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Dorley…The Final Frontier.

These are the voyages of Alan Malloy

His continuing mission?

To expunge his toxic ways.

To seek out a new life and a new identity...

To Boldy be Basemented like many men have been Basemented before…

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Stardate -364.3979167 – The Basement – Programme Day One

   Steph clearly intended to throw me off kilter with her pretensions of nerd knowledge, because by the time I registered that we had walked past a staircase that presumably led up and out of this horrible place, we had come to a halt outside a pair of double doors leading into some sort of recreational space.

   A pair of girls carrying the same black tasers as Steph stood outside the doors, staring suspiciously at me as Steph sent some sort of message on her phone. I peered through the glass doors into the room, which seemed to be your average “prison recreation room” from the average prison drama you’d find on Netflix. In other words, it was drab, easily supervised, and devoid of anything that could be used as a weapon against a guard.

   Wonderful.

   “Alright, Alan,” Steph said, stepping forwards and pressing her thumb against some sort of fingerprint reader on the door. The doors both swung open on their own, the sounds of active conversation ceasing inside the room as they did. “Time to meet the other “boys”. Go inside, sit down, and wait for breakfast. Just be aware that I’m watching you. Don’t make me regret going easy on you.”

   I walked into the room, and looked around. The girls I assumed were the sponsors of the other boys, were sitting at the tables that occupied the centre of the room, close enough to their charges to intervene if there was trouble, but far enough away that they had time to respond to any sort of aggression. I tried my best to not look them in the eye or provoke them. Besides, I needed to find my fellow inmates and figure out what they knew. Maybe there was a way we could all get out of here.

It didn’t take long to find the droids I was looking for. Well, not droids, but you know what I mean. There were four of them sitting there, grouped around two couches and an armchair at the back of the room. A television sat facing away from me and towards, them, the audio turned down low. The youngest of them looked around nineteen, and was clearly of Asian descent, or at the very least some kind of international student.

   Whatever his deal was, he was staring at me with a level gaze, as if appraising me and my intent. The guy next to him looked at me suspiciously as I approached, although his gaze kept jumping around the room. I pegged him as being either paranoid or stimmed up on some sort of drug. I doubted our captors would have given him anything like that though, so I decided to go with “paranoid”.

   There was another man, tall and with a rugby player’s physique, sitting away from the group on an armchair that looked like it had all the stuffing ripped out of it. He didn’t seem to even notice me, his attention fixed on the sponsors sitting at the tables. He didn’t look cowed like the others. He looked like he was about to charge them like a bull. I made a mental note to avoid him.

The last guy was by far the oldest there. He looked around twenty five, and seemed to be the only one actively watching the television. As I got closer, he looked up at me, and grinned, raising a hand that I couldn’t help notice was trembling.

   “Ah, our latest prison buddy arrives!” he joked, running his free hand through his mousy brown hair. While he was clearly trying to be jovial, his voice wavered nervously as he greeted me. “Don’t be shy, the only one who bites is Arthur, and he’s busy trying to kill our captors with his mind!”

   “Fuck you, Ewan,” grunted the guy in the armchair, who I presumed was ‘Arthur’. He barely gave me more than a brief glance, before continuing to fix his gaze on the group of girls. The oldest of them, an east Asian woman in her forties, sternly gazed at him while patting her holstered taser. Arthur’s only response was to grin menacingly. Jesus, was he trying to get stunned? I immediately upgraded my note about him from “avoid” to “Go to goddamn yellow alert when he’s nearby”.

   “Hi?” I said, sitting down next to ‘Ewan’. “I’m Alan, Alan Malloy. I…where are we? Are we still at Saint Almsworth’s College? How long have you all been here? Who are these-”

   The Asian guy cut me off. “Alan, was it? Apologies for interrupting you. I’m Katsuro Ishihara. While you obviously have a lot of questions…well, I was the fourth arrival, and I’ve already been here most of the last week. We’ve already been over pretty much all of the same questions you probably have, and we have no more answers that you do.”

   “Katsuro’s right,” said Ewan. “None of us know where we are right now, other than the fact that this place is some sort of torture basement. Or a government blacksite. Or something. We don’t know. You and Ted- the twitchy guy sitting across from you- seem to be the only ones grabbed from Saint Almsworths. Ted got grabbed retrieving his drug stash-”

   “For the last time, asshole, I was not a drug dealer!” exclaimed ‘Ted’ angrily, glaring at Ewan. “Me and my twin brother traded in por…uh…literature.”

   “Ah, so it was illicit pornography after all!” replied Ewan triumphantly. Ted began spluttering, but clearly didn’t have a convincing response. He turned back to me. “Sorry, I should explain. I assume you got the whole “you’re a bad man, so you’re here to become better” spiel, right?”

“Yeah, I did,” I replied, bitterly. “But they also said I was here because I’m a toxic fan or something. All I did was expose a bunch of fake Trekkies at the sci-fi society.”

   “Sure you did,” snarked Katsuro. “Let me guess, the reason they were fake Star Wars fans was that they were women, right? That’d be in-line with these people’s whole deal.”

   “Star Trek, thank you,” I snapped, glaring at him. Seriously, was it that hard to get the franchise right? “And yeah, that was what I was doing. I’ve seen enough evidence to know that girls only pretend to like sci-fi to lull real nerds into a false sense of security.”

   “Yikes…I did not take you for an incel,” replied Katsuro. “For what it’s worth, they got me outside the hospital after I…I…”

   He trailed off, and fell silent, his head dropping to stare at his feet. Arthur laughed harshly from where he sat.

   “What that pussy means is he beat up his girlfriend so badly that she ended up in a hospital bed, and then he tried to bleed himself to death after his rich daddy posted his bail. And then the bitch-ass loser got grabbed when he finished healing up from trying to off himself. Fucking slant-eyed…”

   “Holy shit, Arthur, fucking stop,” I growled. “I definitely see why the bitch patrol dragged you down here. What did you do? Rape someone?”

   “Please, I have standards,” the other man sneered. “Nah, I torched a bar full of fucking dykes. Shame none of them were killed, but that’s emergency evacuation procedures for you. Managed to get away, laid low for a couple of weeks, but when I poked my head out to go grab a pint, got grabbed from behind and stuffed in a van. They stuck a needle in me, I passed out, and then I woke up here. Was all by my lonesome until they shoved the conspiracy nut in here a few days later.”

   I gaped. He…he did what? Ewan noticed my expression, and grimaced.

   “Yeah, unless he’s lying through his teeth, he’s the worst offender of all of us. All I did was hack into some college girls’ webcams to get some nudes. It’s not like it was that bad, and besides, those girls should be thanking me for giving them some publicity! They should be prouder of their bodies.”

   I leaned back, and closed my eyes. I was down here with a guy who had been selling the sort of porn that not even the prudes in the government would allow in impolite society, a perverted cybercriminal, a suicidal domestic abuser, and a guy who saw absolutely no issues with setting fire to a fucking bar full of people. It didn’t matter if they were gay or not, that was attempted murder. Wait, hang on, there were only four of them, five counting me. Wasn’t there meant to be a sixth?

   “Hang on, Steph, my sponsor- the ginger one over at the door- she said there were five of you and that I was the sixth. Where’s the other guy?”

   “Oh, you mean Danny,” said Katsuro, looking pained. “He…uh…demonstrated why we shouldn’t resist. Certainly made us three have second thoughts about trying anything. Didn’t seem to get through Arthur’s thick skull.”

   “Ah fuck off you yellow-skinned twat.”

Katsuro stiffened, but remained still. One of the sponsors, an Indian woman, was giving him a look and shaking her head. The older lady kept her focus squarely on Arthur, who was smirking at Katsuro, as if he was savouring the reaction his slur had caused.

   “Katsuro, ignore him,” Ewan urged nervously. He turned to me, and cleared his throat. “Danny’s currently locked in his room. You’ll know him when you meet him. Big guy, black skin, tall enough to be a basketball pro. He tried to make a break for the door yesterday, got hit with about three different darts, spent the next minute convulsing in a puddle of his own piss. They dragged him to his room, put the rest of us on lockdown in our own rooms. We haven’t seen him yet, but we’ve been “assured” by his sponsor, Monica, that he’s still breathing. Apparently he’s not at the point where they wash him out.”

   “Sorry, what was that?” I asked nervously. Whatever washing out was, I doubted it was as simple as being let go. “You said something about washing out?”

   “Ah, I guess your sponsor didn’t tell you,” replied Katsuro. “While we have been told nothing of what it entails, we have been advised to avoid anything that might lead to such an eventuality.”

   “I know they did it to my brother,” Ted said, breaking his silence and turning to look at me. “If he had made it out of here alive, he would have contacted me. I haven’t heard from him in four years, and there’s no sign of him around this place. Whatever happens, none of us are making it out of here. They’re going to do something to us, I know it. Brainwash us into becoming their sex slaves, and sell us to the highest bidder. But whatever they do the washouts? It’s worse than death, I know it.”

   I blinked a little. “Is…is Ted alright?”

   Ewan let out a nervous giggle. “You should have seen him the day I arrived. He was convinced I was a spy for the girls because I still had a sense of humour. It wasn’t until Ishihara arrived that he stopped trying to find holes in my “cover story”. Only reason he didn’t suspect our resident arsonist was because…well…I mean, Arthur is basically promotion material for toxic masculinity. And I’m saying that as someone who’s been pegged as being a ‘bad male’ as well. Hell, it’s not like- oh fuck, ARTHUR!”

   I snapped around to face towards Arthur, who was out of his chair, and walking slowly towards the sponsors. Most of them had gotten out of their seats, and the older woman had her taser drawn, although it was not aimed at Arthur yet.

   “Mister Gibson? Stop where you are and return to your seat,” said the Asian woman, her voice carrying the same commanding authority I recognised from hours of watching starship captains issue orders on Star Trek. “I won’t ask you again.”

   “Maria, Maria, Maria,” Arthur said, his voice gleeful. “I’m only trying to get some water. Come on now, you wouldn’t shoot me, would you?”

   “Maria,” said a girl with short blond hair, focusing her attention on us. “Should I clear the room?”

   “Not yet, Pippa,” the Asian woman- Maria- responded, keeping her eyes on Arthur, who had momentarily stopped advancing, his head cocked as if curious. “Mister Gibson, if you would please come with me to your room, that would be appreciate-”

   She didn’t have time to finish. With surprising speed, Arthur threw himself forwards into a lunging sprint, Maria’s taser darts whipping past his head, trailing their cables behind them. Before any of the other girls could aim, Arthur had gotten within arms reach of Maria. I winced, expecting the older woman to be tackled to the floor as if she had been hit by a speeding truck. Instead, she did the unexpected.

   In a move I had only seen in the martial arts movies my roommate loved to put on in the evening, she intercepted Arthur mid-tackle, and threw him over her shoulder like he was weightless, using his own momentum and inertia against him. He went flying into the back wall, and crumpled to the floor, where he was immediately hit with a pair of taser darts from one of the other girls. He spasmed for a bit, before going still. Maria didn't even break a sweat.

   “Fucking shit, that was cool,” I gasped, realising too late I’d said that out loud. Maria turned to look at me, and her glare was as cold as ice. I immediately decided not to praise the feminist kidnapper ninja unless otherwise given permission to do so. She looked at each of us in turn. Her voice was ice cold as she addressed the four of us.

   “I’m only going to tell you four once. I’ve been jumped before. I do not intend for that to happen again. Don’t be as stupid as your friend over there. Indira, Monica, put him in a cell to cool off. The rest of you? Sit still, and don’t move a muscle. Breakfast will be out in a minute. Once it is, go into the other room, sit down, and eat. Let this be a lesson to you.”

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    Breakfast around these parts apparently consisted of plain Weetabix in oat milk. I wasn’t sure which was worse, but the general consensus seemed to be that the Weetabix was at the very least “real food”. At the very least, it was food, and at this point my stomach had won over my mind in the "the food might be drugged" argument. At the very least, if they were putting anything in the food, I couldn't tell.

As we ate, our captors watched from outside the window, presumably cautious about being in a more confined space with us. A camera also winked from a mounting up on the opposite wall, keeping a beady electronic eye on us. Very 1984 of them.

   “Man, it’s like we’re dangerous animals at the zoo,” remarked Ewan, spooning a glob of mushy cereal into his mouth. “But after that stunt Arthur tried to pull? I’m not surprised they’re not in here with us right now.”

   “You do remember that they’re our fucking kidnappers, right,” Ted snapped, dropping his spoon. “That bitch Nessa jumped me while I was accessing my stash. Only me and Ned knew where it was. She must have gotten its location off of him while torturing him as part of their sick mind control bullshit. We can’t show them any weakness! Not until we come up with a way out of here!”

   “I hate to say it, but Mister conspiracy nut over there is right,” agreed Katsuro, finishing his breakfast and pushing the empty bowl away from him. “But let’s face it: I don’t think we have a chance at escaping this place. At least not when we are at such a disadvantage.”

   “I agree,” I said, after choking down a mouthful of mushy cereal. “There are too many unknowns. We’re definitely underground- the stairs lead up, but there aren’t any leading further down, so we’re definitely in some sort of basement. We know there are at least eight girls running this op- our six sponsors plus the two girls standing guard-”

   “Actually, there’s at least eleven or twelve,” interjected Ewan. “We’ve seen three other girls outside of our sponsors, and there must be someone monitoring the cameras, unless this is a reality TV show, and those are so the audience can watch us on a livestream.”

   “OK, eleven or twelve, possibly a live studio audience for the laugh track, whatever,” I said, slightly annoyed at the interruption. “And we have no clue how many might be upstairs. Hell, we don’t even know where we are. For all we know, this is a facility out in the middle of nowhere. Then there’s the actual security. It’s pretty airtight, at least from where I’m standing. There’s a door gating off access to the stairway, and it’s locked tight with some sort of biometric lock. There are cameras covering every angle, and those girls clearly aren’t afraid of using those stun guns on us. We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and they might have other security systems that we haven’t seen yet.”

   “Like what?” asked Katsuro, cocking his head. “You don’t think they have real guns, do you?”

   “They could,” Ewan pondered. “But it could be something more exotic. Knockout gas, or sentry turrets, or something else right out of James Bond. They clearly have the funding to set all of this up, we can’t afford to fuck around.”

   “He’s right, you know. You boys can't afford to fuck around. Danny, go eat breakfast.”

   We turned to face the door. The girl that Maria had called Monica was standing in the doorway with a tall black guy who must be Danny, the guy who got dragged off prior to my introduction. He shuffled over to a nearby seat, and sat down, not saying a single word. He looked tired, and his eyes were red. He looked over at me and sighed.

   “Well, I guess I’m not the new guy anymore. I’m Danny. Danny Clifford. Christ, what did they get you for?”

   “I’m Alan. Alan Malloy. I pissed off a few girls at the sci-fi club.”

   “Putting it a bit mildly, Alan?” said Monica, frowning. “You missed the bit where you aggressively chased women- a lot of women at that- out of the society, harassed many more at other gatherings, attacked other girls online, and in general exhibited a thoroughly unpleasant series of behaviours in your interactions with the fairer sex. In other words, you were an incel. A really shitty one.”

   “Can’t be worse than Danny,” Katsuro said coldly. “Danny here was part of the attack on the Almsworth Pride March last year. He and a bunch of his neo-Nazi mates stormed the parade and started smashing skulls. Two people died, and a bunch more were injured. Fucker was one of the ones who got away. My crimes are something I regret. But this fucker? He probably enjoyed stomping on those people. Mashing them to a pulp. Bet he gets off to that sort of sh-”

   “MISTER ISHIHARA! THAT’S ENOUGH!”

   Katsuro stopped ranting as Monica’s furious yell echoed around the room. He stared at her in shock. I realised that someone nearby was sobbing quietly. I looked around for the source, and realised it was Danny. He was sitting with his arms on the table in front of him, sobbing into them. Monica, to my surprise, actually walked over to lay a hand on his back, as if she was comforting him. What the fuck was she doing? Wasn’t she meant to be one of our captors? Eventually, Danny stopped crying, and straightened up. He stared at Katsuro despairingly, his face slick with tears.

   “I know what I did was wrong. I knew it before I even got put in this fucking hole. I…hurt…people. They were fags and dykes and queers…but they were people, and I was part of a group of people who hurt them. Deke and Matt? The two who actually killed that day? They got what was coming to them. Some of the others did as well. But I didn’t. I hear those screams every moment I’m still alive, Katsuro. I still believe in the righteousness of what I did, but the actions I took were wrong. She…she wasn’t meant to be there…she…she was…”

   Danny began to sob again. I watched, confused about what was going on. This guy, Danny. He was almost as bad as Arthur. Fuck, as far as I was concerned, he was worse. He had been part of a terrorist group who hurt people. My opinion on the groups he targeted was...I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think about sexuality or gender much, even if Star Trek had some episodes that discussed it. I didn’t tend to rewatch those ones very often. But I would never go as far as to violently assault a group of people doing something that was legal.

   If this was the sort of behaviour which these girls, whoever they were, would respond to with kidnapping and forced rehab…was I as bad as Danny, the neo nazi? Ewan, the perverted cybercriminal? Katsuro, the domestic abuser? Ted, who I could only imagine had been peddling some really sick shit if he was down here? Or Arthur, the bigoted arsonist?

   Was there a chance that I was actually in the wrong?

…no. This was all part of the mind game. They were trying to get me to break without even having to do some sort of first year psychoanalyst bullshit. Hell, next they’d start dropping Star Trek references on me to try and convince me that they were also capable of being proper nerds. They might even…no, do not imagine your sponsor- who is actually really attractive holy shit- dressed up as Uhura. No, fuck no, she kidnapped you, do not…

  …aw crap. Thank you, brain.

  …she would really rock that beehive hairdo though. Not going to lie.

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“Alright, girls, let’s sum up the first day, and what we know.”

   Maria pulled up a set of six camera feeds on one of the security room’s monitors, and turned to face the other sponsors. Five of the windows were displaying the feeds from the bedrooms, where the majority of the intakes were spending their evening. The last display showed the feed of the cell where Arthur was currently housed. He had overturned his cot, and was currently sitting in a corner of the concrete box glaring up at the camera.

   “I think we may have made a mistake recruiting Arthur,” Pippa said, nodding towards the monitor. “Let’s face it, we rolled the dice on his behaviour being attributable to the shit he experienced in the foster system, and we may have been too optimistic about him. He’s far more violent than any of the other boys, and he represents a significant risk to our safety.”

   “Pippa, with all due respect, you tried to punch your sponsor in your first year,” Maria said softly. “I think we should give him a chance to change. This is only the first official day of the programme, and he’s not the worst man who’s been admitted to the basement in the twenty years we’ve been doing this.”

“Besides,” she added. “That’s not your call to make. I’m his sponsor, and I’ll make that decision if we have to make the decision to wash him out. We’ll keep him in the cell for another day and a half, and then put him back in with the others. But we’re definitely going to keep an eye out for any more trouble from him.”

Maria turned to Nessa. “Nessa, how are things going with Ted? You’re the only first-time sponsor here, and you have some skin in the game. He doesn’t suspect anything?”

   Nessa hesitated, before shaking her head. “I made sure not to make any mention of his…brother…at this stage. And he won’t know everything until second disclosure, that’s for sure. But I think he suspects I know what happened. I can see it in his eyes. As for how he’s going…again, too early to know for sure, but I’m fairly certain that he’s not a threat at this point.”

   “Good,” Maria said, grinning sadly. “If it gets too rough for you, just talk to me, OK?”

   “OK,” Nessa agreed, sadly staring at the image of Ted pacing back and forth in his bedroom. “He’ll be fine, I’ll make sure of it.”

   Maria nodded, and turned to face Monica. “Right, moving on. Monica, should be be worried about Danny? I saw the tape from the argument at breakfast. What do you think is going on with him?”

Monica leaned back in her chair, and took a long sip of coffee. “It’s hard to tell. He’s clearly in a very fragile mental state. It could make our job easier, or it could make our work akin to clearing an active minefield. He reminds me a lot of another intake; Steph knows what I mean.”

   The red haired girl nodded, and took a sip of her own coffee. Monica took a deep breath, and then continued.

   “I think he’s going to be OK. I can’t promise that- his escape attempt yesterday shows that he’s not so broken that he won’t try and take advantage of an opportunity to escape, and he’s by far one of the more serious offenders of the bunch- but really what I need to do is help him ditch all of the shit that the alt-right drummed into his skull. That’s the hard part.”

   “Good. Pippa? Steph? Indira? Your three seem to be doing the best at this stage. Do you concur?”

   Pippa shook her head. “I can’t get a good read on Ewan right now. He’s certainly not violent, but something about him irks me. He’s too blasé about his situation, although that could just be a coping mechanism. It’s too early to really know what his levers will be, and I haven’t had a good chance to start earning his trust. I’ll speak with him this evening, but I can’t offer anything right now.”

Indira shrugged. “Katsuro does seem to regret what he did to his girlfriend, and he doesn’t seem to be suffering as much as when we picked him up. It’s concerning, considering that he spent the first two days we had him shivering and crying in his cell. If I had to guess, I think he’s started repressing his feelings of shame over what he did, which is why he’s regained some degree of emotional stability. As with Pippa though, I don’t know what approach I’ll take at this moment. He’s by far the least toxic of the bunch, but until I can get a clearer picture of what’s going on in his head, I can’t give you much.”

Maria nodded, and turned to Steph. “Is Alan adjusting OK?”

   Steph snorted. “I saw his face when Arthur started throwing slurs at Katsuro. I also saw from the security footage how he was looking at Danny after Katsuro told him what that guy did. I don’t think his problem is one of bigotry, not necessarily.”

   “Bullshit,” scoffed Pippa. “He’s a fucking misogynist. You did read his rap sheet, right?”

   “That’s the thing,” Steph argued. “I don’t think that’s down to hating women. I did some digging into his school records. He got a lot of shit in school from other children. Mostly because of his specific interests. Classic “nerd gets bullied” shit, you know? But one person hurt him worse. She pretended to be into the same shit to get close to him, and then she struck. There was an incident, during a school assembly. The details weren’t clear, but she put him in an extremely compromising position that resulted in him being made even more of a pariah. Whatever happened was so bad that even after he was moved to the next school he attended, his reputation preceded him. And at the next school, and the one after that.”

   “So, what?” asked Nessa. “Are you saying that his entire attitude- the whole “hurr durr, if you have a vagina you can’t be into the same things as me” thing- is because he got burned one time by a ten year old girl?”

   “I’m not saying it’s a justified reason for his actions,” Steph replied, putting down her coffee. “But it does mean I have an approach I can use. He’s convinced that the only reason a woman would be interested in the same things as him is to manipulate or deceive him. That’s why he lashes out. All I have to do is convince him that women can genuinely like sci-fi.”

   “You cannot be serious,” Maria said. “Steph, he’s an incel. There’s got to be more to it than that.”

   “This is by no means going to be easy,” Steph replied, grimacing. “I’m going to have to go deep on this one. I’m not going to lie, I’m not an expert here. But to feminise the nerd, you have to become the nerd. Now, if you ladies would excuse me, I have to go call an expert on the topic…”

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