Andersonville was, in a word, hell. Slavery was bad enough. But this…this was taking it to a new level. The best thing that you could say about the camp is that they left little room for boredom. When I was working in St. Mathews, at the very least, I knew my day would end when the sun went down. Here though, they cared for nothing like that. The factories were open much later than from sundown, the mines continued to operate, whatever needed to be done whenever it needed to be done.
Andersonville had a hierarchy for prisoners, that, oddly enough, the guards seemed to observe and respect. The politicals were the worst off. Former nobles, commoners who got too uppity, a disgraced bureaucrat, if they were in here, their life might as well have been over. The worst jobs, coal miners, toxic waste clean-up, or the worst, scientific experiment, last in food, and the prisoners hated them, cruelly inflicting any small torture they could. The rebels were treated just as badly by the guards, but the prisoners accorded them a certain degree of fear, for knowledge of what it took to rebel and have the guts to surrender to the Royal Army indicated a person who couldn’t be broken. Above them were the commoners who ended up here. They were usually in here for passbook violations or ration fraud, and found themselves pretty badly off-road crew, miner, or rock breaker. The serfs had a rung above them. They constantly harassed the formerly well off commoners, and because the serfs were in greater numbers, they had the strength in the brawls that spilled out. An exception to this rule came with the mobsters, the commoners who weren’t in here for a booking error. These were murderers, drug dealers, extorters, and they thrived in this prison market. They kept the black market thriving here, and with some tips to the guards and the visiting friends who brought the packages, the mobsters here led a pretty comfortable life.
But I didn’t fit in here. I was a serf, but I was a foreigner. I wasn’t in here for a soft crime, but it’s not like I was a murderer. I was a bit lost. It didn’t help about how the barracks were organized. Each wing had a prisoner in charge; in my case, an Irishmen named Kelly who had mafia connections. If you got on his good side, you were set…if not…
It’s not even like I did anything wrong. I helped an old man out by giving him a hand, but it turned out, that old man led a rival faction in the prison. The guards put me in a road crew, where the best thing it had going for it was the work we did outside the prison; road maintenance, clearings, and when on the inside, digging the latrine trenches and corpse burial.
But nothing mattered in comparison to the food. Each wing received a pot of mush. Every day and every night, it seemed the rations order always miscounted, and there was nothing but a watery mush and bread for each prisoner. One of the key powers you had as wing leader was division of the food. Now, murder of the leader happened often enough that everyone at the very least got one share. But an added bonus was there; there were a few shares left over. And no matter how horrid this pasty gruel was, the prize of the day was one of those extra helpings. You were only fed once a day, you needed it to make you last. The leader needed to make a choice. Obviously, he had one for himself, and that left maybe two servings for nineteen other people. Some had favorites; the toughest or the most connected. Kelly didn’t have to worry about those two aspects, so he went with obedience. Those who did what they were told by him, official or not, received better chances of getting the coveted prize. But if the two same people got it each time, no one else would obey, and Kelly already saw the problem after a week of rule. He could’ve made it rotational or first come first serve-that’d be fair at least. But no, he chose two lackeys, who, when the rest of the wing comes to kill him, will not save him.
Today seemed different though, and it was confirmed by Kelly. It seemed in the middle of the night, one of our fellow prisoners had enough of Kelly’s system, and clubbed him to death with a small rock. The guard had no real reaction, ordering me and another prisoner to bury the body almost as an afterthought. As we brought Kelly to one of the burial pits, I noticed a line of prisoners being moved out onto trucks. Very odd. No one left Andersonville unless they left like Kelly.
When we got back, it seemed our task wasn’t the usual routine. Andersonville was expanding, and each wing needed to put up fifteen cabins by the end of the day. Fifteen? That’d be impossible in normal circumstances. But it seemed we had already lost quite a few from our wing between disease, purges, murders, and the transports heading out. Guards were whispering about South Africa and Brazil. Names popped up. Nakita, Kugluktuk, Innet. Those names at least piqued my interest; they were Canadian. In the north, yes, but Canadian. I tried to learn more; work wasn’t exactly progressing well. There was wood yes, but not enough nails, not enough cementing, nothing that showed the guards were serious about their quotas.
Yet the mood quickly turned somber. The commandant was here, and it meant it was time for inspection. We might lose rations tomorrow, might have an extra work detail, or if he was feeling rather sadistic, be sent to the mines. The first wing leader came to him, and announced that his wing had built eight cabins. A shot rang out, and one of the guards shouted laziness. The second wing leader tried to take credit for the other wing’s efforts, and said his wing had completed fifteen. Another shot rang out, and the guard declared they had no tolerance for liars. When my wing finally came up, our temporary leader, a scrawny Southerner we called Pidgeon was shot due to our completion of only seven cabins.
Along with a few other prisoners, I was chosen for grave digging duty, and we dragged the unfortunate men over to the pits. One of the other grave diggers, a serf named Danny, darkly suggested that the burials might be good for the local soil. I could only shudder at the thought.
Since I knew I had missed showers, I headed straight back for the barracks. Food would be served soon, and our depleted wing would probably have enough that even I’d get double rations. Another prisoner, Zeb, had caught me before I headed back; our wing had been merged with four others for a new one, and our cabin was actually on the other side of camp. As I shuffled through to the other side, I only became more angry; I probably had missed any chance of double rations, and in all likelihood, my first rations were probably given out too. When I got to my barracks, the new leader of the barracks told me he had no room for me. Confused, I told him that I was in this wing before, and in the leader’s own confusion, he called a guard over. The guard didn’t want to deal with this, so he called his sergeant, who told me to go to the prison hold.
The prison hold is one of the worst parts of the camp. Though there is no work in the hold, you only get one set of half rations to last you an entire day while you simply sat in the metal box that served as the prison. There was no one to talk to, nothing to do. It seemed my fate was to sweat to death in the hot Georgia sun. My salvation came in the Commandant who requested to see me. It turned out, there was a bureaucratic error, and with the new influx of people into the camp from the territories, there wasn’t enough room for me in the camp. Furthermore, serfs were fetching high prices up North. As a result, I was being shipped off to Kugluktuk tonight.
As the guard put me on the train, his countenance showed extreme anguish and frightfulness, something I wasn’t expecting. He handed me a cigarette, and a 5 dollar note. The Queen’s face stared at me with her icy eyes, and I almost threw the money away. But the guard said “You’ll need this”, and he touched the brim of his cap.
It was time to return to Canada. Kugluktuk. Hopefully this wasn’t as bad as Andersonville. But then again, nothing got easier for a Canadian in this nation.
But Queen of Sheba wouldn't be a particularly powerful title in this NES. You'd have Ethiopia and some bits of Yemen. Not Brazil. 
