upon your back, and not hesitate, not tremble, not turn and run back to your flawed life, however short it might end up being if the wrong volunteer got inside the sphere and ruined things for Earth?
When the door irised open to admit you, and you realized that you alone had been chosen to enter, would you step over the bodies of those who had tried before you and walk through? Would your chin be held high? Would your cheeks be dry? Would you be curious? Terrified? Resigned? Proud? Some bowel-loosening combination of all of the above? Would you look at it as a sacrifice or an adventure? Or would you be too numb with shock to make that sort of fine distinction?
When the door whispered shut and they reached for you, would you shrink from their gelatinous touch? Would you gag when you saw their formless bodies, quivering and gleaming in the strangely low gravity? Would you beg them to find someone else to take your place? Would you turn and pound on the seamless doorway, hoping to find a way out of the brightly-lit spherical prison?
Would you scream when they jellied your bones and reshaped them into arcane loops and whorls? Would you desperately try to press your skin back to your flesh after they’d slowly peeled it off and discarded it? Would you rail and beat the mush that was once your hands against the pearly carapace they’d poured you into to try and give you a semblance of your former shape, something for your once-fellow humans to identify with?
Would you cling with tattered will to your sanity as they unspooled the layers of your mind, peering into every nook and cranny, dredging up every iota of schoolyard humiliation, every love affair gone wrong, every trip to the emergency room, every screaming fight your parents had had when they thought you weren’t home, every drunken confession of lust, every mortifying, self-aggrandizing lie you wished you could take back? Would you survive the onslaught of all your life’s memories bombarding you in a nanosecond’s rush? Would your mental screams resonate from the walls of your misshapen skull as they plunged icy daggers into your brain, carving it, rending it, giving it shapes and contours no human mind had ever had to bear?
Would you recognize the moment when your soul froze and shattered into a trillion pieces, fleeing from the body that it no longer recognized, no longer fit?
When they finally finished, when you were first able to hear their multilayered thoughts in your head, when you finally learned their plans for your people and your planet, would you overcome your madness to act as a proper diplomat for Earth, just as you’d volunteered to, negotiating in good faith for its future in a galactic civilization? Or would you lash out mentally, taking revenge for the tortures they’d heaped upon your body and mind? When they attempted to explain that they didn’t understand the concept of “pain,” would you show them what it meant by hurling your fresh memories at them to make them feel each and every moment of your reshaping? When they pleaded for you to stop and you suddenly understood that they had no defense against your assault, would you continue on until their minds had fallen silent, their quivering bodies nothing more than motionless blobs clinging to the walls of the gleaming white sphere?
And then would you soar from the ship in your pearly shell and survey the wreckage of your former life, trying to find any sort of connection to it? Would you even attempt to identify with these meat beings that used to be the center of your existence? Would you feel anything when the people who had so recently been such an integral part of your life screamed and shrank from the sight of you, not understanding what you were, or who you had once been? Would you feel your mangled bones grow cold as you realized that you could no longer remember what love felt like, when you realized that you were incapable of wanting it, of missing it?
When you
When the door irised open to admit you, and you realized that you alone had been chosen to enter, would you step over the bodies of those who had tried before you and walk through? Would your chin be held high? Would your cheeks be dry? Would you be curious? Terrified? Resigned? Proud? Some bowel-loosening combination of all of the above? Would you look at it as a sacrifice or an adventure? Or would you be too numb with shock to make that sort of fine distinction?
When the door whispered shut and they reached for you, would you shrink from their gelatinous touch? Would you gag when you saw their formless bodies, quivering and gleaming in the strangely low gravity? Would you beg them to find someone else to take your place? Would you turn and pound on the seamless doorway, hoping to find a way out of the brightly-lit spherical prison?
Would you scream when they jellied your bones and reshaped them into arcane loops and whorls? Would you desperately try to press your skin back to your flesh after they’d slowly peeled it off and discarded it? Would you rail and beat the mush that was once your hands against the pearly carapace they’d poured you into to try and give you a semblance of your former shape, something for your once-fellow humans to identify with?
Would you cling with tattered will to your sanity as they unspooled the layers of your mind, peering into every nook and cranny, dredging up every iota of schoolyard humiliation, every love affair gone wrong, every trip to the emergency room, every screaming fight your parents had had when they thought you weren’t home, every drunken confession of lust, every mortifying, self-aggrandizing lie you wished you could take back? Would you survive the onslaught of all your life’s memories bombarding you in a nanosecond’s rush? Would your mental screams resonate from the walls of your misshapen skull as they plunged icy daggers into your brain, carving it, rending it, giving it shapes and contours no human mind had ever had to bear?
Would you recognize the moment when your soul froze and shattered into a trillion pieces, fleeing from the body that it no longer recognized, no longer fit?
When they finally finished, when you were first able to hear their multilayered thoughts in your head, when you finally learned their plans for your people and your planet, would you overcome your madness to act as a proper diplomat for Earth, just as you’d volunteered to, negotiating in good faith for its future in a galactic civilization? Or would you lash out mentally, taking revenge for the tortures they’d heaped upon your body and mind? When they attempted to explain that they didn’t understand the concept of “pain,” would you show them what it meant by hurling your fresh memories at them to make them feel each and every moment of your reshaping? When they pleaded for you to stop and you suddenly understood that they had no defense against your assault, would you continue on until their minds had fallen silent, their quivering bodies nothing more than motionless blobs clinging to the walls of the gleaming white sphere?
And then would you soar from the ship in your pearly shell and survey the wreckage of your former life, trying to find any sort of connection to it? Would you even attempt to identify with these meat beings that used to be the center of your existence? Would you feel anything when the people who had so recently been such an integral part of your life screamed and shrank from the sight of you, not understanding what you were, or who you had once been? Would you feel your mangled bones grow cold as you realized that you could no longer remember what love felt like, when you realized that you were incapable of wanting it, of missing it?
When you
Similar Books
