Cordelione (0604, D30056A-8)
A prison colony annex of Polonor, without atmosphere or oceans. There are 87 prison facilities here and no other settlements. Grand Warden Patton Odis serves as the highest authority over all the prisons, answering only to the Corrections Committee of the Polonor Governmental Forum. He has been Grand Warden here for nearly twenty years, and the Committee is highly satisfied with his work, insofar as he rarely asks for budget increases beyond the standard 2.4% yearly. They are uninterested in any further details.
Unbeknownst to anyone who hasn't been there personally, the prison facilities on Cordelione are highly unorthodox. All of the existing facilities have been converted to huge, open rooms stacked with low berth racks to hold the prisoners in cold sleep. This allows the Odis to maintain only a handful of on-site employees at each facility: two cryo technicians, two doctors, two guards, and four custodial and auxiliary staff. To keep prisoner death rates within reasonable tolerances, the doctors revive prisoners yearly for approximately one hour each—they have them walk 100 yards, eat a nutritional supplement, and watch a short children's television program before putting them back in the rack. This system makes the overhead of the prison at least 57% lower than average per prisoner, and Odis has no qualms about pocketing the difference as much as he can.
When the prison facilities grow too close to full, the Grand Warden arbitrarily increases the number of revivals per day, hoping the doctors will grow weary or complacent, and make fatal mistakes. Nonetheless, the doctors are very practiced at reviving low berths, and are quite proud of their collective survival rate, all things considered.
Visitors to Cordelione are not allowed into the facilities except under exceptional circumstances, and even then only reluctantly. Proper papers and clearance are mandatory.
Patrons
- Patton Odis, Grand Warden.
For the first time in living memory, the Corrections Committee has taken an interest in operations at the Cordelione Facilities. It seems the recently appointed committee chair wants to make a big show of taking an interest in his job. They intend to make a video call to the prison in three days for a "remote tour." Odis does not want to reveal his unconventional operations, so he had his orderlies set up a decent approximation of a normal prison wing. Most of the cells contain a pile of pillows under a blanket on the cot, but he plans to revive two or three actual prisoners to occupy a few. It's likely to be a messy affair, and the Grand Warden is on edge. He hates messy.
The biggest deficit in his plan is his lack of guards. The facility operates so lean that he can't justify taking several guards from their duties elsewhere, and he's convinced that a lack of muscle will make him seem weak and under-prepared to his superiors. He'll pay you 5,000 credits each (negotiable up to 10,000 each) to pose as guards for the length of the conference call. The job is simple: just stand at attention on the spot you're assigned until the cameras are off.
During the call, the new committee chair (a surprisingly young and charming man named Reeve Tan) insists on speaking to one of the players posing as a guard, to ask how they like their job, what job they had before this one, and how safe they feel moving around the facility. Lastly, he asks, "What's the scariest situation you've had to deal with in the last year working here?"
- Adrienne Stanley, doctor.
Dr. Stanley is worried because patients coming out of cryo at this particular facility have been dying at a much higher rate than the norm. The Grand Warden seems unconcerned, but Dr. Stanley went over all the records and medical logs anyway, and it just doesn't add up. She suspects that one of the cryo techs is sabotaging the racks somehow, but she lacks the technical knowledge to investigate.
Actually, the cook (one Hilary Ajax) has been doctoring the nutrition supplements given to prisoners before they go into cold sleep, leaving out the nutrition part and adding a small amount of mild sedative. Her previous job was as a nurse—one of the reasons she was hired for this job. Credibly accused, she grows indignant at Dr. Stuckey, claiming she's been sleeping with Odis and doesn't deserve her job.
Because the effects of the sedative only manifest when the prisoner is next revived, Ajax was able to affect hundreds or thousands of them. Now they lay in stasis, silently waiting to wake into likely death. Dr. Stuckey says she will try to find some method to detect and reverse the effects, but her access to the patients is limited while they're in cold sleep. She doesn't seem optimistic.
When presented with evidence of Ajax's misdeeds, the Grand Warden assures you he will take care of it personally.