Author's notes: Maybe it's time to have a chapter that explains things more is what I was thinking when I wrote this, and then I vanished. Oops. I'm back now.
Reasons
Prisoner 777 covered his head with his pillow. He was just starting to believe he'd really spoken with the Tallest earlier, but that made him feel foolish because he completely forgot to ask about Bann.
"Laes…?" Lard Nar's tentative voice snapped him out of his melancholy state, although he accidently flung the pillow off of him when he sat up, and it ended up frying in the electrical force-field. He blinked as the burnt remains of the fabric drifted down onto the floor.
Well that was an oops. Who knew the current was that powerful? He started wondering what would happen if he tried touching it. The barrier wasn't supposed to be strong enough to kill, but maybe the guards increased the current to a more heart stopping level for kicks.
"Laes," Lard Nar repeated more firmly.
"Sorry, I was just thinking about how many watts of power it would take to fry a pillow like that," Prisoner 777 admitted as he moved to sit at the edge of his mattress. "What's on your mind?"
Lard Nar was sitting up in his cot looking at Prisoner 777 in concern. "Are you feeling ok?"
"Yes," Prisoner 777 responded, and he blinked. "Why?"
Lard Nar's expression changed to one of confusion as he studied the other Vortian. "The guards hauled you off to be tortured, and you're asking me that…?"
Oh right! He had been hauled off to be a test subject earlier. The guards walked him back to his cell, and then his mind started thinking about how strange the Tallest were acting and whether or not Bann was still alive. He'd momentarily forgotten that the reason he'd been brought to that room was to experience horrible psychological pain. Red made the device seem so harmless, and with the Tallest's help, he hadn't even died.
"Yeah… um… there's kind of a weird story about that," Prisoner 777 admitted, tapping his fingers together.
"Are you going to tell me?" Lard Nar asked.
That was a good question. Would Lard Nar flip out if he knew the Tallest were hanging around? Prisoner 777 didn't want his cellmate to do something reckless that could get himself maimed or killed, but maybe the former rebel should know. "I guess so… um… so out of ten, how totally pissed are you at the Tallest?"
"I would give that a full ten… if not more," Lard Nar replied with a scowl. "Why are you asking me that?"
"Well…" Prisoner 777 paused as he thought about how he could bring up Irk's leaders as casually as possible. He mentally shrugged. He'd be completely honest and then deal with whatever happened afterwards.
"When I was brought into the room, the Tallest were both using the visors already, so I had to wait for one of them to finish. Then I entered the virtual world with the red coloured one, apparently he programmed the sand-world. Who knew right? Anyway, he gave me a few tips on how not to die and gave me access to the weapons which had been locked before, courtesy of the guard's twisted sense of humour. Well, to make this short, I didn't end up dying at all so I guess that made things better."
There was a long and awkward pause. Prisoner 777 studied Lard Nar, looking for any sign of blind rage or even a hint of anger at all. "Oh…" the former rebel finally murmured.
Well at least he didn't have to worry about his cellmate trying to assassinate the Tallest at the moment. That was good, because the chances of that actually working were next to nothing. The most likely scenario would be Lard Nar getting shot to death, and he would also be killed in some brutal manner, and then everyone else would lose their mush rations and get zapped twice as often.
His cellmate probably recognized this which was why there was no irrational threats or more rational anger happening. As long Lard Nar was locked up, he couldn't do anything potentially destructive or threatening to the Irkens without getting some kind of terrible backlash for it.
"So uh… I'm open to opinions on this. I mean I'm not sure this is really typical Irken behavior," Prisoner 777 admitted, tapping his fingers together.
"I'm just trying to figure out why they are…" Lard Nar stiffened and his eyes widened in realization. His mouth parted, but no words came.
"Hey…" Prisoner 777 spoke, leaning forward a bit. "Clue me in here, because I'm pretty confused about this. I mean I know Irkens generally don't listen to aliens, like at all… and now their leaders are playing buddy buddy with me all of a sudden. It's kind of concerning."
"They want to use you to get information out of me…" Lard Nar said in a low whisper. "That's the only thing that makes sense…" His head lowered and he stared down at his legs. "They want you to trust them… they might even be making the guards do horrible things so they can step in and rescue you on purpose… they would know what time you were supposed to be testing those devices. They might have even assumed you would save me… and then… they stuck us together so they could use you to gather information on the resistance…"
"And Bann…?" Prisoner 777 questioned. Lard Nar's hypothesis made much more sense than the radical notion that the Tallest may have decided to do something nice on a whim. Compared to that crazy idea, anything sounded sane.
"I don't think he was a part of any plot…" Lard Nar answered as he carefully lowered himself back down on the mattress. He breathed a sigh. "If he was, they wouldn't have gotten rid of him… maybe they wanted you to rely solely on them so they had to remove him from the picture."
"Oh gosh… you're probably right…" Prisoner 777 remarked before burying his face in his hands. He stayed like that for a little while, trying to collect his thoughts. There was just one thing that didn't make sense about Lard Nar's theory though… He brought his hands down. "But… there's one thing I don't get… they're the Tallest. They have tons of people that could come here. Why are they visiting Vort personally? I don't understand that part."
"That…" Lard Nar paused as he tried to come up with some kind of explanation. "I don't know… the first few days in this cell I was so messed up, I-I didn't know if I was in the virtual world or not… I thought you were a program and that I was still in the room, surrounded by guards waiting for me to give up any piece of information…"
That would explain why Lard Nar had been so quiet… he was completely paranoid. Whatever the Irkens had done to him had messed up his sense of reality.
"I don't know anything for sure…" the former rebel admitted. He grasped his head and stared up at the ceiling. "Maybe… maybe I'm just being paranoid… but I can't think of any other reason…"
Prisoner 777 nodded in understanding. "Alright. I understand. It's a good thing you haven't given me any information. Not that I would say anything, but it's still better if I don't know."
"Thanks Laes…" Lard Nar mumbled, shutting his eyes. "I wish I could tell you everything, but I can't... not here."
"I'm curious though," Prisoner 777 spoke. "How did you decide I was real and not a program?"
"Because… when I got myself beaten up, you reacted the way you would have… even a copied personality wouldn't act exactly the same… they are too easily manipulated by their environments, and there are ways to confuse and override certain data entrees."
"Was I in one of the virtual worlds you saw?"
Lard Nar grew quiet. He didn't respond for a while, but he finally answered, "yes…" in a soft tone. "You were."
"What was I like?" Prisoner 777 asked. He was interesting in this topic since he programmed the control schematics into ships and battle-mechs. Usually he just did basic coding, but he'd always been interested in any type of artificial intelligence as well. "Did I act like me?"
"I don't know… you only said two words to me before you died."
"What were the words?"
"I was in the midst of severe mental torture…" Lard Nar reminded him. "Do you really think I can recall two words out of the entire ordeal?"
"… maybe?" Prisoner 777 replied.
"I don't remember," Lard Nar said.
"Two words?" Prisoner tapped his chin.
"I don't remember…" Lard Nar muttered irritably. "Please just drop it."
Prisoner 777 wished he'd been involved in the project that created the program that could download a user's personality into machinery, but he hadn't even graduated when the researchers on Vort lab three came up with that one. "That's interesting though. I wonder what it would be like to talk to a virtual copy of yourself."
Of course that program had been for military use only. Even if he managed to leave the prison and somehow earned tons of monies, he still wouldn't be able to have one.
"Laes," the former rebel's voice sounded stern. "Can you please stop talking about it?"
Prisoner 777 covered his mouth. "Right, sorry," he spoke through his fingers. He brought his hands back down and glanced over at the place the guards liked to come through. There really was no door. The energy could be parted almost anywhere to make a passage, but that was their favorite spot.
He looked down at the burnt remains of his pillow. If he didn't clean it up before the guards passed by he was going to get in trouble. Or Lard Nar would get in trouble. Either way, he needed to pick up all the little pieces and put them somewhere where they wouldn't be seen.
After doing that, and double checking twice to make sure no small ash pieces were laying anywhere, he decided there would be no way to hide the mess permanently. Eventually the guards would barge in and check the entire cell for anything that could possibly resemble a weapon of any sort. This usually happened once a week, sometimes twice a week, but since Bann had been on duty they hadn't had one in a while.
Bann was always going into the prisoner's cells anyway to talk and whatnot. He could have easily told Slappy he'd been checking the rooms when he was actually having conversations. There usually weren't any weapons hidden away in the cells anyway. Buckram and Angry-Sheela always turned the zappy rooms upside-down looking for any piece of shrapnel.
Prisoner 777 was proud of the fact that he'd never been zapped for having any kind of potentially dangerous objects in his cell. Since he was frequently bored, he always kept things clean and organized too. No one had to tell him to tidy up or quiet down, well usually, and the reasons for him getting zapped were more frequently due to the guard's boredom rather than his own carelessness.
Ok, that was a bit of a lie. Overall he guessed he'd been electrocuted more because of the guard's dull shifts left them wanting to shock the prisoners for fun, but he also couldn't hold his tongue when he was nervous too. He said the strangest things when the guards were looming over him with their shock-sticks, and many of the things he said weren't at all helpful.
Anyway, to avoid the potential wrath of the normally irritated Irkens, he was easily able to convince himself to eat the remains of his pillow. Yes it was weird, but it was no worse than the grey sludge he had to consume every day. Actually, the burnt smoky flavor was kind of a nice change. He decided to keep some in his pocket for later so he could use it to flavour the flavourless glop the Irkens dubbed "the stuff."
"Did you just…?" Lard Nar asked, not wanting to interrupt despite being aware of the obvious munching noises Prisoner 777 had been making over the sound of the electrical barrier.
"Yes I did," Prisoner 777 answered.
"Why...?"
"I've eaten the same thing for a really long time, so I'm willing to try almost anything else?" Prisoner 777 offered. At least he thought that was a pretty solid reason.
"You're going to get sick," Lard Nar spoke as he slowly propped himself up. He turned to the other prisoner with a worried expression on his face. "You aren't trying to make yourself sick on purpose… are you?"
"No no," he waved away his cellmate's worries. "Seven-ten already tried that, but the Irkens must be putting drugs or something in the food because no one ever gets sick anymore." He chuckled. "Yup, so there are no excuses for us not to be working."
Prisoner 777 sighed. He'd met his deadline for the Gigadoomer project, just barely, but he hadn't been placed on the building team. He had a feeling this was because he was supposed to be keeping an eye on Lard Nar, or maybe the correct way to put it was 'gathering information' on Lard Nar. Either way, the Irkens seemed to be keeping him in a pretty good state of boredom, so there was nothing else to do besides talk to his cellmate, or sleep, or daydream about coding and mechanics.
Beep beep.
He jumped out of his cot and flew across the room so fast he nearly crashed into the monitor. This couldn't be Zim again… could it? The Irken didn't call very frequently. Maybe it was one of those mass transmissions the warden sent out every so often about a new punishment or policy being implemented, or not.
When that happened all of the screens turned on automatically, so it probably wasn't that.
Ah well, there was only one way to find out.
Prisoner 777 nearly squealed in joy when Bann's face appeared on the monitor. He stopped himself though and cleared his throat so he wouldn't sound weird. He had so many questions he wanted to ask.
"Before you say anything, I have to let you know I don't have much time to talk," Bann said. He was wearing a bandage on his cheek, and one of his antennae was bent in an unnatural position. His arm was in a sling, and there were cuts under his left eye. "I wanted to contact you sooner, but I couldn't. There hasn't been any time."
"What's going on?" Prisoner 777 asked hurriedly. "Why did you leave? Where are you right now?"
"I was on the front lines," Bann explained. There were dark circles under his dull purple eyes. He looked so tired, yet he still managed to smile. "I was injured. I didn't think I would live, but fortunately the Bludonians decided not to kill me right away. I'm in one of their medical facilities I think."
"Hang on…" Prisoner 777 stared at the injured Irken in disbelief. "You're telling me Irk is fighting with the Bludonians from planet Bludon? Aren't they the peaceful civilization that are kind to all creatures and have never waged war on anyone ever? In fact I'm pretty sure they're known throughout the galaxy for their charity… they've even sent gifts to Irk. I'm sure of it."
"Yeah, well Irk sent them an invader," Bann answered; his antennae drooped and he rubbed one of his eyes. "They aren't stupid, and their armies are nothing to laugh at. They forced Invader Sneakyonfoota to leave, and this got the armada riled up I guess… and anyway, it's just a mess." He let out a sigh and carefully touched the bandage on his face. "I might die soon, so I just thought I'd let you know what's going on."
"Where are you calling from?" Prisoner 777 asked as he tried to peer behind Bann at the background. He was in a room of some kind; the walls were a dark metallic blue colour, and there was a door to his right.
"A small communication's room at the Bludonian's medical facility," Bann replied. "They won't want me talking to you for very long," his eyes turned to one of the corners of the room. "They're monitoring this transmission. I'm actually surprised they're letting an enemy use their equipment. I'm pretty sure I should be calling them foolish, but instead I feel grateful."
Defective… they put him on the front lines to die. The Empire wants him dead. He doesn't fit within the context of his society's ideals.
"Do… do you know why you were transferred…?' Prisoner 777 questioned him.
"The warden was suspicious of me. He probably informed the Tallest, and they thought this would be the quickest way to deal with a potential problem," Bann cracked a grin. For a second he didn't look worn-down. "I understand what they were doing, but I can't really say I agree with the result of that."
"Bann… I'm sorry," Prisoner 777 spoke, running a hand down his face. He lowered his eyes to the desk, not wanting to see the injuries Bann had received fighting for the Empire. "We should have been more careful… I shouldn't have asked for your help."
"It's fine," Bann reassured him. "Please don't throw a blame party for yourself. I'd be sad if I found out my capture caused you guilt or something silly like that. Just let the others know I won't be coming back ok? If and when you get a chance."
"Yeah... maybe next week when I can talk to other people."
"That sounds good. Thanks."
Prisoner 777 was starting to tear up. He was totally attached to this guard.
How could he have let this happen? The warden wouldn't have gotten suspicious if Bann hadn't been trying so hard to help him and Lard Nar. The only reason the rookie was helping them was because he asked, no, pleaded for the young guard to do something.
"Call…" Lard Nar hesitated and ground his teeth together. Prisoner 777's attention fell on the former rebel leader. "Use the ultarian wave signal. It's weak and hard to find, but if you use that one, the Resisty will hear it. Tell the Bludons you have that connection. They may let you go…"
Bann stared wordlessly at Lard Nar. Prisoner 777 stared too. After all this time, didn't his cellmate think this could be a trick? What if this wasn't really Bann they were talking to, but someone else wearing a holographic disguise? Oh great… now he was getting paranoid.
Still, a signal that could be used to contact the Resisty left the ball in the rebel's court. They could choose whether or not to answer, and Prisoner 777 was pretty sure they wouldn't unless they had a really good reason to. Even if they did respond for some reason, they would most likely have a plan on how to escape a possible trap.
"They probably won't answer," Lard Nar spoke, almost as though he was sensing what Prisoner 777 was thinking. "But it would give you a chance at least."
"Thanks… I didn't think you would try to help me," Bann admitted.
"The Bludonians aren't unreasonable people," Prisoner 777 tried to encourage him. "I'm sure they'll listen to you if you just explain your situation."
"You're right, I'll give it my best," Bann told the two Vortians. Then the transmission ended.
"What were you thinking?" Prisoner 777 asked as he turned away from the monitor. His gaze fell on Lard Nar who was sitting in his cot, staring blankly at the electric barrier. "What if that was a holographic disguise? Or what if this room is being monitored somehow, maybe through the computer or something? The whole Irken race could know about the ultarian signal…"
"It wasn't a big secret…" Lard Nar mumbled, but Prisoner 777 could tell his cellmate was anxious about what he'd said. "We have others."
"Don't tell me!" Prisoner 777 spoke quickly. "You're totally slipping right now! Look, I know not being able to talk about your friends is hard and everything, but you're not really in a good place to be talking about secret signals! You know that!"
The room became uncomfortably silent after Prisoner 777's outburst. As much as he liked Bann and wished the guard was safe back at the prison, he knew an Irken's loyalty was always given first to Empire before anyone else. Even though Bann was nicer than most Irkens, the Vortians couldn't completely trust the guard.
Prisoner 777 rubbed his cheek. This was bad. Lard Nar was faltering because he was a nice guy despite everything he'd been through.
"I have to get out of here Laes…" Lard Nar finally broke the silence.
"I wish I could help you… honest," Prisoner 777 remarked, and his shoulders slumped. "It's just kind of difficult to think of a way out with the lock-down in effect and the guards always patrolling the halls. Parting the electrical field would require building a small disruptor and there are weekly checks for that kind of thing."
"I'm going to crack eventually…" Lard Nar's hands gripped the mattress tightly as he spoke. "The tortures have stopped for now, but they'll continue when the Irkens realize I haven't given you any information."
"We'll think of something," Prisoner 777 encouraged him. He smiled. "We're both Vortians. If we put our minds together, I'm sure the answer will become obvious."
Lard Nar returned his smile and offered a slight nod.
Alright. It was time to stop daydreaming about food and to actually start thinking of an escape plan.
More Notes: I do not recommend frying your pillow and eating it. The only reason this isn't going to mess up his insides is because of the grey "stuff" they eat. It keeps you hydrated, fed, and illness free! If the texture wasn't horrible and the taste wasn't so bland, it would actually be pretty decent.
What is the grey mush made out of? That is a real mystery.
