by Loki Renard
“How do I look?”
“Silly,” I smirk. “Really, really, silly.”
His fake face takes on an expression of truly deep offense. The effect is amplified because he doesn’t have any hair at all, just a smooth dome with a funny yellow and red mark on it.
“What is that on your forehead?”
“That’s the Galactor branding,” he says. “Every member of this species is branded with it at birth. There’s no such thing as a murketeer without branding.”
“What happens if they’re not branded?”
“I’ve never seen one without.”
WELCOME! The ship starts spewing the message all over again. WELCOME TO THE INTERSTELLAR GARDENS. YOUR TOUR GUIDE IS ON THEIR WAY. PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOUR TRAY TABLES ARE STOWED, AND YOUR WEAPON SYSTEMS ARE OFFLINE, AS BEING BLOWN FROM THE SKY OFTEN OFFENDS.
“Is everybody ready?” Reaper comes in, dragging One in tow. She’s in the mastiff suit, but I can tell from the way she’s growling she doesn’t like it. I don’t understand why. These things are awesome.
All too quickly, the Galactor guide arrives and docks with our ship. He stops outside the airlock and shouts through the impenetrable barrier, somehow still managing to be audible.
PERMISSION TO BOARD?
“Permission granted,” Reaper says.
I press close to Tarkan’s side, not knowing what to expect.
The man creature who steps into the ship’s airlock looks a lot like Tarkan’s suit body, but with far more branding. He’s basically a walking logo. Tarkan’s brand only covers his forehead, but this man’s entire face is a Galactor brand, a large, bright orange ‘G’ covering his eyes, nose and mouth.
“WELCOME!” He says, somehow speaking in a tone of voice which imparts that same capital letter feeling as the messages which were being beamed into the ship. He has a broad smile, a frighteningly wide mouth beset with large, flat teeth. I thought Tarkan looked creepy, but this man creature takes it to a whole other level. When he smiles - which he does constantly, I feel as though I am going to be devoured by a friendly beast.
Tarkan shortens the leash as he feels me become tense, a small growl escaping my lips.
“MY NAME IS ROI,” he talk-shouts. “I’LL BE YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND AND GUIDE ON THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFE TIME.”
“Hello, Roi,” Tarkan says.
“HELLO!”
Roi smiles at Tarkan and Reaper with a glassy eyed expression of cheerfulness which makes a shiver run down my spine. I do not like these creatures. I’d rather we had been greeted by a full blooded Scythkin complete with facial knives and that ridge down their back that threatens to turn you into grated human if they turn around too quick than this smooth-skinned smiling mannequin of evolutionarily designed over friendliness.
“WHAT ARE YOUR NAMES, GENTLEMEN?”
“I’m Tark…”
“He is Taxachun, and I’m Norehturns,” Reaper says quickly. “We’re on a junket from the Infinite Debtorium system.”
“HOW EXCITING FOR YOU. WE HAVE A RANGE OF ACTIVITIES TO SUIT EVERY INTEREST, BUT FIRST, A FEW FORMALITIES. PLEASE FILL OUT THE FOLLOWING FORMS.”
His jaw hinges open, and a sheaf of papers come flying out. I let out a yelp and jump away, but Tarkan is already calming me.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “They survive on pure bureaucracy. It’s completely normal.”
“Thank you!” He says, taking the papers with both hands. “I can’t wait to fill these out carefully and in great detail.”
“OF COURSE! PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU REQUIRE ANY ASSISTANCE.”
Reaper and Tarkan exchange looks. I’m worried that they didn’t plan for this well enough, or at all. How could they? They didn’t know where they were going? They didn’t know what they’d find when they got there. All four of us have come here chasing the star imprinted on my arm.
Roi stands there just smiling blankly, waiting for the paperwork to begin.
“PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU REQUIRE ANY ASSISTANCE. YOUR BUSINESS IS IMPORTANT TO US.”
“Taxachun, why don’t you take the girls in the back,” Reaper says. “I’m going to be greedy and just fill these out all myself.”
“HA HA!”
Tarkan takes my leash and draws me back toward the door. On the other side, One is following him dutifully. It’s so strange to look at a slathering animal and then realize that she can fit inside a suit that makes her look like a dog. That’s a zinger I’ll have to save for when our scythkin masters aren’t listening.
We exit the room, and we all pull our suits off as soon as the door behind us is closed.
“I hate that guy!” One exclaims.
“Me too,” I agree. It might be the one time we have ever agreed with one another.
“Me three,” Tarkan chimes in. It is such a relief to see his violent body in all its sharp glory. I rush to him and hold him close, feel him pick me up and swing me into his arms. “It’s okay,” he reassures me.
“I don’t think it is,” One chimes in. “I don’t think this is going to work at all.”
She kicks the suit and turns away from it, an expression of disgust and annoyance on her face. She doesn’t want to be here. She’s not interested in finding out where I came from. She’s jealous because she lost where she came from.
“I was promised a puppy,” she pouts. “Nobody said I’d have to pretend to be a dog.”
“There’s worse things,” I argue over Tarkan’s shoulder.
“I know. I lived them.”
“So did I.”
“You both had hard lives,” Tarkan says. “And you’ll both benefit from what we find here. There are other humans in the universe, One. That’s a good thing.”
“Hurray,” she says dryly with a roll of her eyes.
“Or did you like being the only girl in the world?” I add.
“I’m not jealous of you, if that’s what you think.”
“Really? Then maybe you should take that jealous bitch suit off.”
“42!” Tarkan growls. “Don’t call One names.”
“She doesn’t have a name, she has a number. Just like me. Because she’s just like me.”
“I’m nothing like you,” One hisses, her eyes narrowed at me.
“You two are going to defeat me,” Tarkan sighs. “I will be broken on the wheel of your female aggression, torn limb from limb by your petty insults. A death by a thousand snide remarks. And to think I could have been consumed by an oculan worm instead, gutted by its thousands of teeth and turned into luggage by its owners instead of this.”
I laugh at his self-pity and settle next to him. I am nervous, that’s why I’m bickering with One. I am on the verge of discovering something about myself that I might not want to know. There’s a reason I woke up in chains, I’m sure of it. Someone wanted me gone from somewhere. Was it here?
A tap at the door sends One and I scurrying for our disguises. We’re just barely in the forms of great slobbering mastiffs when the door opens .
“That’s all the paperwork done,” Reaper says, doing his best to sound regretful and almost succeeding.
Tarkan leads us back out. I see Roi’s face crumple with dismay when he realizes that Tarkan didn’t leave us behind.
“THEY ARE VERY BIG GIRLS AREN’T THEY.”
I want to kill him. Something vicious and frightened rises up in me and makes the corners of my lips rise in a snarl. I brace myself for another tug of the leash around my animal shaped neck, but instead Tarkan gets down on one knee beside me and puts his fanged mouth close to my ear.
“I know,” he whispers. “I’d like to just rip his face off and use it as a dipping cup too, but we have to find out what’s going on here, and we can’t do that if we lose our disguises.”
I have never had any reason to trust anyone, but I do trust Tarkan. I take a deep breath and I force myself to calm down. I can’t always fight. In fact, I can almost never fight. Maybe I should stop trying. Maybe I should just be a good girl and n
ot tug on my leash and let him take care of everything. The very idea of that makes bile rise in my throat and the mastiff suit makes a yakking sound which draws all eyes to me.
“UNFORTUNATELY, THE GARDENS ARE A BIO-SECURE ZONE, SO YOU’LL NEED TO KENNEL THEM,” Roi beams uncomfortably.
“We never go anywhere without our girls,” Reaper says. “They’re no dirtier than we are. We bath them more than we bathe ourselves.”
I think I hear a groan from One. She’s going to give us away with all her human noises. Even the suit can’t contain her talent for whining.
The smile on Roi’s face wanes for a moment, then flashes back. “WE CAN ORGANIZE CAGING AT YOUR COST.”
“Or you can accept our appreciation via this voucher for one thousand credits,” Reaper suggests, palming what I guess is currency. He’s thought of everything.
“OR THAT,” Roi smiles. “COME, STEP INTO OUR SHUTTLE. WHAT ENVIRONMENT WOULD YOU LIKE TO PERUSE FIRST?”
Reaper and Tarkan look at one another, pretending they don’t have an agenda. I have to give it to them, they’re capable of more intelligence and subtlety than I thought scythkin could muster.
“What do you think, Norehturns?
“I don’t know, Taxachun,” Reaper muses. “Perhaps the human exhibit?”
“THE HUMAN EXHIBIT IS ONE OF THE FINEST WE HAVE. YOU ARE ABLE TO ENTER THE SIMULATION AND WALK AMONG REAL LIVE HUMANS. WE’RE VERY PROUD OF IT.”
“You hear that, Norehturns? We could enter a simulated Earth,” Tarkan says, his voice verging a little too intensely on the sarcastic. “How would they not know that we are aliens?”
“WELL!” Roi declares, his energy radiating a level of smugness I didn’t think possible. It oozes from his every word, the way he forms the sounds themselves makes each syllable seem as though it is looking down its nose at me. “WE HAVE A TECHNOLOGY BY WHICH YOU MAY DON SUITS WHICH ARE UNDETECTABLE TO THE HUMANS, AND TO MOST SENSORS.”
“WELL!” Tarkan booms back. “A technology of suits! What a marvel! What a surprise! What an inconceivable…”
I see Reaper reach over and not so subtly punch his broodmate right in the arm.
“We’re just so excited!” He says, covering for the attack. Tarkan is undeterred.
“Will we look like humans in the suits? JUST like humans? Wow!”
“YOU WILL BE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM ANY OTHER HUMAN IN THE SIMULATION.”
“Then how do we know that the other humans in the simulation are actually humans?” Tarkan poses the question with a wicked swiftness which belies his silliness. “They could just be anyone wearing a human suit.”
“NOT TRUE!” Roi declares. “WE GUARANTEE A 100% HUMAN EXPERIENCE.”
“Well, how can we be sure?”
“WE GUARANTEE A 100% HUMAN EXPERIENCE,” he repeats, louder and with an even wider smile which makes me think the top of his head is literally going to fall off and we’re going to be left staring at nothing but a waggling tongue atop his stupid neck.
“You can’t just repeat the word guarantee…”
“WE GUARANTEE…”
On the third repetition, I let out a snarl which snaps Roi out of his loop. Apparently he’s not used to difficult questions.
I can’t help but imagine how incredible it would be if Tarkan and Reaper burst out of their smooth faced disguises and just ate Roi’s face off. Hearing about people living in a simulation makes me sick. They’re prisoners and they don’t even have the dignity of knowing that they're in prison. The way these creatures farm them for profit, use them as entertainment, and apparently send some of us into brutal slavery has to end.
Hidden away in this suit, I begin to formulate a plan for revenge. Tarkan and Reaper are here out of curiosity, apparently only concerned with humanity’s existence. As long as there are some people alive, they seem to be satisfied. But that is not enough for me. It’s not good enough just to draw breath. It has to mean something.
Tarkan
So far, so good, I suppose. I am concerned that at any moment 42 is going to come bursting out of her skin and give the game away, but aside from a few snarls and growls which are actually very much in character, she seems to be content to stay by my side. I run my hand over the hound’s head, knowing she will feel it as a calming caress over her own head and neck.
“Good girl,” I murmur, meaning it. She has been such a good girl. None of this has been easy for her, I can only imagine the shock she is in, how much she probably needs to talk. Humans are almost incapable of processing their emotions without speaking them aloud. She will have to wait for that. I am eager to see this human simulation, something the Scythkin Empire should have done, in my opinion. We didn’t do enough to preserve humanity, and if not for Galactor we would have eliminated them entirely.
Roi’s shuttle swoops down into the garden of planetoids. As we close range, I can see a great many other ships and shuttles, thousands of them blinking along the flight paths between the exhibits.
We dock at one blue and green place, which is where I assume they keep the humans. Roi beams broadly as his shuttle opens up and deposits us into a waiting room.
“I’M GOING TO HAND YOU OVER TO ANDREW, HE’S OUR RESIDENT HUMAN.”
Roi makes a sweeping gesture with his hand as a man enters. He is wearing what I think humans used to call a shell suit. It is bright purple with a triple yellow stripe running down the outer sides of the pants, and a matching jacket with pink accents. It looks like the battle regalia of some species, but only in garish color. The fabric is cheap nylon; fuel by-product humans very much enjoyed clothing their soft flesh in. If I were human, I would weld myself a suit of metal and wear it at all times, but surprisingly few of them ever did that.
I was expecting another Galactor peon, an alien of some kind. But not this kind. Andrew is… actually a human, I think. I stare at him, wondering if he’s secretly some other kind of creature in a suit, but I don’t see any sign of that. Would I see any sign of it? I don’t know. He seems very natural though. He’s not super handsome. He’s not super large. He doesn’t have any strange bulges where he shouldn’t have a bulge. He looks as though he’s in his fifties, with a slight paunch. It doesn't look like the kind of character an alien wearing a suit would choose.
“Alrighty guys,” he says. “I’m just going to run you through a few of the conditions of entry, m’kay? Alright. Alright. Okay. Now, you can touch the humans. This isn’t called the Interstellar Human Petting Zoo for nothing, alright, okay?” He lets out a lurching laugh. “If you see a female, or a male that takes your fancy, you can try to make an approach on your own terms and see if they accept you, or we can sedate the person in question and…” he waggles his eyebrows in one of the more disturbing gestures I’ve ever seen eyebrows perform.
“And what?” Reaper asks the question in a voice so deep he’s about to break the illusion of his murketeer suit. We’re supposed to stay upbeat and friendly, no matter what. Murketeers never express negative emotions.
“And you can touch them at your leisure. They have no memory of it, so it doesn’t affect…”
I have to yank on 42’s leash hard to stop her from catching Andrew with her canines as she makes a vicious leaping motion which has the clear intent to kill.
“Whoa! Haha!” I laugh, pulling her hard against my leg. “She’s a little fresh today. Needs some walkies. Do you want some walkies girl?”
“Are you a human, sir?” Reaper distracts from 42’s near attack by asking Andrew about himself. Bastards of all species and races like to talk about themselves.
“Yep,” Andrew beams. “Born right here in Galactor space.”
“So you’re one of the exhibits?”
“Oh no!” He laughs. “I’m upper tier, bred for administration. I’m not a common exhibit. See, there’s different levels of human. Most humans live down below. They don’t know that they’re in a simulation. They think they live on Earth in the very early nineteen nineties.”
“Why the nin
eteen nineties?”
“They’re widely regarded by human historians as being the peak of human civilization. Medicine was advanced, technology had advanced far enough that society felt free, and one of the most celebrated humans of all time, a woman named Kim Kardashian had yet to make a sex tape.”
Reaper and I exchange puzzled looks. “Humans love sex tapes, why would it matter if one made one or not?”
“Believe it or not, the Kim Kardashian sex tape was a pivotal moment upon which the fate of the entire globe was decided. It is possible to pin point that event, and human society’s reaction to it as the slide into what we like to call the era of the entertainer. Nothing was truly real after that point.”
“Nothing was real?”
“They started to fake their asses. Once you fake your ass, there’s pretty much nothing left to be real about. And once everything is fake, then nothing matters. Humanity descended into an ever more reckless state of complete confusion from that point onwards. Terribly sad.”
I am skeptical about what Andrew is saying. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense. It’s that it almost makes too much sense. I never trust explanations I can understand, as a general rule. Life is never simple, so if it seems to be, I must be getting something wrong.
“Anywho,” Andrew continues. “I’m what they call upper tier, gold star, exclusive. I liase with Galactor corporation entities like Roi, and then I come back and deal with fake President Regan and fake Prime Minister Thatcher.”
“Do they know they’re fake?”
“They do not. They think I’m an Iranian arms dealer. They sell me guns, I manipulate the imaginary ones and zeroes which they consider to be important in their accounts, and then I ship the guns back to their inventories. That’s how the simulation’s economy works.”
I’m actually learning a lot right now. I never expected to enjoy a visit to a place like this as much as I am.
“That’s actually pretty smart,” I say.
“OW!” I say next, because 42 has just sunk the teeth of her very real and yet also very fake suit right into my fake upper thigh which never the less transmits pain signals to my brain. “BAD GIRL!”