Prologue: The art of illusion

Posted on Fri Dec 12th, 2014 @ 1:13am by Ensign Sizb
Edited on on Sat Dec 13th, 2014 @ 4:10am

1,826 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Prologue: The Gathering
Location: Starbase One, In Orbit over Earth
Tags:

Then:

As Patron Tutor Kile'az privately put it, his creche class consisted of twelve attentive, obedient students...and Sizb, possibly the scrawniest, weakest-looking, weirdest-looking hatchling he had ever seen. Of course, he knew size wasn't everything, strength wasn't everything, but in the grand scheme of things, at least on S'sgaron, if you weren't a physically-adept specimen, you weren't much. The military was in ascendancy and presently controlled much of society; every house, from that of the most minor artisans to the noble house of the King himself, was expected and required to contribute strong sons and daughters to the service, or face serious legal and financial repercussions. Later, the present military push would presently come to an end, and the requirements would relax once again, and other paths for success and service would again become possible, but for now, each house, each family, still owed no less than two strong subadults for national service, or four to the priesthood.

Kile'az predicted that Sizb would either become a laborer basically without rights or position in the military machine of Gorn society, or a casteless vagrant. As small and weak as he seemed to be, that was only a slightly slower death than complete destitution would be. Unlike certain other races, the Gorn did not coddle or protect the nonproductive, there were no aid societies, no charitable organizations--though it had been tried on occasion; if you could afford to give out money, food, clothing and medical supplies to homeless layabouts, you could by-Greatfather pay the extra taxes. On S'sgaron, you stood on your own two feet, or you died on your knees, and if you couldn't find a place on your own, no one was going to move over and make room for you.

There was always the priesthood, of course, but...

...but this was *Sizb.*

But, until the day of Choosing, he was still Kile'az' responsibility, and so he would bury his misgivings and treat him as he did his other students (though perhaps keeping a closer eye on him during physical training, to be sure the other, stronger hatchlings did not maim him). And if he sometimes looked into the scrawny youngling's silver eyes and had to suppress a cold shiver at the light of lunatic brilliance mixed half-and-half with utter and complete madness he saw there, well...

As an important part of their training, it was necessary for the younglings to understand how the world worked, how their honorable and ancient civilization operated and maintained itself (after their period of national service had ended in a decade or two, it was allowed, even required in some cases, to take a career that would help support and further the aims of that society--some of them would undoubtedly go on to work at places like this). To this end, today, they were touring a meat-production facility--a factory farm, where meat was efficiently produced in high-density feedlots. The Gorn were strictly carnivores (beyond the use of small amounts of certain spices and herbs to provide flavor, and the teas, alcoholic brews and tisanes they sometimes enjoyed), and they preferred to hunt when they could, but most people didn't have the time or the financial resources to spend every day at a hunting preserve, and so they often settled for fresh meat purchased from a decent retailer--the succulent, ground flesh of Ziz'zile, a fat haunch or two of V'w'garik, a side of z'zak, crispy dried sausages made from ground and seasoned G'noor-back, and the like, an endless variety of carnivorous delights. The Federation and its allies might make extensive use of replicators, bringing forth tasteless, characterless "food" from electricity and quantum nothingness itself--but unlike them, the Gorn were NOT barbarians, and unlike their mad neighbors, they hadn't yet forgotten their own roots.

Meat was still produced in the civilized, time-honored way pioneered over thousands of years by their ancestors, and today, it was often raised in places like this. For the Gorn were masters of efficient, no-waste factory farming, and had raised mass-production of meat animals to an art form.

"...as you can see," the tour guide was saying, as he led them past rack after rack of enclosures. "Ziz'zile are quite picky. Too warm, and they won't lay eggs. A degree too cold, and they stop eating and prepare to hibernate. So, we monitor everything here, from light levels to humidity, even the movement of the air itself, to produce the optimum environment for them..." he gestured toward one of the chirping, fat, lizardy-things in its enclosure--had a human been present, he would very likely have compared it to a sort of reptillian boar crossed with an iguana, with a bristly ridge of...well, *bristles* down its back. "This one is almost ready to be harvested--in fact, we could probably take it a few days early. Tutor Kile'az, do you think your class would mind a lunch of fresh Ziz'zile?" He gave an open-mouthed smile at the class. "We'll have a couple of them prepared by the staff in one of the conference rooms. Believe me, If you've never had Ziz'zile fresh off the farm, you've just never had ziz'zile. It's FAR better the fresher it is." The hatchlings chirped and hooted a bit in expectation--that DID sound a treat!

Kile'az opened his mouth to reply that, yes, that would be perfectly fine..and suddenly realized that he hadn't heard Sizb in some minutes. Sizb, who was almost never completely quiet, who was almost always drowning everyone around him in irrelevant, inane questions, observations, puns and jokes...unless he was planning some sort of mischief. Which he did, at least once every greatcycle. Mischief that usually cost money. And no amount of punishment, no amount of sanction or privation seemed to break him of it.

And they were in the largest meat-factory in S'zhet, the very capital of the empire, where the king's own food came from.

And instead of what he was GOING to say, that yes, they'd all be happy to break for a nice fresh lunch...all that came out was a tiny, strained...

"...oh, no."

And, right on cue, came the first screams.

From a connecting corridor came a stampede of panicked, terrified younglings, another class like his own. He recognized several of the students and the elderly Tutor who accompanied them, who was actually LEADING the pack of screaming Gorn children, sprinting like someone a half-century younger than he actually was. And right behind them was a flood of technicians and janitors and assorted workers, all equally panicked.

And behind them...behind them...

..at first, it wasn't possible to recognize the bloody, misshapen figures as Gorn, stumbling behind the ragged pack. They were screaming, clawing at their bodies, and then he barely recognized the figure of Sizb along with a younger friend of his named Zzakk.

They were covered in Ziz'zile eggs and hatchlings, which were...somehow MERGED with their flesh. They looked like ziz'zile eggs and young. They were the right size and shape. They pulsated in a way that neither Ziz'ziles nor their eggs most assuredly DIDN'T, and they were covered in meaty, throbbing veins that looked as if they were drawing blood directly from their unfortunate hosts. The two Gorn younglings stumbled as they finally staggered into the main corridor, screaming in terror and agony as they fell to their knees, clawing frantically at the horrible, parasitic things.

A QA technician next to Kile'az looked down at the Ziz'zile egg he held in front of a scanner, and tossed it away as if it were full of live anthrax germs.

"GET THEM OFF! HELP! GETTHEMOFFGETTHEMOFFGETTHEMOFF!!!" shrieked Sizb. He grabbed at an egg that was apparently rooted into his eye socket, tugged at it, and screamed. The egg was splitting as the tiny hatchling inside of it struggled to emerge.

"RUN! SAVE--SAVE YOURSELVES!" screamed Zzakk at the same time.

Kile'az was rooted to the spot--too frightened to run, too frightened to stand there. He took a step toward them, but he couldn't quite bring himself to touch them. He dimly noticed that the rest of the class had scattered and ran, and that from somewhere far, far away, he could hear the sound of guards and emergency personnel approaching at a dead run; someone had triggered an alarm.

Sizb fell to his knees, clawing at the thing in his eye; screaming, he slowly pulled it away, his flesh and blood spraying from the apparently-empty socket. Beside him, Zzakk was on the corridor floor, twitching and gurgling, the eggs attached to his body hatching in sprays of Gorn blood. With a final scream, both of them fell silent and still, face-down on the floor, the only sound the crunchy sound of hatching eggs and gurgling blood.

Kile'az stared at the two younglings on the floor, numb, his mouth open. Horror, shock, disbelief? He couldn't tell, and to the day he died, he would never know.

And as the emergency personnel reached the corridor, the "bodies" twitched, their chests heaving...with laughter. Sizb looked up from the floor at him, his muzzle smeared with incredibly realistic fake Gorn blood. He reached up and pulled the latex appliance away from his eye, held up one of the animatronic "eggs". "So...what did you think, Tutor?" he asked, almost conversationally. "Was that our best performance ever or what?"

And Kile'az...three-time decorated hero of the Great Patriotic War, the Third Federation War and the Klingon Incursion of '04...fainted dead away.

***

NOW...

Crewman Sizb started awake, realized he was sitting on a not-particularly-comfortable bench in a park, and then remembered that the park was actually on a space station, which was in orbit over the planet Earth. He wondered if he'd ever manage to get down there--he'd always wanted to see where the great Blackstone, Houdini and Angel had come from. Old california province was still a haven for stage plays and actors, as was New Orleans district; he decided that next time he was here, he would head down to see them.

"Attention: all new Endeavour crew, report to orientation at Airlock 65 in fifteen minutes," he heard over the corridor in Standard. The voice repeated itself in Vulcan, in Andorite, Klingon and Tellarese, which hardly seemed necessary since most people had access to subdermal translators nowadays, but he supposed that it was mostly to keep a few multilingual translators gainfully employed.

He looked at the human on the next to him, who sat thoughtfully munching some sort of confection. The human looked back at him for a moment. "Jelly baby?" he asked, holding out the bag to him.

"Thank you, no," said Sizb. "I'm trying to cut down." He pulled a pack of cards out of his uniform pocket and held it out, since it would be a few minutes before he had to leave. "But feel free to take a card," he said. "Any card."

Crewman Sizb
Security Specialist
U.S.S. Endeavour

 

RSS Feed