//------------------------------// // Ch. 1: Another Day // Story: Extraria: And Then I Was to Serve // by Thinking Engine //------------------------------// Extraria: And Then I Was to Serve Chapter 1: Another Day Prereader: Zeela ---- “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” -Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher, ca. 600 BC Pain. A lot of it, all over the place. Not just one kind of pain either, but the full spectrum of throbbing, stabbing, burning, and aching torment, like a rainbow of agony. A pounding headache is the first thing I feel as I come to. How long have I been out? What happened? Next is grinding pain in every joint in my body, along with a burning sensation in my wrists and ankles, and a freezing cold gnawing at the very core of my bones, like I’ve been hauled out of a frozen lake. With a shuddering breath, I try to huddle myself together, only to realize that I can't move at all. I appear to be strapped to some kind of slab or table, naked and soaking wet. My eyes open wide in horror, only to reveal that I am also blindfolded. What the fuck is this? Suddenly, a sharp prod to me side. I yelp in pain and attempt to shift away from whatever just poked me. “It reacted to that! I believe it's conscious now.” a gravelly wheezing male voice announces from my left. “Aha!” another male voice, this one much smoother and crisper “Good thing there was some Sal Volatile around here. I imagine it would wake it up even if it was dead. Ugh...” Smelling salts? Guess that explains why my nostrils are burning, but why? What's going on? “Why did you want to wake it up anyway, Doctor? It might be dangerous. Just look at its canine teeth! Mark my words, you'll regret this when it drags you back to its hive to feed it's hatchlings!” he warns half-jokingly. A third voice, a nasal and heavily accented one, speaks up from the opposite side of the table. “Nonsense! Eet is obviously a male mammal, or an analogue of one at least! Observe! Bodyhair, admittedly pitiful, und ze vestigial nippulz und skin muscles causink ze skin to appear bumpy! Ze canines also appear vestigial, like ours, und eet lacks claws. No, I belief eet is mostly harmless.” Alright, I’ve heard enough. This is obviously some kind of fucked up idea of a joke. «And I believe your brain is vestigial.” I snap at the Doctor Strangelove wannabe. “What the fuck is going on? Did my coworkers put you up to this? Let me go already!” Whatever I expected to happen, it was not the minute-long utter silence that followed my outburst. No familiar voice laughing to let me know this was all just a sick prank. The room is completely silent save for the distant sound of birds outside, the quiet ticking of a clock somewhere, and the slightly labored breathing of gravelly wheezy-guy. Why aren't they saying anything? Shit...this isn't a prank...I’ve been kidnapped, haven't I? What are they going to do to me? Am I going to die? Panic starts to take hold of me, and I struggle against the ropes holding me down. “Y-you motherfuckers! Let me go!” I scream and thrash about, desperate to get away from whatever fate awaits me. I feel the ropes cutting into my wrists, and warm blood starts trickling across my frigid skin. “It...talked...oh dear...” Crispy-guy mutters. I'm too busy panicking and screaming incoherently to hear anything. “Zis changes everythink, Herr Merlot... If we...Oy! Oy! He's bleedink!” “Calm it down before it hurts itself! Righty!” Something heavy pushes against my chest, pinning me to the table. “Calm down!” Gravelly-guy says firmly “We're not going to harm you, I assure you, but you need to calm down.” I stop struggling, more out of resignation than compliance. I can't stop myself from shaking though. “Good...” the weight is lifted from my chest before he continues “I'd like you to answer a few questions before we decide what to do with you. Can you do that?” I nod. It's not like I have much of a choice anyway. I just want to go home... “Are you aggressive? -Cough-” His breathing seems to become more labored “Do you fight?”. “I-I’ve only fought in defense. I don't start fights.” I answer truthfully. He doesn't reply to this, but takes a moment before he asks his next question. “Meat -cough cough- Do you eat meat?” the question confuses me, but it sounds like he's expecting an answer. Am I being held captive by some kind of vegan terrorists? Why would a kidnapper want to know what I eat? “I..yes...” I do eat meat regularly, if my modest salary permits it. Truth be told, I’d eat more of it if I could, and I usually reward myself by going to a steakhouse on paydays if I’ve worked a lot of overtime lately. “I...see. ” my captor seems to think for a moment “Are you a hunter? Do you kill what you eat yourself?” “M-my grandfather taught me how to gut the fish we caught when I was a kid, but other than that, n-no, never.” I start to get nervous again, afraid that my captors might change their minds about not harming me. These questions have a certain PETAesque undertone to them. The other two have been quiet while I’ve been interrogated. “If I told you that all you have to do to become free again is to... -cough- is to eat the flesh of another captive...would you accept my offer?” I take it back. This guy is the bastard child of Jigsaw and Hannibal Lecter. My mind goes blank and I start shaking violently in blind terror. Then I start hyperventilating and panicking again. “Y-you sick fucks! I won't do it! I won't do it! I won't do it! Fuck you! I won't do it!” I scream between choked sobs, straining against the ropes. I can't do this. Why is this happening to me? I've never done anything to deserve this fucked up nightmare. They might as well just kill me and get it over with! “O-oy, Righty...” the doctor sounds concerned. Again, I'm pushed down against the table “Calm down! Calm down! There's no...-cough- no way we'd do that. It was a necessary question. I'm done now. You can relax.” “Und you tell him zis after causink him an emotional trauma...” he sighs “Still, I think zis reaction is promisink?” “Hm...” “W-why are you doing this? Wh-what did I do wrong?” I'm still shaken, but at least I'm not screaming and thrashing around wildly anymore. This time, Crispy-guy speaks up...I think the doctor called him Merlot? “It is through no fault of your own that you are here, I'm afraid...” he says with a somber voice “We can talk about that later. As for why...” He pauses for a moment, possibly to formulate a statement in his mind. I have no way of telling with the blindfold still on. “Let's just say that your appearance here has been as much of a shock to us as I’m sure our appearance will be to you.” “What is that supposed to mean?” “Zis is no time for playink with words, Merlot. But you're right. I've certainly never heard about anythink like zis before...” “Regardless, we had to secure you for our own safety. The questions were meant to determine how likely a threat you would be to us if we freed you.” I have no idea what to say. I have no idea how to even begin putting his words into context. There's an awkward silence in the room again. 'Righty' is the first one to break it. “Right. Let's get this over with.” he says as something slides my blindfold off. The ropes around my wrists and ankles are also removed. My eyes are immediately stung by a blinding light and I groan as I clench them shut. Thankfully, someone pulls the curtains in the room closed, and after blinking at the ceiling for a minute, my vision adjusts to the dimmed light. Something in my peripheral vision catches my attention. It looks like the head of a hazmat-suit. However, as I turn my head, I see a pair of impossibly large violet eyes staring back at me through the visor. The shock makes me shoot up into sitting position, startling the creatures to back away from me. The eyes...their stares...their shapes...it's all wrong. This is impossible! I'm hyperventilating, and my vision begins to swim. The shock, combined with the stress and physical exhaustion, causes me to black out. The last thing I register is muffled shouts and concerned stares, then darkness. - - - - By now you might be thinking “What's going on here, and who is this guy passing out all the time?”. I guess this a good time to back up a bit and let you know who I am and how I ended up being strapped down and interrogated by these alien...things. My name is James Maxwell. I'm twenty-something years old and I’m a welder working at a machine shop, in the same little industrial town I grew up in with my grandfather and my older brother Jason. I've always loved machines. My grandfather was a car mechanic, and although I never had much of an interest in the cars themselves, I never lost my fascination with what made them work. My grandfather had an endless patience with grandchildren crawling all over whatever he was trying to fix, and growing up with a grandfather also made me appreciate the past a lot more, I think. Jason didn't seem to care too much, but I'd be fascinated by things like the Nixie tubes on the frequency display of an old radio, or grandfather's Curta calculator. You know that fine line between madness and genius? Whoever invented the Curta calculator was tapdancing all over it, and he'll make you feel like the dumbest chimp in the world if you ever dare to look inside one. I decided I wanted to become a mechanical engineer, and I worked hard to make it happen. I worked my ass off. But about halfway through university, I...well... Actually, never mind that. Something happened that I don't want to think too much about right now, so I decided to get a welders certificate and took a job in my hometown instead. It's a decent job I’m content with, and earning enough to get by is good enough for me. There's something special about people working in places like that. Having a job where being distracted at the wrong time could mean that you won't make it to old age with all your limbs intact, I mean. One of the older guys lost an eye when he was young, when they were kinda lax on safety equipment. A steel bracket his colleague had been working on was accidentally launched from his steel cutter across the workshop, right in his face. And here he is, still not giving a fuck. I myself could tell you firsthand what it's like to be welding inside a pipe section replacement for an oil refinery when there's a gas leak from your gear. My point is, it's a job where you stop worrying too much about about fiery explosions until they happen and you go home tired to rest up for a new exciting day of predictable work and potential dismemberment. At least you can get a good steak in this town. It was just another one of these days, when I got home from work. Home being a modest apartment consisting of a bedroom, a tiny bathroom and a combined kitchen and living room. I was going through my usual routine of after-work beer and checking the news feeds on my laptop before going to the bathroom to take a shower. “Another day ends...” I muttered to myself as I threw the dirty work clothes in the laundry basket. It was now late September, and the worst time of the year was ahead, where the days would only get darker. I turned and looked at myself in the mirror. I'm not really a hulking behemoth, but I'm definitely not scrawny. Too much heavy lifting at work. I think sturdy is a good word. Like a tree. I stretched my sturdy tree-body, releasing a cacophony of pops and groans before I leaned closer to the mirror. I need a shave. Starting to look kind of gruff. Then I looked myself in the eyes and saw steel blue eyes with green flecks staring back. They didn't look happy. I really haven't smiled a lot lately, have I? I tried faking a smile. It looked just that. Fake. I shrugged and got in the shower. “I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine-” I croaked in an atrocious attempt at singing in the shower. As the sweat and grime of the day got washed away by the hot water, I was starting to feel lightheaded. It was nothing unusual, but after a few seconds I started feeling a kind of sharp tingling in my skin, like static electricity building up. This was unusual, and alarmingly so. “I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine..what the fuck..?” I shrieked as the shower cabinet shattered around me and the whole room was swallowed into an incomprehensible roiling chaos of impossible shapes, colors, and sensations. I flailed helplessly and screaming through an imperceptible hole in reality, like a ragdoll in the blender of some cosmic horror making a cosmic smoothie out of the very essence of reality, with my bathroom thrown in for the hell of it. It went like this for about 5 milliseconds before my poor brain simply overloaded from extreme sensory input and shut down. - - - - I wake up with a start and inhale sharply as my eyes open wide. My immediate confusion subsides after a few seconds as I try to recall what happened. That's right, I woke up on a table. There were voices and questions, and then...no... As I keep recalling, I look around me. I seem to have been moved to some kind of office, onto a small couch. Layers of blankets have been piled upon me, and my wrists have been bandaged. I nervously look at the room itself. It's a nice office with a wooden floor and ceiling. The leaf-patterned light beige walls have been decorated with framed technical schematics and a few pictures of primitive steam locomotives. A muffled cough and the sound of writing makes me look to the other end of the room. My eyes widen at the sight of the creature behind the desk there. It's definitely equine in shape, but the proportions are very different from a normal horse. Especially the head. It's muzzle is considerably shorter, and it's huge violet eyes are more forward aligned. It's coat is a dull reddish brown, and it's mane is ash grey. Surprisingly, it not only has a full beard of the same color, but it's also wearing a red vest with brass buttons... “Hm? Oh, you're awake!” The pen it was holding in it's mouth falls onto the paper it was writing on. That voice...This must be 'Righty' “My father and Doctor Cast will be here shortly. Try to relax for a while.” He looks at me curiously for a few seconds “Um...would you like some coffee?” I barely register anything he says, but manage to nod slowly. Righty slides off his chair onto the floor, and trots over to me with an empty mug. I accept the mug, and he goes back to get a pot of coffee from a stove in the corner of the room. As he pours coffee into the mug, I hear familiar voices approach from outside the office. “...zat resulted in kompletely meltink ze bismuth alloy off ze mica disks. Even ze orichalcum clamps evaporated! Zat metal is priceless, and it was only lent to us from Canterlot...” “I'm sure the institute will look the other way. The proof of concept model worked fine after all, and the benefit of..” The door swings open, and two new faces enter the room. “Aha! Well now, it looks like our mostly vestigial friend here is awake.” “Ugh...I will never hear ze end of zis, will I...?”