by Loki Renard
I am speechless, and that means I am powerless.
“Put her in a cage. We’ll use her in a sideshow. The annual conference is coming up, we can have her at the front badgering attendees into wearing their lanyards and asking people if they've sanitized their hand and then making them sanitize them again. Especially the species that don't have hands.”
I am lost. I can’t defend myself. I can’t do anything physically against these big not-Tyanks, and the revelation from the manager that I am myself because I was a slave inside a simulation of their making leaves me with an existential crisis so crippling I barely flinch as the fish men take hold of me.
Eeehhhh…
There's a sound. Like the crumpling of a plastic bread wrapper, or the crackling of a flame.
nnnnnmmm….
And there's a tone. A tone. A mnnnnnnnnnnghhhhhhhh…….
And there is this… BOOM!
That is the sound of something happening very fast and very hard. That is the sound of metal tearing open as the door behind us explodes and a monster I have never seen before enters the room with an aggressive snarling growl.
“SCYTHKIN!”
The scream goes up behind me.
Scythkin!
Tyank is a scythkin, but he doesn't look like this. Whatever just came through the door is burning with rage and rife with danger. He bristles with sharp fury, every part of him extended so that he seems twice the size of Tyank.
I am left standing by myself as the fish men who are definitely not Tyank attack the creature that I am increasingly thinking might be Tyank. Just... not as I have ever seen him.
I knew Tyank was dangerous. I did not appreciate the sheer power he has at his disposal, how the sharp blades reticulating all over his body, usually pulled tightly in when he deals with me, can spring out in a thousand vicious slashing surfaces which leave the crew of this ship so much chum out of water.
From the moment he bursts through the door, to the moment all three of my tormentors are sliced, diced and ready for juicing, it is only a matter of seconds. I am too shocked to react. I stand there, staring before, during and after the mini-massacre.
Tyank turns around, breathing heavily, his blades still fully extended as he takes stock of the room and makes sure that there is nobody else here. There's not. There’s just him and me and the dismembered corpses of our enemies.
The flame in his eyes diminishes and he looks at me with a softer gaze. “I was so worried," he confesses, reaching for me with clawed hands. I ignore the blood on them, and the blood all over him as he pulls me in for the best hug I’ve ever experienced. I bury myself against his naked chest as he holds me tight.
“I thought I lost you," he growls. “I was going to kill them if they touched you. I was going to kill them if they didn’t. Did they hurt you? Did they touch you? Did they breathe on you? What did they do?”
“Nothing. They just talked to me. They were rude, but…” I look down at my feet at the mush which used to be my interlocutor. “They told me I was programmed.”
“All humans in the simulation are programmed, to one extent or another.”
“Like a calculator, or a computer?”
“No. It’s different. It’s…”
“Am I me? Is there any me? Have I ever chosen anything in my life? Do I even have a personality?”
I know this probably isn't the time for this. We are standing in the entrails of our enemies, but I have to know. How can I react to what is happening when I don’t even know what I is? How can I are if I do not know how to am?
Tyank
She’s panicking the way she probably should have panicked when she first discovered the truth about the simulation. But everything which has transpired in the last few hours has no doubt put her into shock, and maybe jolted a few stubborn neurons loose.
“Of course you have a personality. The coding only goes so far.”
“But that man thing was a total stranger and he described me like he knew me!”
“Well,” I say, holding her close. “You could always change your personality if you like. You can be whoever you want.”
“That doesn’t sound like something that is true.”
“I love you, Karen. For exactly what and who you are. None of us choose what makes us. We can change if we want, but we’re all defined by the universe before we have a choice. I am scythkin. You are human. Neither of us chose those things, but here we are, wanting to be loved for whatever we are, and whatever we might one day be. I love you, Karen. For whoever you are, and everything you will be. Coded, un-coded, unplugged, unhinged, it doesn't matter.”
Karen
He has stopped my panic. Somehow, he knew exactly what to say. I may have been formed by the simulation, but I’m outside it now. I choose who I become.
“How did you get so wise?”
“You take enough people apart, you get to know how they work," he says, going back to being his usual scythkin self. “I’m sorry you had to see all that. It must have been very frightening for you. Humans generally like to keep seeing the outsides of things. They get weird when you show them the inside."
“It is messy,” I agree.
“I’m sorry," he repeats, his horns sinking back in misery. “I didn't want you to see that.”
Oh no. He’s gotten the idea that I didn’t like seeing him destroy my enemies. Surely that is the dream of every Karen, to see those who oppose her drowning in rivers of blood. Okay, maybe not every Karen. Maybe I'm already changing into someone more bloodthirsty than before. Maybe I’m already becoming the me I'm going to be.
“That was awesome,” I tell him.
He breaks into a relieved grin. “It was pretty awesome," he agrees. “It has been far too long since I got to do some good hard massacring.”
“Well they deserved it. They’re collecting humans, they said. Putting them in sideshows.”
"Sounds about right. If Galactor can exploit something for profit, they will.”
“We have to rescue the humans!” I say, suddenly filled with uncharacteristic good will toward my species. I have felt twice now how vulnerable to vicious aliens we are, how little we truly understand the universe in which we dwell. It has to be up to the few who know to take care of all those who do not.
"All of them? There’s a lot of humans. We’re talking about all the humans who ever existed throughout history, now scattered across time and space. Saving all of them is not going to be easy.”
“Nobody said things worth doing were easy, Tyank.”
“For now, how about we get back to the simulation. There’s forty thousand or so humans there without much in the way of protection. Unless you think the murketeers can handle the forces we just tangled with.”
“I do not think they can,” I agree.
"Then let’s go, Ms Manager.”
“I love it when you call me that.”
He flashes his sexy, broad grin at me. “I know.”
I fall into his arms, kiss him thoroughly. He wraps his limbs around me, embracing me with all the immense passion we share. I am his human. He is my alien. And the future is ours to simulate.
The END
But also… not the END!
There are many tales involving the scythkin. You have been reading a novella, the following are full length 50,000 word novels. Quelle exciting, no?
In order of publication:
Mine: A Possessive Alien Romance
Interstellar Human Petting Zoo
Humans Must Kneel
Cave Alien
Or perhaps you’d like to know what’s going down on that western world ripped out of time Karen and Tyank visited? You can by reading Orion’s Belt, also a full length novel.
Also, I’d like to invite you to join my newsletter, so I can email you when I write new books. So you can read them. It's a simple arrangement, but an effective one. You also get a free story, so that’s pretty sweet!
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Thanks so much for reading!
Loki Renard