I was no better than a prisoner. Someone indentured to keep all the machines that grow the biosphere in Gothel station. Trees genetically spliced not to smoke in the resident's authentic fireplace, lawns that didn't give you allergies and not a sword grass weed in sight. Machines ensured it only rained at night and once a year it snowed for the children.

Everyday, I would let my long hair down the control tower for my captor to climb up. She wanted me to think of her as a generous giver of food and water. But in reality she begrudgingly served my sustenance with a side dish of complaints from the residents.

"Rapunzel, I received a serious complaint this morning," my captor yelled, "from Mr Stoke, he got rained on in the grove last night."

"Is that all?" I said with a trace of sarcasm, "He got a bit wet and that's a serious complaint?"

"It ruined an expensive biosilk suit!" My boss said, exasperated, "He wants a written apology from you."

"Maybe he should have left the bar early and got home before my 2am shower!"

Astounded by my insolence, she withheld my food rations until I apologised. I refused, so I didn't see her. The fool, she didn't realise that I had escaped! Hair makes an excellent rope as it turned out and I had plenty of spare time to make it. I climbed down my makeshift rope and ran to the dock. Amazed I still remembered where it was after all this time in captivity. I found a ride on a freight ship, illegally of course, I had no money. It was a nice few days in the hold amongst the rats before I was discovered. I was lucky, they were in their rights to throw me out the airlock as a stowaway. Instead, they gave me a shuttle and a week's food supply in a cardboard box.

I ran a scan, got no signal, waited half an hour, repeated twenty times a day for six days. I cut my hair every morning, a futile effort with the hair growth chip. By nightfall my hair was halfway down my back, by the next day it was trailing behind me again. I didn't sleep much, my stomach lurched from lack of food. I was down to one bowl of reconstituted porridge a day, to last a couple of weeks. Then what? The shuttle would become my coffin, floating aimlessly through space, my hair would line it completely. No one would mourn me.

On the last scan of the sixth day, I detected a slight beep. Had I imagined it? I ran it again, yes, it was a beep. A ship! A ride, I didn't care if I had to work for passage. I sent a signal back forgetting to check if it was an offer of friendship or hostility. Perhaps I should have got closer before I sent it?

I tried to move the ship, the controls were frozen.

My heart sank. Tractor beam.

********

The ship that swallowed mine is as big as a city. Yet it was seemingly devoid of intelligent life. The scans showed nothing but wild vegetation, the regulators must have broken for it to have grown beyond the parameters of the green space. The air was breathable, there was nothing nasty and predatory in the corridors, I was able to venture out.

The ship doors opened. I started to step out, then pulled back gasping in horror.

I was twenty metres above the ground suspended in mid air. Not again.

"Do you require assistance, female?" a disembodied mechanical voice said.

"Yes please!" I said, "could you get me down from up here?"

"Negative."

"What?"

"I cannot let you out," it said in a placid voice, "you would only try to escape like the others."

"The others?"

"The others. They were not useful. Are you useful, female?"

"I'm an engineer, so yes I think I am," I said, hoping it wouldn't sense the slight tremble in my voice, "had to leave my last role though, creative difficulties and not to say the pay was awful."

"An engineer?" If it had a face it would have smiled, "we have much use for an engineer! I want a wormhole to the Grimm system."

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I was a bio engineer and couldn't generate wormholes. The computer continued.

"I would do it myself but I no longer have all the codes. I am old. You have a full rotation to create it. I will send an assistant to provide you with sustenance, when they arrive, let down your keratin overgrowth so they can deliver your food. Do not fail."

"and say I can't generate the wormhole sequence in a rotation?" I added, not wanting to hear the answer.

"Then I will find another use for you. Rest assured that the garden has never been healthier thanks to the others."

"Why didn't I detect any lifeforms? I said.

"Ground bones and blood are very good for green plants!" If it could laugh it would have done so maniacally.

*********

I didn't know where to start, the stowaway shuttle only had basic programmes, it's a craft built for survival, hanging around until you get rescued. The rotation goes on while my hair gets longer and I get hungry. Just when I started thinking about chewing the shuttle controls I heard a robotic voice.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel I require you to let down your keratin growth so I may access your ship without a stair."

I let my hair down. It pulled at my roots as it climbed up. My provider of sustenance appeared, an android. Gun metal and humanoid in shape with two yellow lights for eyes.

"Mad King wants to know how the task is going and wishes to remind you that half a rotation remains." It said.

"I can't do it," I admit defeat, "even if I had the right technology I couldn't find the code. Sorry, I don't want to be fertiliser."

"I can do it," the Android said, "but what will you give me in return?"

"What do you want?"

"Your complete servitude." It said, "The Mad King would not destroy you if you were my servant."

"Alright." What choice did I have?

"Excellent. One wormhole to Grimm will appear by the rotation. Remember your promise." He descended my hair and left.

True to the android's word, the wormhole appeared by the end of the day. Now I wasn't going to be fertiliser for the plants, just another indentured servitude, this time to a robot. He came and got me down the next day.

"Oww!" He ran a sensor over me, it stung as it ran over the site where my hair chip was. Blood flowed as my skin was broken. Barely a second later, the would was closed up cauterized, good as new.

"I have removed the microchip that caused the keratin overgrowth."

Thank goodness, no more daily haircuts.

"I have replaced it with a chip that monitors your vital signs. If it fails you will join the others. We will go to the garden and apply fertiliser. We have a significant but finite supply."

"You mean? You said I wasn't to join!"

"By the ship computer, Mad King, not by me!" It's eyes flickered, for a moment I swore they went red. "I detect a trace of nausea. Are you sickening for something?"

"No, no, it's just," I regained my composure, "I've been in that tiny ship for a while, I'm not strong enough for heavy work yet."

The lights on the Android flickered again. I felt a tingle where the new chip was.

"Scan reveals muscle weakness." It said, "I will put you on the watering systems today and prescribe an exercise regime. You have seven rotations to build up your strength."

"Got it."

"You eat, sleep when I tell you to. You are mine now until you are of no use."

"No way out?"

"No. Unless you have the ship's reset code, which I doubt you do," It's eyes turn red, "it is wise to stop delaying your fate with unnecessary questions, I may grow weary of you and hurry it. "

It left. I set to work on the water system. It wasn't difficult for a bioengineer. After a while the task was interesting enough to distract me from the fact that I was on borrowed time.

After seven rotations, the Android came to me as usual. This time it announced I was at almost full vitality and now able to fertilise the gardens next rotation. I had to act fast, I would not last long once I was moved on to my next task.

That night, I went through the pretence of going to sleep, hoping it would fool the Android. It did and I left my room into the ship's corridors. Going in various rooms, once locked securely, the doors were now easy to prise open. The ship was in bad shape but still functioned. Vines grew

everywhere and whole corridors had become a virtual underbrush. Lights flickered. The humanoid crew passed on I reckoned about a hundred cycles ago, the Android crew wasn't faring much better. Almost every room I went in had one or two Androids in it, either dead or broken up for parts. Wall panels torn off with wired exposed. Without a human crew to keep the machines in check things had gone into disrepair and ruin. I was in a tomb in space, sustained by capturing random ships in distress. A ruined Kingdom run by a Mad King and an insane Android after a power of his own. My hope sunk when I saw shuttle after shuttle lined up broken, disassembled for parts.

Wait? Was it true that the insane were careless? Consumed by their own power that they failed to protect their weakness? The reset code, if only I could know what it was.

I stopped in my tracks. There was a flickering light coming from the garden. I ventured closer. Keeping my distance, I saw the Android, was it? Dancing around a tree?

It was, there was a fire too and was it? Singing?

"She'll never guess, the humanoid,

I'll work her to bones and skin,

Then you my pretty will feast,

Because she won't guess Rumpelstiltskin!"

I smile and creep back to my room.

The next morning, I'm given a shovel, the Android shows me the pile of fertiliser. I retched at the sight.

"It is bones and blood and incapable of hurting you. I fail to understand why it disgusts you so?" It said, "Do you refuse?"

"Yes I do," I said, "consider my employment terminated, Rumpelstiltskin."

The Android threw its head up as if in pain. It's lights went out. I waved my hand in front of it. Dead.

A voice booms above, sterile as the day it was first activated. "Reset code activated. What is your name and course of action?" A slight crackle in its voice, "A wormhole to the Cinderella quadrant is on my sensors, would you like to initiate a jump sequence? "

I smile. The ship is mine. A pile of old junk but it's something I own. I am in charge at last. Sitting myself down at the captain's chair I strap myself in.

"This is Captain Rapunzel speaking, let's go to Cinderella and have a ball." 

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