C11 Dink and Sonny Boy

Dink walked down the stony corridor, with rough-hewn stone walls on either side of him, the rugs as soft as down beneath his feet.

Lighting emanated from the ceiling, from small lamps set back in the stone.

It was assumed there were cameras behind the lights.

Timers dimmed and brightened the tiny lights throughout the day so the ocular muscles would move, allowing the stiffs to blink occasionally, and get out of that glassy-eyed gaze they all seemed to affect when they were in public places, like the corridor, the lounge, and the slave quarters.

Between the constant interface with monitor-life and the lack of any natural light throughout Deep 6, most of the stiffs were visually impaired to the point of being forced to wear the thickest glasses Dink had ever seen.

They looked like shot glasses suspended in a pair of frames.

Fortunately, Dink was not a victim of this impairment yet, although others were beginning to tell on him.

Still, he walked down the corridor with a steadiness that few of the other stiffs could manage, either because of the distortions created by their shot-glass glasses, or their general state of fucked-up-ness.

Dink took the stone steps up to Sonny Boy’s level.

Down another corridor, he stopped at Sonny Boy’s station.

He typed his code in the pad resting on a pedestal outside Sonny Boy’s door.

The pedestal was Sonny Boy’s idea.

The stone door slid open.