Chapter 3 #5
I hope we’re not going to stay here. This isn’t a real place.
It feels like being in a simulation of somewhere real.
I am uncomfortable here, all the way to my bones.
I wonder if this is how animal pets feel when they are taken from the wild.
Probably not, I imagine. Human homes always seem so comfortable.
Creatures sleep on beds, steal food from tables, and generally live a much more comfortable life than they would in the wild.
“I really need to get out of here,” I tell him. “It’s bad here.”
He snugs me closer, wrapping his arms around me and holding me tight. “Not too much longer, pet.”
* * *
Freak
I was worried about this. The realms in which my kind meets are not kind to human minds. But I needed to come here. I needed to see family. I want to know what the hell happened that I was taken.
I take my pet and I go and find the only woman who can make any difference.
“Alara, I need to speak with you, and then I need to go. My pet is not tolerating the lack of concrete existence here well.”
“What happens, happens,” Alara says. “You know that. We cannot change the past, and the future is the past…”
“Except when it isn’t,” I remind her. “There are stories that there are those among us who can affect timelines. There are rumors that the universe might not be entirely pre-ordained. In which case, I was betrayed.”
“That’s a serious charge, verging on the hysterical,” she says.
“Wow, gaslighting much?” Mara pipes up. “The guy was in a torture situation for ages, and you call him hysterical? How would you like it if you were in a vessel with wires and stuff coming out of you, and…”
“Thank you, pet,” I say, covering her mouth with my hand before she says something I wish she wouldn’t. She does not know the specifics of what was done to me, and I plan to keep it that way.
“You’re a warrior. You chose that path. You were captured by our enemies and they tried to use you to make tech that is more effective at killing us.
You didn’t allow it to happen,” Alara says.
“You were strong. You are strong. Whatever was done will ultimately be to your benefit. It may already be.”
Bullshit.
My pet thinks the word so loudly everybody in the realm can hear it. I can’t punish her for it, because she really doesn’t have control of her thoughts. I hear laughter from some further afield. Alara does not laugh.
“I think it’s time you took that little thing to a place that suits her more,” she says.
“I agree,” I say.
“Go well, Tasin,” she says.
Wow, fucking useless.
Again, my pet’s thoughts are loud and scandalous. She cannot help them. And Alara cannot help but hear them, and though she schools her features and her mind, I know she must be furious.
“Goodbye, revered one,” I say, bowing low.
My pet thinks something so unrepeatable I don’t dare even think it in my own mind.
As we prepare to leave, we are not alone. Three warriors come to stand with me.
“Is this the escort to make sure we actually leave?” I make the joke lightheartedly, though I am sure Alara would want to ensure me and my pet are no longer on her plane of existence. We have caused her much embarrassment.
“Did you think we’d let you go alone?” Aric laughs and shakes his head. “We’re coming with you, brother.”
“And we’ve got a ship!” Fidas says.
“And my axe!” Drak adds.
We all laugh, even though we’re not sure why. Jokes are funny things. They have a tendency to get into the cosmic fabric and just stay there, sometimes for millennia, being funny for no reason at all. Humans like to say death and taxes are inevitable. But they’ve forgotten about jokes.
I am pleased. One of our kind can be a formidable enemy, but four is a war party.
We will be more or less untouchable. It is hard to catch our kind off guard at the best of times, but with four minds directed toward threats at all times, we should be very safe in the rough and feral lands of common existence.
Time chimes, and we step back to the world that my pet would probably consider real. A place where time flows in the usual way, and actions have consequences, rather than the other way around.
I feel her breathe a sigh of relief, taking air deep into her lungs. I wonder if she noticed that there wasn’t really oxygen where we were, and that she did not need to breathe? I won’t ask. I don’t want to panic her. She did so well to tolerate it for as long as she did.
“Where are we?” She asks the question, and it is a good one.
“This is a battleship,” I explain. “I did mention that we’re at war, did I not? It would be a big thing not to mention.”
“At war with who?”
“Our enemies,” I say. I hate to be vague, but being specific might cause her to become panicked, and she has been through enough.
“And who are they?”
“Well, there’s a few species. The World Eaters are our main opponents at this stage.”
The image of something like a giant fish opening its jaws leaps into her mind as she suddenly imagines a universe that feels as though it is made up of vast distances and massive planets being nothing more than a pool with baubles of life dancing in it, being consumed by creatures multitudes of times bigger.
“They’re big enough to eat worlds?”
“No. They have fleets of small robots that can consume entire planets within a matter of years. It’s interesting to watch, but horrific to experience.”
“Sounds like a lot of life,” she says.
She is not wrong.
“Captain Tasin, what’s our heading?”