That liquid.

That fucking liquid.

I think they never realized how bad it was. How it stinked. How it tasted bad to the point of making me sick. How it itched to much it made me want to rip my skin off. But of course, that didn't matter to them. It provided sustenance, and most importantly, it was practical. And that's really all they ever cared about, right?

I remember I wasn't from there. I remember I had… others that cared about me. But they managed to erase every other memory of my past. Apart from that, all I can remember is being there. And that was all I was.

A test subject.

A prototype.

A guinea pig.

An… abomination.

And that tube was my world.

Regardless of how much I hated them, they were my fathers and mothers. They fed me through tubes, poked me with a thousand needles, and kept me alive for whatever purposes it suited them.

I was alone, at first. In time, they brought more like me, but we couldn't even exchange looks: those that were near me, that I could see though the foggy glass had been… mutated, beyond recognition. They no longer had a face for me to look at.

I found out who I was from their chit-chat, between diagnoses, test results, and other medical crap. They thought we couldn't hear them, but…

They were trying to stop entropy. I didn't know what that meant at the time, but it was bad. It could spell the end for the entire universe, and all the creatures on it. It was bad. And once they realized it, they frenetically worked on solutions for it. They couldn't find them. And time was running out. It all seemed hopeless, until one of their scientists came up with a solution. To use sentient beings' emotion to produce energy. It was a brilliant plan, and although not definitive, it would ensure their survival until a final solution could be thought of.

But they ran into a snag. Their kind wasn't able to use that technology themselves, for whatever reason, so they had to resort to outside sources.

Us.

That brilliant solution would require thousands, no, millions to be sacrificed just to inflict a temporary setback to their enemy. And not a single one of those victims would be their own. Bastards.

They tried different things on my brethren. DNA manipulation, mind control, artificially induced emotions. None worked. And since we were just experiments, those of us that failed… were disposed of, like failed experiments.

However, for me, their first and prime guinea pig, they waited until they had a method with better chances of success. And when they finally came up with a promising idea, one worth sacrificing me, they went for it.

I suddenly felt my life being sucked out of me, as if my soul was abandoning me. When I opened my eyes again, there was a steel jewel standing in front of me. They immediately connected cables and wires to it, apparently to test it if outputted energy. It seemed a success.

Time went by. I felt that the jewel had some sort of mysterious power, and that I had some control over it: I was able to change the color of the water, but not at all times. I had no idea what was the deal with that thing, but as they saw me doing that, they were even more satisfied.

Eventually, they took me to a different section, and started more exhaustive tests on me. Exhaustive, as in torture. Electric shots, stabbing, poisoning, loud and constant screeches through headphones... images of violence… rape… everything. And as they did so, the energy output seemed to increase. More and more of their kind came to watch testing every day. Not only was I a success, was also public show. Maybe it was precisely because of that.

And it was also then that I heard them talking again, this time about the jewel: they called it a "Soul Gem", and, apparently, it contained my very soul, and they were drawing the energy from the emotions I felt when I was subjected to pain.

It was only then that I realized – really realized that I was going to be nothing but a soulless energy source for rest of my pitiful life. I succumbed to that knowledge, and sank deep into depression.

I was a power plant.

A human power plant.

…

But something went wrong.

When they tried to increase the output, I wasn't able to. I was at my limit, and I wouldn't be able to produce more. I was a failure. I had lost my potential.

So I was to lose my future.

I was finally able to leave that horrible tube, and got to see the world, even if only for mere seconds, from the outside. They were already moving on to other test subjects. They dragged me along the corridors of the lab, and threw me down the incinerator shaft, along with my jewel.

I said goodbye to this cruel world... and good riddance...

But again...

...things didn't go as planned.

I didn't die. For all intents and purposes, I should have died in there: both my miserable body and my Soul Gem had been thrown down into the fiery heart of an incinerator, that burned with vicious blue flames.

But I had survived.

My skin had been burned off: I was a mess by anyone's standards. But I had manage to crawl back up from the towering inferno, with every cell in my body screaming in pain as I did so, and escaped on my own two feet.

I used those two feet without delay and ran as fast as I could, looking for an escape out of that hell that I was forced to call home. Some way to get out of there. Some way to be free.

They realized what was going on, and tried to stop me. It took me only a blink of an eye for them to burst into flames. I didn't realized how I had done it, but I could ignite objects remotely at will. And so I set my pursuers ablaze, wave by wave, incinerating large portions of the lab as I did so. But they kept coming and coming, like a plague from god. There was no end to them. So I ran. I ran and didn't looked back, only stopping to lift fiery barriers.

In the end, there was no way out. I ran into a dead end, a small, circular room at the end of an hallway, and scores of them threw themselves at me. I had nothing left to lose, and made my stand, turning the place into a living inferno. Their ashes piled up all the way to the ceiling, but more kept jumping through the flames, dust and ash.

I panicked. I ran into the bottom of the room, and there was some sort of control panel: I smashed the keys at random, in desperation, foolishly hoping that one would call god to bring down the sword of Damocles on them.

It worked.

The room's glass door slammed shut, trapping me inside. They piled up against it, but were unable to break it. It was only when they started to get smaller and smaller that I realized what had happened. I was soaring high above them, high above the lab: the "room" was some sort of ship. And I kept getting away from the place I hated so much, witnessing how their lab grew smaller, giving me a magnificent view of their city, glittering in tones of green and white, and finally even that became only a set of lights, shining on the face of the big sphere they called their planet, into the vastness of space.

The onboard computer had been programmed to teach a newborn everything about life. It was from it that I realized, really realized what had been done to me, and learned how about science, how to survive, and to read, though I couldn't speak, as I had never used my vocal chords.

And now I type this in the computer, as I fly by a beautiful, small blue planet. My food ran out long ago, my body never recovered, and I've been feeling kinda down lately, I don't know what is going to happen from now on. Better to write this while I can.

For some reason, my Soul Gem had turned black with time. I don't know what that means, but it's probably nothing good. Right now, I just noticed the glass had a small crack on it.

I feel a bit tired now, I think I'm gonna take a rest. I don't know if I'll wake up, specially since I just noticed a few more cracks on my Soul Gem, but I am okay with it.

This planet, this view is so pretty… To die with this view… it feels so… nice…

*bzzzt*

END TRANSMISSION

A/N: Short story I had planned. Got another one planned, will be putting them up between Against Destiny chapters.

A big thanks to Jon Philips for largely inspiring a lot of this with Product, aka "I was born in a tube".

Reviews welcome :)