Fugitive
The narrow dimly lit corrodior seemed to continue for ever and ever. A thin sheet of oily 
water covered an otherwise naked dark grey concrete floor like a glass thin sheet of dark 
ice, and the ceiling was filled with a jumble of electrical cables and odd steel pipes 
writhing around each other like giant snakes, their purpouse as distant to him as the exit 
from the concrete maze in which he was trapped. His breath burned red-hot in his chest, 
coming raspy and ragged out of his mouth. His legs throbbed and ached dully, and he was 
only dimly aware of where he was or why he was there, acting more on a primal instinct, 
telling him to flee, than conscious thought. Everything seemed as if part of a never ending 
infernal nightmare. He tasted the new word carefully in his mouth, felt it roll of the 
tounge. Ironic that his first dream should be a bad one, this had to be a dream, everything 
seemed so vividly unreal, surrealisticly twisted and distorted in his mind. 
His feet, or what he suspected to be his feet, they seemed more like a numb extention of 
his legs, devoid of life, made little splashing noises as he staggered forward, more 
interested in the concept îawayî than any destination in particular. He was hoplessly 
utterly lost, everything looked the same here. No stripes to follow, no signposts to direct 
you, no landmarks at all to navigate by. An empty doorway yawned invitingly towards him on 
his left, beckoning to him with its murky depths promising safe hiding in the same way a 
submarine cave would beckon to small fish in waters filled with hungry predators, and he 
fell rather than stumbled gratiously into the night. A grind, creaks and then a loud clang 
as the bolt on the reinforced steel door slid into place. Perhaps, Hopefully the sentinels 
wouldnít bother to look in here, at least not for a while. Mentally he tried to make the 
steel barrier that separated him from his prosecutors to look as inconspicious as possible. 
He sat back against the cold, rusty but unyielding metal surface, letting out a deep sigh 
as the adrenaline surge, which had kept him in motion thus far, slowly subsided and left 
room for other emotions to take its place. His arm hurt like hell and a thousand demons, he 
touched it tentatively, wincing. The gash had stopped bleeding now but the area around it 
was charred and mangled like nothing heíd ever seen before, on top of that he was stone 
cold, hungry and exhausted. But at least he was alive, for all the good that meant. 
Actually it only meant that the Babcock sentinels had been unlucky enough to miss him, or 
rather fail to kill him, sending him running for his life into the maze of narrow 
corridors, maintainence shafts and twisting air ducts that surrounded the entire complex, 
standing abandoned since the overturn and the constrution of the factory in some distant 
past. 
As his breathing slowed and his heartbeat returned to almost normal he felt the fatigue 
slowly overtake him. He had been running for a long time now, silently dreading the moment 
when the sentinels would finally find him, trapped in a dead end corridor. Gleaming, dead 
metal eyes glaring penetratingly at everything and nothing at the same time. But he was 
safe for now. By now every part of him had exploded into a crimsom firework of pains, aches 
and throbbs, but sleep quickly overcame even the agony in his arm, pulling him into a 
strange weird landscapes of rolling green floors, terrifying and at the same time 
unexplainably beautiful. 
Dreams. A word only whispered in the closest of confidence with the most trusted of 
companions, the true meaning of such a word shrouded in black mystery. Apparently something 
the people of the world did before the overturn, he didnít really understand why or how, he 
was not even sure the people of that time understood or knew the answers to those 
questions. Nobody ever dreamt in the complex, the very thought of such an erratic 
unmachinelike behaviour was appaling, resulting in instant reprogramming if you were caught 
doing it. And dreaming was obviously dangerous for the mind, why else would the elders 
outlaw it?, and put such harsh penalties for the discovery of one dreaming?
Stability and peace through ignorance, security reasons prevented ordinary people from 
learning too much, possesing too much truth, and perhaps that was just as well. Nothing to 
worry about except your own life and your work in the factory, and that was what the 
leaders were there for, a life in peace with no worries at all. Dreams, he had to stop 
himself from laughing fearing that the babcock sentinels would pick up on the new and 
unknown sound and track it to his hidingplace but within he longed silently for the 
reassuring it would bring. Instead he floated, drifted into unknown landscapes diplaying 
vistas he had never seen in the waking world, perhaps they were something from his youth, 
half remembered images that had chose this time to resurface from the depths of some black 
subterranian pool hidden within the lands of his unconscious. A world tinted with an alien 
beauty, the ceiling imeasureably high and light blue in colour, the floor covered with a 
thick green carpet, water flowing through an open canal at his left and strange brown 
pillars all around him covered with green papery flakes similar in texture to the carpet. 
It was warm, and bright, too bright. The air moved carressing his cheek with genle fingers. 
He twitched in his sleep. He looked up at the ceiling, it was far off, blue, warm, light, 
and he was all alone. Something felt wrong, incredibly intolerably wrong and with a pang 
that made him sit up with a start from his crouching position he knew, there was no 
ceiling, nothing that protected him with its wings! 
Reality, or what passed for reality came rushing in around him. It took a while before he 
remembered where he was once again but then he could feel the pricks of chill in his back, 
breathing that had just a few seconds ago had been deep and regular turned shallow, he sat 
in silence, listening intently, dreading what he knew he would hear. The faint clicks of 
articulated metal legs against concrete, steadily growing louder every second. 
The sound seemed to freeze him, stopping him from moving even an inch as he heard his doom 
approach with clicking mandibles. The door seemed to explode inwards, buckling under an 
enourmous pressure as the sentinel attacked with full force. He rebounded instantly almost 
falling over his own feet in his effort to get away from the wildly vibrating door. They 
had found him at last, didnít know how, didnít care either, he just wished he were 
somewhere else. He began pacing the wall like a trapped animal, feeling with outsctreched, 
trembling fingers for an opening. A virtual hail of tiny explosions tore at the door, light 
penetrating trough tiny cracks in the strained metal, and his fingers found what they were 
looking for, a narrow portal with broken hinges. The bounding at the door was almost 
unbearable. He quickly squeezed his way through the narrow opening, he didnít have a clue 
where he was headed, perhaps even into the gleaming mandibles of another sentinel but at 
least he would be alive for a few seconds longer, so he ran. A threshold that he didnít see 
caught his legs and sent himtumbling to the floor in a heap, his head smacked against 
something hard. He didnít know if he had lost conciousness, the corridor pitch black, 
preventing any visual aid but the crash of tearing metal was what brought him to his feet 
again. They had almost caught up with him he could hear the tips of metal legs scratch the 
concrete with a sickly sound. Again he was running, limping, cursing silently at the debris 
strewn floor hindering his movements. He could just barely make out another doorway in 
front of him. 
At the last moment he realized his mistake, but by then it was too late to stop, the 
elevator shaft opened like the mouth of some primal beast below his feet, leaping up to 
engulf him as he fell forward. The elevator cable became his lifeline. Climbing it with an 
expertness he didnít know he possesed, sheer terror opening hidden reserves of desperate 
strenght inside him. They wouldnít be able to follow him up here, at least not this way. 
Three large swings brought him within grabbing distance of the next floor and panting he 
augemented the obstacle and swung his legs in over smooth floor. 
For an eternal moment he just lay there, sprawled on his back, concentrating hard to take 
deep long breaths, calming himself. For the moment he was safe, for all their mobility the 
Babcock sentinels couldnít climb vertical surfaces, perhaps this was a problem already 
rectified in some dark room deep within the structure of the factory. 

The Sentinels were the guardians and protectors of the factory warding of intruders using 
lethal force, the defenders of freedom, watching out for the well being of the workers. He 
had never realised how effective they were keeping people in as well as out, instead he had 
believed furiously in the lies and half truths with which he had been fed, he had believed 
for almost twenty years. But then, suddenly without any warning tiny bits of pieces that 
had accumulated silently, began clicking into place in his brain like pieces of a giant, 
world-enveloping jigsaw puzzle. It began with books, somehow it always did. As a child heíd 
always been fond of reading, and as his child body slowly grew into the complexity and 
perfection of an adult he would read everything he could get his hands on. This was of 
course somewhat of an exaggeration, the books allowed to workers were strictly limited in 
number and subjects and he had swept through them like fire through lands of dry brushes, 
engulfing every word hungrily. They had later told him that the exessive reading was 
probably what had countermanded his programming, altering it somehow. They had told him the 
problem needed to be corrected and if he would just step in here for a moment everything 
would be alright. That was when he had run, he knew what happened to the workers who 
differentiated from the template, standing out of uniformity like a sore toe. But the 
worker books, mostly technical manuals concerning this or that engine or boiler in the 
complex or manifests of different kinds was not the only he used to read. As he grew older 
and bolder, less frightened of the overlords, he would sometimes sneak into the forbidden 
parts , into the libraries of the elders, stealing works of writers like Defoe, Swift and 
Melville, carrying him on their shoulders into worlds of magic. The concept of ships 
enthralled him incredibly  as he had never seen water in larger quantities than the algae 
production ponds or the fresh water reservoirs, both to small for anthing like the vessels
described on molding pages. To think that there somewhere was enough water to sail for days 
and days on without ever seeing a shoreline was curiously frightening. Of course he had 
heard stories if the sewers and the water supply systems far below even the deepest reaches 
of the factory, but that was probably just what it was told as, stories. No one had never 
claimed to have been that deep or trying to convince that they even existed. 
He wasnít even aware that there existed an outside and that perhaps he could reach it. The 
books had all reffered to mountains, jungles, forests and deserts, things incomprehensible 
to one who had spent his life far below what must be ground level, but maybe it looked like 
that meadow from out of his dream. 
He couldnít really fathom the word. Was it real? Was it something that really happened? He 
both longed and feared an answer. Reluctantly he rolled over, getting to his hands and 
knees, fighting back the nausea that came rolling over hime like tsunamis. Ritch, ritch, a 
brief glare, the stench of sulphur reminding him of the hot thermal springs far far below. 
The soft yellow light spread around him soothingly providing faint illumination, at the 
same time the shadows loomed higher, darker and even more intimidating than before, 
promising swift death to anybody who dared tread the path into the darkness. Another floor, 
another corridor leading of into some dark distance ahead. Doors lining one wall, 
undisturbed concrete on the other, a rusting sign displaying a letter and a number, 
announcing itself as a îB3î whatever that meant. Slowly he moved forward, the shadows 
retreating in front of him in dismay, tearing and clawing at the light in anger. He tried 
the first door carefully wishing more than anything else to leave the corridor, fearing all 
seeing eyes of glittering sentinels. Perhaps he should go back after all, perhaps he would 
be forgiven and everything written of as an accident, a mistake, feelings getting out of 
hand turning into rash action before anybody had time to contemplate the full consequences. 
False hope welled up inside him, overflooding his mind with remorse and sadness, a fierce 
will to return to whatís homely and familiar. Sheer reality slowly evapourated his mounting 
hope. No, they would never let him back in now, not since he had realised that the outside 
existed, that the factory wasnít all there ever was. His programming had been intolerably 
corrupted, he was worthless as a worker now. He put the disturbing thoughts out of his 
mind, he was all out of options, continue on the run or be defeated, killed. He tried the 
door. It didnít budge even an inch, the story was the same with the next two as well, but 
the fourth opened groaning and complaining revealing a large room, deep and dark and inv
ting.The doors were wooden here, the concrete covered with panels and recessed in them, 
covering all four walls as well as a square in the middle were books, bookcases, heaps of 
books, piles of books in crates on top of already overloaded cases. It was all to good to 
be true, such wealth, it was even larger than the elders library! He walked along the wall 
tracing the backs of inumerable volumes with his fingers, names flashing by him, glorious, 
wonderful names, unknown names. Zola, Hugo, Dickens, a long row of books stating that they 
were the îEncyclopedia Brittanicaî bound in serene blue-black leather binding. He picked a 
volume out of the lot opening it at random. Words, pictures of wonderful objects unseen to 
this date by anyone worker from the factory, landscapes (they were green after all) people 
in beautiful clothes, women dressing in cloths around their hips, very impractical and men 
in tuxedos. They all seemed so full of life, so pink and brown and red, remembering his own 
pale complexion. And the ships, huge ships sailing on blue water below a clear sky. 
Everything seemed so lovely and nice, light and warmth and health. A movement at the edge 
of vision made him crouch quickly, the arcticulated metal leg swung in a wide 
head-splitting arc exactly were his temple had been a moment before. The machine tweaked in 
surprise as the lethal blow missed itís designated target. Suddenly everything seemed to 
move very fast, the next thing he was aware of were his legs pounding on hardened floor, a 
doorway portal opening and something wet, warm and slightly sticky running down his side. 
Stairs spirraling upwards disappearing from view. He rushed blindly upwards towards a faint 
bleak light somewhere far above. A ladder took over when the stairs ceased, becoming his 
escape from the dark metal menace crashing upwards like a legged battletank. As his hands 
took hold of the steps he realized he still clutched the precious book close to his heart. 
The ladder ended adjacent a sealed manhole in a slightly curving ceiling.

The street wasnít particularly crowded at this time of day, a few pedestrians frequented 
the sidewalks and one or two cars slowly worked their way through a stream of uncooperating 
traffic lights, as the manhole slowly and grudginly opened and the figure clutching an old 
worm-ridden volume slowly emerged from what seemed to be the centre of the earth itself, 
collapsing in the middle of the street. People rushed to.

He stared at the clear bright sky spreding above him, he had made it, he had made it 
outside, to live in freedom with the other dreamers of his kind. And all those faces 
staring worriedly at him, why did they look so frightened? Yes, he knew he was bleak, pale, 
and that he was badly wounded, but frightened? The image evapourated, disappearing like 
Pequod had done into oblivion, taking him deeper and deeper into the cool darkness of 
unconsciousness.

For a while they stood silent, looking at the thing in front of them on the street as it 
slowly stilled itís movements, staring in a frightful fascination as dark oil pulsed out of 
the gash in the side, staining the smooth, pale grey metal body.

Per Sikora 1999