The Slug Invasion

by Matthew Pelly

  Chapter 2 - The oldest Slug

  The Human

  After what seemed to be a very exciting moment, I was met with only disappointment at the boredom of it all. Instead of landing on the planet triumphantly, charging up to the Slug King's castle (or wherever he lived), and demanding that he heed what we had to say, we floated around the planet in space. That was it.

  Matthew told me that Slugenis Control (or whatever their equivalent was) had taken control of our ship, and would keep it circling the planet in a safe orbit - that is, in an orbit that won't crash into the hundreds or perhaps thousands of other ships also orbiting Slugenis.

  Since the interstellar ship was never designed to land on a planet, we had to get into the smaller scout ship first. A hatch opened at the face of the cylinder opposite the view screen, and we all went through it, Matthew dragging most of our stuff. It was pretty easy because the door was close to the edge of the curvature, so there was only a small step to get into it, due to the gravity pulling directly below us.

  Once inside, we followed a path which took us to the scout ship - a smaller ship, the same shade of purple as the other ship, that could land on planets. It also contained the transport ship inside it. Yes, that's right, a ship inside a ship inside a ship.

  Once in this scout ship, we strapped in (Matthew tied me up with a harness-of-sorts where the ship's curvature met its flat end, since I couldn't do it), and we parted from the interstellar ship. There was no gravity in this ship, since it wasn't rotating (we were so close to Slugenis, there was no point), but I didn't get to take advantage of it because I was tied down. Damn. I also didn't get to see any kind of cool view of us leaving the larger craft, and this ship's main view screen wasn't turned on, so I couldn't even see the map. Another damn.

  So, Slugenis Control had taken control of the scout ship as well, and they'd land it in Slugapital (Slugenis' very imaginative capital city) for us when we were at the front of the 'landing queue'. Apparently, there was a long list of people trying to enter the hub of a massive space civilisation. Who knew? I'd asked why we couldn't just land ourselves, but Boy told me that we humans couldn't even drive in two dimensions without crashing into each other, and yet there I was, judging them and their safety precautions. Well, that certainly made me shut up.

  We spent ages following the interstellar ship in orbit, like maybe half an hour. I know that doesn't sound like ages, but when you're floating above the wonders of an alien planet, believe me, half an hour is a lot. Once it was our turn to land, our ship stopped its following, and began the descent into the planet's atmosphere.

  There then followed a few minutes of a series of ship movements that shoved me around inside my restraints. The ship moving of its own accord would have felt weird if it hadn't been flying itself since we left Earth. During the course of this bumping around, the pull of gravity built up significantly, and it ended up feeling pretty close to what I was used to on Earth, although it might've been a bit stronger.

  The ship gave one last attempt to splatter me all over its insides when it gave a loud, reverberating thump. After that, all was still and silent. I didn't know too much about space travel and stuff, but I was pretty sure we'd just landed.

  "We have landed", Phill stated, in case no one knew.

  "Indeed we have", Matthew agreed. He started to unclip the harness that held him into his dish-shaped bowl (the Slugs' sick joke of a 'seat'), and said, "Get unstrapped. We're about to get out."

  In my excitement to get out of my seatbelt, I couldn't unclip it. Actually, I don't think excitement had anything to do with it; those buckles were not designed to come off by accident. Phill had to help me out after he'd freed himself. "Thanks", I told him. He didn't respond, but he did smile in my direction, so that was a good sign.

  "Everyone ready?" asked Boy.

  "Yes", replied Carmen, feeling the need to speak for some reason. Apart from Boy, the other Slugs were still quite characteristically silent.

  "Let's go then", Matthew said, and he made his way casually to the exit of the ship. There'd be no more playing with abstract gravity for me anymore; it back to plain-old unidirectional living.

  Of its own accord, a small hatchway at the end of the ship opened up. We all had to duck our heads to get through it. Directly beyond that was another hatchway, which also started to open after a few seconds. "Here we go", Matthew announced, doing his utmost to say it in a cool voice. It worked for me.

  The door opened, and we stepped out onto Slugenis. What I felt was a noticeable increase in heat, but not to the point of uncomfortable. What I heard was some loud, almost construction-like noises, but not to the point of painful. And what I saw, to the point of total frustration, was purple.

  The Slug

  'Why the hell is everything so damn purple?!' was the first thing that Ethan uttered. I had to laugh at that; he steps onto an alien planet and his first comment is a complaint about our colour scheme.

  'I'll explain it sometime', I promised him. Although it would be hard to explain that we see violet differently than him. Quite hard indeed.

  We stepped out onto the space dock of-sorts, and I noticed that I was having some difficulty moving about in the slightly higher gravity. I'd been on Earth for so long, I'd forgotten what it was like to live on my own home planet. Interesting.

  Another thing that hit me was the noise; literally hit me, due to sound being vibrations. The point is, it was quite loud here. I could hear various loud building and sparking noises that would drown out any soft speaking. Although it didn't override Ethan's exclamation. Of course, no measures had been undertaken to reduce the noise pollution, seeing as how none of the Slugs knew that such a thing as sound even existed. That would be one of many things that would change with our arrival.

  Boy and I were at the front, followed by Ethan, then Carmen, Frank and Rosetta, in contact with each other, and finally Phill. It was good that he was last; I would have to warn any Slugs that approached us.

  And approach us they did. Two Slugs came up to Boy and I, and although they didn't have any faces, much less expressions, I could tell by how they moved that they were unsure about our forms, our height, and these strange fabrics we wore over our slime.

  In truth, we cast a great contrast to the "ordinary" Slug. Normal Slugs were much shorter, had much less intricacies in their forms, and most definitely didn't wear clothes, due to the fact that we have no genitals and an effective biological way of regulating our temperature.

  The two Slugs that came up to us were in the most basic, multi-purpose form; practically a solid puddle with three arms and a neck. Their base was a thick glob of dark purple, slime's natural colour. Three "arms" extended out of the middle of the base, arranged in an equilateral triangle around their body. This had the effect of the Slug having two arms facing in every direction around themselves. The top of this base, about my waist-level, had a neck-like protrusion, starting thick but thinning out, that extended up to the height of my chest. The end of this neck had two dark holes, about the size of a Human eye-hole, for eyes, the only deviation from the uniform Slug purple - at least, in the visible spectrum.

  I was surprised that I didn't hear a gasp from Ethan behind me; in truth, I felt similar, as it had been so long since I'd seen a Slug in this form.

  Boy reached out a hand and grasped one of the Slugs' hands, which was actually just an arm ending in two prong-like fingers. The other Slug tentatively reached a hand towards me. I hesitated, considering just how much I wanted to read, before grasping it.

  And then I knew everything.

  I knew the Slug's trepidation at these strange newcomers, obviously Slug from our scent, but so unlike any it had seen before. I knew the Slug's confusion at why we would choose such a form for ourselves, and swath ourselves in such strange materials. I knew the Slug's bewilderment as it looked over my body, noting the colour of my slime, the blue-white things I had for eye-holes, and the stringy stuff coming out of my head. And I knew the Slug's
amazement as it fully realised just how intricate my form was; even with mental blocks, to mould such accurate hands, wrinkles, facial features and everything else I had was still a pretty decent feat, if I don't say so myself. Which I just did.

  Meanwhile, the Slug enquired my purpose here. I sent our wish to see the Slug King, and the Slug hesitated before responding. But it never got to respond. It saw something that drove all else from its mind, including the things that it didn't know I was seeing. And, unbeknownst to it, I saw what it saw.

  I saw through its eyes as it looked past me and to Ethan. To it, he was just another Slug in a strange form; he was too mixed up with the rest of us for the Slug to isolate his non-Slug scent. Ethan isn't what captivated its attention however. It looked past him still and saw something that it knew only one reaction to.

  A lifetime of indoctrination and training activated itself. It let go of me, assuming that I would act the same way, and lunged straight at Phill, standing there with a vacant expression on his face. The hard, straight architecture and the unmistakable machine-like, non-organic appearance of any Cyborg form never escapes a Slug, no matter how good their disguise.

  The other Slug, the one Boy was communicating with, noticed the commotion, and came to the same instant conclusion; it too threw itself at Phill, prepared to fight to the death, probably hoping that it would come to that.

  'No!' I yelled, trying desperately to turn and stop their attack. I was too slow, however, having been facing the other way, and neither of the Slugs could hear me.

  One Slug could hear me though. Carmen sidestepped herself in front of Phill and the two Slugs, causing them to crash into her instead and knock her onto the ground. Ethan let out a yelp as Phill passively watched Carmen fall, and as the rest of us rounded on the two attackers.

  They must have triggered some kind of signal, because, soon, Slugs were everywhere, all of them the same basic form, all of them surrounding and advancing on Phill. All of them! Surrounding. Advancing. All of them.

  I couldn't allow this to happen, I couldn't! After all the Cyborg had done, after all he had sacrificed, to be destroyed by his newfound allies would be the ultimate insult! I may be at war with his race, but Phill was one of us now, and I'd find a way to save him. Even if it killed me. Save him from this ultimate insult. Even if it killed me.

  Despite all of this activity, and the ambient noise of Slugenis, Phill's voice could still be clearly heard as he exclaimed, 'Fantastic.'

  The Cyborg

  This was not good. This was exactly the outcome that I had been reassured would not happen. I tried to comprehend my probable death; I had craved such an occurrence so many times before, and yet now I found the outcome unsatisfactory.

  I was surprised, and strangely pleased, when Carmen had used her body to defend me from the initial blow. I remembered when I had strived to earn the Slug's loyalty; it seemed that such an initiative had succeeded and paid dividends.

  Presently, a large group of Slugs were surrounding me, cutting off any chance I had of escape. As if I wanted to; where would I go? I'd determined long ago that the Cyborg world was closed to me. Staying with the Slugs was my only destination. It seemed that that destination was perhaps closed to me also.

  It soon became evident to me that something was wrong. The Slugs didn't attack me. If they planned to kill me, they'd do it without hesitation. Despite everyone, including myself, claiming that the Cyborgs were the leaders in efficiency, when it came to killing their enemies, the Slugs were an equal rival.

  I noticed two of the new Slugs inside the surrounding circle, in contact with members of that Slug circle, all of which were in contact with each other. Rosetta, Frank and Boy were also inside the circle, in contact with the ring. Carmen lay on the ground, her injuries seemingly insubstantial but temporarily debilitating, with Ethan crouching by her side, although his attention was focused on what was happening around us. Matthew had stepped in front of me, in an apparent gesture of protection. The effort was appreciated, but was obviously futile; I was surrounded, and no amount of widening his body to the point of stretching the fabric of his clothes could make Matt cover all around me.

  In short, I found myself in quite a predicament.

  I considered;

  I'd already established that, in this scenario at least, I did not wish to die. In order to further my chances of survival, I had to better understand my situation.

  Obviously, our Slugs, less Carmen and Matthew, were frantically trying to communicate with the ring of opposing Slugs, desperately trying to explain the situation to them. There were also two unknown Slugs in contact with them, but I had difficulty trying to fathom why. Were these the two Slugs that had initially tried to attack me? Perhaps. If so, why had they stopped their assault? In addition, what were they trying to say?

  Now this demanded further contemplation. Assuming that it was them, they had collided with Carmen when she had stepped in front of their attack. Thankfully, it appeared that it was not a fatal blow. Unfortunately, I had momentarily assigned all of my processes to witnessing Carmen's fall, and did not observe if they were the two Slugs I now considered.

  However, given that they had rammed into her, and not killed her, was it possible that she had communicated everything to them in that brief moment of contact? Can Slugs communicate with more than one at a time? Could the Slugs' sense work that fast? I decided that there was too little I didn't know about that matter; I would have to let time answer that question for me. As it answered everything.

  I processed Matthew's protective stance around me. His position indicated his mentality. He would defend me against his own race, perhaps even to the point of attacking them. Such an action would provoke never-before-seen retaliation, and would mark a first for the Slug Empire. Matt had already tested his species' tolerance enough; he couldn't allow something like this to jeopardise his reintegration into the Slug race. He couldn't allow something like me jeopardise his reintegration into the Slug race. IIII IIIcouldn't allow something like me to jeopardise his reintegration into the Slug race.

  I knew what I had to do.

  "Matthew", I spoke.

  "It'll be alright", he reassured me without looking back at me. "They're not getting anywhere near you."

  I could hear the anger in his voice, as if he blamed the other Slugs for wanting to kill me. I continued, "Leave."

  Even Carmen looked at me here, while struggling to stay upright without Ethan's assistance, as Matt shifted slightly and asked, "Why?"

  "You cannot fight all of them. You cannot convince them to let me go. You cannot leave Slugenis with me now. There is but one option left; you have to leave." I paused to allow him to comprehend what I was saying. "Don't risk your standing for my sake. Go and do what you came here to do. There is no other choice."

  I decided to wait for several seconds before continuing my persuasive speech, but Matthew moved first. Abandoning my side, he strode up to one of the circled Slugs and planted both of his hands on either side of its 'head'. After approximately 20 seconds in this pose, he released his grasp, and said to the others, "Let's go."

  Everyone in our group, Carmen included, albeit limping, got up and walked to him. As Ethan walked by me, he paused for a moment. "Don't worry about it", he tried to reassure me in a low voice. "We'll come back for you. And besides, there's no way they'd kill a random Cyborg who strolled onto their planet; they would want to find out why first, right?"

  He confidently joined the others, and I never got the chance to tell him that with no way of communicating with me, they would believe that they'd never know why I 'strolled onto their planet'. The speech had seemed to reassure the Human more than his target.

  Without a word, Matthew, Boy, Frank, Carmen - seemingly mostly recovered from the blow she sustained - Rosetta and Ethan walked away, although everyone but Matt cast a glance back at me first.

  I watched the circle of Slugs part to admit them passage and then close again, and tried to consider what they
might be thinking. Before I could come to a conclusion, however, the Slugs closed in on me.

  The Human

  "He'll be alright, won't he?" I asked anxiously as we power-walked through the Slug spaceport. If Carmen was hurting from the pace, she didn't complain. Although I knew I should be taking everything in, and remembering as much as I could to tell Pauline, the only thing I registered was that the place had no roof. Weird already.

  "He'd better be", Matthew almost growled.

  "We need to speak to the King immediately", Boy explained. "If we can convince him that Phill is harmless, and could indeed aid us, then he can give the order to free him."

  "They're not going to kill him yet, then?" I asked, starting to get hopeful.

  "I told that Slug I spoke to how old I was", Matt began, "and I told it to free Phill. Unfortunately, despite my age, that didn't work. So I just ordered it to not harm him. And if it doesn't do what I say, I'll make sure it loses its Honour."

  Now I was confused. "Why would it lose its Honour for not listening to you?" I asked.

  "Because I'm older than it", Matt replied simply.

  After a few seconds, it became clearer that he would not elaborate. I turned to Boy. "Boy?"

  He seemed to get what I meant. "Remember when we said that the oldest Slug is the strongest and wisest, and that is why they become the Slug King?" I nodded. "Well, the same goes for command. The King cannot make every decision, as you should well know." He said this as if I'd been the king of a species before, and knew from first-hand experience.

  But I just said, "Yeah."

  He carried on, "So we have a line of authority."

  "Like a chain of command?" I asked.

  "Precisely", Frank confirmed.

  "But", Boy added, "our command system goes by age. The older a Slug is, the more authority they have, because they are stronger and wiser than any younger Slugs."

  "So", I mused, "that Slugs should have heeded Matthew's order, because he is older than him, and technically a higher rank."

  "Precisely", Matt chose to speak. "But it didn't. Given the circumstances, I understand its trepidation to let loose a Cyborg, so I won't do anything about that. But if it tries to pull anything..."

  His voice trailed off and I almost shuddered, reminding myself never to try and hurt Phill. As if I needed any reason other than him being a robotic killing machine.

  By this stage, we had reached a different area of Slugenis; it looked like we had left the spaceport. And, for the love of God, almost everything was purple! It was just insane how much they loved that colour. I seriously would have made a huge complaint about it, but now wasn't the best time. I stopped looking around at the architecture, and hurried to catch up to Matthew's cracking pace.

  It looked like we were at some kind of massive train station. Firstly, the place was packed with hundreds of Slugs. All of the ones that I could see was in that weird shape that the others had been in, which had really freaked me out at first (actually, it still did). Every one of them seemed to ignore us, as well as each other, which suited me just fine. I could just imagine what their skin/slime felt like. Ugh.

  Onto the location itself, dozens of single-line monorail-like tracks ran in straight, parallel lines through the complex. Underneath, along and through each of these tracks was a large box every ten metres or so. On top of the tracks were squarish, nondescript carriages of three different sizes; small ones, medium ones, and, not surprisingly, large ones. Most of them were in a state of constant motion, always zipping around along their tracks. At one part, however, was a huge amount of stationary ones. I could see Slugs getting into them, and watched as the carriages zoomed off soon after.

  Following Matthew's lead, we all got into a large one which had enough space to fit the six of us plus a few more. Unfortunately, they had those stupid dishes for seats again, complete with large spike that looked like it was designed with anal probing in mind. Matt gave me an apologetic look and said, "You'll just have to stand or something."

  I stood at a corner, leaning against two of the sides, because there were no handles or anything to hold onto. Just like the spaceship, the carriage closed its door and just took off without any input from us, and rocketed off down its track.

  Over the trip, I would've gotten to see a fantastic view of Slugenis, of what the planet actually looked like and what its cities looked like. Yes, that's right, would've gotten. Would've gotten if that damn carriage had any damn windows! As soon as the door closed, the inside was reduced to near pitch-black light levels, so that I could barely see my immediate surroundings. Which was incredibly boring, and really didn't make much sense. Nothing was worse than knowing you're on an alien planet but not being able to see anything.

  No, they couldn't add any windows to this transportation system, which meant that I had nothing to do but whimper to myself in the corner, expecting the thing to take a violently sharp turn at any second, and desperately try to convince myself that that rattling sound was supposed to be happening.

  I had no idea how long this had been going for, but at some point in time we slowed down, eventually stopping. The door opened, and glorious light came in. "How did it know where we wanted to go?" I asked.

  "Because I told it where", Matthew answered me, despite the fact that the thing had no buttons or any other input device that I could see. Great. Very helpful.

  We stepped out of the open doorway. Once we were all out, it closed itself, and the carriage took off again, continuing down the track it had been going in.

  For the first time, it occurred to me to look up and see what the clouds were like. Sorry about that clouds, but there's kind of a fiasco going on, so you weren't really at the forefront of my mind. I'm sure you can understand my position.

  So I looked up, and I saw... clouds. Except that they weren't... clouds. But they kinda were. Well, how to describe them...

  You see, back on Earth, clouds tended to be separated from other clouds, the patterns of which is part of what made them so appealing. But here, on Slugenis, every cloud in the sky seemed to be fused together. Rather than many clouds, there was one huge, somewhat multilayered one, covered with holes, that dominated the sky. I guess that meant that whatever was under that monster got a lot of rain.

  They were pretty cool, I guess, but it just wasn't the same as back on Earth. Or maybe I'm just biased. OK, I'm probably definitely biased.

  "Are we here?" I asked after getting my fill of the spectacle.

  "Yet", Matthew said in a correcting tone. "Are we here yet. And, yes. Yes we are."

  What we stood outside was this: a largish building. The Slug King's grand palace was a largish building. It was obviously purple, made of some unknown material, shaped like a single-storey box, and had no roof that I could see.

  "This is it?" I asked.

  "Yes", replied Rosetta. "What's wrong with it?"

  "It's kind of..." I struggled for words. "Unimpressive."

  Boy said to me, "Why would it be impressive?"

  "Because!" I said.

  "Because why?"

  "It's the house of the King! It should be massive!"

  "Why?" the Slug asked again.

  For the life of me, I had no idea why, so I just mumbled, "Just because."

  "Don't worry about it", Matthew intervened. "Let's go in. And Ethan, put this on." He handed me a tube of sunblock.

  I started to open it as I asked, "Why?"

  "Slugenis' atmosphere lets in much more UV radiation than Earth's, even if not as much light actually hits you. Wouldn't want you getting sunburnt."

  As I applied the sunblock (I didn't bother asking where he'd gotten it from - it had English writing on it so it was good enough for me) we walked towards the building, noting its obvious absence of any royal gardens, balconies or grand arches, and approached the front door. A thin spike poked out of one side of the door, and Matthew walked right up to it, and thrust his palm onto it.

  I gasped, and stuttered, "Agh!"
/>   "What?" asked Frank, speaking for the first time in ages.

  "Why did he just do that?" I stammered.

  "We can't just walk into the Slug King's house", Boy explained. "We need permission first."

  "By making a bodily sacrifice?!" I asked, stupefied.

  No one spoke for a bit. "By requesting permission", Frank explained slowly, making me feel like I still knew nothing about these wretched Slugs.

  "OK then", I replied uneasily, still understanding a total amount of zero. That seemed to be the state I'd been in perpetually since Matthew told me he wasn't actually a human.

  After another few seconds, the metallic door swung open, and Matt stepped inside, seemingly oblivious to our discussion. We all stepped in to follow him, me admittedly somewhat timid (after taking one more glance up at the clouds - nope, still not like Earth).

  As if trying to reinforce the fact that no, the king of an entire species does not live here, the inside of the building was remarkably plain. It was shaped like a square, just one large room, and a big inverted square-based cone extended down from the ceiling. The tip of this cone was a pipe that ran into the ground. And I had absolutely no idea what it was for. Must be a Slug thing, I guess.

  Because the cone-thing was transparent, enough light came in to fill the whole room. It didn't seem that there was any need for lighting then (I sure couldn't see any lights), thanks to this big skylight of weirdness. I wonder how they saw anything at night?

  We stepped around the cone, and found a Slug sitting in a large bowl on its other side, opposite the door. Unlike the other Slugs, which at least had some semblance of a body, this one seemed like a great glop of slime, and nothing else. It was just a round blob, like a lump of dough, sitting in its dish, although it did have two of those black holes which I assumed were eyes.

  And speaking of that, this concave dish was much bigger than the ones I'd seen previously. The Slug inside it, which looked as if it contained the same amount of slime as Boy, looked much too small in it. The bowl's sides curved up at the floor and extended about thirty centimetres off the ground.

  "Hello", I said loudly, before remembering that it couldn't hear me.

  If it noticed our presence, it made no indication of it, although its hole-eyes were looking at us. I'd have to ask Matt one day why we needed eyes but they didn't. Stupid biologically simple Slugs.

  "It can't hear you", Matthew reminded me.

  "Yeah", I answered.

  After a moment of us just standing there, Matthew said, "Well, no time to waste, then", and strode right up to the King. He stood right in front of his ruler, and slapped one of his hands to the side of its body.

  It may have been a human thing, but this seemed very disrespectful to me. I don't know about the Slug King, but if I was a king (and I'd sure make a great one, wouldn't I?), I wouldn't want one of my subjects to slap me. This King didn't give any reaction to it though.

  It looked like this might take a while, so I turned around to one of the Slugs behind me and saw the big roof-cone thing again. "What is that?" I asked no one.

  "A liquid water catchment system", Boy explained. "Most Slug buildings have one."

  I looked at it again. "Please explain."

  "Water rains into the cone", he began. "You have rain on Earth, so you should understand this concept." Yes, I understand the concept of rain. But I just nodded, prompting him to continue. "The water is funnelled into the cone and down the pipe, where it is stored underground and pumped up for use."

  Well, that was pretty simple. I wondered why our roofs didn't work like that, but put it down to the Slugs having access to some special material that we don't that allows them to do it. That, and the fact that they don't mind having a massive upside-down traffic cone smack-bang in the middle of their houses.

  "Ahhhhh!" Matthew proclaimed, and he turned to us. I, in turn, turned to him, and noticed that he was out of breath, and had a very strange expression on his face.

  "Ahhhhh what?" I asked, not sure of what to expect.

  "You'll never believe it", Matthew egged me on. "Ever." He gave a little crazed laugh, but when it stopped, he looked down, ashamed.

  This didn't sound or look good at all - and when two senses agreed on something, they were usually right. "What is it?" Boy asked first, and I guessed that he felt the same way.

  "Well, first I got told off for just strolling in here and slapping the Slug King", Matt admitted sheepishly. Aha! I was right! "Apparently, they must've changed their protocol or something. Back in my day... Anyway, that was when it told me the news."

  "What... news?" I asked concernedly (if that was a word), hoping that it didn't involve Phill.

  "Well", Matthew began, but he stopped when he looked at me. "When a new Slug King is required, the oldest Slug currently alive becomes the new King, as we explained before. However, the oldest Slug is rarely on Slugenis, or anywhere nearby, when the old one dies. They must be brought back here first, which, as you know, can take quite a long time. For the duration of their transit, the oldest Slug currently on Slugenis becomes the temporary King, taking on the full responsibilities of the Slug King until the new one arrives."

  "Why are you explaining this?" Boy asked quickly.

  "Because", Matthew began, solemn now. "This Slug here is just temporary. The Slug King is dead."

  It was a measure of the gravity of this news that every Slug - Boy, Carmen, Frank and Rosetta - physically gasped. I got the distinct impression that this was not expected.

  "Dead?" whispered Rosetta. I don't remember if she'd ever whispered before.

  "Of natural causes", Matthew explained in a low voice. "Perhaps it'd just reached the age limit of a Slug. Or a new virus or disease got it. Nevertheless, it is dead, and the new King is en route."

  "So the oldest Slug on Slugenis now becomes the temporary King", I surmised. I know the old one had just died and all, but it was hard to feel sympathy for someone you've never met. And for someone who's wanted to die their whole life.

  "Precisely", Matt confirmed. "Up until now that was this Slug right here."

  "And?", I asked, as everyone else was still preoccupied with the revelation.

  "And", Matthew explained, "I am older than this Slug." He paused for a split second, before going on. "I am now the oldest Slug on Slugenis. So until the real one arrives, IIII IIIam the Slug King."

  Now it was my turn to go silent. It would have been extremely startling, but my friend added, "Didn't see that one coming! Well, maybe you did, but I sure didn't!"

  The Cyborg

  I was being held in an unknown location. While bound, the Slugs had completely blanketed me with a material which prevented visible light from entering, meaning that I could see nothing. No doubt it also blocked radio waves and other forms of electromagnetic radiation; this was to ensure that I could neither send nor receive any information. Obviously, the Slugs had no idea that my network capabilities were destroyed and that Matthew had removed all but two cameras on the front of my face.

  So this is where I waited. Time once again expressed its superiority over me, this time leaving me no way to measure its progress. I had no puddle of liquid to reflect the planet's movement relative to its star, no device for accurate timekeeping, no idea how long I had been here.

  I'd stopped transferring my senses to my long-term memory, but I still had to endure the initial experience of them, with not much else to dedicate my processes to.

  In short, it was torment.

  I had tried to process the likely eventuality of my sentence, but could come to no conclusion. Back in my cave, I could still see around me and hear the radio Matt had given me; clues as to my fate. Here, I had no such stimulus. Cyborg CPUs were based on organic brains; such is the only way to achieve true intelligence and sentience. However, this meant that without any senses to organise and interpret my surroundings, I had nothing and was nothing.

  As such, I had no measure by which to estimate how long I spent in that purgatory
. All that I knew was that I was there for some time, and then I was released. A group of Slugs pulled the material off of me, allowing wonderful light to once again fill my eyes, and unbound my restraints. They then warily left the room, leaving me to myself.

  I slowly stood and examined my surroundings. I was in a fairly small room, too small to stand up straight in, and the surfaces were moist. Water noiselessly trickled down some walls and collected in little puddles on the ground. All 6 sides were made of the same material. This evidence indicated that this was once a water tank, most probably drained in haste to accommodate my arrival. The Slugs had no prisons; none of them committed any crimes, as previously explained by my friends, and I would venture that this was the first time a Cyborg had ever set foot on Slugenis. Perhaps it would also be the last time.

  I left the tank, and emerged into what seemed to be a default Slug building, comprising a square room with an inverted cone with its base upon the roof. If there was any meaning to this configuration, it currently escaped me.

  Exiting the building, I entered the streets of the planet. Curiously, a large amount of fixed-position tracks marked the landscape, small Slug transportation devices periodically moving along their assigned tracks. Cyborgs had no equivalent, but Humans had similar vehicles called trains. Was this an example of parallel evolution? Or the limitations of organics? With no satisfactory answer, and no further evidence to develop one, I continued walking.

  As I travelled, I utilised the time that was made available to me to process my situation.

  I considered;

  Why had the Slugs released me, and set me loose upon their planet? It was extremely unlikely that Matthew and the others had managed to convince the Slug king to release me. Despite my nature, and my detachment to the Slugs' enemy, I was still one of them. I doubted that any Slug could convince any normal Slug that I was friendly and safe.

  So, given that I am still not trusted by the Slugs, why would they release me? Why would they not kill me? Such an act was unheard of; apart from our group, Slugs and Cyborgs never encountered each other without a fight ensuing. I determined the most probable answer to be that, due to my race and situation, I represented too great an anomaly to destroy. That explained their lack of hostile behaviour.

  However, this led me back to the original question; why let me go? I contemplated a variety of possible explanations, none of them associated with a satisfactory probability of truth. Perhaps Matt had managed to organise my release - but he would've come to get me himself. Perhaps the Slugs genuinely trust me because I was with Slugs when I entered Slugenis - but they wouldn't just leave me to my own devices. Perhaps they wanted to see if I knew my way around Slugenis - but common sense is enough to traverse a city, and they had no evidence of a possible destination.

  Eventually, however, I did come up with a hypothesis, one so intuitive that in the face of no viable alternative it must be true. Obviously, the Slugs had determined in my confinement that a lot of my capabilities had been somehow removed. I was still in a visually damaged state, as I had been for a sizeable period of time, and the Slugs had no Cyborg diagnosis equipment that could inform them that I was working normally - or, normally for me. This means that they believed - and were probably right in believing - that I was no in condition to fight or cause any trouble, at least not to multiple Slugs.

  Given this, they still had no idea why I had come to their planet. So their plan was plain; they released me to see what I would do. See why I'd come here. No doubt I was being extensively monitored at this very moment. There was likely several groups of Slugs watching my every move. In addition, while I had no information regarding Slugapital's automatic monitoring systems, if there were any, I could guarantee that they were trained on me.

  With this in mind, I continued my steady pace, trying to preserve the illusion that I had not caught onto the Slugs' strategy. I didn't wish them to know that just yet, as I couldn't predict what they would do.

  There was one thing I could predict, however. Once the Slugs realised that I had no true purpose on Slugenis - it was unlikely that they'd conclude that I came here with Matthew simply because of his misguided friendship - once they realised that I had no reason for being here, then they would kill me. Then I would truly end, and all of my efforts would be over, and Matthew would likely do something to further ostracise himself from his Empire. All because of their incapacity to understand.

  I had felt many things in my time before, things that I was never designed to feel. I'd felt boredom and loneliness; I'd felt surprise and joy; I'd felt failure and disappointment. In all my life, though, this was the first time I'd felt fear. Based on this occurrence, I determined that it was an unpleasant experience.

  The Human

  "So you're the King of the entire Slug species?" I asked as we left the 'palace'. Rosetta, Carmen and Frank weren't with us, as they'd been sent off to do 'Slug stuff', as Matthew explained it.

  "Yep", Matt replied cheerfully.

  "So you can do whatever you want?"

  "Well, within reasonable bounds", he said. "Wouldn't want to get corrupt, now, would we?"

  "I guess not", I said slowly.

  We walked in silence for a few more seconds (I was looking up, of course).

  Breaking it, Boy said, "He was a good King."

  "Amen to that", Matthew said appreciatively. "He was a mighty good King indeed."

  "Amen?" asked Boy.

  "Religious term", I explained, and he nodded quickly. I got the impression that, like other Slugs, he didn't get religion. It gave me a strange sense of satisfaction to think that there were some aspects of humanity that the Slugs simply didn't understand. Good - see how they like it.

  "So what will you do with your newfound powers?" I asked excitably. I had a sudden vision of getting palm leaf fanned and fed grapes by Slugs, but this vision was so twisted, not to mention they probably didn't have palm trees or grapes, that I quickly dispelled it.

  "Well, I've already given the order to free Phill", Matthew said. "So he's in no danger." Ah, so that was why he'd lost his depressed mood.

  "How would his captors know the order so quickly?" I questioned. "I thought that Slugs need to be in contact to communicate."

  "Wait, you don't know?" Boy asked, astonished. I shook my head, and he continued after a pause, "So, this whole time, you haven't known that. Didn't you wonder how we flew our ships, or gave directions to our transportation, or opened doors? Or managed to run an entire empire without remaining in constant contact with anyone?!"

  "Well", I shrugged, "I'd always just assumed that it was a Slug thing. Advanced technology or something like that."

  "Something like that", Matt echoed. "All right Ethan, your ignorance is about to lose its reign of control." Was that a compliment or an insult? He continued in a grand voice, "As we travel to rescue the already rescued Cyborg Phill, I shall describe, nay, explain to you exactly how this phenomenon of 'a Slug thing' works."

  "OK, I get it, it's awesome, just get on with it already", I complained.

  Matthew smirked, and then proceeded to tell me another major facet of Slug life.

  "Now, I don't know how human brains work, and I don't think you do either. No offence. And while we Slugs don't fully understand how our own brains work, we know how they give commands and send signals. Basically, there are two different types of signals that our brains can output; command signals and communication signals. Command signals are used to do stuff with slime cells, such as altering their form. That's really complicated, and probably another huge explanation so I won't get into it. And by get into it, I mean describe it."

  I suppressed the urge to whimper at this loss of immediate information, but contented myself with the fact that I was about to be overloaded anyway. "Continue", I urged him as we kept walking.

  "Commencing continue. Right. So the second signal type, the communication signal - this is used to activate Metal Slug and to send signals to other Slugs. These signal types are a s
imple electrical stream - it's this electricity that activates the electromagnets in the Metal Slug particles. When sending a signal, however, the signal is actually a rapid code of electron, no electron, electron, electron, no electron et-cetera et-cetera. Plus at least another three et-ceteras onto that, and you get the picture.

  "Now, when the recipient Slug's brain receives this basic code of electrons, it converts it into a sense that conveys a specific meaning. When in physical contact, each Slug has a unique... feel to them which acts as a personal identifier, although I'm not entirely sure how that works. But, other than that, you follow?"

  "I guess", I answered, completely oblivious as to where we were walking.

  "OK then, this code of electricity, what does it sound like?"

  "A code of electricity."

  "By God, you're right! Other than that though, it is practically identical to the computer binary code of ones and zeroes. It's just like one-zero-one-one-zero-zero-one. I'm sure you've heard of binary before? It was on Futurama, if I recall."

  "Yeah, I've heard of it."

  "Good. Now. You know those large, long spikes that you see quite frequently?" I nodded, and he laughed. "Wait, I have to ask, did you really see me shoving my hands and other parts of my body onto that and not wonder what it was for?" I nodded again, too proud yet simultaneously too embarrassed to say anything.

  "Alright", he continued, still slightly chuckling. "You would've seen those spikes on our message communicators, inside our seats on ships and transportation thingies, and outside the Slug King's door. Those are actually special, very sensitive electrical readers. They can actually read the electron stream of our brain signals, and convert them into binary code for our computers to use, process and transmit. In this way, we can control our ships, doors, transportation devices, and other stuff, as well as communicate over distances.

  "Also, these spikes can get binary code from any source, convert it back into electrical signals, and insert them into our body where we direct them to our brain and interpret them as if it was another Slug giving it straight to us."

  "Ahhhh", I murmured. "It all makes sense now."

  "Indeed", Matt said. "Alas, the aforementioned identifying feeling is not reproduced when the signal has been converted to and from binary, so identification of individuals becomes difficult. I trust that I'll need to remind you of this again at some point; I can't expect you to just completely remember everything that I tell you, the first time that I tell you, now can I?"

  "I suppose not", I answered distractedly.

  After a minute or so of silence, during which I was trying to remember every time I'd seen one of those spikes and reordering my perceptions of it (I doubted that sucking on one would be any less uncomfortable), Boy said, "I wonder how Phill's doing."

  Matthew reassured him, and me too for that matter, with, "Don't worry about him; I've given the order to free him. What could possibly go wrong? Or, on the contrary glass-half-full analogy, what could possibly not go wrong?" He paused for a second. "Wait, that was wrong. Stick with the possibly go wrong one. In either case, though, I'm sure he's having a grand time."