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Chapter 1: Clara
I hadn’t run yesterday when authorities came to my apartment to arrest me. I was a shitty runner and an even shittier fighter. Besides, where would I go?
I was broke and struggling, and I’d already received my last eviction notice the day before. It was illegal to be homeless in Nova Vita, so as of last night, I was a criminal.
Now, I sat inside the holding cell with another woman. Julie was in her twenties like me. She was here because she’d missed repayment of her medical advance three months in a row. Her cheeks were gaunt as if she’d been starving for a while, and her complexion was pale. Her stomach complained loudly every so often.
“There’s no way I’m going to Utopia.” Julie sat cross-legged on the bench, picking at the peeling pleather of her worn-out shoes. “I’d rather chance it with the monsters.”
She was brave. Me? I wasn’t so sure I’d survive.
If you’d asked me yesterday which one of these two horrible fates I preferred, disappearing forever into this colony’s Utopia Project or being fucked to death by monsters that look like Old-Earth-styled demons, I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer. I still couldn’t today, but after a long night of deliberation in a cold concrete cell with only Julie as my companion, I was leaning toward the rut, as crazy as that might sound.
I just wasn’t sure if I was making the biggest mistake of my life.
As I debated silently, the re-education officers sitting outside my cell talked about the bonuses they’d get for every worker they sent to the Utopia Project.Cellwas a bit of a misnomer; there were no bars and no doors, just a line on the floor. They didn’t need bars to control us when stepping foot across the line meant a debilitating electric shock delivered by the tiny chip implanted in our arms at birth.
The asshats monitoring us were sure that any sane woman would choose Utopia over the horned monsters. They practically celebrated our misfortune. Just for that fact alone, I wanted to choose the rut, but fear of the unknown, and massive alien cocks, stopped me from making my decision.
I analyzed the other option. They called it the Utopia Project, and at first glance, it looked very much like a utopian society. The government gave you everything you needed to live, food and board, and you didn't have to work a day in your life. At least, that was how the project had been marketed through colony-run media when it had first launched eight years ago. At the time, it was marketed to the poorest of the poor: those living in the Nova Vita’s outer edges.
The only catch? You didn't get to keep anything. Those in Utopia owned no possessions.You won’t miss your things at all, the ads had insisted, because everything was provided for you.Join the Utopia Project. It’s paradise.
For those with very little to their names, this had been a siren's call, and some families even encouraged their adult children to apply for the program. That was, until the ones who’d left for the project stopped calling altogether. Within months of joining, those people had disappeared, replaced by doppelgangers who only replied to transmissions with the same few rehearsed lines.
I never thought I’d be forced to choose between disappearing into Utopia or being shipped off to the Kadrixan monsters who lived on the next continent.
If I’d just kept my big mouth shut, I wouldn’t be in this position. One little comment, and I was deemed unemployable.
It was unlawful to say anything bad about Nova Vita, especially about the way the colony was run. All citizens of Nova Vita should be grateful to live here. We had clean air and fresh water, two things people unfortunate enough to be born on Earth didn't have, and we should always be grateful, especially to our glorious officials who kept our colony going year after year, despite attacks from savage natives.
But the Utopia Project wasn’t my only fear. Even if it was unlawful to mention it, Nova Vita had been struggling for a while. Year after year, the poor got poorer as officials funneled resources to those lucky enough to be born in the inner colony. Our leaders had made a deal with the devil.
Well, maybe not the Devil himself, but demonic-looking aliens with red skin, glowing eyes, and horns, who called themselves Kadrixans. In exchange for supplies, they traded yearly shipments of women to “comfort” the monsters during their “heat.” And the time of their spring rut was coming soon.
Unlike Utopia, where no one ever heard from you again, a woman sentenced to sate the monsters’ heat could technically return after the rut was over, if she survived. However, the few women who’d returned that first year had been treated like tainted goods and had trouble finding jobs. They’d ended up back in the cell, making the same decision the next spring, except for the few with family to take them in.
“Think about it,” Julie continued in a whispered tone. “No one ever comes back from the project. Ever. And I heard the only reason they claim participants don’t need to work is that they’re forced to volunteer every day. If they don’t pay you, it’s not work, just volunteering. It’s basically the prison camps re-named.”
I looked nervously around to make sure the re-education officers hadn’t heard her. “Shh. Not so loud.” I’d heard the same thing, but repeating it could get you thrown in the prison work camps for sure. At least I still had a choice right now.
“I’d rather take my chances with the monsters,” she continued. “I heard their rut is happening soon. We won’t have to stay locked up for long before they ship us out.”
There was a sound from the front, and our jailors stepped out into the hallway.
“What about the women who didn’t come back that first year?” I wasn’t exactly the glass-half-full type. “I know why later groups never came back, but that first year, they didn’t know they’d be treated like pariahs if they returned. Did they not…survive?”
“I think the women who came back would’ve said something. And some demanded to go back the next year.”
“Everyone’s heard of that. Doctors claimed they were so depressed they wanted to die and that’s why they went back.”
Julie cracked up laughing. “And you believed them?”
“No.”
She had a point; the story didn’t add up.
The officers returned and we zipped it.
