by Loki Renard
He addresses the question to the younger woman, who is smiling quite happily, as though her knees aren’t pressing against hard concrete.
“Yes, sir, very willing sir.”
He nudges his cock toward her lipstick covered mouth. The scene is so lewd and wrong, I want to look away, but I can’t.
“Suck me, please.”
I don’t know why, but the please makes it all the more perverted. It’s because it’s not really a request. There’s a glazed look in her eyes which tells me she’s not fully aware of what is happening as she parts her lips and lets him push himself inside her mouth.
Tarkan and Reaper do not look impressed. It’s hard to tell what their real expressions are, with them being stuck behind two layers of suits. I don’t see Tarkan when I look up at the human holding the leash which wraps around my neck and keeps me tethered to this bizarre reality.
“Come on guys. Take any female you like. Or dude if you prefer. It doesn’t count if you just get sucked off,” he says, grunting and moaning slightly as he speaks through the pleasure of his compelled oral experience. “You get one pussy or ass hole on entrance, but mouths are complimentary.”
He’s disgusting. In every way.
“We’d like to get back to the tour if you could put your personal business on hold,” Reaper says stiffly. He has a stony expression which is mirrored by Tarkan. They do not seem to be interested in taking any available hole, which is how Andrew seems inclined to see the world. I see people with thoughts, feelings, suffering injustice and being repressed in ways they cannot understand. He sees a series of holes to be used and traded, taken advantage of and desecrated.
My stomach churns when I think about the possibility that I am from here. If I am, have I been in the same position that woman was just now? Did I give myself to aliens and human traitors just because I was told to? Was I nothing more than a commodity to be traded?
Andrew pulls his cock reluctantly free of the woman’s mouth and sends her on her way with a smirk. My hatred for him grows by the second. He is a traitor, working for the enemy, using his own people as slaves for his sick gratification. If this is what he is willing to do in front of perfect strangers, I can only imagine what happens when he is here alone.
Tarkan
I want to kill him. I want to kill him right here and right now. This weak, spineless creature is taking advantage of the females in this simulation as much as he pleases. That means he could have touched 42. Had her. The thought alone makes the suit start to bulge around me as my natural form begins to assert itself. I bet his throat tastes like cowardice and lies.
“The girls really don’t like this,” Reaper says to me, speaking over Andrew’s head.
“I know. We need to get them somewhere quiet and calm them down. Is there anywhere private?”
“Sure! We have a hotel which has a room where you can relax. There’s just one rule, you cannot take your suit off. It is imperative that none of the humans in this simulation ever see an alien. Aliens are the number one conspiracy, the territory of the mad, and it needs to stay that way.”
“You hear that, Taxachun?” Reaper looks at me significantly. “Keep the suit on.”
He’s spent a lifetime nagging me to do the right thing.
“It would also help to pick human names,” Andrew says. “I would have mentioned that in the orientation, but you gentlemen were in such a hurry…”
Another set of names? I can barely keep up with the fake name I have now. I’ll have to remember my fake name, while I walk around inside the impossibly tight suit within a suit. I hate this. This is not how scythkin behave. We should be displaying ourselves in our full glory, dominating those who dare oppose us.
“Taxachun…” Reaper says my fake name just at the right time, before my dorsal ridge can spring free and put this charade to an end.
I reach down and try to reassure 42, but she feels like a coiled spring of pure rage beside me, and I know she is thinking what I’m thinking.
Blissfully unaware of the gory death that awaits him, Andrew is showing us something new, a chunk of plastic he pulled from the hands of a passer-by.
“This is a personal confuser,” he says, opening it to show a scrolling screen of green text. “ On Earth, in the nineties, computers were fast becoming part of the human experience. We’ve adapted the technology so instead of allowing for the free exchange of ideas, it constantly lies to the user with randomly generated algorithms. We’ve got half the people out here thinking fat is bad for them and the other half thinking sugar is poison. It creates a delicious meal time tension.”
“So you just fuck with them,” I say, trying to keep my tone light.
“Fuck with them, fuck them in the ass, all the same thing,” he beams. “But seriously. We keep them confused on basic levels. What to eat. What to wear. Small things that keep them from ever noticing the big ones. We’re a distractible species.”
Everything he says makes everything worse than it was a minute before. This traitor is a willing participant in the ongoing subjugation of every human on this planet. And he’s a dick. But I need to know something else before he dies. As soon as we get to the hotel room, I am going to break this man’s neck and turn his entrails into party decorations, and nothing Reaper can say or do will stop me.
“How do you know which people in the simulation are captive humans and which are touring aliens or other elite humans, or…”
“The tattoos,” he says. “Every human bred for simulation purposes is marked with star map of this precise location. We used to put it on the buttocks, but we put it in more visible locations now, usually the inner arm somewhere. For a while we put it on the foreheads, but humans became 30% less attractive to other sentient species when we tattooed their faces.”
42
I’ve been marked. Not as a citizen, but as a slave. I realize in that moment, that I have never been free. I was born as an exhibit. What my captors were doing when Tarkan found me wasn’t anything different from what I could have expected where I came from.
That’s when I get angry. Very angry. I make a motion toward the asshole who declares my kind his slaves. My body only makes the smallest step, but that translates into a lunging motion for the suit, an aggressive snarling emitting from my fake throat. This suit allows me to express what would otherwise remain hidden and secret.
“Quiet!” Tarkan snaps the leash, tightening it around my neck. I know he’s trying to keep the situation calm, but fuck calm. And fuck this leash. I know why it is on. He wants to control my responses. He wants this to be about him. But it’s not his species which is being enslaved. And it’s not his life that has been torn apart. It’s mine.
And I’m done.
I make full use of the suit, biting Andrew’s arm hard enough for my teeth to sink into his flesh. His scream is ear shattering. He tries to pull away, but he cannot. Hot blood fills my mouth, but still I do not let go. I keep thinking back to what he did to the girl on the street, how casual his exploitation was.
“Get her off him, Tarkan!” Reaper snaps the order, but it’s too late. On the other side, One has joined the attack with me. I never thought she and I would be united in anything, but we’re both using our alien given ferocity to destroy this lecherous traitor.
“They’re going to kill him.”
It’s just an observation that leaves Tarkan’s mouth. No more, no less. He’s done enough killing in his life that this doesn’t concern him.
“We can’t let them kill him.”
Reaper is now also failing to sound concerned.
“I mean, we could,” Tarkan says as Andrew’s body sinks to the ground between One and I, flopping and spasming.
“I think we just did,” Reaper replies with a sigh. “Human design is ridiculous. Can’t stand up to attack for even a minute. It’s amazing they made it out of the stone age.”
Somewhere in the midst of my vicious attack the suit tears off. The teeth that felt so strong and so dangerou
s seconds ago melt away and I am left crouching on the ground. Nude.
Andrew is screaming, the crowd of people around us is simultaneously pulling away and surging closer, creating a weird push-pull effect of humanity around me. The suit is gone, and with the suit, the leash. I’m free.
Tarkan reaches for me, but I’m gone in an instant. Adrenaline is flooding my system and all I can think to do is run.
Chapter Eight - Roomie
42
I flee into the crowd. If Tarkan is following me, he’s not able to keep up as I dart through traffic as if I’ve done it thousands of times before. Something tells me I might have done. This is the world I was created in, I’m sure of it. This is where I’m from.
I take the first corner I can find. Left. Left. Then a right. Then another left. Then… it’s almost as if I know where I’m going. My feet are taking me somewhere my mind can’t remember ever having been.
“Fortuna!”
It takes several seconds for my mind to realize that it's a name that’s being shouted - and that it is being shouted at me in a way which strongly implies that it is my name.
Someone is running toward me at full speed. I prepare to sell my life dearly, my fists clenched, ready to sock this person right in the nose as she closes the distance on me. But the closer she gets, and the more I can see her expression, the more I get the idea that this is a friend. She’s beaming like a maniac, but not the way that creepy Roi was smiling. Hers is genuine and lights up her whole face.
“Holy shit, Fortuna!” She grabs me and hugs me. “I haven’t seen you for fucking ages! Where were you?”
“Uhm…” I pause just a little too long for it to be natural.
“Not again,” she sighs. “I’m taking you home. You know you’re naked, right?”
“Erm.”
“You have to come home!” She insists, dragging me along by the hand. I think briefly about resisting, but I have the feeling that this is a friend of mine, or was. This is someone who has my best interests at heart - and someone who is suffering without knowing it.
It’s obvious from what Andrew said that no humans usually leave the simulation - and that might be true, but I bet even fewer of them come back. From this girl’s perspective, I am back from the dead.
She pulls me into a building and takes the stairs two at a time. She’s chattering the whole time about people I’m supposed to know and events which I guess happened to me. She pulls me into an apartment. A place I’ve been before. I know by the smell, which is instantly familiar and makes every muscle in my body relax with a sense of safety. This isn’t just a place I’ve been before. This is somewhere I used to call home.
“You’re late on rent.” she says, then smiles. “Ah fuck it, who cares. You're back! You've been gone for weeks. I thought you were dead or in France. Which might be the same thing. Haha!”
I look at this woman who might have been my friend once. Maybe more. This is someone I lived with. A roommate, I guess? She has short blond hair cut into a sleek bob which swings around her face, the kind of naturally narrowed eyes and sharp chin which give her an intelligent look. She’s curvy, wearing highlighter pink legwarmers over a leotard, as if she just came from an exercise class?
“Been working out?”
“Oh yeah, step aerobics,” she says with a broad smile. “It’s not doing anything for my ass, but my ass is doing a whole lot for the cute instructor, if you know what I mean. You know what I mean, you slut.” She smiles so happily I can’t take offense to the word, even though it’s one of the worst things you can call a woman. She clearly means it as some kind of compliment.”
“That’s okay, you, uhm, rancid whore?” I try to copy
“Wow, that’s offensive!” Her face gets all pinched for a second, then she laughs. “I’m just kidding. Don’t look so worried. Do you want a lunchable? They’re new and they’re sooooo good!”
“Uhm…”
“I bought like thirty on sale, so I’ve been eating them for breakfast, lunch, and tea. Do you think the lunchable police will come down here and arrest me?” She guffaws as she breaks open a plastic ration container and starts rifling through the contents with her forefinger.
She’s taking my disappearance and return in stride. She obviously doesn’t know enough about how this alleged world works to worry about me.
“Are you alright?”
“I could do with some water,” I say.
I know I’ve left Tarkan and Reaper behind, and maybe I should feel more guilty about that, but I don’t know why they brought me here. Just curiosity? Was it worth it? I’m glad they did, or I would never have known the truth, but is truth enough to make up for the danger I’m sure I’m now in? And what am I going to do now that I feel like an alien inside the world which thinks I belong there?
“Hey, do you have a tattoo like this one?”
“Of course!” She pulls back her sleeve and shows me. “Everyone has one. They were all the range in the wheneverago. Wow, you’re really fucking out of it.”
“Wheneverago?”
“Yeah,” she nods, biting through a cracker. “Remember how there’s like that time nobody can quite remember? The wheneverago. That’s what we’re calling it now. It’s like a super trendy way to say, hey, aren’t we all super fucking stupid.”
I sense a certain cynicism in her. I like it.
“You really don’t seem okay,” she says. “Do you want me to get you an appointment with a doctor?”
I watch as she walks across the room and pulls a piece of plastic with a curly cord from the wall. A low tone emits from the plastic handle, which she puts to her face in one of the weirdest displays I’ve ever seen. There’s just enough time for me to shake my head and tell her no before she starts pressing buttons on the part that is still on the wall.
“I’m fine,” I say, forcing a smile.
“I mean, you’re not fine. You're naked. You were scooting through the streets bare-assed,” she says. “So something is up.”
Instinct tells me this is someone I can trust. Someone who apparently has my back no matter what.
“And you’re still naked,” she says. “So maybe go to your room and put something on and we can talk about this more without you, like, rubbing your butt all over my favorite chair.”
I turn around and look at the three doors that lead out of the living room. I don’t know what one I’m supposed to go through, and she notices that right away.
“Jeez, Fortuna, what did you take this time?” She shakes her head. “You’ve got to stop taking what they giving away in the clubs. The only good drug is one you buy.”
She takes me by the arm and gently leads me to the second door, which opens into an absolute bombsite of a room. There’s stuff everywhere. Clothes have been pulled from the drawers and strewn on the floor, the bed doesn’t even have a sheet on it. There are cans stacked up along the window, creating an aluminum curtain through which very little sun filters. It smells like decay in here, and I’m pretty sure the moment she opened the door was the moment a hundred little furry creatures scuttled for cover.
“This is gross.”
“Yeah,” she says. “You’re gross.”
“I must have been attacked here!” I conclude, thinking that this surely has to be the site of a struggle. Maybe they took me here. Or maybe they tried to and I fought back. Is that blood on the wall?
“What, no. This is just how much of a slob you are,” she laughs. “Your room always looks like this. I gave up on getting the security deposit back literally years ago.”
She takes me by the arm and pulls me back toward her, looking into my face. “Seriously, Fortuna. What did you take? I’ve seen you come back from your parties messed up before, but you don’t seem to remember anything this time.”
“I’m okay. I guess I did get messed up,” I say. I’m not ready to tell her the truth. Though I know that very soon, this whole thing is going to come to an end one way or another. Andrew saw me burst out
of my dog suit and run away. He’s been bitten by me. There’s no way he doesn’t alert the authorities. There’s no way this entire simulation isn’t going to be combed over by Tarkan and Reaper, and probably whoever the hell Galactor are. But I don’t care about that right now. I’m standing on the precipice of what used to be my old life and even though I don’t actively remember it, I can feel it all around me, trying to draw me back in. I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just try to blend back in with the world I came from. Now that I’m inside the simulation, everything feels very real. Hell, it is real. It’s just not true. And I don’t know if I care about how true my world needs to be.
“Have a shower," she suggests. “I’ll grab you some clothes, and make you some food and then when you feel better you can tell me what the fuck you did this time!”
“Okay,” I smile. Thank god Tarkan educated me on some elements of humanity, enough to know what a shower is, and to enjoy it when I get inside.
Am I being a traitor by running from Tarkan? I miss him already, but I had to get out of there. Something was drawing me deeper into the city, an instinct I had to follow.
I grab a quick shower, just zip under the water long enough to get the stray bits of Andrew off me, and then I dart out again and dress myself in the hot pink leggings and silver pullover which my roomie has left out for me. She’s so sweet. I wish I knew her name.
“Feeling better?”
“Yeah, much,” I say, rubbing the towel through my hair. “Hey. I have to tell you something. It’s going to sound weird, but you have to try to believe me.”
She has a skeptical expression on her face, but she nods. I figure if anyone is going to listen to me, it will be her. She seems like my only friend.
“I wasn’t on a drug trip. I was sent away. Taken off this planet. Put somewhere bad.”
“That sounds like a trip to me,” she quips. “What do you mean somewhere bad?”