As I attempted to sit up, of course I forgot about my very sore, not to mention broken arm and couldn't stop my scream of pain. I think the painkiller had worn off, cause it then began to throb like nothing else. My scream echoed around the room, unfortunately waking a few people up, and brought the guards in. No one was exactly happy about that.
I recognised the guards cause they were the same people who were nearby, when I fell off a cliff and onto a different planet. Struggling to my feet, I recalled my earlier meeting and couldn't contain a shiver of fear. For myself, on a pleasure planet and for Farrie, unconscious or dead.
The guards stomped right up to me, waking up quite a few more people on the way. Upon reaching me the closest grabbed my good wrist and stabbed it with something sharp. The other one then inserted something into the cut made. It was pretty small and shiny, and sent a burn-like feeling up my arm to my head. Shaking my head to clear the feeling, to utter and complete surprise, the guard started talking in perfectly understandable language.
"What… How? How can I understand you?" was my response to whatever the guard had said, I wasn't actually paying attention.
"Translation device" the guard said gesturing to my wrist. I raised the limb and stared. The cut looked pretty awful and all, and red and puffy and bleeding with this lump in the centre, but it didn't really hurt. Compared with my other arm that is.
"Alrighty" I said, gathering my courage, little there was of it. I was flat out terrified. "OK. I have coupla questions. For starters, where is Farrie – my dog? Why am I here? Why is everyone staring at me? And could I please have some of that pain killer stuff for my arm?" Actually not every one was staring at me; some were staring at the guards but still. It was creepy.
The guards just looked at me, making me feel about 3 inches high. I lost all my courage and just burst into tears, but I didn't bother wiping them away. "The animal is locked away, but is safe, you are here to serve your masters on this planet, same as everyone else, people are staring because you look different than everyone else and no, slaves cannot have pain killer, they do not deserve it." After that long sentence I was lost, but before I could ask again, the first guard (who cut my arm) pointed to two of the people standing near me. "You too will show her" he/it (I don't really know) demanded then both the guards walked out.
As for me, well I felt like curling up and dieing. Everyone around the selected two and me started talking at once. Taking obvious pity on dazed, confused and terrified me, they made everyone leave. "I am Chani," the girl said. She was short, had pale blue skin, dark reddish-brown hair falling around her face and black eyes. She was actually very pretty, and looked to be about my own age, 13, or 14.
"I be Bazarn," the male said. He looked older, say 15 or 16, and was totally different to Chani. He was tall, had goldish skin, white hair and hazel/brownish eyes. As he said his name, he performed a slight bow of sorts.
"Umm…Uh, I'm umm, Kat." I stammered, having trouble thinking of my name around a headache and sore arms. I felt a fresh wave of tears rise up, but I stopped them, not wanting to seem weak, even after everything. "Do you know what is going on? And could you explain word for word? All I know is I was running away, I fell over a cliff with my dog and my suitcase… Speaking of which, would you know what happened to it? It had all my clothes in it, not that it really matters though. Anyway I fell over a cliff, landed on this hard metal thingy, broke my arm, got my dog knocked unconscious ended up at a place where they did this on my arm, had hysterics, passed out and woke up here." Chani seemed to be suppressing a smile, but failing, and there definitely was a laugh in her voice when she spoke.
"Well, Kat, basically you are on the Pleasure Planet of Perdh. It is a type of Leisure Park, the whole planet. We are all slaves to those who own it. They prefer younger ones because they don't make such a fuss. You are what, 13?" I nodded "well that's almost old, I was 7 when I got here, 6 years ago. Maybe I should say when I was kidnapped and brought." For the first time, I heard bitterness and long-held anger in her voice as Bazarn took up the story.
"I was 10, but we were brought in at the same time. What we do here, more or less, is clean, repair, or serve any master or any visitor to here without question. We are the lowest of the low; we don't deserve food, medicines, sleep, or anything else. We work to earn everything. By the way, your clothes are probably being sorted; you will get to keep anything they deem suitable. The rest will go to people who will fix them to suitability. " I understood more less, apart for a few things.
"What type of clothes are suitable, what type of pleasure planet is this and why are you both covered with bruises, cut and suchlike?"
Chani gave an empty smile. "We're bruised 'cause the guards' beat us, we're their property. As for the types, you will see soon enough."
Call me very stupid or something, I never even suspected exactly what types were what. The clothes given back were my more… outgoing clothes. My see- through lacy top, skintight jeans, midriff tops, mini skirts and the like. I was gonna be cold, but I highly doubted I'd be thinking about that. As for the planet… well, it was different all over. Some parts were little kiddies area, fun parks, whatever. Some more were adults only – bars, and a few more extravagant places. The rest of the planet was shopping malls, and places where the people could land, from space. The whole planet was small, smaller than Earth, but personally, I hated it from the moment I walked out the slave room.
My slave room was located just by one of the spaceports. It was noisy outside, surprising; it was pretty quiet inside. I was wearing a green blue midriff top and a white miniskirt, and was feeling very exposed. Chani was worse, cause she had been here so long, most of her clothes were falling apart. All she had was two pieces of material she had wrapped around herself. I was confused that we had to wear such clothes when we were only working in the spaceport, but Bazarn cleared that up for me.
"They want us to look as good as possible to advertise what happens on the rest of the planet. People come to the spaceport, see us working and then want to see more of it." That brought some very unpleasant pictures to my mind. I did notice Chani looking bitter and angry again, surprising me. The only other time I had seen her mad was when she was talking earlier. Usually she look remarkably high-spirited and happy, bubbly even. Same with most others I'd seen. I would have though they were angry, bitter, and upset all of the time.
I was given a job as a waitress of sorts in a cafeteria type area of the spaceport. Chani was assigned too, mostly to tell me what to do. It wasn't a very hard job – take orders, and clean tables. The hardest part was smiling and looking happy as Chani instructed me to do. That more or less cleared up my former questions, everyone was happy because they were trained to be.
After a whole day of boring work, I was handed a piece of metallic material. It had writing on it, but I couldn't read it. Chani translated for me. "Hard work: food, and sleep earned." She read, and gave me a worried glance "Oh no."
"Oh no? What's oh no? Isn't that good?" I said, drawing a blank as to the problem.
"You'll see. It's better you don't know yet." And Chani refused to say another word all the way to the slave room, leaving me to fret and wonder.
Back at the room, I handed the guards my notice, ignoring the looks I was getting from others. I couldn't ignore the look the guards gave me though. "Food and sleep, huh. This is what you deserve." Just as those words reached my ears, another guard punched my face. Instantly I collapsed and passed out."