My question for this chapter: "Would any of your original characters be capable of withstanding three years of ... this story, without snapping? Tell me about them."
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Chapter 13
My name is Freya Savitri, and I was wrong. Pain is not something you can just ignore.
Doctor. There were many of them in the next month of dull madness. Mjek in Albanian, hekim in Azerbaijani, nekap in Balarusia, metge in Catalan, dokotala in Chichewa, medico in Corsican, lijecnik in Croatian, laege in Danish, kuracisto in Esperanto, arst in Estonian. The word these Gashn soldiers used was a mix between a mouselike chip and the sound of licking your lips. Some clear association between using saliva to dress a wound and the skilled art of nursing something back to health. It left me at least grateful that none of the doctors who came to see me tried licking my thighs, instead strongly favoring herbs and concentrated powders, or the rare supplies of nanite laced burn cream still rationed from aboard our ship.
Manggagamot inFilipino, laakari in Finnish, arzt in German, dokte in Hiatian, likita in Hausa, kauka in Hawaiian, orvos in Hungarian, laeknir in Icelandic, dokita in Igno, dochtuir in Irish, medico in Italian, pizisk in Kurdish, medicus in Latin, arsts in Latvian. No matter what they were called they all had the same job, and all held a similar reverence. These docters perhaps more than most.
Field medics is what most of them were, as a full team of twenty different aliens each set about working with me on a daily basis. Always at random my muscles would lock up and I’d be forced into that prostrate pose for easy handling. Their confusion over what to do vanishing in the face of the actual job, quickly setting about scrubbers to clear infection and inspection teams to handle observing the recovery. Tiny stitching were applied over the tiniest cracks to heal the scar better, and their thin little hands removed the stitches within the few days I needed to heal. Better than human surgeons at least.
Those who weren’t combat medics were usually elder gentlemen or enthusiastic scholars more concerned with the bioengineering knowledge they assumed they could gleam from this. The oldest among them was maybe two years old, and I was forced to listen as they prattle with all the studious observational skills of a veteran professor. Scientists in their field doing as much experimentation on how to treat a human’s injuries as they were historians combing through ancient documents written before their time.
I was given that bath I wanted. A tiny scrub at a time by little mouse things keeping me held in lockdown and then riding my body with sponges like I was some amusement ride. Occasionally they’d drag in a hose and start to sprinkle water at me, lukewarm rather than cold as these Gesshru didn’t appreciate a wide variance in temperatures.
My clothes were cleaned, my chamberpot was emptied regularly, and I overheard many amusing discussions about the abysmal conditions of my cage. Numerous medical personal all made the recommendation that I be given a full pond with heated water to relax in, and that my physiology would be best suited to steaming waters of a temperature most find at thermal vents.
Spa. They recommended that this base manager install a spa into my room.
I heard mention of needing exercise, I heard numerous concerns about my mental health and what being force-fed Cavni prisoners would do to my psyche. They wanted a fake tree brought in. Baring that, install metal pipes as a jungle jym, or simply large rocks to climb about on.
Pamit denied most of these requests in an offhanded and casual way of course. The climbing equipment with concerns that I’d be off-balance when placed into lockdown, and might fall and injure myself if their remote forces awkward movement and positions when I am off the floor. Waters of a high enough temperature for a human to call a comfortable bath, these Gesshru would consider lethal ranges. The equivalent of swimming in burning oil, because at their size water was actually quite sticky.
Were I to lie to myself I’d have said I could remember their names. If I were to blatantly delude myself I’d have somehow worked up some narrative in which I spoke to each of the people working on me. Patching up wounds and carefully monitoring my health, taking blood samples and cross referencing public knowledge of Max units with their first hand observations.
But I didn’t.
What was the point? They were all going to die anyway. Short lived things that wither into old age by the time it takes a human to potty train. Tiny baby mouse things in the middle of a war for dominance of the continent. There was nothing to be gained from caring about them, and no manner of knowledge they offered or awareness I could grant them would make escape easier.
Maybe if their plans for improving the cage actually fell through I’d have more tools to work with, but Pamit knew the truth. And he knew that if these medical researchers were given long enough to examine me they’d conclude I’m not some Gashn created bioweapon. And then they’d all be killed. And nothing would change.
They were moved away from my treatment early.
Pain had all but stopped, their carefully applied painkillers dabbed strait onto the wound wasn’t needed at this stage of my recovery. Sometimes it hurt if I moved the wrong way, but I could walk just fine. They never told me if my armor was repaired or not, but honestly I’d have preferred if that took a bit longer. That was a job for engineers.
My helmet was given minor repairs, as best they could manage without damaging the folding mechanism. Apply crazy glue to the plastic shards to put the visor back in place, then polish off the edges so it folds back up. Cracks were still very much visible but the plastic looked sturdy enough and the whole thing was clear enough to see through. A shame they didn’t just remove the helmet entirely, without it folding back out or somehow stuck in the shape of a collar there is no control panel to access.
Jam that inner working somehow and quite suddenly they can’t pilot me, but it doesn’t actually help me escape. The collar is still hooked in after all. So they just use a remote to set me in lockdown and then come repair the helmet.
From what I could gleam through scattered conversation the best scientists and medics assigned to me had been ordered to focus all studies on the new captive Souleater, with special emphasis on how to tame one. I never saw where it went or how the trapped little fluttercat was being treated, but these people still thought of them as animals above all else. Presumably it was trapped in similar conditions to me, albeit with less opportunity for mind control.
If one hooks a collar into the Souleater and controls it remotely, people are going to wonder why that tech looks so similar to what goes into a Max unit. And the medics working on me were already smart enough to be suspicious, if not quite smart enough to play dumb.
Tasgal I didn’t see much of during my recovery, though I knew he was arguing with the medics rather often. Pushing for that lobotomy whether it be partial or full, demanding that all Max units be given the same procedure before disaster strikes. One could only hope he wasn’t making much headway.
And so fully healed, miserable and lonely, leaned against the back of the pristine white walls and waiting for the next mundane hell to assert itself, I suffered. This was a quiet suffering in a state of perpetual unease, but it was hell nonetheless. My room unchanged in this entire time, my bowl still filled with nutriment paste. That slimy gray muck that for better or worse didn’t have corpses in it.
When all one has is the minutes to count, you know exactly how long it is before the next interesting thing happens. And in this case it was just heatbreaking.
That feeding tube in the wall activates again, a squelch and a plop. Tiny black rubber falls to the bowl and sinks inside the wet marsh, a thin form wriggling beneath the vacuum sealed sheets. With a heavy sigh I stomped back over to the bowl, every beat of my steps sending ripples through the paste and making it’s form sink deeper inside. A low crouch, quietly examining.
It was a child.
Female, though it was too small in the chest to have the telltale fluff a human would search for, it’s head was smooth and the hips were compact. Only one set of ears rather than the distinctly sharp, swiveling horns a male would possess. Being only half the size of an adult this thing must have been less than a month old. Born either just as my recovery started, or very soon afterward. The poor thing was terrified and struggling, unable to even scream against its bindings.
At any other moment I would have been horrified by the fact they’ve given me a child to devour, that these Gashn soldiers care so little for their enemy they would torture one so young. But honestly I was simply numb to it all.
With a heavy sigh I tore away the wrappings. Head first so the little thing could breathe, and simply offered a sorrowful look when she manages a scream.
High pitched wailing. Choking sobs. It sounded like the shrill cry of a groundhog more than anything else, but I knew what the cries meant. Her tiny paws waggled at my fingers as if to push me away. She scooped up some of the nutriment paste and lobbed it at me, her strength not enough to reach beyond the rim of my food bowl. As I reached to pluck her out, she tugged at the now unsealed wrappings and tried to burry herself deeper within the rubbery tomb. As if hiding her head inside that makeshift blanket would get me to go away.
I said nothing.
One set of fingers pinches down on the top half, my other fingers grab the bottom section, and as delicately as possible I lift the entire snack pack free to set down atop my blanket. There was a bit of food staining the cloth but tiny specks weren’t worth caring about. There wasn’t anything in this world that would make me feel comfortable licking the mush off of her wrapping.
She remained hidden away for all the world like I was the monster under her bed. But I continued my meal.
Scooping up globs and handfuls, licking the mess off my fingers, occasionally looking back to see the tiny little bundle shivering in fear. The same routine as last time of course. I had my fill for today of the freshest food, then made sure to ration a fair bit left for the rest of the week. I could make it. I’m a human, I can hold out on minimal food for that long. She’ll need as much as she can get if we want her to …
Want her to …
To die of something other than starvation, honestly. I didn’t dare consider that killing it myself would have been kinder to the alien rodent, even if true I couldn’t bring myself to it.
A heavy sigh, standing back to me feet, and then wondering over to one corner so this child could have the entire rest of the room. She got the blanket, I sat with my knees against my chest and my arms wrapped around myself in the closest semblance of a hug I’ve gotten in the last three years. Just as last time there was nothing for it but to wait.
How much longer could I hold out? Not the food, that was pure medical knowledge, but my mind. At what point does a human break? When does the will snap, and how long do I have until insanity is impossible to avoid? Back when we could still talk our assigned therapist might have said something about gradients and types of insanity, that it’s all just what we use to cope and what perspective mindset we end up on.
What do I use to cope?
It all seems hopeless now, I’ve cracked the code and I’ve managed to learn completely fluent Gesshru. I know the variants, I know the words, I know the gestures, I’m the best damn linguist from earth. I am the single best linguist alive on this planet to date. And yet no matter what system I use or how I manage to make the words, I’m just too large and too deep, and their tiny little ears can’t pick up what’s being said through the distortion. Those pilots who do manage to gleam at the hint of a language behind my roars vanish under obvious circumstances, and anyone not a pilot has only as long as their lifespan to make use of it.
There are no friends here. Not in these conditions, not with these short lived little things. That child in the room will be an adult in less than a year. Even if I somehow manage to rescue it above all odds, she’s going to live out her entire life \span in less than the length of time I’ve had a pet cat.
Cope …
I cope with words, I cope with the knowledge this can’t last forever. I quietly hope the Cavni Federation wins this silly war, but they’ve been on the retreat since before Earth forces went into orbit around this planet. Be patient perhaps. All of the rodents work so fast and adapt so quickly, living their tiny little lives in the blink of an eye. They will adapt again before my own death, and very likely will adapt several times over.
Complete upheaval of their entire society takes only a single generation, what happens when the old coots who maintain this Max situation die off and the young, impressionable pilots come into this with sincerity and eagerness? Well, at present a lot of the old farts already did rust away or get flung to the stars or whatever curse is applicable for their silly afterlife ideas. The ones currently in charge are the next generation past that, carrying down the legacy of their ancestors.
So if I know I’m going to outlive them, I’m going to outlive their memory, I know for a fact us humans will outlive the entire concept of their nation. Why can’t I just be patient?
What is it I need, what do I use to cope?
How long can my mind hold out?
There was a tug at my foot. Something warm and tiny, a tickle. If this were anywhere else I would have assumed spider without thinking and then kicked it away, but stilled myself. Deliberately calm, muscles locked, don’t move an inch.
I turn my head down and spot the tiny little thing. Half the size of a typical Gashn soldier, standing barely upright and using one sleeve of the plastic wrapping as a makeshift dress. She leaned forward as if her body expected quadruped movement and seemed to rely on my toe for balance. She staggers back, looking at the foot with some trepidation and then glancing around to see if I’d moved.
Evidentially she had concluded I was safe and padded over to the opposite toe.
A poke. She was pawing at me. I moved my foot away from her with just the slightest nudge, and she flinched at the enormous grind of flesh against polished tile. An obnoxiously loud sound to that child’s ears.
She walks in place, two hands holding up the wrapping to keep her clothed and looking around with all the nervous air of a five year old trying to sneak into the cookie jar. She steps forward. One hand slowly extends out, all too smoothly, and taps against my toenail.
I say nothing, and do nothing. Simply allowing this.
“Hey!” I hear her chirp. Head leaned up to look directly at me.
“Yes?” My answer sent her to her knees, hands up by her ears and the tail drooping down. It was a small whisper, it was as quiet as I could manage while still making sound, and yet a little on the high end of for these tiny things to handle.
“Heeeyy! Can you help me up!” She chirps again. Teeth clacking noisily, her ears perking up as if to focus better and then folding back the moment she see’s my mouth open. The girl was catching on.
My hand moves. NO! I move my hand. A distinction that made this so very different from the last moment I handled a child. There was a squeal when my hands cup around her waist and gingerly lift her a scant few inches off the floor, only to place her atop my foot.
When I draw my arms away she’s looking up at me with a pout, seemingly more concerned with her attempt at a dress than the fact she was alone with a human.
“No you silly, the bowl! Can you help me get a food please?” she all but begs.
Fearless?
No, she’s simply gotten bored of waiting around while I sulked in the corner. Fast little things in thought and in adaptation, she’s probably been inside her wrapping for at least a day now. How long without food when the closest Federation settlement was Scando, and that place was razed to the ground?
I place my right hand next to her and hold the fingers outstretched. She stares at it blankly as if I were an idiot, then unleashes yet another alarmed chirp when I use the left hand to shove her into my palm. A lift, a simple walk across the room, all while she wailed in tiny mouse noises that I couldn’t translate for the life of me. Pure alarm, unfiltered excitement, the primal scream of a person expecting death at any moment.
“WHEeeeee!”
Okay, maybe she considered this a roller coaster ride. Stop judging me, we all have our off days.
As gently as one might take care of their rebreather equipment I place her back down on my blanker and begin trying to scoop up a fingerfull at a time. She was already rolling and bouncing down the blanket before I’d even pulled my hand away, but once she got to the edge of my food bowl her hilariously small size became all too apparent. She couldn’t leap over the edge, and even when attempting to grab at the inward curved bowl of metal she just slides down the polished surface. One hand desperately clinging to keep her fur covered up even as she slides down and fails to grip anything.
I place my hand and that food on my fingertip right next to her.
She blinks at me.
“No fork or plate?” the tiny thing was so hopeful, flopping to a seat right where she was. This was the point that defeats her. This was where she gets disappointed. Of course it does …
“No fork or plate. The ones I have are too big.” I whisper with a smirk and keep my hand steady.
She flinches and allows her ears to fold back the moment I speak, but instantly perks back up .
“Okay fine, but only just this once. Daddy doesn’t want me eating like a tribal.” She scoots forward to pluck at the nutriment paste and lap up what clung to her fingers. Seated uncomfortably but smoothly.
“Oh does he now?” I chirp back as quiet as a mouse. Or at least my best impersonation of a mouse.
“Yeah! And you’d like daddy, he’s big like you. And strong. And brave. And he gets into fights.” More nibbling, watching her eat was like listening to a wild rodent as it gnaws on sunflower seeds.
“I avoid fights if I can help it.” Came my reply.
“Well he fought against one of you, but I think he had to run away.” She nibbles and nibbles, wet smacking sounds as the last of that food drop I offered her disappears.
“Sensible if you have a place to hide, though humans can walk faster than a Gesshru can run. So just trying to make distance won’t really help you.” Without hesitation I dipped my finger back in to scoop up another dollop of paste. She watches with that enthralled gaze of a child on Christmas waiting to see what new gift you had on offer.
And heartbreakingly this tiny bit of food was enough to brighten her features with their equivalent of a smile.
“Thankyouthankyou! I was supposed to run away from you, daddy said. But then I got caught and everything went black and I couldn’t move. Now I’m here.” She explains as if I couldn’t have figured that out on my own.
“You seem very stationary and talkative for someone who’s supposed to be running.”
“Can you help me find the exit please? I want to run away but I don’t know where to run to. There are no doors or anything.” I bite my lip in response, but to her patient eyes my silence says it all. A quick shake of the head and she mutters back. “Oh. Sorry for asking, I guess you’d have left too if you could figure it out.”
I nod my head.
“All of us would have left a long time ago if we could.” At my voice her ears fold back instantly, and then perk forward the moment my lips are still. Her nose wrinkles in thought, and her eating slows. She didn’t even finish the second dollop before evidentially her hunger was sated. I lick off the rest of the food stains on my finger.
“Don’t feel bad though! My name is Orchi, and I’m really smart. I’ll figure something out for the both of us, okay?” her voice brimming with optimism, her eyes directly on mine. It was strange to see a Gesshru that wasn’t immediately fearful of me, but then she’d had time to get over her fears.
“If you have any ideas I’ve got all the time in the world to hear them.” My enunciation was perfect, my accent was impeccable, there was just that ever glaring problem that her ears were too small to hear me.
“Hehehe, you keep making funny sounds. Just talk normally, like this. See!” she opens her mouth wide and points, as if showing me her teeth might offer some insight.
“Sure.” With a roll of my eyes I open my mouth as well, using one finger to point inside as well.
“There you go. Now just make one chomp for yes.” She bites her own teeth, that chittery teeth clacking one expects of a mouse. “And two chomps for no.” she opens and bites twice in rapid succession, fast enough that to most humans it would sound like a single motion.
I open my mouth wide with deliberate and almost mechanical movements, then clack my teeth together twice.
“Like this you mean?” I chatter in Gesshru while she was sent into a gigglefit at the way my face looked. “Now where did you learn a little thing like that? Most adults don’t even get that far.”
“Perfect! Now listen. This is very important.” She forces her gaze to be this stern disapproval, standing back up onto two legs. Her dress almost falls and she’s left scrambling to catch it again and fit the plastic wrap into place. “Do other people ever come into this room?”
Lips curling up into a smile, I click my teeth once for yes.
She starts to make a giddy squeak noise and then forces herself into this façade of composure.
“Actual people, tiny ones like me. Not big animals, but real people.” She clarifies as if that might have been unclear.
Rolling my eyes I give her the most flippant tooth clack I can manage.
“Hrmph. You gotta be mistaken, there aren’t any doors here. If people come into the room how do they get in?”
Wordlessly, I stand up. The sudden motion casts her instantly into shadow, the young Orchi falls back onto her tail in a frightened flailing and several undignified noises. Barefoot and on polished tiles my footfalls weren’t exactly noisy, but to the Gesshru race there was always that vibration shuddering the ground with every step. I took measures to minimize this and never could tell how well I managed. But it was a short walk, end of the room, I rap my knuckles against the doorway.
“Th- … people come out of that? It’s a wall.”
I tap on the edge and trace my fingers along one seam, then across the other. Finally I point down toward where the control panel is and rap my knuckles again.
“O-oh … that’s. It isn’t a wall at all! It’s a door! A really big superhuge door of awesomeness.”
I click my teeth once, padding back closer to her and flopping onto my blanket. Her ears fold back at my approach, her fur ruffles in the wind that follows every wake of my movement.
“Duh, I shoulda thought of that. The people have to get you in somehow.” She muses, standing back up and leaning against my food bowl.
“And they have to get me out, for missions.” I nod to her, before making a single pronounced tooth clack just to make it clear. Lips pulling back to show the flat teeth.
“So then that’s how we get out. It’s the front door, no one will be expecting it!” she waves her arms around excitedly, but then her plastic wrap falls down. Of course there was nothing to show and nothing for me to see, she was a rodent and tiny, and a child, and an alien, and I’ve already seen plenty of outright healthy specimens in far better condition than this half starved and scrawny little thing before me. But she put as much effort into covering up with that plastic as she had in hiding from me.
This was as much for her benefit as it was mine, so I saw no reason to stop her.
“One of us needs to get a keycode in order to open it I’m afraid.” There was plenty of teeth clacking as part of a serial, sounds blending into other sounds for the sake of forming a word, but she didn’t seem to comprehend.
“Now here’s the plan. When people come inside, you … uh throw your blankie at them! And then while everyone is all smothered up and lost in the dark we walk right out.” She seemed all too proud of this little plan.
I clack my teeth twice for no, poor little Orchi didn’t quite grasp that I’ll be paralyzed long before anyone with access moves to open those doorways.
“Hrmph. Well if you’re going to be a spoilsport. How about you put down lots of this sticky mush food and then when people walk inside, you just leave through the open door while they’re all stuck? Make sure to take me with you of course.”
I clack my teeth twice once more, and she looks indignant.
“W-wha! You’d just leave me behind?”
A double clack, shaking my head at her.
“Okay good. When we escape take me with you, otherwise you’d just be rude and no one would like you.”
I couldn’t help but smile, offering a single tooth clack in response.
“So if doing stuff to the door doesn’t work, how about we hide somewhere? You hide under your blankie and I’ll hide under your bowl. When people come to look for us, we spring on them!”
Another double click, rolling my eyes and offering a theatrical wave of my hand to that empty room. My other arm lifts up the corner of my thin blanket as if to emphasize how unsuitable a hiding place it would be.
“Just a suggestion. Rusted core, you don’t gotta be snippy with me.” She sticks her tongue out in this most adorable little pout.
Okay, that got me to snicker. I nodded my head and clacked once, a bit amused by the fact I was having this useless distraction of a conversation at all while simultaneously wondering who got her to swear like a soldier.
“How about this. I hide in your hair, and then when people come in and do things, I spring out and uh … scare them away!”
My eyes roll back more in thought than exasperation. But it didn’t take long to realize she’d just be pinned down as easily as anything else and then shot in the back of the head. Worse still I’m probably the one who they’d feed her corpse to. I click twice and hope she took a hint as to my reasoning.
“There hasta be some way. Come oooonnn. Do you have a toilet you can flush me down?” she pleads without much anticipation of my answer.
A shake of my head, I clack my teeth twice for no, and then point over to that chamber pot in the corner. The fact it still had a lid always brought a tiny bit of joy to my heart, this prison would be so much worse if we added horrible smell to this mix of body horror and torture and all around unpleasantness.
“Eeewwww. We gotta get you potty trained when I get back home, alright?” she huffs, waggling a finger at me like this was somehow my fault.
Another roll of my eyes at the sillyness of it all, but I clack my teeth once in response.
“Super amazing ultimate plan. I wrap myself up in plastic and … and disguise myself as garbage.” She chips happily.
That one I had to think about for a minute, realizing she likely had the materials to do it and was small enough it’s possible for her to go unnoticed if someone were exceptionally dim witted. But then there were cameras watching this whole thing, if not constantly then at least sporadic enough that we couldn’t plan major things in advance without expecting retaliation. I click at her twice and try to look sad about it.
“Aaawww, why not? This place is spotless so they have to be cleaning it lots. If they weren’t pulling garbage out you’d still have tons of wrappers from your last meals!” she huffs and acted as if I should offer some full explanation.
I just click my teeth twice once more and hold a palm out to pet at her. The shoulder mostly.
“Hrmph, dumb Gashn starflung bleeeh. There has to be some way out of this. And I’m not going to rest until I figure it out, okay? You aren’t gonna be stuck here because I can do the thinking now. And I’m a lot smarter because I’m a person.” She chirps reassuringly.
I roll my eyes and nod along, just glad to be part of a real conversation for once.
“How about …”
And on,
And on.
And on …
Not one of her plans would offer a viable means of escape. But the conversation was nice. I guess I’ll just have to take these little victories as they come.
