2016-08-15 - spike - Trapped 6

Author: spike
Title: Trapped 6
Date: 15 August 2016

Chapter 10

Yi-erwu was heading back from the village after getting food and decided he’d better phone his friend.

“Greg, I’m going to be staying up here at Greenfield for tonight. I want to observe Barker in the morning. That’s when the shit’s gonna hit the fan for him. He has the shackles on. Tomorrow is hairloss, collar, tattoo, manacles and hopefully, whipping day. I want to see if he copes any better than I did, that is, not at all. I’ll show you the video later tomorrow, introduce you to my family and show you what I’m so obsessed with.”

“How did he react?”

“I waited til he woke up, recorded the initial “WHERE THE FUCK AM I?!” but I didn’t stick around after that. I don’t want him to see me for a while.”

“Afraid?”

Yi-erwu burst out laughing “Of him? No, not anymore. I just don’t want to give him hope. I’ve clued the rest of them in, act normally. No hint there may be a rescue in a few weeks. He’s there for life, that this is it for him now. If he struggles or fights he’ll be punished, etc. Now for the important stuff, I really really need access to the house. You need to get Angie on board.”

“You want me to tell her you’re back?!”

“Oh god no! Not until she’s seen me and knows how much trouble I’m in.”

“What then?”

“Just tell her that you’ve found out something about my disappearance. Tell her not to tell my parents cos it might give them false hope and to meet you at the pole You can take her to the clearing from there. She’s seen Marty, I need him too. For some inexplicable reason I think he fancies ‘er”

“OK, will do… How will you avoid drifting, dig another ditch?”

“Yeah, I can survive one night without a sleeping bag. I’ll be fine… OH! Get Phil and Ian too.”

“Them two? Why?”

“Think I’ll need all the help I can get to get everything done. And if I do it right that could mean a thousand men to deal with.”

“THOUSAND?!! You’re not planning to free the entire camp are you? What’re you going to with them all?”

“That’s still weeks off, I’ll cross that bridge… Look, when the time comes, we’ll have to set up a kind of staging area, make a small tent city up on the moors, as far from the roads as possible so as not to attract attention.”

“But what about food? Water? Clothes? It’ll cost a fortune!”

“That’s one of the reasons I need Marty. He can shift like” Yi-erwu clicked his fingers by the phone “that. He could easily pilfer a few hundred thou in a day if he put his mind to it. And I know for a fact a little petty thievery isn’t beyond him.”

“100 grand is not petty!”

“It is if it’s not all from the same place! I’m not proposing a bank robbery y’know. Little bit here little bit there so no-one notices. Anyway never mind that for now. Angie, for after school at the pole, Ian and Phil too, that’ll do for now. Don’t tell them anything either, don’t want one of them blabbing before I’ve spoken to them.”

“OK, I’ll call her as soon as you hang up, and tell the others in class tomorrow. Happy digging.”

He found an ideal spot almost immediately and settled in for the night. The sky was clear and the air had a pleasant bite to it, but it wasn’t enough to phase Yi-erwu. His hard earned cold resistance was standing him in good stead.

He awoke before dawn as was his habit by now, and immediately began to shift and walk across to the location of his cell and the border of the nuked worlds. He knew the routine by now, he’d lived it for long enough so his timing was spot on when he focussed on the location of his bed to see Lingjiu prodding Lingwu to stand to attention correctly.

As had happened with him, before the rest of the slaves were filed out the commandant appeared, stood in front of his newest acquisition and began barking orders to be met with a defiant glare and utter incomprehension. Again he barked an order at the two guards nearest to the door and they dragged Lingwu out of the door kicking and screaming across the frozen yard and dumped him on the processing centre floor. He sprang to his feet and tried to make a break for it forgetting his legs were now hobbled by a two foot length of chain, tripped and fell flat on his face.

Yi-erwu laughed. Oh this was perfect, if this didn’t earn him an extra ten or more lashes nothing would. He noticed the guards he’d been dumped before also doubled over in laughter.

Once they’d recovered enough they grabbed him by the arms, dragged him into the chair room and held him in the kneeling position. Another guard appeared and without even bothering to bark an order to raise his arms, snapped the manacles and collar on, picked him up and forced him into the chair. Lingwu continued to fight every step of the way, he even manage to kick the guard in the groin at one point. For that he received a full force punch in the face. Restraints locked to the chair, he was left.

He continued for 2 hours, screaming obscenities and trying to break free until the tattooist arrived for the next stage of his processing. He fastened the belt around his chest, got the hair clippers and proceeded.

Yi-erwu was enjoying this, he could see the defiance begin to fade from his enemy’s eyes as each step of processing was completed, first hair, then wetshave, then burning anti-hair salve and finally… The tattoo… Now he was permanently marked as his brother.

Yi-erwu really hoped this experience would beat the bully out of the little fucker. He might even end up becoming a decent hard working productive member of society rather than the utter waste of skin he currently was.

Again, the long wait. Yep, it was part of the process as he’d suspected when he went through it, make them wait. Nothing to think about but what was happening to them. No distractions from their fate, no escape, just life as a slave.

Finally, the chair unlocked and the newly processed slave was led into another room with a flogging frame and strung up. It was far too cold to do it outside right now which meant at least he would be safe from the exposure Mike had suffered from, that might help speed his education once he was returned to the hut.

The whipping began ten minutes later. Lingwu yelped on the first two, screamed on the fourth and was a gibbering wreck by the twentieth but the whipping continued. At thirty, his body slumped, passed out from the pain. The whipping continued for another ten.

“Well, that’s what you get for staring the commandant in the eyes and swearing obscenities at everyone, the kick to the groin probably added another ten too.” he muttered to himself in satisfaction. “So, forty lashes, let’s see if that beats a little obedience into him.”.

He knew it would be a while before they dragged the unconscious new slave to his permanent home, so he wandered over to pay Lingjiu another visit.

“YI-erwu! wasn’t expecting you until tonight!”

“Decided to take the opportunity, he’s now permanently a member of Siyisan. He’s just had his whipping. He’ll be back after they leave him hanging for a while if my treatment was anything to go by. At least he’s indoors though, he would’ve been a block of ice in this weather if they’d left him an hour outside.”

“How many?”

“Forty”

“That’s harsh for a first flogging! What the hell did he do?”

“From what I saw, numerous crimes. Stared the commandant in the face, swore, kicked, screamed all in English obviously, and when one of the guards was carrying him to the chair he kicked him in the groin”

“Yeah, that’d do it alright, surprised it wasn’t fifty for all that.”

“They probably gave up on forty considering he passed out on thirty. You might as well use some of the salve on him, we did save it for just this kind of beating after all”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“Gonna get my sister in on it, I need her to get rid of my parents for a while, get them out of the house so I can work on these. Once I have access to my room and my equipment I should be able to start actually doing something about them. I did have a nasty thought though. How many times have you had an adjustment to yours in the past year or whatever period you can keep track of?”

“My guess is about once a month… Maybe once a fortnight since we increased the workload to keep up with you” he grinned.

“Thought so, that’s what worried me. I’m growing, but I had at least twelve adjustments while I was here and I’ve not grown that much.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying the adjustments are temporary, the collars are shrinking by a really small amount constantly and need to be loosened because of it. Makes you even more dependent on the masters if you think about it. That’s my theory anyway, haven’t had a chance to test it yet. Any slave who did escape like me would be dead within the month probably. If he was a normal uneducated slave that is. I just need to find out how to loosen them. I’ll be able to slip out sideways if none of the metal is touching my skin. And I could do the same for everyone else then too.”

“That makes a lot of sense, a lot of us wondered why we needed periodic adjustments, but we just accepted it as part of the routine.”

“Anyway, I’ll make myself scarce for a few days until he’s settled in before I show up again, it’ll give me time to do other stuff too if I’m not stuck up here.”

“Good luck Yi-erwu”

“Thanks, have a feeling I might need it.”

With a grin, he was gone.

Lingjiu smiled, he had another piece of ammunition to use on young Lingwu now. Not only do the collars never come off, but they constantly shrink too. Another cunning layer of control imposed by the masters, this one they hadn’t even seen the need to use as leverage.

* * * * *
Greg, Phil and Ian were sitting by the pole bored.

“What is this big secret? Come on you’ve got to tell us!”

“I promised and quite frankly, I agree, you’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll tell you this though… it’s bigger than you can imagine!”

“OI! I heard that!” Angie angrily stomped around the corner.

Greg laughed, “Perfect timing, but I didn’t mean YOU!” he got up, “Follow me, I found something.”

He walked across the street and down onto the towpath with Ian, Phil and Angie bombarding him with questions as he went. He just ignored them and continued walking.

* * * * *

Yi-erwu decided the best way to handle this would be with maximum impact. So he stripped and got back into his slave miner suit. He stood a few feet away in another world and watched as the clearing became populated by his best friends and sister. He waited for Greg to drop the bomb before he made his appearance.

* * * * *
“It’s just through here!”

Angela glared at Greg “You don’t seriously expect me to climb a fence do you?”

“Oh stop being so prissy, it’s only 4 foot high, even Ian can get over that”

“OI! Watch it!”

The clearing was empty.

“OK. I assume we’re here… WHY are we here?”

“First of all…” he pointed at a tree stump “Put your phones down on there.”

“Why?”

“So you can’t use them of course! This is super secret, OK, no-one and I mean no-one can know about it”

Grudgingly they all complied.

“And the big piece of news I have for you is…”

All three in unison “WELL?”

“No drumroll?”

Phil was beginning to lose patience with Greg. “Look, if you don’t tell us soon, I’m off!”

“Me too, you dragged me all the way from Oldham claiming you’d found out about my brother! WHAT IS IT?!” Angie looked like she was about to start throwing punches.

“Is that it?! You know something about Mike?!”

“No sense of drama some people. OK YES, I KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT MIKE! That’s why I had you put your phones down there…”

He pointed at the stump, the phones were gone.

“YOU THIEVING TWAT, WHERE’S MY PHONE!”

“I have them” Yi-erwu appeared in the middle of them holding up their phones.

Phil and Ian recoiled in shock and fell backwards.

“OH MY GOD! MIKE!” Angie threw herself at him with such force he had to take a step back, she gripped him in a huge hug. She looked up into his eyes. “How the hell did you get so big?! You’ve got a good foot on me now!”

“Ewww, gerroff, it was bad enough seeing you doin that to Marty!”

“AND WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN? MUM’S A WRECK!”

“I know, I know, but she’s best not knowing. Let her think I’m dead, I don’t intend to stay here long, I’ve got more important things to do.”

“How… wh… what just happened? Where did he. How did you. You just appeared!” Phil scrambled back onto his feet staring in awe at Mike’s appearance.

“Long LONG story, I’ll let Greg fill you in on that one. But we’ve got important stuff to talk about. I’ll just do the summary of the summary. Sit down.”

They all sat on the grass.

“Right, summary of the summary… I have an ability, time doesn’t work the way you expect, every choice produces a different timeline like a constantly branching tree with the very tips of the twigs as our “present”, as each action results in a different timeline it’s possible to travel between them, I’m one of a few people who can do this. I can walk to places where things turned out differently, Greg and Angie know about the place we visited were world war one lasted forty years for instance. Greg even said he’d like to live there.”

Phil and Ian stared first at Yi-erwu, then at Greg, Greg nodded, then at Yi-erwu again.

“Well, after our brief visit there, I went back that Sunday. The Sunday I vanished. Had a look at the town as it was there, then returned here and had another look comparing differences… That’s when Barker caught up with me.”

“We all know about that much, that’s the bit that was all over the news, where’ve you BEEN?!” Angie was becoming increasingly impatient. “And what did you mean you’re not staying!?”

“OK, OK! It’s difficult picking out the relevant bits without skipping stuff that’s also important, Barker had me in the alleyway, just in mid punch, I shifted, fell backwards, turned and ran. And ran. And ran. Once I’d finally calmed down enough to realise where I was, I slowed, had a look around, switched back to normal vision and explored… That’s when I got caught!

This outfit I’m wearing, this is a miner’s uniform worn by the slaves in camp thirteen when they go coal mining, other uniforms depending on the job, but this one was the one I was wearing when I finally escaped two days ago.”

“Why the hell didn’t you drift?”

“I was exploring, OK? I walked around a corner, soldiers, ZAP, woke up locked in these things to a ring on the floor in a slave barracks… And it’s that that’s the important thing.”

“What?”

“The slave camp, I intend to free them, with the help of this” he held up a taser “but I need access to the house and that’s where you come in. Oh, also need Marty. Now more than ever before.”

“Look mate”, Phil was being his usual sceptical self it seemed “I’m all for fairy stories but COME ON! Where’ve you really been?”

“Come here Phil, examine this collar, these manacles and shackles, until I got back here the manacles and shackles were chained together with these by the way.” He reached into his bed and pulled out a chain.

Phil got up and looked, he turned the collar around, looked on both sides, underneath, all around. He examined the shackles and manacles too.

“How do you get them OFF? There’s no catch?!”

“That’s meant to be the point. I told you, slave camp, once a slave, always a slave, if you don’t work, you suffer, if you CAN’T work, you die, these aren’t ever meant to come off. But they have to. Because I think they’re shrinking”

Greg let out a yelp “FUCK! WHAT?! It was bad enough what you told me about how they get them off, but they’re shrinking too?!”

“Think so, yeah. I told you I’d had a dozen adjustments while I was there, click, loosens a notch?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I might’ve bulked up but I’ve not grown that much. And I asked Lingjiu this morning after Barker got his punishment… He has regular adjustments too, he’s a fully grown man.”

“BARKER?”

“Oh. Not got to that bit yet have I, it can wait, no time to get sidetracked?” Yi-erwu began removing his top.

“I woke naked in a bed, shackles chained to a ring on the floor with a voice warning me not to speak English because it was forbidden. That was Lingjiu, my bunkmate, the man I’ve grown to think of as a brother over the past 6 months. The man who saved my life, my MIND, the man I owe everything to.”

Top removed, he pointed at his tattoo, then turned his back to show his whip scars.

“Oh MIKE!” Angie burst into tears and ran over to hug him again.

“It’s alright, sis, it’s alright, I’m fine. All healed now. And all the stronger for it. By the time I was finally free nothing Barker, or should I say Lingwu, could do would hurt me!”

“So that’s the name he got given is it? Much better than yours” Greg smirked

“I said just the same thing to Lingjiu, some people have all the luck, I get a tongue twister for a name, he gets that!”

“Look, what are you talking about?” It was about time Ian chipped in, he was always the quiet one but this was getting too much for him.

Yi-erwu grabbed the iPhone from his ditch where he’d put it down to change. “Gather round, First, I’ll show you the world Greg and I paid a visit to the day before I vanished, because that’s important too, then I have to show you my home for the past six months, my brothers and who’s occupying my old bed now.”

There were quite a few comments like “That looks nice!” and “I’d like to go visit there myself!” And then a unified “WOW!” when the drifting back home segment played.

“That’s the place we visited briefly, we went back to visit Oldham library there to find out why it was so different.”

“Why was it?”, Phil couldn’t stop staring.

“Great war. Theirs went on a lot longer, wiped out the entire working male population, still recovering now but it knocked the whole world back a hundred years technologically. No idea if even Einstein survived to do his theories of relativity there and if he didn’t, probably knocked them back even further.”

He played the second video.

They stared at the dorm room, each bed containing a naked man with similar collar and shackles to him, each gave a brief greeting, sometimes in Chinese, sometimes in English. Yi-erwu named each in turn. Then finally, a man with a badly burned face and a milky eye spoke, Yi-erwu paused the video indicating that man, “That’s Lingjiu, mentor, brother, best friend in any world, sorry Greg”, he pressed play again, the scene moved to the bed beneath and the unconscious form of Barker, in shackles chained to the ring on the floor. The camera zoomed briefly onto the shackle and the symbols on it and then there was a stirring, the camera moved back and the figure sat up and shouted “WHERE THE FUCK AM I?”

There were a few alarmed expressions from around the room in Chinese and then Lingjiu’s voice. “Quiet boy, English is forbidden here”.

The video stopped.

“How did you?”

“Same way I got trapped there for six months. With one of these.”

He held up a taser.

“That’s my mission now, that’s why I need access to the house. Angie the moment you get home I want you to start searching for Scottish breaks, it’s still February so there should be plenty of vacancies. I need mum and dad out of the way. I am not facing them like this and think it’ll be kinder to let them think I’m dead. Because what I have planned means I’ll be leaving here again permanently.”

“What do you mean permanently?”

“The men in that room? I’ve grown to love them all as brothers, Lingjiu especially and I vowed months ago never to let them down. And now I have the power to actually DO something for them. Free them, in fact, I intend to free almost every slave in that camp. And when I do, I’m going to find a way to fix them permanently in that world with the canals, and I’m going with them. They need me.”. He paused. “Greg”

“Yeah?”

“Remind me to record an introduction video, I’m getting sick of telling this story” he grinned.

Ian and Phil were still on the sceptical side, Yi-erwu could tell.

He sighed. “Look, I called you all here cos I need help in this, I need some research doing that I can’t do while I’m sleeping in a ditch with my parents in the way at the house. There’s so much to do and so little time, but if you two want proof… I’ll take you to that little corner of heaven to see for yourself. You may also see the proof in the fact I’ve got so much stronger after six months of hard labour.”

He grabbed hold of Ian and threw him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, then did the same with Phil over his other shoulder. “Six months ago, I had trouble carrying Greg there, but I did promise, think I said “If you lose some weight or I put on some muscle I’ll take you there.” He held out his arms to Angie. “Hop up. I can handle all three of you no problem now!”

Angie looked doubtful but hopped up anyway.

“See you in a minute Greg. Oh, take care of these, with this load I don’t want to drop them” he handed Greg the phones.

“Now, it still takes me a bit of time to warm up, I can’t guarantee the exact world we visited last time because the horseshoe I used to follow is still at the house but… here goes...”

Five minutes later, they were standing in the courtyard.

“My GOD Mike, how the hell did you get so strong?”

“Never mind that now. Keep hold. If yo let go, you’ll be home in seconds. Let’s go and see what Failsworth pole looks like here. I’ll need to come back here tomorrow anyway, got to do some research on villages that died in the war, places abandoned I can use to set up a new settlement”

“You’re planning on freeing twenty-nine slaves? Everyone in that hut?”

“Oh, that was just everyone in our cell, there were three more cells. I plan on rescuing as much of the camp as possible, hopefully all of it, that’s about a thousand men! Anyway, keep hold, this little door’s a bit of a tight squeeze!”

By now the main work was done and a few men were going towards the pub, a few where tying off barges until the morning. Just after they exited the courtyard the gates swung open and a group of barge ponies were led in for the night, gates slamming after them.

They walked along the towpath back to the pole awestruck, even Angie was gaping.

“You weren’t kidding, this place is amazing, how can it exist? I thought Marty said all the changes were gradual!”

“I don’t know, I’ve always wondered that, how can worlds where 50 or 100 years separate their branch from ours be so close. It’s one of the things I was going to ask him.”

“Who’s Marty?” Phil asked curiously

“Long story, Greg will fill you in, remember… I’m not going through all that again.”

“He was here last week, said he’d be back later, why do you need him anyway?”

“He’s still a lot better at it than me. Takes me a good five minutes most times, he can do it instantly without even thinking about it, second nature to him. If I can’t figure out how to remove these things, I’ll need him to steal the loosening thingy, he could easily get in there, observe for a while and snatch it without putting himself at risk.”

“And you can’t do it yourself because…?”

“I’m dead there. I arranged for there to be a mine collapse right on top of me so I could get away”

“How the hell did you escape a cave-in?”

“Simple, I stepped to one side. Took over six months to get away though. That’s why I’ve bulked up so much, the hard labour started three days after I got there, between then and the end there were two rest days. Anyway, my plans are:

1. Angela, mum and dad, holiday to Scotland or somewhere, at least a week, then I can have full access to the house and my room. I need to get these off before they kill me.”

2. Angela again, once Marty shows, tell him I need him, tell him where my sleeping ditch is.”

“You’re sleeping in a DITCH?! Why not just bite the bullet and go home?” Phil was looking at his friend as if he was a different person.

“I need the ditch, I have another problem, not just these shackles. This taser. It didn’t just stick me in that world making escape difficult. It actually reset my homeworld to that one and I have absolutely no intention of ever going back there in an uncontrolled drift. If I fall asleep, that’s where I go, and if they capture me, it’s DEAD time. They don’t like slaves escaping, instant execution.”

The blood drained from Angie’s face. “Executed?”

“Yes. They don’t take slaves back, give them a slap on the wrist and send them back to their cell without any supper. Anyway, I think you’ve seen enough to convince you I’m not demented, we can drift back here so you can see how everything changes between there and home, or we can go back to the courtyard so we appear in the clearing, your choice.”

“Courtyard” Ian chipped in “I don’t want anyone seeing me pop out of nowhere”

“Here, I want to see this place change”

“Angela, deciding vote...” Yi-erwu grinned.

“Here, anyone sees us, tough, just accuse them of being drunk”

Yi-erwu let go. Then he locked onto them and followed them back. He would’ve liked to see how things changed too, having drifted back the last time in the clearing but the option was no longer available him.

Then, a short walk and they were back in the clearing.

“Why didn’t you tell us! God Mike, you can go anywhere, do anything!”

“Not quite, it takes a lot of walking to get most places where there’s a significant difference. I stumbled onto what look like the exact opposite of each other within a couple of days, tranquil, technology free, vs hell on post-nuclear bombed earth. That’s another thing I need to do, check myself for radiation. No idea how long fallout sticks around, how long it takes to get washed away.”

He turned to Angela “You’re the key to all this, mum and dad, gone.”

“And just how am I meant to pay for a last minute holiday, let alone explain it?”

“Both very simple. Two-fifty quid, top of my wardrobe, Tardis. I was saving up for a new computer”

“And the explanation?”

“That’s even simpler, just book it, don’t tell them until you shoved their packed suitcases and then THEM into a taxi, tell them it’s a surprise. Something to take their minds off everything. Early birthday present, whatever. Give the taxi driver an extra twenty to make sure he gets them on the train, simples. Just get rid of them, I have a limited time and I don’t want to waste any of it dealing with them.”

He turned to Phil and Ian “Right, you two, if you can bunk off school, we can go back there during the day, I need help searching through archives and I know what you two are like when it comes to history, want to see some living history? I plan on going to Manchester tomorrow and raid the archives of the library there in that world.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Dead or abandoned villages due to the war. Places I can take the refugees once I’ve rescued them, a village is ideal, an empty one perfect. Out of the way, get the place rebuilt using good hard graft and plenty of it. As it’s abandoned, with luck, we might’ve fully rebuilt and been living there for long enough for it to become our land by default before anyone notices. Still horse and cart country there, very few trains and the cars are the bloke with red flag in front type.”

“I’m in. My dad’ll probably play hell if he finds out I’ve been playing truant, but this is too good to miss.” Ian was amazed, he’d seen things in real life today he’d only seen before in shitty ITV dramas.

Phil nodded. “Count me in too”.