And just like that, I found out that Galaxy 456, Star Ammochost, is full of
little tricks to manipulate our minds. For example, the other night’s dinner
gala with the living humanoid creature.
That evening I showed up for duty on time, as I had always
done the past fifteen years or so. I wasn’t fully aware of my assignment, but
being a waiter and all in a traditional fast food restaurant of the 26th
century, I suspected I was to wait on someone. Duh…
I couldn’t be more false in my predictions. It wasn’t
someone I was to wait on, it was something.
Yeah, something was waiting to eat in the balcony. A strange creature from Galaxy 236, Star Tritim. A humanoid creature
three meters tall.
I froze and nearly pissed my pants when I saw her. Mind you, I’ve seen a lot of bizarre
living things in my lifespan, but this one took the cake. I figured she must have
been female, because her breasts were regular 36 C’s, counted in human standards
that is. Other than that, she wasn’t a humanoid
at all, which brought me to an awkward position, after I stared at her
sparkling fangs and her scarred nose-less face for nearly a quarter of an hour.
She never granted me with so much as a glance, which was blissful for me, from
what I learned later on.
Fortunately, or not, the restaurant’s chef was a
deformed amoeba with more sheer power than a regular earth bear, literally pushing
me every single time I was supposed to go serve. I snapped out and then,
fortunately this time, the first course was over. It was high time for the main
dish, which wasn’t fish as I suspected, but a lovely steak Diana, just waiting
to be melted in one’s mouth. On this occasion, waiting to be crashed under
famous jaws and between sharp teeth, for the humanoid was the queen of her
realm, as the chef informed me.
When she snarled, I was told it was the signal for
dessert. I hesitated, yet came out and did what I was paid to do anyway. It was
only then that I noticed her closely; she wasn’t alive, she was dead!
Ok, well, I didn’t think you’d understand by a mere
sentence. But it was true; the girl, the creature from the strange Star, she
wasn’t breathing as we do. She was mechanical, an automaton covered in metal
plates, wired down to the slightest detail. At first look, she seemed all
fleshy, with bones and “living” muscles, but not at the second look. She was
either a freak of nature, or a pioneer in this sector, that’s for you to
decide.
Next thing I remember, I was cleaning up their table,
ready to move out to another guest of our private-owned restaurant, when a hand
grabbed my wrist. She was very powerful, because my whole arm went numb, and I
can swear till this day that I clearly saw fires leaping from her eyes. She was
hostile and mean, and for some weird reason, angry at me. I frowned but said
nothing. I thought about yelling for help, or for her to let me go, but that
wouldn’t be proper, given my current status as a waiter facing a queen, even if
she truly was a beast to us humans. Besides, I too acted in a strange way.
Despite shivers going down my spine, I managed to snap
my wrist and free my hand. The beast granted me with a look that had nothing to
do with friendliness, nor had the two guards of her that stood up from the next
table. She cursed something in a strange language, must have been her own I
figured, and then her guards snatched me. I distinctively remember myself
kicking, punching, spitting, even biting on a few occasions, just to be freed.
A futile try. And then everything went blank.
#
It seems I was unconscious for some time, because when
I woke up, I was sitting on a chair in a well-lit room. There were several
other seats around me, and a big sofa in one corner. I made to move, but I had
no movement in my legs, no sensation at all. I tilted my head as if I was going
to cry in my palms, and took a glimpse at my lower limbs. And then I fainted
for the second time.
I regained my senses in another room. This time I
wasn’t sitting, I was lying on a table. Three high beams struck my face with
pure white light, and I closed my eyes to avoid going blind. I tried to move,
but I could sense my wrists held down by some kind of straps. I made to move my
legs, but again, I had no sensation in those. I was bathed in cold sweat all of
a sudden, since I realized what I saw earlier might just be true. I just might
be amputated.
When I came to my senses for the third time, I decided
I wasn’t going to pass out anymore. I was still strapped on the table, which
now felt more like a surgical bed than anything else, but that didn’t freak me
out. I summoned all my strength and screamed the word help several times. When I finally decided I was alone in the room,
she came in my view.
Even though she was a queen, I bit my lips and cursed
her, for I had no other way to stand my ground. The moment I did this, I
regretted it. She granted me with a magnificent punch in the face as I was
still lying on my soon-to-be deathbed. My left eye hurt so much I couldn’t open
it, though I could still feel the blood rushing down my cheek. She then left a
smirk as I could see with my good eye, and said something in her language,
which from what I understood, was the calling of a guard.
The guard looked like her, only shorter and bulkier;
it was a male this time. He squeezed my head and released me from my wrist
bonds. I tried to sit using my arms as levers, since I reckoned my legs were
taken by my torturers, but no, I felt life in them again, as I could move them
in free will as I had always done. And then I took a look down.
The fleshy part of my legs was gone. And by fleshy, I
do mean the whole leg! I was left speechless in a state of shock. The beasts
had replaced my legs with mechanical ones! I was devastated yes, but still, I
was able to walk, as I found out the very next moment. The guard helped me down
the bed, and I took my first steps as a mutant; it went well, I must admit,
even better than my walk with my crooked human legs. But still, I should have
gotten an explanation for this.
The guard could speak the human language quite well.
When I asked him why they’ve done this to me, he in turn asked his queen, and after
a debate amongst them for a few minutes, he served me an answer. I was their
slave, he said, and under their law, they were entitled to my body. I was no
longer in control of anything besides my breathing rate, and my “masters” just
happened to be in urgent need of a pair of human legs. That’s why they
amputated me. Or so he said.
Don’t get me wrong. If anyone of you ever lived in the
galaxy that I grew up, abductions are not a rare phenomenon. And since the
destruction of Earth two centuries ago, and the rise of uncontrollable riots
and violence in Galaxy 456, Star
Ammochost, nothing could scare me anymore. Or so I thought, until I saw her
giving another set of orders, and then the guards got some kind of tranquilizer
guns in hand. Oh oh, there goes my hands, I thought.
#
It had been ages since my last dream, but during the
short nap I was forced to have, I did dream. I dreamed of my mother, and how
she insisted I was born by her womb, and not in some test tube in a lab a
thousand feet underground. And then my father, and how he argued it was unsafe,
risky and irresponsible of her to place her own health at risk, just to give
birth to another one of us. Another one of us, ha, so so funny. See, I already
had twenty three brothers and fourteen sisters, all born in the lab. Why would
my mother risk her life just for me? That made no sense, no sense at all. I
couldn’t ask her anything though, since the risk she took proved to be her
fatal mistake. Oh, well….
#
When I opened my eyes, I was terrified to move. I
wasn’t sure what part of me was gone now. Was it my arms? Was it my neck? Was
it my head? I knew all could be artificially made and replaced in such a way,
others could never see the difference. But I would. I didn’t want to end up
like all my brothers, robots. That was my biggest phobia. No, I didn’t want a
life like that.
I stayed on the bed motionless for a few hours. No one
came in, no one spoke or said anything all that time. It was high time I took a
look at what was missing from me. I braced myself, gulped—which went well,
meaning that my larynx was still human—and made to move. Strange thing, I could
sense all my limbs now. I looked down; no more mechanical parts, no more metal
joints and hybrid tendons. I had my own legs again. And my arms were intact.
And my nose, my ears, my chest, my penis, everything was there, as it should
be. How was that possible? I closed my eyes.
#
And there I was, at the dinner table again, the
beast’s palm touching my wrist. I snapped out and freaked all the same. I
looked deep in her eyes, and I understood what I had just felt. I had a
premonition, a view of the near future. I cracked. So, that was my fate to be?
Being chopped down to pieces by another galaxy’s monster? No thank you, that
wasn’t what I had in mind for me.
I had to escape.
I passed the screaming chef and rushed outside. I had
no cash left in my wrist-buried barcode, so I decided to hitchhike till the
next planet of our galaxy. I was picked up by a human girl, who said she wanted
to “preserve” her tribe, so she asked for my semen in exchange for the ride.
Since I wasn’t in the mood to bargain or to please her in anyway, I passed the
offer. That was a big big mistake, because I was left alone in the middle of
the space highway, having as little as an hour of oxygen supply in my
reservoir.
And then she
found me.
I don’t know how she found me, but she did. And just
like in my vision, her two guards tried to grab me, and I was to be doomed if I
hadn’t been able to run as fast as I could. And that’s what I did; I ran as
fast as the wind, as far as the nearest Astra Police Station. I had to report
her somewhere, hadn’t I?
Surprisingly, all the officers were on her side! I
couldn’t believe it. It was as if I was arrested for lying, passed through
trial at the same time, found guilty, and sentenced to death by execution. I
had no other choice but to wait. If one had limited rights while in prison in
the 21st century, imagine how it is in the 26th. Total
absence of human or any other creature’s rights. Yet I patiently waited three
days and four nights to be released. When it finally happened, I came across
another surprise.
The humanoid beast was there to pick me up. I
hesitated, who wouldn’t anyway, and I tried to outrun them. But being only two
meters tall, while they were three, I had no luck. They held me tight, while
she started talking to me. Funny thing was, I could understand her! And just
like that, as she talked to me, she changed her shape. Her face softened, her body
shrunk to my size, and her mechanical parts turned into flesh and bones. And
she was so so beautiful, and I was so so in love.
She said she needed me. I was flattered to say the
least with her quote, but then came the rest of the story. Not her personally, she
added, but her people—if one can call her clan people. A strange bacterium infected their males, and they were
dying pretty fast, how convenient! The remaining ones weren’t enough to sustain
life as they knew it, and that’s why she was seeking some strong guy to be her
private mate for as long as she was alive. A human that possessed powers like
premonition, and as handsome as me. That part won me over, and even without the
flirting quotes, I was ready to follow her.
I smiled and asked where Galaxy 236, Star Tritim was.
#
Until now, I have three hundred children, all of them males—I
still don’t know if my human nature is to blame for this. Galaxy 236, Star Tritim has bloomed once again with my help.