by G. L. Argain
“Take cover!”
Each and every robotic Selentor exploded, causing chunks of debris to fly at frightening speeds in various directions. A few of the AOIB members had been hit, but no severe injuries had been taken. The walls of the building had been damaged, and the nearby teleporters had been altogether destroyed.
What inconceivable strength that Selentor had! Could it have been the armored suit? Or was it truly how much more powerful one got from that muscle-altering gene? Andrew was not able to move—he had never experienced so much pain from one hit, not from the hupac or anything else during his training. His blood was flooding with adrenalin, but it was nothing to help him get back up.
The Selentor shot Shul a couple more times until all that was left was an unmoving, metallic body, covered in holes the size of basketballs.
Andrew tried to reach out to Shul’s body, but every inch that he moved seemed to increase the pain tenfold. His eyesight was becoming blurry, but he managed to see the Selentor approach him. He bent over and broke Andrew’s kneecaps as well as his shoulders. With even more pain to deal with, Andrew nearly fainted. He stayed awake for a few more seconds to see he was being dragged out of the laboratory, and he could see the hupac right beside him as they were both to be teleported onto a Selentor ship. The hupac didn’t look like it was breathing, let alone conscious. The Selentor made off with the human and the hupac before Juvir and the AOIB had the chance to make any moves.
All of this had happened in about one hundred seconds.
Chapter 18
“Wake up.”
Andrew was in a stupor; his sense of time and place was dull. However, he could tell that he was not lying down, but rather being hanged by his arms. He was stirring into consciousness, but he felt like he could not awaken fully. His eyes felt so heavy, as though they were no longer able to open. Every muscle in his body was so relaxed, so hard to move. He never bothered to breath harder, which would increase his oxygen intake and help him—
“Wake up, already!”
His eyes opened as an electric shock was applied onto his torso. He let out a small grunt after the shock stopped, looking to the front of him to see what caused it. There was the Selentor—the exact same one that murdered Anzem and Shul, right in front of him. The human and the alien were alone in a cubic, metallic room, twenty feet on each and every side. Andrew was indeed being hanged against a wall, with some tiny yet powerful tractor beams holding him to it by the wrists as well as his legs and neck. The Selentor had barely touched Andrew with a plasma blade—the electric shock jumped onto him like an arc. And yet, he was not badly hurt by it, even with how high the voltage was on that thing.
“Welcome back, Andrew.”
“What? What’s going on,” Andrew said groggily.
“Do you remember me at all? Probably not since I got my muscle genetics improved. I’m the guy you first tried to kill, pouring all of those chemicals on me.”
Andrew drew in some air, then let it out by speaking, “You’re that guy?”
“It’s Lieutenant Voriaku, and you should address me as such. Especially due to my promotion up to Lieutenant.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is that you….mutilated me, killed Anzem and Shul, and worst of all, YOU KILLED AN ANIMAL JUST TO USE IT AS BAIT!!!”
“Huh? Oh, you mean that hupac? What’s so wrong about using bait?”
“That ‘bait’ was an intelligent being, just like you and I—”
“I’ll stop you right there. That beast is not an intel-being, and neither are you!”
“Bullcrap! I might understand why you think the hupac is not quite like you and I, but how am I labeled as an animal while you are not?”
“I wouldn’t say you are an animal, more so you are a savage, but the best way of telling you the difference is to tell you what exactly an intel-being is.” Voriaku paused for a moment. “What do you believe an intelligent being is?”
Andrew gathered his thoughts for nearly a minute before responding; Voriaku waited patiently. “To actually have intelligence. To use that intelligence, as well as any arms or tools that you have, so that you don’t just survive in the world, but also so you thrive. With me and the hupac working together, we had no one above us—we thrived in the wild, being able to enjoy life without worrying about survival.” The human himself was marveled by his own words.
Voriaku reacted to this speech by driving the plasma blade into Andrew’s right shoulder. As the human shouted out, the blood either dried up from the electricity or spilled out onto his chest.
“Any pet can thrive under their owners, since they get food and shelter, maybe even companionship. But what separates a pet from an intel-being?”
Andrew could have thought of a variety of ideas that would satisfy the question: freedom, sense of self, a purpose in life. However, Voriaku gave an answer that he did not expect: “Control. That is what makes one civil.”
This statement bewildered Andrew, and he soon developed the need to ask. Before he could speak, however, Voriaku said the words for him. “You think that control isn’t the answer? On the contrary, it’s the best one. Think about how your species evolved. How did humans start off, in regards to control?”
He needed to think about this for a good minute—his thoughts were increasingly focused on stopping the pain in his shoulder, although he could do nearly nothing about it. He finally gave his answer: “Humans were bound by nature.”
“Good, but I’m looking for something more.”
“Uh….they didn’t rule the world?”
“No! That’s a key element for what I’ll say later, but that’s not it. Again!”
Andrew felt that his answers were making less and less sense. However, he suddenly thought about that one night, after he and the hupac took down that gray, leathery creature. He was thinking about something….something about people and freedom….
“They didn’t rule themselves?”
“There we go!”
“But that’s just government! Humans have had government for thousands of years!”
“But not complete government. What separates civilized beings such as I from savages such as yourself is this: intel-beings utilize control over everything—ourselves, our planets, everything that we were bound by before!”
Andrew was not believing this. Why would totalitarianism be the key to being an intelligent person?
“Of course, we can’t have absolute control over positively everything, but we are able to completely control everything that matters to us. Nature, weather, and most importantly, our own actions and thoughts. To make sure nothing gets out of hand, to ensure everything goes as one wants it to, that is the answer! And before you say anything else….” Voriaku stopped Andrew from interjecting once more. “I’d like to say why I’m telling you all this rather than just killing you instantly. We’ll have time for more questions later.”
Voriaku walked to a corner of the room and pressed his finger onto a device on his wrist. Part of the ceiling above opened up to reveal a beam that shined down upon him; this beam caused him to float in mid-air. Andrew looked towards him, able to move his eyes but hardly his head.
“Anti-gravity beam. It cancels out the artificial gravity already on this spaceship, so I can give my legs a break from standing for so long.”
The human remained silent.
“But, anyway, let me explain your purpose here. Commander Fall wants to see you die. Not just dead, but to actually see you die, slowly and painfully. Ordinarily, it sounds cruel, but the fact that you’re not an intel-being makes up for it. He’s watching us now through a monitor.”
The human made a growl from its larynx.
“One more attempt at resistance, and you’ll have to make me step out of this comfortable beam and impale you again with my plasma blade. Do you want that?”
Andrew shook his head, however slightly.
“Good.”
Voriaku stepped out of the beam anyway, t
ook out the plasma blade, and cut off his right foot. The tractor beam moved up his leg from his ankle to keep the human restrained. Andrew screamed for five seconds, then he kept his teeth clenched and his voice down as he stared at Voriaku, both with fear and resentment. It was more painful than having his shoulder impaled.
“Because I can,” Voriaku stated, “and also for revenge.” He walked back to his beam. “You were to be killed from the start, but when you actually managed to escape and even gain the support of our enemies—the AOIB—you were labeled a serious threat. Even more so, you had killed two innocent bystanders while you were in the armory with that old sword.” Andrew remembered that segmented sword that he brought to Ku-an Doel. He also remembered those two aliens, but what he did to them was out of self-defense. Or maybe fear of what they might have done to him. “Luckily, there is nothing now to let you escape again. No robots are enabled, all of the defenses are engaged, and you—you savage bastard—are stuck on a wall, while I have complete control over your being.”
Andrew began to shed tears.
“But there’s something which I like to do as a little preference of mine, something that I grant to even savages such as yourself. I want my enemies to know everything I want them to know before they die. That way, the moment before I make the final strike and turn your body into a corpse, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you were just a little bit civil like myself.”
Andrew hesitated for a few seconds before saying, “Why?”
“The universe has enough people that I don’t like. But when I see and listen to somebody that truly believes differently than I do, or if that somebody is so incredibly stupid that it becomes unbearably annoying, I don’t want him or her to simply die. I don’t even want to stop at seeing that person suffer. I want to change them. I want to see more people in the universe that would agree with me, but I don’t want to see less people in general.”
“Wait.”
Voriaku allowed Andrew to speak by not moving out of his beam. “Go on.”
Because of the pain from earlier, his speech was slow and strained. “If….you don’t….want people….you like to die,….then why do you kill….the ones that just….changed their ways for you?”
The Selentor was the one to give pause in answering this time. “Well, I guess it’s because if people die stupid, then they are forever stupid. If they die as honorable intel-beings, then they are forever intel-beings.”
“So forcing me….to follow your beliefs….actually sounds….ethical to you?”
As Voriaku stepped out of the beam, Andrew winced. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing….nothing,” said Andrew as he trembled.
“You think it’s bad to impose your beliefs onto others? Do you like to be around people you don’t agree with? This is exactly why you need to change!” He drew out the plasma blade.
“Oh, God no—”
The blade sliced the other foot off, and Andrew screamed violently again. It was almost blood-curdling.
“And another one bites the dust.”
He was in unbelievable pain. Through a surveillance camera, too small to be detected by anyone with the naked eye, Commander Fall was watching, enjoying himself like any other sadist.
Once the human got his nerve together again, he said, “You’re gonna run out of limbs soon….so why can’t you just stop? I can’t take this….”
“Oh, no I’m not. I’ve got a solution right here.”
Voriaku pulled out a bottle with a dark purple liquid from inside his suit. He opened the cap and force-fed it to Andrew. An intense burning sensation ran throughout his whole body, but it was more intense as it got closer to his absent feet. To his surprise, his feet grew back right before his eyes within a matter of seconds.
“They look just like your other feet, too,” said Voriaku. He took the old feet, pressed another button on his wrist-computer, and dumped them down a chute that had just popped up.
“Whu….where did you just put those feet? In the airlock like they were trash?”
“What are you, crazy? Why would I waste perfectly good meat?”
Andrew’s eyes opened wide in horror and disgust.
Voriaku continued: “Sure, we can get food from our pills, but real, organic food just tastes so much better! Us intel-beings dare not eat each other, unless in extreme circumstances, and it’s hard to come by mere animals anymore!”
The human remained speechless, utterly shocked. However, an epiphany had developed when he thought about the hupac. “No….you didn’t….”
“Did what?”
“You ate the fucking hupac! GOD DAMNED PRICKS!!! RRRRAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!”
“I should’ve done this sooner.” Voriaku pulled out a syringe and injected Andrew with a sedative.
“AAAAAGGGgghhhh……”
“Too bad you won’t feel as much pain from now on, but at least you won’t overreact again. And just for the record, that hupac is still in the meat locker.”
Andrew hung from the wall in disappointment. He was still upset about Voriaku treating him and the hupac as meat, but instead of acting out in a fit of rage, he hanged motionless in a daze of depression and sorrow—not quite enough to make him cry, however.
“We’ve got another hour together, so we should get started with some Q&A. However, I cannot keep you alive for much longer than that, because otherwise I would be wasting the commander’s time, and well….let’s just say I wouldn’t be lieutenant anymore.”
Andrew focused his eyes onto Voriaku’s, not in much of a daze now, but still unwilling to rebel again.
“So let the changes commence. And remember this, now and for eternity: it’s not the end, it’s just the beginning.”
Chapter 19
“Why is control such a big key for being intelligent?” inquired Andrew.
“Because,” Voriaku replied, “the more intelligence people have, the more likely they are to use that intelligence towards what they want. Nobody wants to be cold and hungry with no shelter to stay in—not even animals. But unlike wild animals, who just have to deal with it, intel-beings can use their intelligence and their hands—or whatever they use to pick up tools—to their advantage. When we have control of our hunger and our immediate environment, we are able to satisfy our basic needs. But once that is satisfied, we want more. We ultimately want everything for ourselves, and the best way to achieve that is through controlling what we desire.
“We seek out what pleases us, and we want to eliminate anything that does the opposite. We want to keep people that we like, and we want to get rid of those that we disapprove of. We want to stay well fed, safe, comfortable, and most of all, in control; we want the power to make our lives easy and satisfactory. But what we want more is to not have that taken away once we have it. Once we have power, we want to keep it, and we forget what it’s like to live without it. We fear that something terrible will happen to us if we are deprived of power and control, and that we can never be so comfortable and satisfied again. So now we have to use our power in a way so that we don’t lose it. We must fully control what we already have so that it never escapes our grasp. People that will never think differently, a constant means of food and water, a government that never falls out of power, etcetera, etcetera. Now that’s a strange loop: using power to keep power.”
“What about free will? You know, the freedom to do what you want?”
“That’s another thing achieved with power and control. With the right amount of power, we can do anything we want.”
“But that’s only for those with control! What about the intel-beings who have to do your bidding?”
“Huh? Oh, the public? We control them out of their own accord—they want us to have the power. You see, with great power comes great responsibility—everybody knows that. The public doesn’t want to bear that much responsibility, so they let us officials keep our positions, as long as they’re satisfied.”
“So would that make the ‘regular’ peop
le savages and not intel-beings?”
“Oh, no, although I do know where you’re coming from. The people within society do not have much control individually, but if they were all to become unhappy about something that we do, then they would have the capacity to overpower us. Like trying to control a giant dragon—it’s best to understand its behavior and control it accordingly rather than simply forcing it into a cage. There’s always the chance that it could escape the cage.”
How did Voriaku know what a dragon was? Was there an alien planet on which dragons actually existed? Or did he just study human folklore enough to realize the idea?
Dragons aside, Andrew said, “Let me get this straight—you are a species that uses a totalitarian government to control everything, including people, so that nothing goes out of your favor?”
“I never actually mentioned totalitarianism, although that sounds about right. The Selentors are a species ruled by High Leader Rolpjym, and I personally enjoy everything that he does. Sometimes he asks the people what they want, then he gives it to them as long as his power does not diminish as a result.”
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having absolute control as a ruler? Isn’t there some minority who’s bound to be dissatisfied with what your ‘high leader’ does? As though they would try to do something to drive you out of power?”
“Oh, please. A few people aren’t going to make a difference. The people are either too ignorant or comfortable to do anything, or even if they did feel dissatisfied, they would be too intimidated to take us on. I know so because the dictatorship of the High Leader has remained strong for millions of years. How long have you said humans had government? Thousands of years?”
Andrew remained silent.
“Ooh, and now that I think about it, it’s time to take off another limb.” And so, Voriaku pushed himself out of the beam, activated his plasma blade, and sliced off Andrew’s left calve; he had once again screamed for a few seconds while the pain endured for several minutes. The tractor beam that was once holding Andrew’s left calve to the wall had moved up to his thigh; if his entire leg was removed, then the beam would altogether disappear—at least until the leg grew back.