I got lucky with Slippery Pete. Other people’s bunkmates would bring their work home with them. I heard stories on the factory line, and screams in the nearby bunks, followed by whimpers followed by the kind of muffled silence that is worse than all the rest. Slippery Pete looked like he could be that type: as big as a house, skin blistered from fire and callused. His fist was the size of my neck. But despite appearances, Slips was one of the good ones. He worked himself ragged on the job and had no torture left in him by quitting time.

It was a century or two into my stint on the Second Floor. I still remembered some details of my life above ground then, chanting, on the top bunk as Slips snored like an angry bull beneath me, the words I’ve long since lost. Slips never said his own memory prayers, never threw out his own cut anchors. He must’ve heard me, night after night, but he never said anything.

Not until the night he told me about the loophole.

That day had been a particularly tough one. We spent the whole afternoon practicing organ removal and consumption, à la father-on-a-porch-with-his-shotgun: If you hurt a hair on her head, I’m going to pull out your heart and make you eat it. Needless to say, we had to get our hands dirty. Slips worked deftly and silently, as he always did. His rhythmic breathing, a metronome under the screams, stilled my own. That was, until he suddenly stopped.

The Downstairser on the belt was a woman, no older than forty. Not to be a traitor to my sex, but we didn’t see a lot of women come across our factory line. The Downstairs is a bit of a boys’ club. So even before Slippery Pete’s breathing caught in his throat she stood out, staying his never-before-stayed hand.

A pause on the factory line was unacceptable. We had a lot of people to torture. But Slippery Pete wouldn’t budge. He just stared at her, the braided ship ropes of muscle in his arms tense under a rubber apron. I saw someone look up and down the line, which led to another glance, and then another. The overseer would be next. No one wanted his attention.

“Slips,” I said, just loud enough to be heard over the wails and slosh.

Nothing.

The woman had the look we saw on any Downstairser who wasn’t on his or her first tour, when fear and pain lose their sparkle. Happiness and the affiliated feelings are always the first to go. Then, after quite a while, anger. By the time a person loses fear and pain, they’re nothing more than breathing meat. I remember her hair was long and black. It looked like she had once kept it very soft.