The GateKeeper

I’ve tackled Colette down on to the dusty ground before she even knows what’s happened. Fortunately, she’s rather famous for her sense of humour.

I can already hear U.V.’s guffaws from the invisible tunnel that she seems to have entered.
“Bravo! Encore! That’s what happens when you’re a DIVA, Colette!”
“Vraiment, cherie! Je ne connais pas que tu te sens comme ca!”
Colette is fluttering her eyelashes at me as Miraj holds out both hands in an effort to help us up. Me and Colette are sort of tangled so we just end up pulling Miraj down on top of us. I hear Colette’s giggle, and Miraj’s sigh, “I suppose that was necessary.”

Jo kicks at us while walking past, then disappears beyond the iron gate. I feel an incredible wave of excitement growing from the pit of my stomach. I have to get in there. I disentangle my own limbs from those of Colette and Miraj, then launch myself at the gate before I have time to change my mind.
Everything is dark.
There’s a flash of light. For a split-second, it’s as though someone is peering at me from the other side of a mirror.

It’s no one that I recognize, and then it’s gone. I feel the slight pressure that occurs when passing through a bell jar. My eyes begin to adjust, and I can see what looks like an elevator door one step ahead of me.

There’s another flash of light. I see the same face again, but this time it looks a little different.

I feel someone standing behind me.
Another flash, the same face.

“Qu’est-ce que tu attends, cherie?”

Two familiar figures stroll by me as the elevator door opens. I follow them and hear U.V. saying,
“We’ve even got compost!”

We’re in a small hallway. To the right is a room with two double bunk-beds stacked in the middle surrounded by walls covered in bookshelves. U.V. and Jo are on the floor, facing-off over a brightly coloured map covered in small cubes.

“Comment -?!”
“Relax, Colette. It’s just a board game.”
“Bon. Maintenant, ou est la cuisine?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten.”
Miraj decides to stick up for Colette, “But we’ve never come in this way before.”
“Still, you have ways and means. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“How did you already get so involved in this game? You were only about 30 seconds in front of us.”
“We’ve had it going for a few days now.”

Colette spots a mini-fridge that's been somehow built into one of the bookshelves. She makes a beeline for it, and opens the door without hesitation.
“Comme c’est mignon! Cucumber sandwiches!”

Jo yawns while reaching over the board to pick up one of the cubes. U.V. stretches out so that she’s lying on her stomach with feet waving in the air. She asks, “Can someone find me a pillow?”
“Je peux le donner a toi, si tu me donnes la route pour trouver la cuisine.”
“Cucumber sandwiches aren’t enough for you?”
Colette is about to make further complaint, when Jo cuts her off, standing up abruptly.
“I’ll get YER damn pillow, and I’ll take YOU to the goddam kitchen. Jesus. It’s like hangin around with a buncha babies half the time. Follow me folks. Lets go make some real food."
Guilty as charged. I'm hungry, and I'm not gonna deny it.

I wake up to sirens.

“Shit. Sorry, folks. I forgot about disarming this part. Hang-on a second.”
The truck immediately halts. U.V. begins speaking in subdued tones to a device that’s wrapped around her wrist. It almost looks like it’s made out of tumble-wire. She holds it up to her eyes for a moment, as though she’s doing a retinal scan. She turns back to us, nonchalantly continuing with her guided tour, completely unfazed.

“So 188 hectares were chosen as the site of the Central Experimental Farm and Arboretum. This is the land that we’ve got now. It’s all ours. We’ve got Marquis wheat, Preston lilacs, the Explorer series of roses.”
“You mean that in a non-colonialist sense, right?”
“On the prison-colony side of the moon, Miraj, sure. Hey Jo, use that bridge over there.”
“You mean the broken one?”
“I fixed it. I know it still looks broken, but trust me. I fixed it.”
“Whatever you say, U.V.”
“Comme vous etes droles.”
“Yeah, we’re gonna take that bridge and then there’s a bell jar we can use -”
“Tu veux me dire que nous allons arriver toutes suites?”
“We’ll have to go a little ways on foot -”
“Quoi?! Mais qu’est-ce que tu prends, toi?”
“Oh, Colette. It’s good exercise.”
“Tu ma rien dit comme marcher -”
“How do you get away with being SUCH a diva, Colette. Really. In our line of work...”
“Being a diva IS my line of work, U.V.”
“Of course it is.”

Our truck has just crossed the broken bridge when suddenly, what looks like an ornate iron mesh gate appears in front of the truck. U.V. hops out, plucks a large, old-fashioned key from her pocket, inserts it, and the door swings open. I’m watching U.V. as she enters the gateway. I can see her entering, but I can’t see anything on the other side. It looks like a gate sitting in the middle of a lunar desert, with a bridge on one side and nothing but a continuation of the desert on the other. She simply disappears. Then she waves her hand back out at us, so that it looks like an arm has emerged from thin air. Very cool. She shouts to us and it kind of echoes all around.
“Are you coming or what?”
Opening the door, Jo jumps down, and walks around to get supplies from the back of the truck. Colette throws open the door beside her, sticks her head out, sniffs the air, and then gingerly steps forward as though she’s about to get into a pool of water. I hesitate only a moment before yelling, “Onward, ho!”

A battered old truck, Jo's, sputters to a halt in back of Dr. Hubbleworth’s (our agreed-upon meeting place). Ultra-Violent is already riding shotgun in the front. She looks at us and nods with a wink of enticement.
“You scared, Carey?”
“I know I’m in good hands, U.V.”
“You certainly are, my friend. Hop in!”
U.V. climbs into the back and opens the door for us. She holds out her hand to Colette, who giggles as she climbs in. I go next, then Miraj comes in behind me. He whispers something to U.V. who quickly nods and says, “Of course.”
“I’m hungry,” Jo announces.
“Me, too,” chimes in Colette.
“Don’t worry, folks. I got plenty of snacks.”
“I’m sure you do,” Miraj says in an undertone as he settles into the seat located furthest in the back.
“Onward, ho!” U.V. shouts as the vehicle lurches forward.

We’ve been driving for less than a minute when U.V. says, “Blindfolds, please. Except you, Jo.”
We all comply. We know it’s in everyone’s best interest. Less than another minute later, Colette whines, “Are we there yet?”
Jo snorts, “As if...”
“C’est bizarre, vous savez, mais je me sens comme... C’est comme j’ai fait tous ca -”
“Colette, tu commences maintenant? En francais?”
“Qu’est-ce que tu veux? Tu attends quoi, Miraj?”
“Ahem. Well, Carey, I don’t know about you but I, personally, do NOT speak French.”
“No, me neither.”
“Presque, mais ce n’est pas tout -”
“Colette-euh.”
“Quoi? Je veux l’aider.”
“Lentement. Tu dois etre gentil.”
“Miraj! Bien sur, je vais etre gentil! Qu’est-ce que tu croit? Je vais la craquer?”
“Tais-toi, si te plait.”
“Hmmphfff. J’ai faim. Qu’est-ce qu’on va manger?”
“Colette-euh. Ca suffit, maintenant.”
“Comme tu veux, mais, tu sais que tu -”
“Enough with the French already! It’s rude!”
“I could just as easily say to you, ‘Enough with the English, already!’”
“Which way do I go here?”
“Straight ahead.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“It’s been a while, eh?”
“Sure has.”
“We scared ourselves pretty good last time, huh.”
“Yeah, but lets not get into that tonight.”
“Nope. Everything is very secure.”

Silence.
“Are we there, yet?”
Groans all around.
“Well, I could’ve asked it in French, n’est-ce pas?”
“Carey, how’re you doin so far?”
“I’m ok. Do you think you could describe the place we’re goin to a little bit, before we actually get there?”
Pause. Then, U.V. says, “Sure. Ahh, where to start, eh Colette? Never mind. Don’t say a word. Once there was an investment banker... For two weeks we kissed, held hands, then on a wonderful, Earth-lit day he drove me to his inflatable, self-sealing fabric habitat where -”
“Mon dieu, U.V. Is the drive really THAT long?”
“Alright, the banker is not important. While I was with him, I happened to discover his plans to build a subterranean abode somewhere along the boundaries between -”
“Aughh, U.V. I don’t exactly want to be tortured for the information you were about to, so cavalierly, share with us.”
“Miraj, I was only going to say, ‘mares and highland regions’.”
“Even that is a little more than -”
“It’s no more than any idiot knows about a lava tube, duh. ANYway, as I was saying... A lovely spot giving ready access to elevated regions for communications, regolith harvesting, plenty of mineral resources. Long story short, I’ve taken the place over, and I think you’ll love it. I call it ‘Malebolge’.”
Colette giggles, “Male bulge!”
“Sure, Colette. Anyway, I like to think of it as an amphitheatre -”
“The kind they used back in the day to dissect bodies.”
“Ahem. As I was trying to say, it’s kind of like a large funnel-shaped cavern that has tunnels leading out from it like spokes on a wheel.”
“There’s something about that design: the honeycomb. It’s supposed to be an easier way to control the masses.”
“Yeah, well there aren’t exactly any masses staying there.”
“You mean, not any masses that are still alive.”
“It’s something about discipline that requires complete enclosure.”
“Ahh, that sounds like Foucault.”
“Thanks, members of the peanut gallery. May I continue? Of course, the way they’re describing it sounds harsh, but wait until you see how I’ve decorated it: frosted blue night-lights, rubber matting beneath the rugs. It’s really quite comfy-cozy.”
“The specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself. It is the protected place of disciplinary monotony.”
“You’re making it sound like the prison.”
“I’m just quoting Foucault. Besides, that’s what it was designed for...”
I finally decide to participate, “I thought it was going to be built for some banker?”
“Tsk, tsk. La pauvre...”
“Prison is actually big business, Carey. He was planning on developing the place and selling it off to one of the major incarceration corporations.”
“Oh. Have the rest of you already been there?”
“Yep,” Jo pipes up from the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, there’s nothing to worry about. In spite of all our jokes, it’s really a pretty nice place to stay,” Miraj says trying to put me at ease.
“Cherie, wait until you see it. Quite a unique space. The lines are so clean and you don’t get any of the ‘partition’ quality.”
“Brand new kitchens, bathrooms. One for everybody.”
“Every body.”
“Don’t start that shit up again. C’mon now.”
“Quelle merde, exactement? C’est Foucault, ehn? Tu ne l’aimes pas? Mais il t’adorait. Je t’assure. One must eliminate the effects of imprecise distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals, their diffuse circulation, their unusable and dangerous coagulation.”
“Colette, as if we don’t already know this stuff: establish presences and absences. Know where and how to locate individuals. Set up useful communications...”
I’m kinda starting to tune-out after this point, even dozing off a bit.