passionate coitus resonated from several doors as they passed. They were all faking of course and she knew it. It was all in the name of repeat business. Men were vain creatures after all and their egos often demanded that a woman’s orgasm could only ever be achieved through their expert penetration.

     She ignored it all and did not give it a second thought as she stepped into the elevator, Byron staying close. She eyed him closely and, not for the first time, considered what might be running through that beautiful head of his. Byron was not a typically attractive man. It could be argued that he was not attractive at all but there was a quality about him that made him utterly fascinating, not only to Jasenka, but to most of the girls at the centre.

     He was taller than most men but wiry with it. He kept a slicked back head of hair, greased to his scalp and never falling further than his ears. He rarely, if ever, shaved, leaving his face a shaggy thick mess of dark black hair. Ollie required that all of his drivers dressed smartly but Byron just did not look right in a suit. Jasenka had often thought he would be better off fronting a band as lead singer, not slumming it as the driver for a pimp like Olyphant Geronimo.

     “Something on your mind?” he asked, looking her squarely in the face with his gentle blue eyes. She crossed her arms defensively and looked up at the ceiling, feeling weather beaten by her life.

     “Nothing really, just having trouble sleeping,” she replied and chuckled at the irony of a Stainsby girl not being able to sleep.

     “Dare I ask why, if the answers not an obvious one that is?” he asked pressingly.

     “It’s nothing, just the usual headache is all” she said, reaching up and feeling her temple with the palm of her hand. The frequency of the skull pains she received had reached a daily level. They had started when she was thirteen and had carried on to present day with increasing regularity and intensity. Every colony planet had its fair share of terraforming problems that affected its local population and Elysium had more chemicals in its atmosphere than most, Jasenka just assumed that was the root cause of her permanent headaches.

      The elevator bell dinged and the doors drew apart slowly. The garish décor of the Centre’s lobby was almost blinding in its tastelessness. The centre had once been a luxury hotel, back in the days when developers thought that people may actually want to holiday there. The bright red diamond patterned carpet still managed to retain its awful presence even in the foggy glow of Elysium sunlight from outside. The foyer had a dozen or more leather armchairs in circular placing with a small coffee table in between each set up.

      There was maybe fewer than ten punters milling around right now, they were either just about to leave (usually still drunk or high from the previous night’s revelry) or had just arrived from a nightshift at the Iocaste plant.

      Jasenka paid no mind to any of it as she followed Byron out front to where the car was parked. It was a sleek piece of machinery that by any other planet’s standards was probably a hundred years out of date. Most civilised places on the inner colonies had done away with archaic transport and upgraded to self-driving vehicles, but on Elysium, people had to make do. They had to recycle and repair, restore and rebuild, reshape and redesign the old into something workable several times over before eventually scrapping it to dust.

      Byron opened the door to the sleek and exotic vehicle and Jasenka could not help but be reminded, and not for the first time, of how the vehicle looked like a marital aid that she had frequently been asked to use.

She glanced down at the alley to the right of the Exhibition Centre, wedged between her building and the Bordello & Breakfast next door. It was the dark place where the owners had traditionally conducted business of a far bloodier nature. More than one Stainsby Girl who had tried to run was often found dead in those alleys.

     Out of the shadows she could see the silhouette of “Homeless” Hilde rooting for scraps from the B & B. Jasenka had spoken to her on a few occasions, had even bought sandwiches from a local shop for her to eat so she got something solid if not healthy at least. There was something odd about the woman. She had appeared out of nowhere only two months ago and, remarkably, had not been snatched up by any of the whorehouses in the Red Light District.

     Hilde was certainly attractive enough to earn a decent living. Her long, naturally turquoise hair was enough to catch any man or woman’s eye. She had an ethereal accent that could not be placed to any human colonist Jasenka had ever heard, in fact, it sounded closely reminiscent of the original Broken Earth immigrants. Her eyes, one of blue the other of green had a haunting way of holding your attention yet you were always afraid to meet them. She had often remarked to herself that in spite of the torn rags she wore Hilde still managed to look every bit the empress.

     Yet it still confused her, why had no-one snatched her up? What was so special about this homeless woman that the pimps and scumbags who ran the district could not bring themselves to seize an opportunity such as this when it was handed to them so blatantly? The thought made her bitter and she could not bear to look at the obvious freedom Hilde was able to enjoy.

     She seated herself in the back of the car, melting into the comfortable cushions of leather coated passenger seats and the softness of the cushion immediately wiped thoughts of Homeless Hilde from her mind. Byron climbed into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine. She watched with detached idleness as the busy streets unfolded around her slowly as they passed.

     The city was as dank and foggy as ever, no chemical warnings had been issued so most citizens, even the alien population, such as it was, was out and about without face masks on. Days like this were becoming less frequent. With each passing year, the KRONE Industries Iocaste factory pumped out more fume fogs across the city, shrouding it in a thick mustard yellow mist. It could almost be considered beautiful were it not for the health problems that it caused most people who lived there.

     Still, there was an unusual air of joviality on the streets today. Jasenka noted with interest that bright lights, streamers and decorations had been hoisted upon the street lamps as they drove at a slow pace down Ezekiel Road. The streets were thick with people, which was strange considering it was only seven am according to Broken Earth time.

     “What day is it today Byron?”

     “May 14th, Broken Earth calendar” he replied.

     “What about by central colonies calendar?”

     “It’s…” he said pausing for thought as he pulled into the main market square; the lights of the occasion were giving a beautiful rainbow coloured glow across the sleek surface of the glass windows and painted Jasenka’s face in a cool shine. “… June 1st, I think.”

     “Then that explains it,” she said watching as some drunkard tried to pick a fight with a T’Gaanie. The interaction was brief; the human seemed to have objected to being bumped into, the T’Gaanie apologised and tried to walk away, the human swung for him, the T’Gaanie ducked then open hand slapped him underneath the chin sending the human flying. The drunk lay on the floor twitching and convulsing and clearly unconscious as the T’Gaanie smoothed out his purple tentacle dreadlocks and walked away.

     “Explains what?”

     “Foyers Day,” she said, the joy of the occasion ringing hollow in her voice. The world and the crowds passed in slow motion around her and for the most part she put it all out of her mind. She had no interest in any of them and no interest in where she was going either. For all she cared she could have been going to see a client or a firing squad, it was all one and the same to Jasenka, her life meant that little to her.

      They were heading further outward now, to the very edges of the city and closer to the Iocaste mines. Three titanic hauler waggons passed the car, miners piled inside and hanging off the sides, ready for another thirteen hours of total darkness, not that Elysium’s surface was much better.

     She caught fleeting glimpses of one or two of the miner’s faces as they passed and they looked even more grim than usual. It was only to be expected, they would have to face the pitch black for thirteen hours while their friends enjoyed the festivities of the public holiday. Most of them would be drunk or passed out by the time the shift finished. Drinking on the job was an annual past time on Foyers Day, in fact, it was heartily encouraged. When a team of men worked for a pittance per hour for the profit of an unfeeling and uncaring corporation, they were not likely to do their best work when they wanted to be anywhere but at work.

    The car turned away from the dirt road that led to the mines and headed toward the brightly illuminated building in the opposite direction. The medical district was the least populated section of the city. Most ordinary citizens who suffered from the horrendous health problems from the fog could not afford the care they needed from KRONE Corp’s medical facility and instead used the free clinic situated outside the foundry’s gates. It was to her benefit that Jasenka’s employer did not believe that anything worth having or using could ever be free and so shelled out more than was expected in order to keep his girls clean and virus free. After all, repeat business was the order of the day and dicks don’t fuck when they have a rash.

     “So this is my appointment?” she asked.

     “It’s your quarterly check,” he said as he pulled the car round to the wide stone steps that led to the front doors. “Do you want me to go in with you?”

     She looked at his face in the rear view mirror, trying to get a read on his thoughts. Byron had not been with the Centre long, only a few weeks in fact and she had found him nearly impossible to read where usually she was rather good. Most men were open books, they usually wanted one thing, especially from women like her, and their body language usually exposed their thoughts far more clearly than their words ever could.

     Byron however was a mystery; he came and went as ordered by either Olly or the girls, never sampled the goods no matter how much some of the girls wanted him to and was always unfailingly polite. By most men’s standards he was an anomaly. She had considered the possibility that maybe he might have come from the Amish settlement out on Elysium’s great eastern frontier, but somehow that seemed to fall short of her instincts.

     “No thank you” she replied, “Just wait out here, I shouldn’t be more than an hour or two.”

     “Really, that long?” he asked.

     “Am I the first girl you’ve driven to the clinic?” she asked with a smile.

     “Yes”

     “Then how did you know it was my quarterly check?” she pressed. He rooted around in the inside pocket of his jacket and retrieved a hand scroll, the glow of the view screen lighting the car’s interior with cold light.

     “Mr Geronimo makes us familiarise ourselves with the check-up schedules of all the girls,” he said. Jasenka said nothing, just gave him a silent acknowledgement of thanks as she slid out of the car and walked up the steps to the KRONE facility.

     All of a sudden she was painfully aware of her surroundings and none of it made her feel comfortable. The medical centre loomed above her like an open viewed yuppie tower with no walls. It was a huge building that looked like a cross between a cheese grater and a window. Huge open panels of glass showed consultation offices where the doctors conducted their ‘private’ examinations in full view of the world. Jasenka had been naked in front of countless men, but this kind of wantonness toward medical health always made her feel ill at ease.

     She tried her best to ignore her discomfort and headed inside.

     The lobby was much as one would expect from such a place; white marble with plain black furniture and a large desk bearing the diamond logo of KRONE Corp on the front with an unpleasant secretary to match. Jasenka approached and informed the young lady behind the desk of her appointment. The secretary thanked her and gestured for Jasenka to sit.

      Looking out of the glass door, Jasenka watched the far end of the Elysium skyline, out toward the shipyards. The white lights of the shipyards were one of the few things that could break through the density of the fog and its light could be seen for miles around. So long as you had a fairly clear line of sight, the incoming ships could be seen making their approach or the ascent into Atmo burn. Jasenka had, as a child, obsessively watched the ships come and go whenever she possibly could. One day she had even begged one of the older girls to take her to see the shipyards which, after much arguing with Olly, she finally did.

      There must have been a hundred different aliens there that day, most of them exotic and colourful and bold and new. She had held the memory of their colours, their shapes, their skins and scales and furs and clothes to the deepest part of her soul but it hurt to recall it. Even now the memory pained her. She had seen a way out, had seen a world beyond Elysium’s crummy life and crummy people, a way to a greater universe that she would never ever know.

      “Miss Jasenka,” said a thick weighty voice. She looked over to the door by the secretary’s desk and saw Doctor Dubanowski’s large frame occupying the space where the door would have been were he not standing in front of it. He was oddly large for a Doctor but Jasenka assumed that might have been a side effect of being born on Elysium. Slight abnormalities like large or diminutive stature were commonplace and the kindly Sikh Doctor was no exception.

He held out a welcoming arm and stepped to one side to let her through. She knew the way well enough by now, after so many years coming to the Medical Centre for legally required check-ups his office was not unfamiliar. After a few minutes she found her way to the office door and walked in.

      She seated herself in the patient’s chair next to Dubanowski’s desk and placed her hands in her lap, staring out the window wall, watching the world go by. Dubanowski’s office was on the ground floor and looked out across the Centre’s courtyard. For some reason she found this made her a little more comfortable, if they had been up any higher she may have felt more exposed.

      “So, are there any developments of any kind that I need to know?” he asked as he reached for his KRONE issue hand scroll. Jasenka could make out a few of the files through the clear plastic surface as he scrolled through them; there was no-one she knew and by the pictures that accompanied them it looked like he had more non-human patients than those of his own species.

       “Nothing new doctor. Just the same problems as before,” she said crossing her legs and hugging herself comfortingly.

       “Are you still having those awful dreams?” he asked and she nodded. “Did you follow up on that psychiatrist I referred you to? He works in-house so it’s not like you’d have had to go off world for it?”

       “There’s no way my boss would have gone for it. He only really lets me out to get my quarterly checks because Consortium law says that he has to.”

       “Yes,” Dubanowski said, stroking his lengthy beard, “I can’t say as I believe it’s right or proper for a young lady like yourself to be locked in a room all day doing…”

       “Doctor,” she said, politely interrupting, “I’d rather not turn this into another lengthy conversation about the state of my profession. I’m quite well aware of your feelings towards it but I must insist that we carry on with the examination.”

       “Very well,” the doctor said, bringing up Jasenka’s file and a clean typing screen. “How have the headaches been lately? Has there been any change in their frequency or have they gone altogether?”

       “I’m having a good day today, but that’s a rarity,” she explained. Headaches for her were all a part of daily life and nothing to take note on, but recently they had been getting worse and their length had been gaining as well as the intensity with which she suffered them.

       “Are you still taking the medication I prescribed you?”

       “In order to do that my boss has got to loosen the purse strings and he won’t do anything that takes money out of his own pocket.”

       “But I gave you a note explaining the seriousness of your headaches and how they could be detrimental if left unchecked?”

       Jasenka remembered the note all too well. She had given Olly the note on her last quarterly check and had received a beating for her troubles. With every blow of Olly’s fist he screamed at her ‘You’re mine, my property, you work and that’s all!’

      It was enough to keep the memory raw and well worth not repeating.

      “He never got round to getting me time off. We’ve had a busy season lately and what with the festival. We’ve had all sorts of casual business coming in, so I’ve been rushed off my feet, literally,” she said with a slight laugh. The doctor did not reciprocate the laughter, instead he just looked at her over his glasses, pseudo judgement scrawled across his expression. Had Jasenka not needed his confirmation of her attendance she would have got up and left right then.

      “Well then, shall we commence with the full scan?” he asked. Jasenka grimaced as he gestured toward the small circular dais platform in the corner of the room. She got up and stepped on it in three graceful paces and held her breath slightly as the doctor placed his hand scroll in the panel on the wall and began to programme the scanners settings.

      “Will this take as long as last time?” she asked, a shiver running the length of her spine as she stared out into the long dark afternoon of the Elysium day. From her position on the platform, she could see Byron standing outside the car talking to someone on his own hand scroll and looking up at the doctor’s office. It was strange to see him show emotion the way he currently was. She had never seen him be anything but polite and professional but right now he looked worried, pensive even, as he continued his heated conversation.

      “The same as usual, a few hours, but you won’t feel a thing. As you know, you’ll be asleep for the whole thing.”

      “Great, two hours of guaranteed nightmares and a guaranteed migraine when I wake up” she said dejectedly.

      “We can always rearrange and do it another day if you like?”

      “And have you charge my boss twice for two separate appointments, he’d really thank me for that. No, let’s get it over with now” she said dejectedly.

      Dubanowski continued to programme the scanner and Jasenka looked to the one thing that comforted her during her appointments and indeed her life: she looked to the horizon, to the far away distance beyond the clouds that hovered above the Elysium shipyards, to lights of the dozens of ships that even now were coming and going as they made broke the fog and away into the black. But most of all, she looked outwards and into the darkness above, to the greater universe that had been so denied to her and prayed, prayed that one day she could find the courage inside to somehow, someway, to leave and find all the wonders of worlds away from here.

     “Are you ready?” Dubanowski asked. She breathed deeply , took one last look at Byron who now stood with his back to the building, still fighting with whoever it was on the other end of the line, and nodded.

     Dubanowski pushed a button on the hand scroll and Jasenka was engulfed and a fine white light that covered every inch of her skin and lifted her off her feet so she floated on the spot. The light engulfed her until it became blinding, and then the world went black.