by Loki Renard
Having been left in charge of aliens who are not my kind is difficult for me. My instincts are to murder them brutally and leave their carcasses for hatchlings to devour, but I have been strictly ordered to keep essential staff intact, and that means this goofy looking little creature and all his equally goofy friends.
“We are ready to reset,” he says. “In an hour, none of them will remember this having happened.”
INCOMING HUMAN
A voice blares officiously through the subterranean machinery.
“What the hell? Incoming human?” I glare at a murketeer, as if it is his fault.
“They’re sending a human woman to you, Mr Tyank,” the murketeer says, tapping away at his little electronic pad. They live and die by those things.
The murketeers insist on calling me Mr. I loathe that. Mr is a prefix for human men. I am not human. You’d think the blazing eyes, body covered in serrated ridges of pure hell and the horns which lay back over my head in irritation every time they call me Mr would be a clue.
“Why is she being sent here?”
The murketeer taps away again.
“Says she was grossly insubordinate. In need of discipline, containment, and possession.”
“So she’s for… me?”
“Yes, Mr Tyank.”
I’m so surprised by that piece of information that I barely notice what I am sure is another insulting, “Mr.”
I have been left babysitting a simulation of a hundred thousand or so humans, but I did not imagine I would be given one of my very own. Human females are rare, delicate, beautiful, winsome creatures. Several of my clutch have taken their own. It has become something of a trend since the species went basically extinct.
Scythkin clutches travel together, powerful males going from planet to planet, destroying everything our paths and claiming it for our own.
That has changed with the taking of the simulation. We cannot simply conquer and destroy it. It must be tended to. And that means I am stuck here in the office, taking care of inventory and watching over the humans who live inside a generated reality based on a mish-mash of cultural elements from the continent of America during the 1980’s and 1990’s, commonly regarded as the second most comforting period of human history.
It felt like a punishment when I was left here. I know Krave felt the same way when he was first obliged to act as simulation manager. He was restless and frustrated for a long time, and ended up installing an authoritarian regime which was swiftly overthrown by his rebellious little mate.
Maybe this is Krave rewarding me for my service. A woman, for my own. A woman to keep. A woman to bury my flesh inside and feel the ripples of her pleasure. Human women are a delicacy, a prized possession. Being guardian of a simulation with over fifty thousand of them and not being able to be with any of them has been torment beyond torment. But perhaps my time has come.
“Bring her to me,” I say. "As soon as she arrives.”
I begin to make plans for her arrival. She may be frightened after her ordeal. I will have to be sensitive that. I will have to hold back my natural lust and ensure that she is not broken in any way before I embark on a sensual conquest of my first human female.
“Initiate the simulation reset,” I order. “Prepare my quarters for a female guest.”
“She should go into the cells, Mr Tyank,” the murketeer says. "She's being removed from the simulation population under a disciplinary code. That means she has proven to be a problem. She should be punished.”
“I’ll punish her in my own way.”
“Copulation is not punishment. Not to human females. They are ravenous in their sexual appetites, Mr Tya….”
His sentence ends in a squeal as I drag him up off the ground and bring him toward my snarling face, my clawed hand wrapped around his weak neck.
“Call me Mr Tyank again, and I will snap you like a fucking twig," I growl.
“S…s…. sir?” He tries again.
I put him down. Gently, so not as to break him. “Tyank will do. Now. Bring me my woman.”
Karen
“WOOOOOOAHH!”
I scream as my metal wings detach and let me plummet toward the ocean. Terror fills my body, panic, adrenaline, all completely useless because there is nothing that stops falling. I can’t do anything but sink through the air like a balloon doesn’t. Complaining will get me nothing. It strikes me that I perhaps should have thought more carefully about antagonizing a massive alien beast telling me my reality was a lie, but that insight comes too late as I fall at terminal velocity toward the uncaring ocean…
Is that a hole?
It is a hole. A big black spot of nothing in the middle of the water, opening me up and swallowing me down. I could swear I hear a leviathan gulp as it takes me into the blackness, where I still fall toward a pin prick of strange light at the end of a tunnel I don’t want to exit.
Go toward the light, they said.
Fuck that, I screamed.
But it’s coming toward me. I can’t stop the inevitable. I can’t fight my destiny.
FWUMP!
I land on something soft and pillowy and find myself staring through thick plasticy bars. When I look up, I see that they curve gently away from me. There is a sign nearby, visible through the bars.
WELCOME TO THE LAUNDRY BASKET AT THE END OF THE WORLD
There's another sign tacked on at the bottom.
(now under new management)
I have landed on an endless pile of socks. Not a single one of them has a pair. They are all unique individuals, lying in laundered smugness beneath my body. I never thought lost laundry would save my life, but here I am, unharmed, though very confused.
Maybe I’m tripping. Maybe that neighbor girl of mine slipped some tweak, or tang, or whatever it is the kids these days are calling their wacky-backy.
I sit in the contained area, feeling very much discombobulated. I see no managers here. I have been discarded, just thrown away like an old sock. Or, a new one… looking around, I get the impression that these socks have likely only been worn once before disappearing to this part of the void.
“Hello?” I call out. “Hello? I’m stuck!”
I would try to un-stick myself, but it is hard to stand up on the socks. I keep slipping through them, and find myself afraid of sinking through them, like a fabric quicksand of sorts. Who knows what horrors are buried in this basket. I cannot be the first person to have been tossed into it.
In addition to being terrified and confused, I am fuming. Not only has the entire city gone insane at the feet of a mad creature with knives for knees and a cheese grater for a chest, but I have been thrown down a hole in the middle of a disconnected ocean and now I sit inside a plastic container, waiting to be retrieved by whatever horrors might wait for me outside. This is unacceptable.
A door opens. I hear it slide and then I hear the pitter patter of feet approaching swiftly. I know immediately that these are not the aliens I anticipated. There is nothing large and seething about them. They are small, wide eyed, massive mouthed. They pad up to me with big smiles and little hands.
“Karen?”
“Yes. I’m Karen.”
Their voices are squeaky and slightly nasal.
“Karen, you have been removed from the simulation for disruptive behavior. You will now speak to the manager.”
Finally. About damn time.
“Are you going to let me out of this cosmic sock pile?”
“Yes, yes. One moment.”
They take hold of some levers outside the basket and begin manipulating what I can only describe as a claw hand which descends from above.
“To the left,” one squeaks. “No. To the right. The other right! Back! Back! Left….”
The claw grasps at me, but does not make full contact with my body and instead grazes off me and slides away without catching me.
“Let me out! Cut this open! Make a door!” I begin making demands in the hope one of them works.
&n
bsp; “One moment please,” the little alien says. “We’ll try again.”
He tries again, with much the same success.
"Maybe she’s too heavy,” one says to the other.
“She likely weighs more than the socks do.”
Of course I weigh more than socks do. This is what has been lurking under our world the entire time? Small aliens with a very poor grasp of basic physics? This explains a lot. Or actually, nothing, but thinking it explains a lot makes me feel as though I understand something, and right now, the feeling of understanding is very important because absolutely nothing makes any kind of sense.
“Get me out of here this instant!”
“How many socks do you think she weighs?”
They ignore me. If anything sparks my ire, it is being ignored. I stand up as best I can and I raise my voice to an authoritatively shrill tone.
“Bring me the manager!”
They stop and look at one another.
“We could bring him here.”
“But he said to bring her to him. That’s the other way around. He won't like that.”
“Oh no he won’t like that at all.”
“But the claw’s not working on her.”
“Tip the basket over?”
“Can’t do that. Then what’s at the bottom would come out.”
“Oh, right. Can't have what’s at the bottom coming out.”
“What’s at the bottom!?” I squeal the question, only to be further ignored.
“Let’s get him. We’ll tell him she's not cooperating. He’ll believe that. Humans never behave.”
“He’ll expect us to deal with her.”
“She's been sent to him to be dealt with. Let him deal with her.”
“Whenever I see him, I’ll be sure to tell him, whoever he is, that he's being represented by utter morons,” I interject.
"What is taking so long?”
The question is snarled by the massive beast who just strode in through the door. I take an instinctive step back behind the pile of socks, putting more fabric and material between me and the monster manager.
“We can’t get her out of the basket, Mr…. sir… Tyank.”
“Damn stupid system," he growls. “It should be a cage. With a door. Not a basket.”
“The basket is from the Galactor period,” the little alien stammers. “They never removed humans from the simulation. They only removed their socks from time to time. It’s the scythkin who repurposed the ocean hole to remove humans.”
The alien gives them a violent look which makes them fall silent. He has gravitas. I admire that, though of course I loathe him and his kind. I’m not entirely sure what his kind are, but I have enough loathing packed away inside me for use on any occasion. I don’t need knowledge when I have ample hate ready to be deployed.
He comes closer and I see him for more of the monster he is. Aliens run my world. That truth is only just starting to sink in now, and I can feel it will take several days to truly become part of my actual reality. These beasts of teeth, claw, and blade have been making every decision which shapes my world for I do not know how long. How dare they?
I have so many words in store for him. I will not allow myself to be intimidated by his massive form, or become afraid of his fearsome physicality. I am Karen, and if I know how to do anything, it is complain, harangue and generally lecture until I get my way.
“So,” he says. “You're the troublemaker.”
I draw back, look down my nose, and give him the benefit of the full force of my offense. The basket gives me the height to do that, set as it is on a raised platform. Probably a counter. This is, after all, the laundry room at the end of existence, where things come to be cleansed. I haven’t been told that explicitly, but it seems to be a safe assumption.
There is a sense of chaos here, a disconnection between the massive alien with the fiery eyes and the broad smiled, round headed smaller creatures which must do his bidding, however inefficiently. He does not belong here. He is out of place here among the discarded laundry. Uncomfortable with a world which cannot be his own.
He approaches the basket, reaches in, and plucks me out as if I weigh no more than a kitten. His hand is massive, just like the rest of him. He is covered in the same sharp blades I saw on the other creature of his kind. They retract as my body swings near in an evident attempt to avoid hurting me. I appreciate it.
He places me down on the ground with what I can only describe as an abundance of care, then looks down at me with a curious expression, as if appraising me. I do not know what an alien might make of me. I know what I make of him. He’s massive, brutal, warlike in appearance and I surmise, temperament. He is everything a human should fear, but I am Karen, and I fear nothing.
“I’m Karen,” I say. “I have some complaints regarding the management of this…” I struggle for a word for a moment, not sure how to describe the collapse of my entire existence “…world.”
“Oh, you do?” He folds his massive blade ridden arms over his chest and cocks his head to the side, his horns twitching forward as if to indicate interest. “Please, do enlighten me.”
“For one, you cannot gather everybody on a Tuesday afternoon and tell them reality isn't real. It’s not nice.”
“Not nice,” he says, as if making a mental note. “Mhm. Do go on.”
I draw myself up, trying to make myself tall, but there’s no way to come up any higher than his ribs. I am not a tall woman. I never have been. That has not stopped me lecturing everyone from policeman to politicians.
“It’s not only not nice. It's incompetent. Do you know how afraid people were? There was panic in the streets.”
“Panic in the streets," he repeats, nodding again.
I get the impression I am not being taken seriously. I know when I am being patronized. It is a mistake many male authority figures have made when trying to handle me. I, however, am immune to being patronized.
“You say you're the manager, and all you can do is repeat what I say? Are you a manager or a parrot?”
“Neither," he says.
“Well these minions of yours seem to think you are. I'd like to speak to the actual manager. The person, or horned beast in charge of this excuse for a planet.”
He makes a small grunting sound, then leans down toward me so my face is very near his, and his is very near mine.
“I am scythkin,” he growls. “We are the scourge of the universe, slayers of species, destroyers of worlds, and we do not take orders from humans named Karen.”
“I haven’t even begun to give you orders.”
My feet make an unscheduled departure from the floor as he grips me under the arms and holds me aloft, much like a small lion cub being presented to a menagerie of wild beasts. Except the only beasts here are the round headed grin factories who now dare laugh at me.
“Small human woman,” he growls, giving me the full benefit of an up close and personal examination of his flame red eyes, harsh bladed body, and horns which I see now gleam with sharpness as if waiting to gore someone. “You will learn to speak with respect.”
Words fail me.
I have been trying to cling to my old way of being, to find the deep well of Karen-ness which resides inside me and makes me who I am, but I am scared of him. How could I not be? He is an unknown monster who has hold of me and seems infuriated by my comments. A sensible person would be quiet, but a sensible person would have sulked back to their apartment and waited for the aliens to make everything okay again. I’m not sensible. I’m Karen.
He lowers me to the ground, slowly letting my feet touch the floor before he lets me go. I breathe out, a long exhalation, and I resort to the question at the core of my being, my own personal koan which has guided me through life.
“Who is your manager?”
“Who is my manager?” He repeats the question, confused. I suppose I will have to clarify what I mean.
Tyank
“You’re not the manager," she
says. “You’re not management material.”
How does she know that I am not first hatched? For a moment, when I first grabbed her, I saw fear in her eyes. Then it switched to something else, a sort of lip curling disdain. This woman has untold power. I can sense it burning inside her. The short blonde cut of her hair frames a face of pure determination, and her eyes burn with a fury equal to any scythkin.
She is older than the other humans I have had contact with, but that does not diminish her beauty or appeal. It deepens it. My broodkin have claimed easier females. Broken, desperate little things who were strong in their own ways, but none who dared challenge our kind the way this woman does.
“I am very much the manager, human,” I tell her.
“Then you need to answer some questions.”
“Sure, what questions?”
“Such as… “ she seems to be searching for a thought. “Such as… How dare you!?”
“How dare I what?”
“How dare you come to our planet, and…”
“Have you not understood yet? This isn't your planet. This is a simulation made to look something like a planet so you can live here without freaking out. This is a zoo for humans.”
“Except for when one of you stands in the middle of the city center and shows his monstrous self to the world…”
“There's no world. There's a simulated disc with a plug hole in it.”
"That's not acceptable.”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
She looks around, as if trying to find inspiration for her next complaint, while simultaneously trying to process what she’s been told. It is not easy for humans to come to terms with illusions, even though most of them happily construct their own and live inside them anyway.
I suppose it’s different when the lie you live inside isn't your own.
“I want to go to the real Earth,” she says, her eyes flashing as if she has just made a good point.
"You can’t. It exploded through time and now bits of it are sort of everywhen.”