art, web

The internal structure of the prison craft was a web of steel. Imagine a silent silicone spider, sliding with oiled legs over girders the thickness of your body, laying its eggs in neat rows. Only there was no spider, and the pods contained the bodies of those that society cast out.  Robotic hovercrafts carried the pods into that vast, echoing space, attached each to the grid, activated the local computer, and left.

Sunny Bingle stood at one of the viewing ports and watched a drone as it stacked Deebo.  She wanted that monkey, alive and breathing.  Sunny was one of the six humans on board, a tiny tribe of secretive people who seldom saw each other and squabbled when they did.  They had each perfected the art of solitude.