Grimm Tales Redux

Rapunzel and The Android- (Kit-the-Obscure)

I was no better than a prisoner. Someone indentured to keep all the machines that grow the biosphere in Gothel station. Trees genetically spliced not to smoke in the resident's authentic fireplace, lawns that didn't give you allergies and not a sword grass weed in sight. Machines ensured it only rained at night and once a year it snowed for the children.

Everyday, I would let my long hair down the control tower for my captor to climb up. She wanted me to think of her as a generous giver of food and water. But in reality she begrudgingly served my sustenance with a side dish of complaints from the residents.

"Rapunzel, I received a serious complaint this morning," my captor yelled, "from Mr Stoke, he got rained on in the grove last night."

"Is that all?" I said with a trace of sarcasm, "He got a bit wet and that's a serious complaint?"

"It ruined an expensive biosilk suit!" My boss said, exasperated, "He wants a written apology from you."

"Maybe he should have left the bar early and got home before my 2am shower!"

Astounded by my insolence, she withheld my food rations until I apologised. I refused, so I didn't see her. The fool, she didn't realise that I had escaped! Hair makes an excellent rope as it turned out and I had plenty of spare time to make it. I climbed down my makeshift rope and ran to the dock. Amazed I still remembered where it was after all this time in captivity. I found a ride on a freight ship, illegally of course, I had no money. It was a nice few days in the hold amongst the rats before I was discovered. I was lucky, they were in their rights to throw me out the airlock as a stowaway. Instead, they gave me a shuttle and a week's food supply in a cardboard box.

I ran a scan, got no signal, waited half an hour, repeated twenty times a day for six days. I cut my hair every morning, a futile effort with the hair growth chip. By nightfall my hair was halfway down my back, by the next day it was trailing behind me again. I didn't sleep much, my stomach lurched from lack of food. I was down to one bowl of reconstituted porridge a day, to last a couple of weeks. Then what? The shuttle would become my coffin, floating aimlessly through space, my hair would line it completely. No one would mourn me.

On the last scan of the sixth day, I detected a slight beep. Had I imagined it? I ran it again, yes, it was a beep. A ship! A ride, I didn't care if I had to work for passage. I sent a signal back forgetting to check if it was an offer of friendship or hostility. Perhaps I should have got closer before I sent it?

I tried to move the ship, the controls were frozen.

My heart sank. Tractor beam.

********

The ship that swallowed mine is as big as a city. Yet it was seemingly devoid of intelligent life. The scans showed nothing but wild vegetation, the regulators must have broken for it to have grown beyond the parameters of the green space. The air was breathable, there was nothing nasty and predatory in the corridors, I was able to venture out.

The ship doors opened. I started to step out, then pulled back gasping in horror.

I was twenty metres above the ground suspended in mid air. Not again.

"Do you require assistance, female?" a disembodied mechanical voice said.

"Yes please!" I said, "could you get me down from up here?"

"Negative."

"What?"

"I cannot let you out," it said in a placid voice, "you would only try to escape like the others."