by Loki Renard
“What happened to your world?” I murmur the question softly. Perhaps she will be able to tell us, when she comes to her senses. Her heartbeat is strong, and her spirit must be too. Humans are not solitary creatures. They are as close to brooding animals as can be without actually being born in clutches. For her to have survived alone indicates a strength of character and spirit even I would not have attributed to a mere human.
The longer I look, the more I marvel, pity, and adore her. I know am committing a serious crime, removing a human from its environment - but I also know I am doing the right thing.
I find myself hoping that others have done the same in the past, that there might be, somewhere in the universe, small colonies of true humans. I’ve seen displays which claim to have original humans in them, but they almost always turn out to be Tarnisians with their gills sealed shut and their tertiary limbs removed. It’s cruel and barbaric, but life usually is.
“Where are we going to put her?”
Reaper’s question is a good one. Our ship does not have much in the way of excess space. It is designed for two inhabitants, and of course we share sleeping quarters, which means she either goes in with us, or we find space for her in the cargo hold in one of the specimen containers. That feels wrong, but having her in our quarters could be dangerous for her, and for us if she panics and gains access to any of the sensitive systems. There’s a reason we keep wild things in containment, and as sweet as she seems now that she is asleep, there is no way of knowing how much civilization remains in her.
Observations over the years indicate that humans are not born civilized. They must be socialized over the period of their lengthy juvenile dependence into being citizens capable of interacting with one another in constructive ways. Even when human society was at its most advanced crime was not uncommon, and antisocial behavior could be observed at all echelons of their society. The powerful were perhaps even more predisposed to it than the common people.
If this girl has not been part of society, she may barely be human in the sense we know it at all. She could have reverted to a wild type, and be as dangerous as any wild animal.
“Put some soft bedding in the chamber,” I tell Reaper. “We want her to be comfortable.”
“She’s not going to be comfortable,” he says. “It’s a polyethelene box.”
“We’ll make her as comfortable as we can,” I say. “I think we should sedate her, so she doesn’t regain consciousness too soon, and I think we should disinfect her. She’s infested with all manner of microbial life, and the last thing we need is for that to get into the systems.”
“I’ll get the equipment,” he says. “You put her on the specimen table.”
It feels wrong to lay her down on a table where we usually carry out dissection and other investigative procedures. Most of the animals who find themselves here do not leave it alive. But she will not be taken to pieces. Human anatomy is already completely understood, and the notion of adding even a single blemish to her already battered body is sickening to me.
She lies still after I apply the usual human sedative agent, her breathing shallow, but regular. I cannot wait for her to wake up, to tell us what happened to her, and to the world in which she lived. There are so many mysteries in this place, and I am certain she is the key to all of them.
…
When I open my eyes, the world has been replaced with something so incredibly strange I find it difficult to explain to myself even inside the simple confines of my own mind. I am naked. My skin feels soft and clean. It has been a very long time since there was not grit in every fold of my body, and I take a moment to simply feel the delight of not sticking to myself every time my legs slide against one another.
I feel rested too. I haven’t woken up feeling as though I slept well since before my mother died, but now I feel as though I have slept for days. Usually my senses do not allow me to stay asleep for more than an hour or two at a time. There is nobody to watch out for me, so I must watch out for myself. Every noise, no matter how small, could mean a predator, and so I am always alert.
Now I feel outright lazy. Instead of leaping up and exploring this odd enclosure, I lie there on the soft sheeting. This is a bed, I think to myself. I have a faint memory of bed, from when I was very small, before the bad things happened.
I remember lying in the bed, my mother sitting on it next to me reading me a book. I close my eyes and conjure the tone of her voice as she told me the ancient tale of the caterpillar who was very hungry, skimming over pages in the electric book reader we had. That was old too, but it had moving pictures I used to watch until I fell asleep. Bed was the last place I felt truly safe.
I do not feel safe now. The longer I am awake, the more the sleep drains from my mind and leaves me with fearful awareness. The bed of my early years was located in a bedroom. This bed is contained inside see-through walls, a fact I discover when I try to get out of it only to bump my nose against the invisible barrier. It is located inside a strange room in which I do not recognize a single item, one with a shimmering iridescence around what I imagine must be the true walls of the place. Walls within walls, this is a place of insanity.
I lie back down and close my eyes and hope that makes a difference. Maybe I’m just dreaming. I have nightmares a lot, and many of them seem real. Perhaps this is one of them. I hope that when I open my eyes again I will find myself back inside the red sandstone cave, covered in the grit of the world, safe from the monsters I must have imagined coming into my sanctuary.
Perhaps I am running a fever. Yes. A fever. I could have gotten an infection from anywhere. An insect bite could have sent me into delirium and made me see things. It has happened to me more than once. A year after my mother passed, I thought I saw her on one of the old roads. I ran to her, and spoke to her for a very long time, told her how much I missed her, and how glad I was that she had come back to me. When the fever broke, I realized I was speaking to an old post box. It still took me several hours to leave, even though I knew the rusty metal monument to a life so long past was not my mother, I’d developed an attachment to it. Delusions and delirium can feel more real than real life, I’ve learned.
I open my eyes again and am miserable to discover that the fever has not broken, the dream has not dissolved. I am still here in this incredibly real feeling space, sitting on a little bed locked inside narrow walls. Why is my cage so small? I feel like a genie in a bottle. Maybe I simply need someone to rub the exterior and free me. But who? One of those great horned creatures with the razor sharp backs? I shiver at the memory. They truly were the stuff of nightmares, which gives me hope that it was merely a nightmare I experienced. But the walls are still there when I press against them, and the soft bedding hasn’t transformed into hard rocky earth yet.
Maybe this is actually real. Maybe what I saw inside that cave was some form of life I hadn’t yet encountered. Maybe it was a mutation? Or something from another planet? Or, I think to myself, what if I conjured it with my mind, thought something into existence? That could be possible. Like a fever dream, but more powerful. My rational mind tells me that’s not possible, but nothing that is happening seems to be possible and it’s happening anyway.
My head is spinning, a thousand anxious thoughts attacking me on all sides, demanding action. I have to escape. That much is clear. I start exploring my surroundings. They seem simple and entirely sealed, but logic dictates that if I was put in here, there must be a way for me to get out. Feeling my way around the walls surrounding my bed, I can’t sense any immediate egress. But maybe it’s not down here. Maybe they dropped me in and sealed me up from the very top.
I look above my head and see a dark plug hovering above. That could be it. The way out. It occurs to me that it looks like a lid of some kind. A lid on a container with smooth, see through walls.
Suddenly I know what I am in.
A jar.
My stomach sinks and clenches at the same time. The only reason I have ever stored a l
iving creature in a jar was because I wanted to eat it. It makes sense to me that the monsters I saw in my cave would want to eat me. They were obviously predators, every part of their bodies designed to inflict pain and death.
I have to get out of here.
The walls are smooth, but if I press my hands against one side and then the other, and do the same with my feet, I can inch my way up to the stopper which seals me in.
It takes all my strength to pull one hand away from the wall and push against the top of the jar, but I brace my feet against the walls and I clench my stomach muscles and I press as hard as I can until I feel it moving just a fraction.
It’s not moving enough.
I can’t get out of here.
I’m stuck.
The realization makes me start to sweat from my palms and the soles of my feet and bit by bit my panic makes me slide down those slick walls until I land back on the bed, unharmed, but trapped.
I need to calm myself. There have been times I have trapped animals and never got to eat them. I think back to the most successful escapes. Once I had a spider leap out of a vessel and bite me, but I don’t think that’s going to work on those terrifying monsters. The hardest bite I could muster probably wouldn’t make an impression on those things. But there was another one that got away. A lizard. I caught it, planning on eating it for dinner, but when I reached into the pouch to retrieve it, I found it limp and dead. I never eat anything I haven’t killed myself in case it carries disease, so I threw it away - then watched as it jumped up and scuttled into some nearby scrub, free to live another day.
Play dead. That’s what I’ll do.
I lie back down and try to calm myself. If they’re going to believe I’m dead, I have to look dead. It’s not as easy as just being still. I have to let my limbs and head flop in a weird way, my neck at an uncomfortable angle. I wonder if my tongue should be sticking out or not. I am guessing not, but I try it anyway. No. That’s wrong. Tongue in. Eyes fixed on a single point of nothingness. Dead things don’t make eye contact.
I have executed my plan just in time. I hear a smooth mechanical sound, then there are footsteps. The creatures are back to take their prize. I hope I can make myself look as inedible as possible. I wonder if I should wet myself. Probably, but my bladder is too empty and it’s too late anyway.
They’re standing over me, their massive all too large, not quite actually human frames. They have made themselves look like people again, but I know the truth about them. I know that beneath that apparently male exterior lurks the form of an unspeakable beast.
They’re not wearing clothes. Or at least, they're not wearing many clothes. Instead of the odd outfits they had on earlier, they have come to me in nothing but the suits themselves. I wonder if they like to eat nude.
Now that they’re closer to me, I can see all the little inaccuracies in their suits of skin. The knees are wrong. They look overly jointed instead of being smooth skin, there are little channels where they’re made to work into one another. The shins are too long too. Everything is just slightly out of proportion, and obviously straining where the true form of the creature inside is being held. I feel an uncanny crawling sensation running over my skin. I hope they don’t see it. That will make my playing at being deceased utterly obvious. Dead girls don’t get goosebumps.
I stare lifelessly, avoiding the desire to close my eyes and block them out entirely. I find myself staring at their crotches. I know they’re not really human men, but they look like human men. Naked human men. Men with large male members, long rods which swing heavy between their thighs. I can’t swallow, but I want to, because in spite of my instinctual and sensible fear I’m nearly drooling at the sight.
I have been of mating age for what feels like an eternity, but I have never seen a male before, and there are certain female instincts that don’t seem to be inhibited by fear. If anything, my terror makes my response to their cocks all the more intense. Everything about these creatures causes me to respond in the most animal of ways. I can feel my heart pounding, my breath catching in my throat. I’m not supposed to be breathing at all, but I want to gasp for air. I am just as naked as they are. This position I chose, this splayed semblance of death puts the most intimate parts of my body on bold display. I want to get up and pull my limbs close, hide myself from their strange gazes. But if they see me move they’re going to know I’m alive.
They come closer to the jar in which I am kept, speaking their language which is not at all human. I don’t know why they're bothering with attempting to pretend to be human when every sound out of their mouth sounds like the universe folding up on itself.
One of them taps on the glass, his knuckles making the space around me resonate with bell like sounds. I force myself to stay still, pleased when their voices get louder and the sounds come faster. It seems to me that they’re arguing with one another, maybe panicking. They want me alive. That’s good. Still doesn’t mean they don’t want to eat me though.
There’s a squeaking sound as they work at the stopper at the top of my enclosure, and a pop as it releases. The air which rushes in smells very different from the air I am used to, and is much more humid. That’s when I realize that they must have prepared this entire chamber of mine to be like the place I came from.
I don’t like the smell of the new air. It is sharp and foreign and it smells of elements I’m not familiar with. It immediately makes every nerve and sense I have rebel against it. I wonder if I can even breathe the air out here, each shallow inhalation makes my nostrils burn faintly. But I’m supposed to be dead, so I can’t move, can’t react. I have to hope that they discard me before I give myself away with some kind of involuntary reaction to all the strangeness which surrounds me.
More air rushes in as the sides of the bottle fold down in some bizarre manner. I have never seen glass or plastic melt this way before, but again I cannot react, not even when I feel arms under me. Massive arms which draw me back against a powerful body which carries me as if I weigh nothing.
I know they’re not really men. I know that the massive muscles wrapped around my prone body aren’t real, but this is precisely the kind of body I was designed to react to, and my dumb biology doesn’t understand what is at stake now. That means increased heart rate, flushing across my traitorous naked chest, all the way to my face where I can feel heat welling.
Maybe they won’t notice. They’re still making loud clicking noises to one another, speech of some kind. Please, I think silently. Please, believe I’m dead.
Reaper
When we got her to the ship we stripped her down and put her inside a sonic cleanser which stripped all the filth from her body and cleansed her of any pathogenic microbes which might have been colonizing the exterior of her skin. We had to be careful about that, because the insides of humans are bacteria filled, their stomachs and sex cavities existing in symbiosis with colonies of secondary organisms. Without the bacteria, they die. We know that for unpleasant reasons.
Now that she is clean and has been treated for the parasitic infections which had taken advantage of her frail human system, we can finally see her for what she is - a true mixture of many human traits.
She has caramel skin and red lashes which match the fiery mane of hair which falls around her shoulders. Her lips are full and expressive, her body slim from the calorie restriction of her lifestyle, but the shape of her curves suggests that when she has been fed, she will be deliciously curvy.
“What shall we call her?” Tarkan asks.
I think for a moment, then it comes to me. “One.”
“One? Because she’s the last one?”
I nod. It is simple, I suppose, but it fits her somehow. She was one girl alone on a broken world. One female left from billions. One precious gift from a dying planet.
“One,” I say. “Definitely One.”
With that small matter of business attended to, we next have to figure out what is happening with her. I put her in the safest place
I could, set the conditions to as close to perfect for a human as possible, but she does not seem to be well. She is unresponsive, though clearly very much still alive. I wonder if the shock has been too much for her, if she has slipped into a catatonic state. Humans do not adjust well to alien interference, that is one of the many lessons we have learned over the years of handling them.
“I think she’s doing what people would call faking,” I say, looking down at her prone form. She is a heavy weight in my arms, but not a dead weight. When I move her up and down, I can feel her adjusting to the motions of my arms.
“You think?” Tarkan snorts. “I can see her breathing. And she’s not sleeping, so this must be a ploy.”
“You think she’s playing dead?”
“Makes sense. She may never have met a human male before.”
“It’s not normal for human females to play dead when they meet males for the first time,” I say, still concerned by her behavior. She is a very strange little thing. I wonder if her solitary state is indicative of some kind of serious trauma, if she might have been driven utterly mad by the lonely sands.
“It’s not normal for human females to be found living in filth in the middle of the remnants of their civilization. Nothing is normal. She’s probably sick in a variety of ways,” Tarkan shrugs.
“I’m going to give her a thorough medical exam,” I say, carrying her to the small med bay which is usually reserved only for ourselves. This ship is small, but not so small it doesn’t have full facilities. I lay her down on the bed, and while she is still playing dead, wrap straps around her ankles and wrists, binding her in place. I can feel the muscles under her skin tensing when I touch her, but she’s committing to this charade fully. Her eyelashes flutter, but her eyes remain firmly closed.