{"id":1258,"date":"2023-04-01T19:35:26","date_gmt":"2023-04-01T19:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/?p=1258"},"modified":"2023-04-07T01:32:36","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T01:32:36","slug":"amiantos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/amiantos\/","title":{"rendered":"Amiantos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I live in a building with my parents and hundreds of other people. We will live here for the rest of our lives, and our children will do the same. Categorized PL, Permanent Life. Prison-for-life.

The loudspeaker: \u2026subtropical lowlands, clay and limestone, pseudo-desert, mineral steppe\u2026<\/em>

In one of the common areas, I see a soldier through the bars, smoking outside. At this second, no one else is near us.

I say, \u201cI can see us together at the war crime tribunal in twenty years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

By his face I see I\u2019ve severely miscalculated. This is an attack on his sexuality. Then he sees how young I am and laughs. He is thicker and taller than me but I don\u2019t hate his face. It has stupid and serious parts, his eyes big in a solid face, eyebrows two flat lines, but the parts add up to coherence.

\u201cYes\u201d, he says. \u201cI\u2019d be the one testifying against you. They\u2019d send me to prison but I wouldn\u2019t be executed.\u201d

\u201cYou think that highly of me?\u201d

He laughs it off again. He knows I\u2019m trying to get something. But he\u2019s still here, which is a fatal admission.

He says, \u201cWhy were you executed?\u201d

\u201cEmbezzling asbestodollars.\u201d

\u201cWhat about the war crimes?\u201d

“I did the war crimes. But you helped me.\u201d

\u201cI did?\u201d

\u201cDue to your military ties.\u201d

\u201cI\u2019m just a soldier.\u201d

\u201cYou\u2019ll be promoted by then.\u201d

\u201cYes?\u201d

\u201cTo the very top.\u201d

\u201cI\u2019d get a good cell. Cigarettes everyday.\u201d

\u201cI saw this.\u201d

He gets me on a day pass, even though it\u2019s night. He drives a gray car issued by the government, a used Ban-Veloz.

We go to his place. The apartment is a single room, long and narrow, with alcoves on the right side. Every surface is cluttered and grimy. Plastic lawn chair and a metal fold-out table. The only color is from an aquarium on the table, surrounded by trash. The fish are that common kind that is pretty but cheap. In mags, aquariums are flush against walls, and everything is clean and black around them. This aquarium is angled carelessly as if never moved from where he put it when he brought it back from the store, like a bag of groceries.

He\u2019s looking for something in a plastic bag. He says, \u201cFeed my fish.\u201d

\u201cHow much?\u201d

\u201c40 units.\u201d

The fish food is in the form of long strips like crystalline fruit leather. Each strip is 10 units. I grab some and they crumble in my hands. As I feed the fish, I laugh and say, \u201cI had the irrational feeling I could estimate by grabbing. But that isn’t true.\u201d

He grunts but keeps searching. I\u2019m relieved he isn\u2019t angry at me. I take out exactly three strips and feed the fish, but I feel the unknown chaotic portion I began with has fed them at least 0.5 too much. I hope this difference will not be lethal. It\u2019s okay for a fish to get a different amount of food, probably?

I wonder if something will happen here. But there is no bed. A cushioned area, possibly extracted from a car or waiting area, is covered in papers and those thin plastic bags like for bagging fruit that stretch and tear in your fingers.

He says, \u201cI have to drive somewhere.\u201d

He has his gun now, but he probably always had it, if he was standing near the prison.

We drive to a better part of the city, the commercial district. I\u2019ve never been in a building this tall. Is it a skyscraper? The prison has a lot of stories but is wider, and goes underground. This building seems like a hotel inside, or a commercial center with all the suites and numbers. It is clean but we see no one. Every door is the same but they have different placards on them in the same font, with very different businesses and functions. I think this floor is owned by the government.

We go into a room. It has no bed. It has black shiny lockers. There are clean areas recessed into the wall, like for getting your blood pressure checked. One recess is deeper, enclosed, the size of a small bathroom. Exposed metal grooves. Black tile, no lights.

He takes his shoes off, putting them in the locker.

\u201cMy captain had to see AMIANTOS<\/em>.”

I listen.

\u201cI had to go with him. He went inside. I stayed in the waiting room. I faced away from the doors. He came out and went directly to the hospital. They have a room now where your family waits outside and you can talk to them through the glass. Then they give you something and you. You know.\u201d

He takes his socks off and rubs his feet like he\u2019s crushing them.

\u201cBut I\u2019m the guy who drove him to the hospital. Or maybe the guy in the room outside the room. I don\u2019t know.\u201d

I\u2019m quiet for awhile. Then I say, \u201cWhy did your captain have to go in?”

\u201cThey wanted to know when the next parade would be.\u201d

\u201cCouldn\u2019t he do that over the telephone?\u201d

\u201cYes.\u201d He puts his wallet in the locker and a coin falls out, ringing on the metal.

I feel nervous being outside the prison, like I could get in trouble, or he might change his mind. I put my hand on his leg.

He pulls his gun out and cradles it in his lap. \u201cDo you really want to suck my dick when I have radiation burns?\u201d

\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d

\u201cYou might as well suck my gun.”

He pulls the trigger. Click. Click. Click.

\u201cOn. Off. On. Off. Heaven-Hell cell.\u201d

Click click.

\u201cThe doctor said something like, each cell rolls the dice.\u201d

\u201cIt happens to everyone,” I say.

\u201cListen. You need to stay far away.\u201d

\u201cIf we\u2019re all getting it, I might as well get something for it.\u201d

\u201cWhatever you think life with radiation is like\u2026don\u2019t think of it that way.\u201d

The sound of my breathing cuts out, and I hear the next part deep inside my head.

\u201cThink of it as. You played the game. Now the game is over.\u201d

The glass is so thick that no sound penetrates from the city. The room feels separate from everything else. It makes me calm, even though it\u2019s already morning and the sun is rising, all over this PL-world.

He grips the barrel of his gun. \u201cI heard about a bullet they found. In the old place. This bullet, if it enters your head, will send your soul to a new body in a new time. And if you can find another bullet, you can do it again. And each time your soul becomes more dangerous.\u201d

\u201cReal?\u201d

He shrugs.

\u201cWhat caliber is the bullet?\u201d

\u201cDoes it matter?\u201d

\u201cCan it shoot through two skulls?\u201d

That gets a smile, broken in the middle. He says a lot to me without speaking.

He puts the gun in the locker but doesn\u2019t lock it. He goes into the dark room and takes his shirt off, sitting on a tile bench like a bath house. But I don\u2019t think I should follow.

Slowly, I say, \u201cSo what do you want from me?\u201d

His voice echoes in the tiled space like he\u2019s far away. \u201cJust sit there while I get my treatment.\u201d

I wait and watch the clock. The door opens and a nurse comes in. She doesn\u2019t look at me. She enters the dark room with him and squirts brown gel onto his back. Something is concentrated there, dark under the gel.

She takes out a large needle and punctures his back, rubbing the skin next to it. I lean against his locker, metal the temperature of our skin.

His voice is strained from being hunched over. \u201cYou said twenty years?\u201d

\u201cAt the war crime tribunal.\u201d

\u201cThen we\u2019d better get started.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I live in a building with my parents and hundreds of other people. We will live here for the rest of our lives, and our children will do the same. Categorized PL, Permanent Life. Prison-for-life. The loudspeaker: \u2026subtropical lowlands, clay and limestone, pseudo-desert, mineral steppe\u2026 In one of the common areas, I see a soldier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,45],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-1258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-story","category-xrafstarverse","tag-asbestos-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1389,"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions\/1389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xrafstar.monster\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}