Luther Garland, Lord of Caledonia, lifts two quaking arms to the sky. His mask of fawn ribs rattles and leaks gasps of steam into the cold morning air. "Aye-eye," he begs. "Aye-eye, give us your command!" Between a gap of bone, his bloodshot eyes widen into rueful flames. "Aye-eye, give us your command," his officers chant, muffled behind their blood-stained welding masks. He falls prostrate and screams, clutching at his mask of ribs as commandments from God enter the hole in his bare forehead. The shivering swarm of women around him wait. Millie studies each-loose and blistering skin, yellow eyes, bald patches-soon, without medical intervention, they will all die. "Aye-eye warns of the frosts. They approach out of season," Garland rasps. "We must harvest the remaining berries." He stands, picking his rusted weed hook from the ground. "Aye-eye decrees a holy binding." He flails his hook at Millie, striking the soil before her bare feet. "No," one of the officers calmly says. It's Silas, Millie's husband. Garland turns, steam spilling from his mask of ribs. "Remember, she is the botanist. She inspects the berries." At this, Garland swings the blade of his weed hook into Silas' shoulder. "Lord," Silas chokes. "The jackals want only safe fruit. They make wines for people to drink. If we send poison, the jackals will hack us all to bits with their machetes." Garland pulls out the hook, drops of blood dripping on dead leaves underfoot. He grunts, visibly confused by his memories. Despite his holiness, Garland still fears the jackals, and fears death. He wasn't born with the hole anymore than he was born a Lord. Millie knows from whispers in the camp that his skull was perforated with a cordless drill by two servants inexperienced in the art of trepanning. "Yes," Garland bellows. "She will inspect the fruit as is her duty to Aye-eye." Millie also knows Garland isn't really from their barren slave camp in Caledonia, Michigan. Or from the time before the Great Lakes dried up. Everyone knows, because his only clothing is a disintegrating jumpsuit inscribed Des Moines Correctional. The voices probably come to him through a malfunctioning RFID chip implanted in his head decades ago by prison doctors to track him if he ever ran away. It must have picked up stray signals until he'd ordered it removed. Whose voices they are now, and what they really whisper deep inside his ruptured brain, is anyone's guess. He stabs his hook into the soil before one of the sickly girls, barely missing her foot. She only continues shivering as his blackened nails dig into her arm, and they hobble away to his cabin. Girls taken to Garland's cabin don't always return. The men disperse into the woods for their daily hunt, and the women gather baskets to pick berries. Only men are allowed to hunt-all women but Millie have grown far too weak. Silas looks back, only the moment's hesitation betraying his identity behind the cyclopic welding mask. "Thank you," she mouths before joining the other women. He might be her husband, but they are also slaves. Speaking against Garland could put him against the blade. She will never grow accustomed to muting her emotions, swallowing tears of relief. Her body aches with his absence. It must be six months by now, but Millie keeps up the charade. In the orchard's shadowy stomach, her fingers shiver through basket after basket, occasionally picking out perfectly good fruit. She picks out enough to fill a whole basket of false poison berries. Until sundown, she is a slave for a task of her own invention. But it keeps her alive.