2952-11-27 – Tales from the Service: A Life on Prospero

“Dogs.” Sebastian made a note. “I can certainly get you Sigurd terriers.” He took his slate back, tapped in a few commands, then handed it back. There was little expectation that the Incarnation had any of the same breeds of dogs as Earth-based society, after all.

Shakil scrutinized the images of young and adult dogs, then nodded. “Yes. They’re a little like the Greenwatch dogs we keep to hunt burrowers on Prospero.”

“Excellent.” Sebastian pulled the images of dogs back to his side of the table. “Now start talking.”

Shakil shrugged. “I grew up in a town of maybe two hundred people. Not much to say about it, except that it was a peaceful life.” He sighed. “My father drove the supply crawler – a one week round trip to the big city. My brothers and I helped him unload at the depot, and helped him load produce for the inbound run. Nothing about that helps you much.”

“Sounds nice.” Sebastian agreed, making another note. “What sorts of supplies?”

“Oh, nearly everything. Essentials, plus anything someone requested special from central. No matter what you requested, it would come in eventually, no matter how silly.”

“How did someone pay for these requisitions? Was there some sort of exchange system?”

“In the Incarnation?” Shakil made a horrified expression. “We’re saving humanity. We can’t put a price on our duty to prevent extinction.”

“So it’s a rationing and queue system, then.” Sebastian had heard about the economics of Incarnation society quite a bit when talking with other prisoners, but none of them were from small towns on the world of Prospero. “They tell you that economics cannot be a barrier to survival, or some such slogan.”

Shakil bristled. “If you know all of this, why are you asking me?”

“We like to get a broad swath of perspectives.” That there were only a handful of prisoners who had grown up on Prospero in particular was something Sebastian didn’t think the man needed to know. “So, you loaded food on the outbound shipments, and got tools, home goods, and electronics when it returned?”

“Who said anything about food?” Shakil looked around the nearly-empty mess hall, then lowered his voice. “They didn’t tell us what our crops were for, they just sent down seeds and instructions each season. Father told me once that he was unloading them at a Navy depot.”

Sebastian frowned. He’d never actually found a prisoner who could explain to him what the Incarnation was growing on its worlds; everyone seemed to have been involved in helping with the harvest, but no-one seemed to know what the produce was for. “So you didn’t grow food, then?”

“Almost every house had a garden.” Shakil shrugged. “But other than that? No.”

Sebastian leaned in. “Are you telling me most of the town’s food came in on the crawler?”

“Most of the calories, sure. Standard issue nutrient blocks.” Shakil gestured to the bank of food-fab machines. “They taste a fair bit better than what those machines give us, but there are only four flavor patterns, so you really have to have some vegetables and herbs for variety. Obviously we hunted wild animals too, in the winter. There’s a lifeform we call a banker-bird there whose meat can feed a whole family for three days.”

Sebastian wrote this down. This was not quite the same story he’d heard from other Incarnation civilians, but none of them had been Prospero natives. “How do they make sure the shipments arrive on time, so nobody starves?”

“Let an essential production site starve? The Incarnate would be derelict to allow it.” Shakil made a warding gesture with his hands. “The depot does keep a reserve of food in case bad weather slows the crawlers, but we only used this twice that I can remember.”

“It would take some serious bad weather to slow a heavy crawler down.” Sebastian agreed blandly. “Do you remember what caused those delays?”

“It wasn’t weather the first time. They sent Father to another town because someone loaded him with another town’s cargo. Then he had to go all the way back to Central to get ours.” Shakil sighed. “We ate a lot of vegetables for a few days.”

“And the second time?”

“We were snowed in. Almost three meters of snow. Even the best crawler has to slow down for that. Father was delayed two whole days.”

Sebastian made sure to note that a three-meter snowfall on Prospero was unusual but not unheard of. “What was your town built with?”

“There’s a machine that you feed dirt and some sort of clear goo, and it makes beams and big flat panels.” Shakil traced a square on the table with his forefinger. “Most everything is built with those. They lock together at the corners, all you have to do is fill in the gaps with epoxy.”

“So, not particularly sturdy, but easy to repair.” Sebastian wrote this down, too. He’d seen a report on a curious fabrication machine captured on Hausen’s World; perhaps this is what Mr. Shakil was referring to.

“And warm in the winter.” Shakil nodded, then a sad look passed over his face. “I guess we didn’t know how good we had it back home. Do you think when all this is over, I’ll get to go back?”

Sebastian smiled. “Probably. But that’s not my department.”

I can tell that this account has been retouched a bit to remove bits of the conversation that Naval Intelligence would prefer not to be publicly known at this time, but the glimpse into life on Prospero is nevertheless quite interesting. The fact that food is processed centrally and shipped out to each village is very strange, and comically inefficient – unless one keeps in mind that the Incarnation seems to spend a lot of time policing its own people for any sign of dissent. Controlling the food centrally prevents anyone from having a realistic chance of rebellion; any rebel town would starve as soon as their local reserve ran out, which presumably would be too soon for them to grow full-scale food crops.