The same day Seesaw was arrested, Azzan found herself out on a bigger, riskier raid than usual. Getting caught was a different experience during this particular raid; it wasn’t until she was trapped in a pod on the grain elevator, waiting for the Slats to dock and send pods down to the surface of Harvest, that she really got time to wrap her head around all that had happened. She banged idly on the heavy steel around her, wishing it had some give in it, some prayer of escape, but at least for now, it seemed there was none.

            The day’s take had seemed like it was going to be good. Her crew had gotten a tip about a place on Midslat where some spices, additives used in food synthesizers, were changing hands in a deal.

            “Are you sure there won’t be police around?” Azzan had asked the other crew leader who had let her know about the deal. He wasn’t untrustworthy, but it sometimes seemed an orphan’s idea of fun to lead each other into ambushes. It had gotten Azzan beaten up and jailed that one time.

            They stood under the intense floodlights that lit the night time streets of the Downslat, making the world look even dingier than it did by the light of the sun. “You don’t pay me enough for me to say ‘sure’ but I said it’s a good take and it’s quiet; if you are willing to take on additive theft, you have as good a chance as any.”

            Azzan knew that stealing cornbrick for survival was different from stealing additives and then selling them. If she had some real money, she could buy things: food, obviously, but also books or tablets down the road, something so the kids could get into school on Midslat, maybe. She hadn’t figured it all out, but she knew that dealing in more portable, valuable items might get her crew members a chance at not living out their whole lives on Downslat. She had decided she would give it a shot; besides, food supplies were low and this would buy them a few weeks to feel secure finally. The thought of it was as motivating as the hunger in her belly.

            Azzan saw more of the flyers about alleyfolk orphans as she headed up through the exhaust pipes to Midslat; someone had wisely posted them in the areas where orphans spent time. She tried to keep her crew from looking at them too closely, because she didn’t think that trying to get adopted, getting put into the “system” of care for orphans, would do them any good. In her experience, parents didn’t solve anything; hers had disappeared when she was 6, leaving her with her toddler brother Clint. The very thought of it made her angry, and so she hurried on.

            In the marginally less smoggy light of Midslat, she walked the streets feeling conspicuous, trying to locate the spice-trade spot quickly. Merchants dealt in many finished products from food making machines, but the most valuable ingredients, known as spices to the thieving crews, were the powders used to make the cornbrick into many other forms of food. Sold in the right places, they could be worth a fortune in Alleyfolk rations.

            The police, however, had been there. Azzan, trapped later on in the space transport pod, thought over their retreat strategy again and again. They should have knocked the guards out, but they were not the people she was annoyed with so she had taken pity on them and left them conscious. When it became clear that the guards were going to outrun her crew members and that someone was going to get caught, Clint had taken four small packets of spice and darted back to the exhaust shafts. Azzan stuffed as many of the remaining packets as she could onto her person, in an exaggerated effort to make the guards notice how much she was stealing. Sure enough, the left her runners alone in order to all take her down, while the other two crew members escaped.

            While being led away, she thought about what would happen to her: a few of those packets would be enough for the cornbrick to feed the crew while she was in jail. She felt like she was going to be alright, that things weren’t so catastrophic after all.

            In the pod however, she knew that things had indeed gone as badly as the possibly could have gone. She was going to Harvest now, and would be there for at least 3 years. No one in the crew was old enough to really run it; Clint was the oldest and he was barely over 11. She could barely notice the lurching and clanking of the elevator as it connected and began moving all the pods down to the surface, click by click. Every minute took her farther from her brother, farther from being able to take care of him, the only occupation she’d known for the past 10 years. She had no idea how she would get back, but it wasn’t going to take 3 years, she’d already decided. She would escape this prison.

            As the police had cuffed her and taken her to court, she knew they must have a particular place in mind. One of them opened a phone and called someone, discussing the spices involved and their tone made it seem like they’d belonged to someone important. After the phone call, she was made to sit for almost an hour in company of only the guards, who passed bars made of cornbrick back and forth and offered her none. From her spot, she could see the many placards outlining the history of the Slats on the walls: the history of Murkth, the planet where humans came from, the rallying effort of the Universal Food Corporation that built the Space cities, the launch of the Slats with their sustainable energy and cleanliness, and the maintenance of the food and fuel supply via the farming planet Harvest. There were models showing how plants and solar cells kept the Slats running, and Azzan thought about the smog buffers and cleaning pads in the ground; in Midslat, they kept everything perfectly pristine, and she assumed the same happened on Upslat. Perhaps it used to be that way on Downslat, but someone somewhere decided to stop repairing the cleaning systems down there. The note about Downslat on the diagram nearest her merely read: “Downslat, a haven for industrial and physical plant services, effectively holds the non-human elements of the Slats while keeping the habitable sectors full of employed, happy residents.” No one bet on anyone having to live on Downslat, it seemed, which made sense; no one lived in apartments on Downslat, or in residents like students or houses like the Upslatters.

            When she was ushered into the courtroom, the local Midslat magistrate laid eyes on the actual owner of the spices. He was a broad-shouldered man clad in the Upslat garb. He wore a tunic crisscrossed with ribbons indicating some kind of governmental power as well as distinguished work as a merchant. She had run afoul of someone who clearly thought he was important; she could tell just by the way his spine refused to bend.

            The court proceedings went forward as they had in the past, but the plaintiff caught Azzan rolling her eyes at one point and said “Do you have any idea the value of what you stole? Kids on the Downslat these days aren’t restricting themselves to food theft!”

            “It’s just colored powders,” Azzan said, playing dumb. “I’ve tasted them; some of them are good, some of them are awful.”

            “Downslat thieves should be in school, not on the street,” the man said bitterly. He didn’t seem to think of the Downslat “thieves” as his problem, but rather as something the justice system should have magically ‘solved.’ Azzan hadn’t been to school in 10 years, because since her parents left, there had been no one to tell her to do so. “They don’t even know what the additives for the food synthesizers are and do. It’s disgusting how they are allowed to live.”

            “Does it bother you just that we steal, or that we suffer?” Azzan said. “Or that we’re alive at all?”

            “The government has discussed many options for ridding ourselves of the problem on the Downslat,” he snarled. “It’s a disgrace that our city has done nothing substantial about the Alleyfolk orphans since the Crust Migration. Our support services are clearly lacking.”

            “That’s irrelevant to the theft hearing.” The judge didn’t seem to want to talk about this as a political principle but as an isolated case.

            “Look,” “The Upslatter said. “I lost a fair handful of additives today, which will no doubt be bootlegged to fund continued criminal activity. Are you going to just give her a slap on the wrist, a few days in jail? You need to try this as a case in the Crackdown legislation.”

            “You know about the imprisonment situation on the Slats,” the judge said. “You know that Bergeron’s edict applies in this case; there will be no more mercy sentencing, for this girl or anyone else.”

            The Upslatter smiled at her. “If the crackdown legislation applies, I can assure you that her punishment will fit the crime. She’ll work off her debts to society planetside.”

            Azzan perked up, confused. What did this mean? Her kind of crime had always been punished with a quick stint in jail.

            “Azzan, I sentence you to 30 million crateloads of community service labor on Harvest,” the judge said, slamming his gavel without much enthusiasm.

            “What does that mean? Where am I being sent?” She asked as two bulky guards gripped her arms. No one answered her, but she knew what Harvest was: the enormous golden planet from which all the food and fuel for the Slats came. She was going there, to work.

            Before she knew it, she’d been escorted down to the Docks, on Downslat, where workers were offloading bales and bales of cornbricks and loading on prisoners of all kinds: a tall, beautiful girl was snarling at people to not hold her so tightly, a boy with pale skin looked like he was lost in another world, and another boy wearing the bright clothes of the Upslat sat tranquilly waiting for his turn to enter the elevator down to the surface. Azzan asked a guard. “30 million crateloads? What is that?”

            “I know it’s roughly equivalent to 10 million crateloads a year; you’ll learn more when you get there,” a sympathetic guard said. “Now get in.”

            All of it was too fast for Azzan to figure out an escape plan, and when the elevator lurched and the door popped open, someone in a yellow outfit quickly stepped forward, covered her mouth with a cloth, and everything went black around her.

            Azzan woke, bathed in a sweet enveloping warmth, almost like being inside the heat exhaust shafts that the alleyfolk used to navigate the two slats where they were unwelcome on the streets. The air was sticky and moist, causing her to sweat the way she usually only did while sprinting. Wherever she was, it was not a good place, she thought, as her head throbbed with the ache of having been knocked unconscious chemically. Anywhere this warm and comfortable must be run by someone of immense wealth. Her eyes snapped open and she tried to make sense of what she saw. She was in a tent made of golden yellow cloth and netting, and through the net she saw fields and fields of plants, green plants topped with spurts of golden tassels ruffling in a gentle, pulsing movement of air. She was momentarily dazzled. She’d never seen something so lovely, so colorful. The Slats were fairly uniform in that they were shades of metallic grey, given that they were built of the strongest, most resistant metals. Especially on Downslat, no one wasted money on pigmented goods; grey and drab were their lives.

            “Well hello sleepyhead!” A chipper voice, childish but clearly belonging to an adult, startled Azzan. “Your fellow new arrivals napped a bit but you outdid them all! Must have had a few sleepless nights, huh?”

            The person wore loose, flowing fabric, a tunic and pants in an offwhite color; they were not consistent and plastic like tarpaulin and they definitely weren’t elastified stretch fabric, like the suits the alleyfolk typically wore. Looking at it made her itchy, itchy like her own skin… she looked down to see that her own limbs were covered in the same cloth, tinted a yellow color by the light passing through the tent. She shook her head, trying to reconcile having been knocked out with this child-like apparition.

            “Where… what is this place?” Azzan squinted at the lanky man grinning at her. “Who are you?”

            “I’ll give you the grand tour!” The man said. “My name’s Noran; I’m the proud Barracks Parent for Outpost Zero-Zero-H-P-A, Ooohpa as I like to call it. On the nutrition propagation planet Harvest!”

            Harvest. The name from her sentencing… “What? I’m supposed to be in some kind of labor camp prison…”

            “tsk tsk! We don’t call it prison! That makes it sound so harsh and dingy. This…” Noran gestured to the fields around the tent. “Is mandatory farming!”

            Azzan stared at him. “How far to the city?” Already she was tabulating times and bribes. How to get work on a transport, how to get well shot of this silly excuse of a prison, how soon she could be running her crew and keeping them alive again.

            “Oh there are no cities on Harvest, we want nothing to spoil the delicate ecosystem,” Noran said, leading her out of the tent. “Here, there is only corn.”

            He playfully hugged some stalks and a cob of corn fell and hit his head with a hollow thunk. Azzan felt momentarily like she had awoke still in a dream. If there were no cities, it would be exceedingly difficult to leave. Though there had to be some way that all this corn left the planet, some method. She would find it out. However, to her irritation, this would take a while. For now, it appeared, she needed to get to know the locals.

            “So, if this is the food propagation planet, and I am sentenced to labor, what will I be doing?” She said, following Noran down a path that split the corn. Everything was exceedingly orderly, as if it had all been grown by a machine. She had seen plants on Upslat here and there, and they were always wild and untamed, of varied kinds, and yielding more flowers than food. Even the Arbors on each Slat were disorderly; she only knew that the trees had to be there to breathe what the humans couldn’t.

            “All in good time. What I think is important is for you to understand our community, the way it works and the reason why you are here. You see, Harvest is a delicate ecosystem, and the reason we need many workers is because we want to use as few ‘unnatural’ machines as possible. There are a few tasks that require a machine but we have found a way to use only solar energy and produce only water from those behemoths. You will see during orientation that Harvest is a marvel, and it will not go the way of Murkth.”

            Murkth was the planet closest to the Slats besides Harvest, Azzan knew, but she had heard little about it besides idle rumors and its figuring in various curses. It had been almost a hundred years since anyone had been there, she thought. “So what kind of work might I be doing? Working on a machine, or pulling corn from these plants?”

            Noran was breezy, which she was growing to suspect. “Oh, there are many jobs. Some are basic and simple and some are deeply complex and require a lot of knowledge. How much schooling do you have?”

            “I finished my 3rd year,” Azzan said. “On the Slats.”

            “But… school goes at least 13 years… ” Noran gasped. “are you… were you an orphan?”

            Azzan inwardly cursed; no reason to be the one giving information and reaping pity. She lied. “No. I just left to help my family. Not everyone needs school.”

            Noran smiled. “That’s true. There is work for everyone on Harvest. We are an egalitarian collective.” He looked at her with new eyes, soft like he thought she was childish. This, she thought, could be an advantage. “E-ga-li-ta-ri-an means we are all equal, and collective means we live together in peace.”

            Azzan had to admit that sounded nice. The stark class wars of The Slats were a cause for constant vigilance and even the little she had could be taken from her at any moment. But her face formed a snarl. It was exactly this sort of bullshit that caused the Crust Migration, and took her parents from her.

            “Where are we going now? Is there any end to the corn? Any buildings, at least?” She said.

            “We want as much space on the surface for crop raising, but that just means we build underground! A bit like the layers of the Slats, but you know, the solar-panel layer is like this surface,” Noran said. “We are almost back to our barracks. The process of arrival is a bit tricky, and we sometimes have… accidents, so we have you all just drop in a neutral location where we can quickly process your entry.” Azzan’s head quickly clicked out an interpretation: we don’t want you running away, so instead of just letting you walk in like human beings, they tranquilize you and then escort you in. It made her wonder, since transport somehow got her here, what she could do to get out, to get back to where she had been originally. A schematic, like the exhaust vent maps available on the Slats, could do a lot to make her escape more feasible.

            Azzan saw a perfect circular clearing, maybe 12 feet wide, ahead. There was a larger chute and a small manhole cover. Noran input some numbers too quickly for her to catch them, and the cover swung in on silent hinges. “Welcome to our little slice of heaven.” He said, and gestured for her to climb down first. Azzan swung herself into the hole at top speed and was instantly blind; the dim interior lights were so much less intense than the surface sun. The walls were the same non-descript, rust-free metal that much of the Slats were made of, and the feeling of being in a small space felt more like home, more like alleys. They climbed down, and as they went, Noran called down to her “keep going past the first three locks; you can open the bottom one but the others are coded to only admit barracks parents. We can’t have you all playing pranks on each other!” Azzan could already tell that this person’s chipper resistance of the fact that she was indeed in prison was going to drive her mad. She didn’t respond, but noted the doors as she climbed: closest to the surface was the door marked “00PHA BARRACKS” then “00PHA TRAINING” then “00PHA MESS.” At the bottom, there was a lock in the floor that read “STAFF ONLY” but a door that sat ajar was “00PHA MULTIPURPOSE.”

            At the base of the steps, in the multipurpose room, the Upslat boy she recognized from the docks was dressed in the same yellow fabric as she was; beside him were the boy and girl, and three more boys, all in yellow cornsilk. “Hi!” The boy said, all but running up to her. “You’re the last girl to wake up, right? I’m Seesaw!”

            “Is everyone here excited to be here?” Azzan asked Noran, as if the boy had said nothing to her. Seesaw’s face fell, and Azzan paid him no mind at all. There was no reason why an Upslat boy would be on Harvest except if he had done something incredibly stupid; it was so easy to live on the upper slats.

            “A good attitude will go a long way, Azzan,” Noran said, gently chiding her. “You’ll see soon that these folks are your new best friends. I know it’s a lot of boys, but Lash here can be your friend, I’m sure!”

            Lash, the girl in question, was the willowy girl from the docks, and Azzan could tell with one look that she was more heavily made-up than Azzan had ever been in her life. There was no way they had anything in common. From the wrinkle of disgust on Lash’s face, she knew that the feeling was mutual. “Thanks, I guess,” Azzan said.

            “Oh, I wish I was you all,” Noran said with a nostalgic sigh. “The Harvest planet is the best place in the world, and even better if you have had a hard time adjusting to the rules on the Slats.”

            “You don’t have to sell it quite so hard,” Lash said. “I think we all can make a pretty good judgment on this place. Especially those of us who were falsely accused and deserve to be released immediately.”

            “You were falsely accused?” Seesaw gasped. “What happened?”

            Azzan slowly realized that the barracks was going to be her new place, her crew, for now anyway. A tiny part of her felt that she was actually happy about this: there was clearly safety, work, and the promise of food here, and there was no one for her to care for. She couldn’t help but feel relief at no potential fights, no impending problems, but on the other hand, she had nothing in common with this crew. And somewhere, high above her head, her brother was trying to run a crew on the most dangerous and desperate Slat. She tried to focus on the conversation but mostly, she focused on the conflict in her mind.