Prolog

The ridiculously short "trial" ended predictably with the death sentence; I was to be liquidated today, tomorrow, or sometime: the Darx never elaborated on when or how. The Darx — that's what we called our invisible opponents, alluding to the fact that enemies in allusion to the fact that they apparently had their base on the Dark Side of the Moon. The war had now been going on since 1969, but to this day we had seen nothing of the Darx themselves except their machines and bases.

Naturally, I had no defense counsel, nor was the trial open to the public; in the barren whitewashed room stood only a simple wooden table, on this a translator, whose artificial voice croaked and scratched the thoughts of the Darx‐judges reproduced. I did not even know not even whether I was speaking to one or more. In any case, they were very anxious to simulate an equivalent similar to our earthly jurisdiction.

I hadn't heard from Lena since I was sent to prison. Couldn't ask her for advice, or hold her little hand, or hold onto her, or cry, or sleep with her. I didn't know where she was or if she even still existed — I had to get by on my own. Espionage, sedition, treason, and terrorism were just some of the charges read in the death sentence; they didn't dare openly call me the leader of a resistance group. They seemed to know that martyrs could have a special effect on people. I put all my mad hope in that. So it could take a very long time until enough grass had grown over the story and they could dispose of me quietly and secretly.

The mechanical guard at my cell door did not stir when I called out, "Hello! Can anyone hear me?" After some time, the machine‐distorted voice of a Darx sounded from his speaker: "What do you want?"

"Prisoner 348211, Jan Ohnehand. I would like to send a memomail to a companion and Relative before my termination." Nothing was heard for a long time. I already knew this, had already experienced that a simple question was answered only after hours or even days. Despite my predicament, I sometimes had to smile when the "yes" to a simple question didn't come until the next day and I had to think long and hard about what I had originally asked. Their trading stations and the entire logistics had been destroyed and made the communication with the lost post Earth extremely difficult.

.

"It is our custom to allow a dying man to write his last will and testament to his relatives before he is terminated," I added. There was a long crackle and pop in the speaker embedded in the guard's breastplate. Then came the counter‐question, "What is the name of the relative and what should be the content of the memomail?"

I had to answer fast and uninvolved, because the Darx evaluated reflexes and response times conscientiously and drew their often wholly ludicrous conclusions from them. "Lena Ohnehand and my memomail contains personal details about the time since we were separated as children" I replied. I knew they would have to inquire about both and prepared myself inwardly.

"Lena Ohnhehand is not registered. Give full name, degree of relationship and state whereabouts!". There it was, the hardest of all questions. I counted to 8, a previously tried and true length of time that I kept constant to the Darx so that they could note this in my personality profile and I had plenty of time to think. "Lena is a Half‐sister, we grew up separately. Whereabouts unknown to me at this time. Last contact on October 11 near of the headquarters. I would like to put the memo on the Net‐O‐Net, she will find it there." The Darx were smart, high‐tech... and ferociously cruel. But they had their problems with cunning, sly liars like me.

After fifteen minutes of silent waiting, I sat down again. Probably I would have to wait for an answer until evening or even tomorrow; the lost outstation Earth was, after all, in itself completely intact, but could only be reached from the control center via emergency lines that were functioning more and more miserably. It was only a question of time of time when the Darx would turn to new projects and forget this Alesia.

I ordered drinking water in a sippy cup and the wall flap opened after a few seconds. I stood up and took the sippy cup with my teeth, drank the water. At least that was something that worked well: eating and drinking whatever you wanted. Finest food, finely pureed, because I couldn't use my hands. Where it came from and how it could be brought so quickly remained a mystery to me, like almost everything that had to do with the Darx. But I thought of Edmond Dantes and Abbé Faria, and there I had it better, I guess.

"Cheers, Admiral von Schneider!" said I to the guard, for in the past two weeks that we had already shared this cell together, I had taught him some earthly nonsense. "Cheers, Miss Sophie!" the steel colossus beeped, raising his hand with an imaginary cup. "Good boy!", I praised him and chuckled; then I continued to wait patiently for the response of his superiors, who, many light‐years away, were doing careful damage control and frantic crisis management. Troublesome supplicants like me with my memo mail were presumably handled hesitantly and anxiously by overburdened subordinates; they had more important things to do. The colossus blinked and winked with all his lights, while he continued to wave at me for a while, then he froze again like a toy whose spring drive had run out.

During the few years in which I had learned to think for myself, I noticed such oddities, although everyone seemed to have learned them from childhood on: one cheers to each other on special occasions, but not when simply drinking water. Only the programmer of this primitive weapon carrier did not know that. Like so many other things not — and sometimes promptly gave me a lengthy, completely pointless debate with his superior. In times of war, it is sometimes quite good to know about the reactions and the thinking ability of the respective opponent, or as in this case, about the limits of this machine.

They couldn't find Lena, of course, she wasn't registered anywhere, didn't actually exist for the Darx. Garantissimo. But this discrepancy alone would be enough to put her name (was that even her name?) on the top of the wanted list. They didn't need to question me again, since I had told them everything willingly. I was arrested at headquarters and could therefore lie completely honestly about having seen her last shortly before. Whether Lena was my half‐sister, how should they check that? I had plausibly stated when and where I had last seen her, because I could assume that "a few days before my arrest" was a plausible point in time, and nevertheless, they could not determine any reliable data about exactly this time. Which private things I wanted to entrust to her, they were probably only interested in so far, whether new usable military facts (excuse me, terrorist of course) were contained. And there they were allowed to evaluate quietly until they became old, very old.

Lena surely knew everything about me, otherwise she would not be Lena. If she still existed (of which I had the greatest doubts), she would surely immediately understand that the memomail was of course not only intended for her, but actually for myself. I'm sure she saw through what I was trying to do: to tell someone my whole life for once, like two friends sitting under a starry sky by a campfire, drinking cognac and telling each other hidden, secret and intimate things. Feeling the closeness of the other, remembering all the things that were essential in life. That someone, that other would be — me. And if I was able to read that memomail again after my termination, I wanted to know about Jan Ohnehand, Prisoner 348211, who I had once been, in detail. My crippled youth, long loneliness, fixation on a few things in life like sex, complete isolation and ignorance of current events; the time of thinking‐learning with Lena, my apprenticeship with her, and our friendship that welded us together in the resistance. I would want to know later who this little Jan was, how he thought and how he spoke, how he began to understand things slowly and in small steps, but also...

The speaker interrupted my thoughts and crackled again. After the interference was over, the tinny voice rang out, "Permission granted. APB on Lena Ohnehand to all departments with top priority. Keep it short and sweet; memo content will be reviewed with security level 5 before release!". A split second later, a voice recorder materialized on the table. The red recording light flashed.

I moved a little closer and began to tell my story.

"Prisoner 348211, Jan Ohnehand, memomail to Lena Ohnehand, for permanent storage in the Net‐O‐Net. Father left us when I was about 6 years old..."