Supervising Officer Mia Woodburn Personal Log – 27th May 2069

This was such a Stupid idea. I thought that when I took the transfer, but the money was so good and so I couldn’t say no.

Humanity spends centuries searching for a way to the stars, and the first thing we use it for is a prison.

The worst of the world resides right here at HMP Celestia. It’s a massive space Station orbiting Mars, owned by the UK government. Other countries can rent out cells for a high price and shove their biggest problems inside. There’s no chance to escape, no chance to reoffend. It’s bliss for the bureaucrats. They get to just dump them here and forget about them, but up here, it’s hell.

We keep them in separate cells. Huge glass boxes that span across most of the station, with a little gap for air across the top. We’ve got them all. Serial killers. Nonces. Terrorists. All locked up where no one can hear them scream… well, almost no one.

There’s so much noise up here. All the prisoners scream and shout at each other all day long. Mealtimes are the worst. Slurping and crunching fills the entire station and it drives me mad.

The weird thing is… they’re all quiet today. I woke up for my shift, and things were refreshingly quiet. As I walked down towards the cells, every single prisoner sat silently on their bunks.

They haven’t said a word all day. All their meals have been left untouched. They’ve just… sat there. Not saying a word, not baiting each other, not trying to fight us guards when we’ve gone in to check them or deliver food. They were still as statues all day. The ones on meds didn’t even move or react when we sent the Nursebots in for their rounds.

There’s nothing wrong with them, physically, we’ve had them scanned, they’re just being… weird.

It’s creepy. I wonder if they’re playing a game, or maybe, the finality of their sentences has finally caught up with all of them, and they’ve gone mad at the same time.

Either way, this whole thing is stupid. They can keep all their problems up here in space, but one day, they’ll run out of room.