by Loki Renard
I’m not afraid of them. It’s impossible to be afraid of them. They just don’t have the physiology to be scary, but they are creepy, and there’s no way I’m leaving this laundry basket to go anywhere with them.
“What are you?” I peer between the plastic uprights at the creatures who seem, frankly, alien. I dismiss the possibility, but then quickly embrace it. Today I was plucked from the streets, flown through the air and dropped into the middle of the Earth, where apparently little egg men are doing laundry. Aliens, at this point, would be the closest thing to making sense.
“Come here, human,” one of them repeats. “You’re going to see the judiciar.”
I still don’t see any reason to leave the safety of the socks. They’re soft and comfortable, all freshly laundered.
“What if I don’t want to?”
One turns to the other. “She’s being difficult.”
“We should have anticipated this. Being difficult is the reason she was picked up in the first place.”
“True. Should we electrify her into submission?”
“I don’t see what choice we have. Power the prongs!”
“No!” I cry out. “Don’t electrify me. Just tell me what is happening.”
“You’re a bad human, and you are going to see the judiciar to be punished.”
“Because I didn’t kneel?”
Why am I even asking. Of course this is because I didn’t kneel.
“You didn’t follow instructions, and you’re still not following instructions. The judiciar will not be pleased. We will put this in our report. It will go on your permanent record.”
I don't know why, but the phrase permanent record frightens me more than anything should right now.
“What’s my permanent record used for?”
“The future.”
Is there anything more frightening than the future? Oh yes, this. Right now. This laundry basket of socks, these aliens with electric probes, the way the entire universe seems to be crumbling into pure nonsensical insanity.
“Discharge the probe!”
“NO!”
BZZZT.
Krave
They bring her to me insensate, and smelling faintly of burned flesh.
“She struggled, I take it.”
If I had scythkin minions working in this place there would be no need to use electricity to control a human female. Humans are so soft and weak, but these murketeers are even softer and weaker, literally constructed from pure bureaucracy. They’re not the enforcers I need. But the bulk of my brood is far from here and I must make do with what I have.
They drop her on the floor, flat out on her back, the light movements of her chest the only real indication she’s still breathing. She’s a pretty human. She’d probably be prettier if she were conscious and if her hair didn’t look as though it had gone through its own personal tornado, but maybe not. The tousled rebel look is cute.
Not that I care about cute. I care about obedient. And this one is far from obedient.
The incident report is as damning as it is short:
Subject remained standing in spite of a dozen insistences. Subject continued to stand when soul cannon was deployed on surrounding area. Subject was removed from simulation.
“What was done to her?”
The murketeers look at one another sheepishly. “She was refusing to leave the collections area. We were forced to subdue her.”
I grind my teeth, my fangs clicking with irritation. “And how am I supposed to interrogate her if she isn’t able to speak?”
“We can wake her up for you,” the murketeer on the left says. “We have smelling oils that will wake a human up from the other side of being.”
“Yes, why don’t you do that,” I sigh. Is it really too much to ask to have my prey delivered to me alert enough to be afraid of me? I have no use for an unconscious woman. I can’t intimidate someone who isn’t able to perceive me.
The murketeers bend down and uncap a couple of little bottles, from which a stench emerges so powerful that even I feel the urge to gag - and I have no gag reflex.
The female sits bolt upright and stares straight at me. I wait to hear her scream. Historically speaking, humans react with the kind of fear which entertains me greatly. Now she will realize the full extent of her mistake. She will beg to be allowed back into her cozy little simulation where all she has to do in return for a comfortable life is kneel once per day.
Her lips part. I wait for the scream.
Instead, there is a hoarse whisper.
“What the fuck.”
Seven
The last thing I remember was being jolted by several thousand volts of electricity. Now I’m staring at a creature who is, once again, Absolutely. Not. Human.
He is massive. He has horns emerging from a skull fashioned from pure insanity. His eyes burn with an orange glow, his skin is silvery and sharp in places, glinting like he’s wearing a thousand Ginsu knives. Except he’s not wearing them, he is them. He’s effectively naked, I realize; his, er, appendage sitting hard between his thighs, pressed erect against his lower belly. Wait, is that his manhood? Or is it another ridge? It’s hard to tell. He is configured broadly in the human sense, but everything about him is brutally alien. There are ridges and channels, hard plates and sharp edges. When he sits forward, I see there is a carved slot in the back of the throne for the massive scimitar of a ridge which rises between his shoulder blades.
“What the… are you?”
“I am Krave,” he says. “Scythkin judiciar.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
He leans further forward, his lips splitting into a befanged smile. “It means you fucked up.”
Krave
I enjoy fear. It is an energy I have always fed on, and right now this girl is giving me a feast. I should have had humans brought before me before now. I could have reveled in their groveling. I could have experienced the joy of seeing the unwilling kneel before me - this girl would not kneel when ordered to, but she is kneeling now. Well, technically she is sort of slumping to the side, her long legs out behind her. She’s wearing short shorts and long socks with three bands of color around the tops, and a top which clings to her upper body, the fabric pressing against her bosom and her waist, showing me the shape of her form. Her hair is the color of the sun, pulled back from her face in two banded groups, letting them cascade over her shoulders. She looks as though she is preparing for the kind of uniquely futile exercise humans love, the sort that takes them nowhere and achieves nothing whatsoever besides burning the excess calories they have ingested for personal amusement.
I wonder if she will cry. She has the kind of pretty blue eyes that would glisten when filled with tears. They are wide right now, her pupils dilated to take in all my horrific glory.
I had imagined that the first rebel would be a male, but the males have proved to be easily distracted by the installation of various motor vehicle vendors, many of which sell vehicles we make certain none of them could ever afford. We ensure that they are utterly unattainable, and then we make television programs which talk exclusively about those very same items. Any other species would lose interest in the unattainable, but humans are fascinated by it. They enjoy the torment. It entertains and drives them like no other.
I have learned much about the little creatures over whom I have ultimate authority, but still they surprise me.
Like this one. This girl.
“Why did you not kneel?”
“I didn’t want to.”
Too simple a reason to believe.
“Why did you not want to?”
She thinks about that, then presses her lips together in defiance.
It is quite amusing. I have all the power over this creature. I have the power of life and death, pleasure and pain. I could do anything to her I want. There is no authority above me, there is no hope beyond me. I intend to take my time with this little human. She has piqued my interest - and that is not easy
to do. For the first time since I took my place in this chair, I feel the thrill of potential conquest, and there is nothing more potentially intoxicating to a scythkin. My entire existence has been dedicated to the eradication of those who dared stand in my way. I have crushed worlds. I have consumed souls. I have broken the will of millions. And now I am expected to tend this colony like a gardener. I am supposed to nurture. I have the task of protecting a hundred thousand people who hoard and sleep and eat and do not know me. Except for this one. She alone has seen me. She knows what lurks beneath the world above.
“Are you a… devil?”
The innocence of that question makes me chuckle. She wishes I was a devil. A devil could be bargained with, but everything that happens now will happen on my terms, and mine alone.
Seven
He’s laughing. That’s not a yes, but it’s also not a no. His laughter sounds like magma grinding molten rock into… wait a moment. Shouldn’t I be bathing in lava right now? Isn’t that what is at the center of the world? I have seen a lot of documentaries over the years talking about tectonic plates and magma and other things hot and volcanic. But this place isn’t even hot. In fact, it’s kind of cold. I’m trembling. Every single hair on my body is standing erect. There is nothing natural about this encounter. The floor beneath my body is hard like slate but the walls are riveted steel. This is a place which has been constructed.
“Alien,” I whisper, more to myself than the monster before me. “They’re all alien.”
“Let me explain this to you outright,” he says. “As fun as it would be to watch you attempt to understand your predicament, I don’t see any reason for secrecy anymore. It isn’t as though you will be returning to the human world ever again.”
“I won’t be?”
“You won’t be,” he affirms.
“Then what am I going to be doing?”
His laughter surges again. I have never been laughed at so much in my life. I laugh along, hoping it is a good thing.
“It doesn’t occur to you that your life might be forfeit?”
“…. no?” I answer his question with a question, my voice reaching a high, hopeful pitch.
He breathes out, in what I would say was an attempt to regain self control if he was human. I don’t know what this strange creature’s behaviors mean - except the laughter, which seems to be common across our species.
Confused and frightened as I am, I am also desperately trying to make sense of what is happening to me. If my old roomie was still around, I would have said that she’d dropped something into my beverage as a prank - something illicit and mind-altering. But she hasn’t been around in… how long has it been now? The memory is lost in the fog of the wheneverago, a time we all understand as being the moments which exist just out of reach of consciousness and yet seem to hang about influencing the present. I can’t remember her name. I can’t even picture her face, and yet I know she owes me rent, and a new sweater.
What’s happening to me now is happening, I am sure of that. And because it is happening, that means it has to make sense, somewhere, somehow. If it doesn’t make sense, it can’t be happening. That’s one of the solid laws of the universe, as immutable as gravity and the way certain soda explodes if you put branded mints inside it.
“Why did you not consider that? You are a criminal. You have been brought before me for the passing of sentence and the imposition of justice.”
“I have?”
“You have,” he affirms. He shifts when he speaks, as if he doesn’t really like sitting in the chair. It doesn’t fit him. He’s not an animal made for sitting. He is a beast made to stride across vast open spaces. Even this relatively large room seems too small to contain him, and too empty to be of interest to him, or anyone else. This is a room where nobody is happy, an empty set waiting to be filled by players. I suppose today, that is us.
“I feel like I should have gotten a warning or something.”
“You were given a warning. Several warnings,” he says. “The drones warned you. Your fellow citizens tried to convince you to obey. Finally, you experienced a dose of the soul-whip - though in your case, I do not think a soul-whip terribly effective. You are the sort of girl who needs to feel real leather.”
Real leather. Those two words make me flush with heat, as some hidden memory from the wheneverago makes my nervous system react with a powerful rush of arousal and adrenaline all at once.
“I, uhm,” I swallow. “I still don’t think you’re going to hurt me.”
“Oh I’m going to hurt you,” he says, matter of fact.
My body fizzes and clenches. I’m not sure that’s the reaction he is going for. I don’t know what he wants, but I know that I never react the way I am supposed to. I have been contrary my entire life. There is an excitement in my veins I cannot deny - or resist. My heart is pounding, and my instincts are churning with a desire which makes no sense, and yet still overwhelms me. Maybe this is a protective instinct, some way for my mind to try to process the threat posed by this massive beast without giving in to natural terror.
I swallow and say nothing. He says he will hurt me, but so far he has not done a thing to me. The funny little egg men did far more to harm me than he. They have scuttled off now, left me to his tender mercies.
“But you’re not going to kill me,” I say, finding the bravery to talk back to him. It is probably not wise. He probably wants me to cower in terror. Should I try that? Would it work?
He tilts his head to the side. His horns bend forward, giving him an expression of intense interest.
“I’m not?” The question is delivered in a soft gravel.
“If you were going to kill me there wouldn’t be any point in dropping me out of the sky and into a laundry basket. You would have just had me dropped into the water. Or macerated by a thousand knives…” I trail off, looking at him, thinking the maceration could still happen.
As terrifying as this creature is, I don’t sense malice in him. He is enjoying himself in this conversation, which is beginning to border on banter. I don’t think he actually cares if I kneel or not. I have been yelled at before by people who were angry at me. Actually, I’ve been yelled at a lot by police officers and librarians and parking wardens and neighbors, and… all the times I’ve been yelled at, I’ve never enjoyed myself this much. Wait, am I enjoying this? Well, damn. I am.
That’s unexpected.
I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be enjoying this, but I’ve always been strange. I think I used to have a partner in crime in the faint memory of the woman whose room stands as a messy monument to her previous existence, but she’s gone now. I know that somehow, even if I don’t remember why. She is gone, and I have been left behind, and now I’ve fallen down the kind of hole you don’t climb back up.
“You’re a strange little human,” he says, the sharp parts of him making a metallic sliding sound as he moves in his chair to stare at me more intensely. I get the feeling that the worst is yet to come with Krave. He is sizing me up, trying to find an angle on me. He’s all edges and blades, but I’m smooth. If I stay that way, maybe I’ll be able to avoid being seriously hurt.
Krave
She’s a pretty little thing. A spectacular piece of work, and quite unique, even for a species which is well known for its uniqueness.
“And who are you?” I extend the question as a courtesy.
“I’m Seven,” she says, as if a name is an answer. I know if I were to press her further, I would get nothing but confusion from her. She doesn’t know who she is. She thinks she does, but she’s wrong. I looked over her file while she was being delivered. It was an interesting read. She is actually one of the older humans in the simulation, though she appears to be in her early twenties. She is #777, designated name, Seven. In her current life strand she is an aspiring artist, enjoys recreational drugs - or what she believes to be recreational drugs, and she thinks she is twenty three years old. Her actual age is far closer to a hundred years old, sti
ll a baby compared to my nearly four hundred years of age.
The simulation these humans live in has freed them from aging. Their telomeres no longer degrade with every replication. They are able to maintain youth, health, and beauty almost indefinitely. They, of course, are not aware of this. The threat of mortality is the only reason humans aren’t completely uncontrollable.
When I reviewed her file, I discovered that Seven has been reset no fewer than fifteen times, officially. Most of those times were short loops in which her memories were ghosted and her new reality was reset to her very early twenties. Early on, she was reset to infancy a couple of times, when the simulation was very new and there were teething problems. Galactor, the previous owners of the colony, were excellent record keepers.
Scythkin spread from star to star, planet to planet, destroying existing life and using the newly acquired resources to set up brood sites where we spawn great clutches of eggs. Galactor spread from planet to planet, system to system, setting up outlet stores and instituting economic tyranny. It is a hotly debated question as to which one of us is worse. Scythkin are a species fighting for survival, whereas Galactor is nothing but a soulless collective.
Seven shifts on the ground, looking as if she’s considering getting up. I let her rise from the floor, but the second she stands on her own two feet, I am out of my throne and pushing her back down until her knees meet the ground.
“Humans must kneel,” I growl.
Now that I am close, she cannot help her terror. It makes her eyes wide and watery, her muscles locking to make her completely still. She’s frozen, just like every good piece of prey. I stare into her eyes, and wonder what lurks inside that pretty blue expression of horror.
Seven
His hands are on my shoulders, each one of them far larger than the shoulder it touches. I can feel the sharp bladed surfaces of his claws on my back, and I can feel his breath on my face, hot and intense.
“Kneel.” He intones the word again with enough gravitas to make my knees buckle when I even attempt to get up. It is not possible to push up against his grip which is firm and impossibly strong.