It was only when Tia came in with smuggled snacks from Dem that Donna realized it was her sixtieth birthday. Theodosius had turned sixty just over a month ago, but she had not realized that the same would be happening to her.

"How's your knee?" the orderly asked, handing her a metal container and a spoon she must have grabbed from the kitchen. Both were cold to the touch. Dinner had been not too long ago, but Donna found herself hungry all over again.

Donna opened the container, blinking in surprise when she saw the delicacies inside. There was a small stack of flat white bread, and in little compartments were things like smoked fish and roe and butter. "The same." She used the spoon to spread butter on a piece of bread, and piled some roe on top. "Is this all?" she asked.

"No. There will be more next week, and the week after next."

Careful to not drop anything, Donna stuffed the little sandwich into her mouth. It was delicious, with so many flavours combining into something even better. The roe had a pleasing texture, the little spheres popping in her mouth. "I could get used to this," she joked. It had been more than two decades since she had been able to eat such delicacies.

"Congratulations," Tia said playfully. "You're old."

Donna had made that joke to Theodosius, but having it be told to her in her turn was not fun. "I'm not at retirement age," she pointed out, gesturing with the spoon at the orderly. "Therefore, I am not old." She made herself another sandwich, this one with the smoked fish and some sort of shredded vegetable she didn't recognize. It must have taken Dem so much effort to put this together. "And being old isn't so bad, anyway."

"You're right there."

Donna quickly and methodically ate her way through the container. There had only been five pieces of bread about the size of her palm without the fingers, but she ran out of everything else by the fourth one and had to use the last to clean out the last bits from the container. "This was amazing," she said, chewing on the dry bread. "I haven't eaten any of this in so long."

"I'm sure your husband will be glad to hear it."

When Dem turned sixty, she wouldn't be able to send him anything more than a few words of congratulations. She wouldn't even be able to see him, as the June slot was already taken up by Lars. "I'm sure he will."

"How are things?" Donna asked Theodosius as they joined up and headed towards the shed.

"Trying to read Don Quixote in the original is continuing to be about as fun as pulling teeth. By hand."

That was par for the course with the classics, which were often impossible to read even in English. "I'll have to give that a shot after I finish the one I'm reading right now."

"What is it, Great Engineering Feats of the Twenty-Second Century?" Theodosius asked with a laugh.

"At least I didn't take out a book that's about how bureaucracies work." She glanced at Ledge, who was strolling along with Smith and was unaware that his reading preferences were being discussed.

They reached the shed, outside of which Xu, Best, and Koy were sitting on a bench and solving the crossword from The World together with two guards. Verdant was absent because of crippling joint pain in his bad leg making it impossible for him to as much as walk out of his cell. "Back to work now?" Best called out. His voice was firmer than that of both Xu and Koy.

"That we are," Donna said. They walked into the shed and found the little cart, which was a small wooden platform with wheels and a rope attached. A few of the nicer guards had made it for them just before outdoor work had begun. Donna picked up the cart and put it down outside. Then, hissing and cursing, they picked up a bag of soil and put it on the cart.

Rubbing at his back, Theodosius glared at the bag. They grabbed a rake each and went off towards the future potato patch, trying to keep an even pace. The cart wasn't too heavy, but the weight was definitely noticeable and the wheels found every single dent in the path.

"What about you?" Theodosius asked.

"Turned sixty yesterday," Donna said, glancing behind her. If they slowed down too abruptly, the cart would hit them on the shins.

"Congratulations," Theodosius replied, using the rake for support as he walked. "You're old."

"So are you," Donna shot back.

Theodosius sighed. "I guess we are." He switched hands without breaking stride. "But at least we have only two more birthdays left. "

Donna tried to remember her first birthday in there, and couldn't. It was all a fog. "At least there's that," she said sincerely as they passed by Blatt, who was standing by the side of the path and staring off into space. On top of her already-existing depression, her husband had just died, and she wasn't going to be allowed to attend the funeral. Thinking about Donna made her feel even more relieved that Dem was alive and well and sending her expensive food. "He sent me food," she said once Blatt was out of earshot, and explained the previous afternoon's meal to him.

The cart got stuck in a small depression, and they had to give it a sharp yank to get it to move again. Fortunately, it was so heavy, it didn't end up going very far. "He sent me an actual cake," Theodosius said for not the first time as they fell back into a steady pace. "I honestly never knew you can make blue food without artificial colouring." He scratched his head with the hand that held the rake. "Though I guess it wasn't very blue. More of a light-blue. Still impressive, though. I could never do it."

Neither could Donna. Both of them had never cooked anything more substantial than toast. "Maybe once we get out, we can get Demetrius and Cynthia to teach us how to cook," she said. To her, everything she couldn't do sounded amazing, even something as prosaic as cooking.

"Maybe." They reached the patch they would be using and stopped, quickly getting out of the way of the rolling cart. "You know, I keep on making the strangest plans. There's so many things I want to do once I get the chance." The cart rolled to a stop. With some difficulty, they put the bag upright, tore it open, and dumped it all in one place. "We'll have to do this again," he groaned, rubbing at his back.

"And you think you're not old."

Theodosius straightened out. "I'm not!"

"With that back of yours?" Donna asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Says you and your knees. And neck. And whatever body part decided to stop functioning today," Theodosius shot back teasingly.

He was right, but Donna didn't want to think about being sixty. Two-thirds of her life gone, and a third of that - wasted behind bars. But then again, her entire career had been one huge waste. There was nothing for her to be proud of. Even her highschool years were tinged with what she had worked so hard towards.

It was strange. Where had her years gone? She didn't feel like her time was limited, but it was so. Most of her life was behind her. She wished she hadn't wasted it. If she had only settled for a normal job, then she'd still have been working on roads and bridges and sewers, coming home to a freshly-cooked dinner, and seeing her children regularly. And she wouldn't have been burdened with the past, with everything that she aided and abetted during her short career.

"Let's ask Li for help," she said, trying to stop thinking about the past.

"Alright," Theodosius said, massaging the side of his back. He sighed. "The orderly will kill me. As soon as I get better, I immediately find a way to get worse."

"You shouldn't have lifted the bag, then," Donna said weakly. Sometimes, things just didn't go well, even if she did everything correctly. Once, she had managed to get a cramp in her foot while lying in bed.

Li turned out to be more than willing to help out. He offered to carry in all of the necessary soil by himself. "We're lucky he's around," Theodosius said, knocking off the top of the pile of soil with his rake.

"That we are." Donna spread out some of the dark-brown soil, mixing it with the rest, which had been loosened up the other day.

As they worked, Hryb strolled by casually, not even looking at them. The younger man was bursting with joy and pride at his son's upcoming graduation from college, but he was still refusing to see him, or any other family member.

When Donna looked back at Theodosius, he was glowering. "He thinks he's in a resort and we're the gardeners!" he complained, slamming the rake into the ground.

Donna looked back at Hryb, who did indeed look like he was in a resort. Head held high, he merrily strode along, paying no attention to the ones who were working. "Imagine if we get out, and pranksters start calling us with job offers for gardening positions."

Theodosius chuckled. "I'd accept, just to see the expression on their face." He stepped to the side and spread some soil over a bare patch of ground. "Though with how many photos of us have made it to the tabloids, they probably know we're not limited to gardening."

"What, you think we'll become janitors?"

"I'll pass on that generous offer," Theodosius said, shuddering.

Before, they would never have speculated like that about their plans. They had had them, of course, but they had never discussed them like that, in the open. But then again, Donna had done the calculations, and they were not too far off the thousand-day barrier. Donna hoped that they'd be released early nevertheless, but the prospect of that not happening became less and less unpleasant with every passing day.

Li walked up to them, upended the sack, and walked away. "Thank you!" they chorused.

"You're welcome!" he replied, and headed back towards the shed, empty sack in one hand.

"I was just thinking about the food you got," Theodosius said contemplatively. "I can't wait to get out and eat like that again. I get that we're not going to be as rich as before, but I'm sure Cynthia will be able to afford a piece of nice smoked sausage."

That was something Donna didn't like to contemplate. She had grown up solidly upper-middle-class by position in society, and simply rich - by parents' income. As she had risen up the ladder, she had become only more prosperous, until she could buy her parents a house without even looking at the price tag. All of that was gone thanks to the Depuration board. There was no getting around the fact that her husband was in the lower class, and the only thing that would prevent the two of them from being poor would be financial help from her old colleagues.

According to Livia, she was making good progress on getting her and Theodosius a book deal. Donna hoped she'd hurry up. It would be humiliating to have to live off Dem, as it had been supposed to be the other way around. Long ago, they had agreed that Donna would work and Dem would stay at home, and the way that Dem had spent the past two decades working in that horrible job of his made her feel ashamed.

"We certainly won't be having meals like at those dinners Snow gave," Donna said self-pityingly.

"Yeah." Theodosius leaned on the rake and stared at a rosehip bush, which was threatening to encroach on a gooseberry bush. "Though I refuse to subject myself to instant noodles and snack cakes. I'm not going to sink that far."

"Ah, the good old student days," Donna said sarcastically. Remembering something she had recently read in a newspaper, she added, "You won't have to. Our neighbourhood is apparently so bad, all the grocery stores sell bruised and misshapen produce for pennies, so that the likes of us can afford it."

Theodosius scraped a small pile of soil flat. "I read about that. I'm not sure if I should be horrified that we're going to live in that kind of neighbourhood, or be glad that it's not going to be even a tenth as trashy as working-class neighbourhoods back then."

"A professional and a civil servant haggling over bruised apples at the market. Now that will be tabloid fodder," Donna predicted.

"There's no way there aren't others who were unable to get their jobs back," Theodosius pointed out.

"Great. We'll have company. We can squat in subway entrances, sell apples and dill from our cottages, and complain about how we were wronged." Donna raked at the already-even ground, waiting for Li to return. "My parents will be horrified."

Theodosius nodded. "Mine are spinning in their graves right now." He paused. "Well, they don't exactly have a grave. I'm sure that the urns are vibrating something fierce, though."

They fell silent as Li approached and dumped another sackful of earth onto the ground. "How's it going?" he asked.

Donna gestured at the small pile by their feet. "It's going." Using their rakes, they slowly began to smooth it out.

"Who do you think is going to win the elections?" Li asked.

"Not someone who will press for our release," Donna said darkly.

"You think so?" Li sounded skeptical. "The general agreement is that this place is a waste of money. Even in the Districts, most people think it's a particularly bad joke."

"Tell that to the governments." According to Livia's most recent reports, the average person was barely aware of their existence, most people who did know about them thought that the prison was a waste of money and that the continued imprisonment of someone pushing one hundred was idiotic, and even those who understood the situation well tended to be in favour of some sort of compassionate release, if only for consistency with the normal prison system. The decision-makers in a few of the Districts, however, were harder than titanium, and even a single director's vote meant no release for anyone bar her and Theodosius.

Li hissed quietly. "I don't understand, what's the point of having us die here? First I can't go say goodbye to my mother, then I can't go say goodbye to my father, and in the end, nobody will get to say goodbye to me." He exaggerated - if he were to start dying, his family members would be allowed to visit - but Donna wasn't going to say that. "Will it really be a national catastrophe if I'm allowed to live out my last years at home?" There were tears in his eyes.

"According to them? Yes," Donna said, picking a more cautious way to express it.

"But I never hurt a single person in my life!" He shifted from foot to foot, hands linked behind his back. "How am I a threat to society?"

To Donna, the idea of Li being a threat to society was absurd, but according to Livia, most people didn't see it that way. Even now, they still shuddered at the words 'Death Squad'. Out of all of them, Li and Hryb had the lowest chances of being released - and the two men were also the youngest lifers by far.

"You're not," Theodosius said. "But they think so."

Li scratched his neck. "That's vengeance for you," he sighed. "I don't even know how to feel. I'm the only one who's still breathing, and I'm glad they picked me to pretend they could understand nuance." They had been tried relative to their codefendants, not relative to some sort of guideline. Had Donna been tried with others involved in the technical side of the Games, she'd have been the star defendant and a shoo-in for the noose. "But it still seems unfair to me."

"It is unfair," Donna said awkwardly. The closer her release date, the more desperate the others became. "I hope they realize this and let you all out with us."

"I don't even want to talk about that." Li crumpled the bag in his hands. "How many more bags do we need?"

Theodosius shrugged. "More."

"Your wish is my command," Li said sarcastically, and walked away.

"I hope they get released," Donna whispered to Theodosius. "How can they visit here and think that this is what they want?"

Theodosius ran a hand through his hair. "I guess they're still angry."

Close by but out of earshot, Hope, Katz, and Salperin were working with pitchforks and rakes to loosen up the ground. The three of them were all in their late eighties, and while they were straight-backed and fit, their faces were deeply lined and they were much shorter than they had been before. "Of course they're still angry, but it's just not right."

The water in the taps was freezing cold. Donna quickly scrubbed the worst of the dirt off them and shook them dry.

"I wonder what's for dinner," Hryb said, staring blankly at the wall.

"Food." Donna wiped her hands dry and stood up. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"That much is obvious," Hryb replied, still staring. Donna joined the short queue waiting to get in, cap in her hand. After a patdown so perfunctory it couldn't be called a search, she walked into the corridor, wondering what would be for dinner. In her cell, she kicked off her boots and took off her warm clothing. Wearing her extra-warm socks, she washed her hands, dried them on her sweater, picked up her glasses, and began to read.

When the tray was pushed through the slit, Donna was met with an unwelcome surprise. "But where's the spoon?" she asked.

The guard shrugged. "Someone stole all the spoons you people use. Admin's probably gonna shake down everyone who just went off duty." With that, she walked away, cart rolling over the smooth floor. Katz and Hope had probably just stayed quiet and Donna had complained in a low voice, but Grass was not willing to eat with her hands and made her displeasure clear in an icy voice. Hearing that, Blatt complained so loudly, the director on duty probably heard it in their office.

Since not even the force of Blatt's complaints was able to make the guard get them utensils, Donna retreated to her table and contemplated the food. She'd have to eat it with her hands. Donna went to wash her hands again, trying to get rid of every little bit of dirt, and filled the empty cup with water. That done, she sat back down and hesitantly scooped up a small handful of rice with vegetables and the occasional bit of chicken.

Blatt was still telling the guards exactly what she thought of them. Donna ate the rice as her insults became of the sort one could not have expected from a former minister. The guards' patience eventually snapped, and there was the sound of the door being unlocked. Grateful that she was safe and sound in her cell and eating tasty rice, Donna licked her fingers clean and wondered when she'd see the other woman next. Hopefully in less than a month, though they had no idea what punishments were meted out for what actions.

"Well," she said as she scooped up a larger handful and some nearly fell out of her hand. Logically, Donna knew that eating neatly with one's hands was more difficult than it looked - she remembered how the kids had managed to get the food anywhere but their mouths - but she had thought it was doable. She carefully ate the rice, grateful that it was rice and not oatmeal, or a stew with broth. That would have been much more difficult to eat without a spoon. "Livia's going to love this. She already thinks I've lowered myself."

In plenty of cultures, people eat with their hands, the lightbulb pointed out.

"I know. If I ever go there, at least I'll know how to behave at dinner." She picked up a kernel of corn and tossed it into her mouth.

Eventually, she finished the rice. It took her much longer than usual, but at least she was done now. Donna licked her hands and the tray clean, washed her hands again, and sat down to eat the bread and peanut butter. Since the bread was flat, she bent it in half and spread out the butter that way. The canned peaches, she simply picked up with her hands. Donna hoped the spoons would be recovered before morning, as she didn't want to do this again.

As soon as the doors were unlocked, the complaint session began. "What was that about?" Grass demanded, leaning out her door. "How hard would it have been to give us some other utensils?"

The guard who had delivered the food, a short and broad-shouldered young woman from One, shrugged. "The rules say you can only eat with those spoons. If they're missing, that implies you have to eat with your hands."

"I'm going to complain!"

"Go ahead," the guard replied, putting her feet on the table next to the go board. "And what do you think that's going to achieve?"

"Our spoons back!" Zelenka said angrily in her powerful voice. "Do you want another press catastrophe on your hands?"

The other guard, a slightly older woman from Thirteen, laughed. "There's already more than enough press catastrophes going around. A lack of spoons won't even register. And how will you get it out?" she asked as if she wasn't one of Donna's letter-carriers.

Donna imagined the flood of parental concern that would fall on her if this got out, and winced. "My parents won't be happy."

"Is that a threat?" the guard from Thirteen asked. "Who even are your parents?"

The guard from One looked shocked. "Your parents are still alive?"

Donna answered the questions in order. "My parents are a retired engineer and a stay-at-home spouse who could never quite grasp the fact that I'm an independent adult. And yes, they're alive. They're eighty-seven and eighty-eight."

"And I thought it was bad that my mom still calls me all the time to ask how I'm eating," the guard from Thirteen grumbled. She didn't look very happy to discover that she had something in common with Donna.

"Eighty-eight?" the guard from One asked.

Zelenka scoffed. She, Xu, and Melton had walked over to be closer to the rest. "I'm ninety-three. And what?"

The guards' shock was understandable, given that Zelenka walked without a cane and stood more or less upright. Her face, however, showed clear signs of age, and she wore thick glasses all the time, as well as hearing aids, and was on something like ten daily medications (as was practically everyone else).

"Yeah," Melton said. "And I'm ninety-two." She cracked a smile. "You two are the same age as my grandchildren."

"This is an outrage!" the guard from Thirteen exclaimed. "Who ever heard of keeping ninety-year-olds in prison? You should have all been given compassionate release years ago!"

"Do I look dead to you?" Zelenka demanded. "Because last I checked, they only give it to those who are on death's door."

The guard from One scratched her head. "Er, technically speaking, at your age, you're not too far off it constantly."

"Well, that's nice," Melton huffed, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall. "The doctors unanimously agree that I should have a few more years left."

"And if the directors unanimously agreed, you'd be forbidden from dying until you reached a hundred and twenty," Donna said sarcastically. The record for women was a hundred and twenty-two.

"Spare me," Zelenka muttered. "At this point, I think I'll leap into the grave like into bed at the end of a hard day."

The other women nodded in unison, the guards looked uncomfortable, and Donna wasn't sure what to think. She was perfectly fine with the idea of dying eventually, but she had zero desire for it to happen sooner rather than later.

Smith, who was the second-youngest woman at 'merely' eighty, laughed quietly. "In any case," she said, "when can we expect to have our spoons back?"

"We already reported the absence and hope to get them back by next morning," the guard from One said, "or at least get new ones. Most likely, someone who got off duty at sixteen stole them for souvenirs."

"And when will Blatt be back?" Grass asked.

The guard from Thirteen shrugged. "No idea who that is."

Fuming, Grass rephrased the question. "When will Female Eleven be back?"

"Three weeks."

"But why?" Grass demanded. "She'll go insane!"

The guard from One opened her mouth, glanced at Katz, and shut it. "That's the rules," she said weakly.

"Sure they are!" Grass whirled around, marched into her cell, and slammed the door shut. Taken aback at the vehemence of the normally calm Grass, Donna stared at the closed door for a few seconds.

"Any updates on the election?" Xu asked.

The next morning, the spoons were back. Donna ate the rice porridge, glad that she wasn't forced to use her hands to eat it. As she ate, she tried to think of funny lines she could tell the men.

It was cool in her cell, but in a way that boded for a warm day ahead of them. When it was time to go outside, Donna decided to stick with just a sweater. Grass was complaining quietly to Smith, Katz and Hope were arguing about who had punched whom forty years ago, and Xu, Zelenka, and Melton were complaining about a bottleneck in production that was about as old as the fight the former Peacekeepers were discussing. Donna stayed quiet, thinking about the jokes she wanted to tell Theodosius.

First, though, she jogged. The weather was unpleasantly cool, but as she ran, she warmed up. Hearing the sound of footsteps behind her, she turned around to greet Li. "Good morning, Mr. Li," she said.

"Good morning, Mrs. Blues," he replied. "That was a nasty surprise we got yesterday, wasn't it?"

Donna nodded. "Maybe the administration decided we need extra motivation to wash our hands."

Li laughed. "It's funny, how I scrubbed my hands until they turned pink, even though I eat berries with dirty hands straight from the bush during the summer. But then again, I don't lick my fingers clean when I eat berries."

"And did they tell you that a souvenir hunter stole them?" Li nodded. "What an odd souvenir. What would anyone need a spoon for? Is there a spoon shortage out there? I know everything portable was taken after the battle, but I thought that was in the past."

"You never know," Li said with a laugh. "Someone sold my dress NCIA uniform to a collector abroad, and bought an apartment with the money."

That sounded like something a souvenir-hunter would do. "Why would anyone need an NCIA uniform?"

"Maybe they want to try it on themselves?"

While there were plenty of people out there who would do such a thing, that was unlikely out of practical considerations. "There aren't that many people out there who can wear something you wore and not have it hang like a sack," she pointed out.

"Maybe they work out."

Given that even Li's current dimensions were more than impressive, that was also unlikely. "They'd have to be some sort of bodybuilder, then."

Li smiled sadly. "I got lucky, I guess. I'm sure they scoured all the Academies looking for the characteristics they wanted - like size." He adjusted the zipper of his light jacket. "I actually read a theory a while back saying that Talvian had been from that program, because of her height."

Before, that would have been rather tame for a conspiracy theory about Talvian - just the gossip about who had really fathered her children had been something to behold - but Donna saw the sinister implications there. "What, are they trying to push even more on Two?" Li nodded glumly. "I don't understand these revanchists. First they say there were no crimes, then they say that the crimes were all the fault of the collaborators." Aulus had explained to her the strange and contradictory positions that portion of society took on the past.

"It makes no sense," Li said. "Just like the absence of the spoons."

Donna laughed. "Still makes more sense than most things that go on in here. Did you hear about how they tossed Blatt into total solitary for swearing at the guards over the lack of spoons?" Li nodded, but Donna still gave him the blow-by-blow account, as the guards had probably emphasized the wrong things.

"Hryb just refused to eat," Li said.

"I suppose that's also an option."

They continued to jog in silence, Donna imagining how Theodosius would react when she told him the jokes. She hoped someone else hadn't thought of them, too.