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A Million Slaves as Tribute

When I heard the word it was like a siren song to me. A once thought impossible chance of promise and change. There were a lot of things in my life that I was indeed thankful for, but there were far more that I was not. The notion of putting my dreadful life behind me and setting off elsewhere was something I once thought to be no more than a mere pipe dream.

And that fateful day I was faced with the prospect of realizing that future for myself, to leave it all behind. That was a chance I could not pass up, no matter what fate would befall me in kind.

The idea of being a slave bothered me not, for I was already a dead man walking. I thought it better to die out in the stars than a disheveled husk in my bedroom, culled by the same hand of fate which had cursed me so.

They gathered up the tributes, myself among them. Most of them were no doubt unwilling – I could see it in their eyes. But I liked to imagine that there were others like myself, desperately seeking something other than the hand they had been dealt. I went to where we would be collected with nothing more than the clothes upon my back, and desperately hoped that whatever future in store for me in that endless starscape was better than the hell I was soon to leave behind.

It was almost like a dream, an incomprehensible illusion I thought only possible in my wildest fantasies. There came from the heavens an almost endless fleet of spacecraft, all of them pure white with stripes of red, all of them weathered by age and the elements. They did not look like anything I had ever seen in my years, I could not call them human by any measure, but despite the alienness of their make, they felt oddly comfortable to me in that moment.

I boarded one of those vessels along with thousands upon thousands of my own kind, my heart beating down hard in my chest so fiercely I thought it would give out before I even saw what the stars had to offer.

I dearly wanted to see what beings had come to visit us, but what I saw was not a form alien, but one eerily human. There were hundreds of them, all sleek and pale, near featureless, but only when I drew closer to one of them to realize that its being was not of flesh, it was of machine.

I was given a room, one to share with many others. It was packed rather tightly, but not as tight as I expected given my newfound status as a slave. All of those crammed into that room with me seemed like unfortunate fellows, downtrodden looks upon all of their faces, except for one, who watched to watch me intently as I entered that room, curious of my presence.

"You're not like the others," he said, with a snide grin, "I can tell that much."

He was a man far more unkempt than the others, with large wispy afro and tattered clothes which stunk fiercely of something foul. I assumed in that moment he must have been a homeless man rounded up in their attempts to gather tributes, but like myself, he didn’t seem too bothered by his newfound situation.

"The name’s Djembe," he said, as he reached out a grimy hand, covered in dirt and scars.

"O’djela," I said, as I took his hand in my own.

"What brings you here then?" he said, as he gestured towards the others in the room.

"Same reason as you?" I said, "I'm one of the tributes, I suppose."

"You came here on purpose didn't you?" he said with a scoff, "you're lookin' round this place like it's the most damn interesting place in the world."

"Well," I said, "it is a starship. We are in space right now."

"Exactly," he said, "but everyone else doesn't care about that. We've all been rounded up by our own people and sent off to space. But you came here on purpose. What's your deal?"

I tried to speak, but my words didn't leave my throat. There came a sharp pang in my heart like many times before, and I feared once again like it was going to be my last.

Djembe didn’t seem to notice my predicament, but I couldn’t blame him. My suffering was always an invisible one, to anyone who didn’t know the truth, I merely came off as a weakling.

After a time too long, the pain subsided and I could speak. "I don't have long to live," I said, forcing myself to laugh. "I thought maybe I would at least be able to see something interesting before I died. Or maybe..."

"Or maybe they could fix you?"

"Yeah," I said, "something like that."

"But then ya'd be a slave."

"I know, I'm-"

"Attention all passengers." There came a booming voice over the intercom, but it spoke so mechanically I felt like it was not a real one. "You have all been rounded up under the pretense of being slaves to our race."

There came a chorus of disgruntled voices from around the room.

"However," said the voice, "this is not the case."

"We have gathered you here to save you," it said, "your planet is soon to fall, taken by the scourge. We could only save so many, and we considered this the fairest way to decide."

"There are those of you who have no doubt left things behind, your possessions, your friends, and your families," it said, "we dearly apologize that we could not save all of you, for had we the chance, we would have done so."

"We hope you understand."

The silence that fell over us was so great that the only thing I could hear was the resident humming of the ship around us. All the fears and all the nerves that not only I, but everyone around me had had, had been obliterated in that single moment, and none of us could come to terms with it.

I wanted to jump up and shout in joy, for the bleak future laid out before me had seemingly changed for the better. But my legs were almost frozen in place, still unable to comprehend the lucky break which had come my way.

Those around us seemed unsure if the words spoken by that voice were true, but their once bleak expressions had changed into something different. They exchanged confused stares with each other, a few nervous laughs here and there. And then without warning I heard across the ship, I heard an almost endless series of cheers and applause, like the entire craft had come alive with the joy I felt burning inside of me. Those in my room followed suit, and they acted with such vigor I could not even believe that they were the same fellows I had seen just moments before.

"Guess you’ll be livin' a while longer then," said Djembe, almost screaming to make himself heard over the noise.

"Seems like it."

That tumultuous frenzy died down before long, and came to be replaced with friendly chatter and banter. There was a part of me that was surprised that everyone trusted their word so easily, but I was not about to complain. I had already entered that vessel prepared to throw my life away, so I was still unsure of what to think.

I sat down beside the only window in that room, and gazed with utmost wonder at the starscape laid out before me. I had known full well that the night sky was full of wonder, but I had not the good graces to see it myself with my own two eyes. I could not come to terms with the fact that I was a passenger alien vessel, far removed from the place I once called home.

“Can ya see our planet from there?” asked Djembe, as he sat down beside me, “bet all of them feel real stupid right now don’t you think?”

“They thought they were getting rid of us,” came another voice, a heavyset man who I later learned to be Anguzu, “serves them right.”

“O’djela here was a volunteer,” said Djembe with a hearty laugh, “bet you feel pretty lucky now huh, kid?”

“What?” said Anguzu, as he stared at me with a quizzical look, “you wanted to be a slave, man?”

“I just wanted to get away,” I said, forcing myself to smile. “I didn't really care what happened.”

“That's pretty weird, I'm not gonna lie,” he said with a laugh, “but hey, I guess it did work out in the end.”

He gave me a hearty slap on the shoulder – which only served to knock the wind out of me – and carried on his way.

“You alright, kid?” said Djembe, his voice suddenly gentler than usual. “I tried to open the door to see if I could get some help for ya’, but, the damn things locked.”

I felt foolish to not even think of trying such a thing, like my survival was not even a priority to myself any longer.

“Thanks,” I said, my voice raspier than expected. “I'll be fine though, I just need to take it easy.”

“So what's wrong with ya'?” He asked, back to his usual blunt self.

“I never did find out,” I said, “it’s the same thing that took my betrothed.”

“My condolences,” he said with a faint frown. “Well, I'll leave ya' be.”

I turned my focus back to the endless black of space beside me and stared off into that void that seemed to have no end. I had always known that on the grand scheme of things that we were insignificant, but a mere speck in the grand cosmic scale of the universe, but I felt with that, I was a little bit more. To some I would be considered nothing more than a faceless one in a million, rounded up and sent off, but to me I was one of the million fateful enough to leave that cold, hopeless world behind.

No longer would I be beholden to them. No longer would I have to struggle to even live. I desperately hoped that the future in store for me was one worth looking forward to, for the first time in my entire life.

But I also had questions, ones which I desired the answers to, but knew not who to ask.

Who was it who saved us, and what did they save us from?

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