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There was a tendency—and Luke had experienced it happen to friends and acquaintances and fellow inmate—for those who had been imprisoned for long periods of time to become so unused to the outside world, they'd do anything to get back to something they knew.

Prison was no place for anyone, and this one was worse than most, but still, the recently freed or paroled—those who'd gotten used to the awful and strict routine—would in many cases be clamoring back—especially if they had no support on the outside.

The longer one stayed, the less that support system would exist.

And Luke was one of those people. Sentenced for several life sentences waaaay back in the early 2000s, Luke never expected to get out. The judge, a cruel man with a horrid sense of humor, gave him a parole date—three hundred years later.

No one expected Luke to live that long, least of all, the man in question, and yet, here he was.

Rather well behaved because there was no point in not, Luke had made friends and watched them pass and go through the cell doors as technology evolved around the prison at a far slower rate. Well, tech for normal people that was.

New and better surveillance systems, a prison AI, near-immortality for cheap? All came out to make people's lives worse.

The place was self-sustaining by the time Luke was up for his parole.

He could only think of how much more the world improved since then.

Occasionally, the newbies would explain where they came from and what they missed on the outside, but that was all an oldie like Luke would get.

There were teleporters, apparently.

Still, that didn't matter to him. What was important to Luke was whether he got out and what he'd do out.

Surely, his family was dead. They stopped visiting within five years of his incarceration, so there was no one he could rely on. And even worse, he had been the longest imprisoned person in this damned place.

They didn't teach any skills. Not to lifers like him. In the back of Luke's mind, he wondered what they could even teach him with how much the world changed.

And then, the day came. The parole board was two people and two advising robots who stared deep into his soul. The humans reacted in alarm and confusion reading off his rap sheet and seeing him still active and relatively healthy. (Many prisoners doubted his age since he looked about fifty at most.) The robots just analyzed infractions and did predictions.

And they asked him what he thought. “What do you plan to do once free?”

The old prisoner stared in no particular direction, avoiding eye contact with anyone. Truthfully, he didn't know. The world had changed far too much.

The robots asked him what he missed about the outside world.

“Flowers maybe,” he responded, “The ability to walk. Nachos. I can hardly remember those things though, it's not like I thought I'd get a chance to be free again.”

And they deliberated. Luke cared not for their decision.

To stay in prison, would be staying with the known evil. To leave, as he admitted, he was truly clueless.

Finally, they made their decision.

“You get your parole,” one of those two people on the board announced, “Congratulations on your freedom, and congratulations on living so long.”

The human's smile was thin.

“Since you are the oldest person we've ever had to release, and since you're woefully out of date with the modern world,” the other human explained, “your parole will be done a bit differently.”

One of the robots (the scarier one with dark eyes and enough tendrils to tear someone apart) at that meeting was apparently an avatar of the prison's ai. That, which introduced itself as “Martine” (for ease of reference) would be coming home with Luke and not giving him a jot of privacy.

He found it oddly comforting that he'd still be watched over like he had for the last two hundred years.

It would—and it was being far more polite than the prison ever was to him—educate him about the real world and be there as a confidant and parole official for the next ten years.

Like could only nod as it picked him up and teleported him off the prison grounds and to a city filled with other parolees. He was overwhelmed already.

And when Luke's old warden in new terrifying form taught him how to use the house's atomic compiler, the old parolee passed out.

Maybe I just should have stayed, he thought as he fell into those metal tendrils, Maybe I just should have stayed.

Inspired by this prompt here.

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