Page 6 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

The Space Hulk

“Here is the setup,” began Leith Mauker. “I simply took a few
threads from the fabric of the future, unraveled them and found the
present. Just as good as a trail of breadcrumbs, I’d say. So it’s an
easy entrée for the reader. Consider the time to be about thirty years
from now. The trends tell us terrorism will increase. Space travel
will continue apace, as corporations take over from cash-strapped
governments. Guantanamo will close, but the prison-industrial
complex will seek new revenue streams. As before, some high-
value, high-profile foreign adversaries, if captured, can be neither
executed extrajudicially nor publicly tried without repercussions.
Put that all together, and what do you get?”
Respectful silence greeted his rhetorical device on arrival.
“I’ll tell you what: a penal colony for political prisoners in high
Earth orbit. Away from any legal jurisdiction. Away from any
attempted escape. And utterly incommunicado. Their followers or
compatriots may be fed false assurances or be given cynical
promises of release, but it’s really a one-way trip for these
characters. Too many of their predecessors have made their way
back into history, beneficiaries of weak policy or powerful
jailbreaks, leaving us—the good guys, the fair-dealers, the supposed
iron fist of realpolitik in the velvet glove of mercy and
compassion—with disastrous blowback from our mistakes. No
more, once we stash them away on space hulks.”
“On what?” said Hydrargyrum Diggers.
“The future version of prison ships, those former passenger
liners and decommissioned naval vessels anchored at a port in a
country where detention facilities are needed but not available on
land. They are not much thought about today, but that is where my
story might get an edge on originality. Does anyone know if this has
been used?”
Shrugs and head-shakes.
“Okay. So far, so good. These future hulks would be obsolete
and abandoned space stations refurbished for bare-bones life. The
systems providing biological maintenance would be operated by the
5