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“Huh, she’s not.”
“She’s not top grade, but she’s not parts material either, is she? Not with that hair. They like the rare hair.”
“No. Good condition on her.”
They’re talking about me as a collection of pieces. In the eyes of the aliens who control this facility, I am not a person. The concept of being a person is something I can only vaguely grasp. I am used to being a thing. A useful thing. Now, not an ugly thing.
“Could probably get ten thousand for her on the Antari Auction House. They’ve been asking for under the table anteparts humans. They like to play with them.” There’s a suggestion to the tone that means play doesn’t mean play. It means something else. Something that makes me shudder even in my sedated state.
“They’ll check the inventory. They’ll know one’s missing.”
I can’t see the Vargons. They are standing on the walkway above me. Their job is to push the button that opens the door that ends things.
“Pull her and we’ll fix the numbers later. The shuttle’s going tonight.”
“It isn’t, is it? There’s solar storms forecast from here to Orion-V. Ship’ll be ripped apart.”
I listen to the Vargons bicker over the last little bit of my life. I’m faintly aware that there is a decision being made, that something might be about to happen that is not part of the plan laid out for me since the day I was born.
“No risk, no reward. They’re paying incredible money at the auction house. Don’t you have debt? I do.”
There’s a moment of hesitation. Then the first voice, the keen one, urges the uncertain one more.
“They’ll never know. It’s Zug on duty. He’s slack.”
The chamber slides open. Instead of going through the dark door, I am pulled out into the light. Unsteady on my feet, and still very much under the effects of the sedation gas, I am cuffed, collared, chained, and taken away.
* * *
“Don’t touch her. She’s worth a month of your wages.”
I come to full consciousness with an annoyed curse coming from the front of what I guess is a transport.
“I’m not touching her!”
“I saw you pawing at her, Gex. Cut it out! If she has slime burn, she’s worthless.”
I stare straight ahead, not looking at anything, not touching anything, especially not the slimy flesh seller to my right, whose acidic skin grease is sloughing into the ridges and valleys in the seat beneath him.
There are big cuffs around my wrists and ankles, a collar around my neck, an electric chain connecting all three containment points. If I move, I get zapped. If I don’t move, but am jostled by a careless trader, I also get zapped.
This is a Vargon ship. The Vargons are the primary traders of live humans and human products in the galaxy. There is a shelf opposite me, clear containers marked with various labels.
Toes
Teeth
Eyes
An eyeball inside its plastic tomb looks straight at me with a you’re fucked expression. As the ship rattles on its course, the eye rotates upward, rolling at me in disgust. I can hear teeth chattering, even though they no longer have any reason to be afraid. The worst is over for them.
Parts of humanity have been scattered far and wide since the aliens found Earth, contained it, and started farming us. I was born. I have lived. Now I will work until I die.
Maybe not. Most of the people I knew were separated off six months ago to become parts. We know what happens to us. We don’t care. Fear has been bred out of our lineage. Acceptance of the fate all living beings find in the universal meat grinder has been genetically inserted into the core of our beings. We are livestock.
I was picked from the line before the sorting gate, plucked from the line by a great clawed machine that lifted me aloft and deposited me in a transport crate. Apparently I am ‘pleasing.’ I do not know what that means. I have light-colored hair and dark-colored eyes, but so did everybody else I lived with. We were all approximately the same size and shape, bred to type. Golden Brown, they called us when they were making reference on their sheets.
“Be fucking careful,” the Vargon next to me shouts as the ship jolts again. The chains swing against my belly, zapping me painfully, making me recoil from the punishment I did not earn. “She’s going to be burned to bits by the time we get her there!”
“I’m doing my best, these solar winds are fucking high,” the other Vargon shouts back wetly. “We should turn around.”
“No way! I am making this delivery!” the one next to me screeches. “I owe Muklog, and if I don’t pay he’s going to take my other toe.”
“Stop gambling, then.”
“Wasn’t gambling.”
“What was it?”
“I skimmed.” The Vargon reaches over, grabs a container of eyes and reaches his gooey paw inside it, cupping a handful of unseeing orbs into his mouth. The sound he makes as he chews will stay with me for the rest of my short life.
