Author's Note:This was initially intended to be a long chapter in one of my other stories but I'm throwing it out separately for now seeing as it would probably just get lost in the greater narrative and this particular arc I thought was worthy of exploring in greater detail. Also at the rate my stories are progressing given what little time I can devote towards them at the present time it probably would be a very long time until I got this far and well, I can get a little impatient with myself at times. Note, the identity of the girl whose POV the story is being told through is being kept deliberately ambiguous as to not give away who she is and which story she is from since I haven't got that far yet. Other than that there are no real spoilers for the other stories as this primarily will take place on the Skitters' home planet long before the invasion of Earth. The girl simply acts as a conduit to whom the Skitters tell the story of their people to. Also consider that with this being an AU/remake the events here will not necessarily mesh up with what was presented in the show. (The show kind of fails on consistency within itself on the world building elements too, which while a mild irritance to the fans it actual is a rather convenient flaw to exploit for writing fanfiction.) I'm basing it more on what Red Eye said concerning his world and just throwing out all the silliness the last season inundated us with. (Aside from the name of the species, that's about all I am taking post season 3 on this.) I may eventually remove this story and add it back to the story which it is drawn from once I get that far but for now here it is.
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Chapter I: Stockholm Syndrome
I was once a normal human being just like you. I had a life, people I cared about, my own ambitions, hopes and dreams. In an instant that world was taken away from me when the Earth was invaded. I scrounged around with a few companions for a time, trying to carve out a new life it what was left of the world but even that would not remain. Eventually I was snatched up by the aliens that had laid waste to the Earth. They intended to enslave me by placing a parasitic organism upon my spine which fused with my central nervous system. It wasn't mind control, but rather it lo-jacked me from the brain stem down and operated my body independent of my own will. In essence it was more of body control than anything else. It was uncomfortable and extremely annoying, to be trapped inside your body, seeing everything, hearing everything but being unable to interact with the world outside yourself. It was as if I was imprisoned within my own flesh. And then you had those Overseer things peering into your thoughts every now and again; there was nowhere you could run to, not even in your own mind. I was completely possessed, I was no longer mine, but theirs to do as they saw fit. Sometimes they had a use for me, other times I was neglected and left standing somewhere, completely discarded and forgotten about. Life was hell, or it should have been if it wasn't for this weird euphoric sensation flooding in from whatever that thing on my back was pumping me full of. I was being made into a junkie, addicted to the high that was induced by my enslavement all the while being subjected to possibly one of the worst forms of rape imaginable. I would have to assume that this is all my life would be from now on until natural death, assuming these things would even allow me to die. I've seen these harnesses keep people alive that never should have been otherwise. In addition to taking over our bodies these parasites confer upon the host some kind of Wolverine-like healing power. They've cured all sorts of diseases, reversed cancer, repaired broken bones and damaged organs in mere minutes, and even halted the aging process. My only real hope of escape was if someone out there was kind enough to put a couple bullets in me. That wasn't really going to happen either, you see I wasn't one of the worker bees; I was being kept here, in the ship, held back for some "special" purpose. For this purpose, God knows what it is, they had paired me with one of the overseers, and not just any overlord either, this was one of the three who were directly responsible for the administration of the entire solar system, namely Earth but they also had stuff going on with the Moon, Mars, the asteroid belt and a few of the outer planets. Most of the human slaves never dealt with the overseers but were instead paired with another slave race, the six legged creatures we called spiders among other things. I, just like most everybody else assumed the spiders were the ones responsible for the invasion and had never even seen an overlord until I was paired to one. There were some people who believed that the harnesses themselves were the actual master race but I don't know. I can't really tell where the orders come from, only that my body dutifully obeys.
When I was harnessed and brought on board these creatures were all monsters in my eyes. That was weeks, maybe months ago, it's hard to tell, I've kind of lost track of the passage of time. Now I have learned that is not entirely the case, they aren't monsters, not all of them at least. The Overlords, Overseers, Guardians or whatever the tall creepy ones call themselves, they were cold, sterile, enigmatic and frightening. No matter how many times I melded with the one they had paired me with it never got any easier. Yes, those ones were monsters and remained so to this day. There were others, voices in the back of the Overseers' heads that I could hear the echo in my own mind that were also quite scary. At least three distinct entities which from my perspective were beyond comprehension. Now the others, the six legged slave race, I found them eventually to be kindred spirits. Maybe you could call it Stockholm syndrome, identifying with my captors or maybe now I could truly commiserate with what they are, something just like me. When the apparent engineers of the occupation were away my condition was quite amenable, even pleasant dare I say. Through the harness I was connected to my fellow subjects so in these terrible times I was never truly alone. That in and of itself brought me a great deal of comfort. There was a sense of belonging, a closeness between me, the other human captives and the other slave races that transcended anything we humans could know between each other. The deepest intimacy between people paled in comparison to sharing a single mind, a single being with all of these other individuals. There was no envy, no hate, no misunderstanding, only total acceptance and the purest unconditional agape between fellow beings. We became each other, freely migrating between bodies and minds; we were one, and we were all.
We were in communion with many subject races, though there were few exemplars of most of these species onboard this particular ship. However it was the spiders whom I felt most connected to. These creatures have been bound in perpetual servitude for generations to the point where they had forgotten what they had once called themselves. For my own reference however, spiders were as good a name as any. They were intelligent creatures with no sense of self; it was something they had never known. They were conditioned from birth only to know the needs of their masters. They had no names, no distinct identities among themselves and knew nothing of the world whence they came. There was no memory, identity, history or a drive towards free will among them, well among most of them. There were some who were able to resist the effects of the harness and retain their independence. These ones were especially close to me, because I was more like them than any of the others. You see I learned early on that I too was able to resist the control of the harness. We were the freed slaves so to speak. I was told this ability was extremely rare, and almost unheard of in the first batch of a species to be harvested. Usually the overlords can fine tune the harnesses to their hosts with their initial test subjects and it usually isn't after several generations of subtle adaptation that an aberration occurs which is resistant to the harness. How it occurred in me they did not know. In spite of my ability to assert my freedom I was urged not to use it lest I arouse the attention of the overseers and invoke them to use more draconian methods of domination. So I willingly relinquished my body and allowed it to function as if I didn't have my immunity. In doing so all was well. As well as a person in my situation can hope for.
It was through these resistant spider creatures that some small fraction of their former way of life remained. Within bondage when they were first taken into captivity some of the first generation transferred their memories into the young during the times in which they were together but not in use. Fully enslaved as the creatures continued to be bred and had less and less contact with the formerly natural born spiders those who retained the memory of their homeworld, their culture, everything they were before they were conquered, became less numerous. Eventually such memories would have been diluted down and completely erased if the mutation had not occurred that allowed the first of the freed to break away from the control of the overseers. Since then the Freed had upon contact with each other passed these memories between each other. There were so few of the Freed in relation to the overall spider population that such encounters were rare. As such, though I was not one of them I too was selected to preserve their memories in the long and unbroken chain that had persisted since the beginning.
The creature I've come to know as Scar was looking directly into my eyes as his inaudible words were spoken in my head. The reason I call him Scar was due to the prominent crescent shaped scar burnt into his face, from his forehead down and around his right eye which ended at his chin below the jaw. It was an indention as well as a blackened discoloration. Who was to say he was really a "he" anyway since the spiders were all hermaphrodites I doubt the human concept of gender identity mattered much to them. Nonetheless to me, Scar was a he. As for what he said, it was more than just words but the emotion attached to them; I could feel what he felt as if for that moment our minds were one. It is a strange sensation, really hard to put into words I could make sense of from a human perspective. With Scar it was different than the overlords or even the blank batch bred chattel slaves. With Scar it felt warm, caring, like being draped in a soft blanket of all those fuzzy emotions. Yet there was seriousness to his words now. I was about to partake in what amounted to the spiders most sacred ritual.
"Girl." he addressed me.
"We shall begin the story of your people with you. Share with me the knowledge of your life, your people and I shall impart onto you the memory of mine." he told her.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
He knew that I was, there could be no secrets between them. Even if I tried to block him he had learned all the tricks for much longer than I had been practicing. Regardless this time I was completely open.
My eyes remained open as it all flooded into me from Scar. It was a story, but not one told with words, more like a memory. It was as if I was to live another life, a life that was neither mine nor Scar's but one that was lived long before either of us were born. Suddenly Scar's face vanished and I found myself looking out of the eyes of one of his kind, before they became what they are today.
I looked down at my body. It was like Scar's but different. The first difference I noticed was that the armored brown scales that had covered him were gone. Instead my skin was a translucent bluish grey color. It was soft and glistened with moisture in the amber colored sunlight of what appeared to be evening. My body was frail, gentle and dainty in contrast to the tough, stalwart frame of Scar and his ilk. I seemed more suited for a somewhat aquatic existence in this form, feeling drawn to the water more so than the land. The clawed hands that had spelled the doom of many a human survivor were no more; in their place were long delicate digits which I could gracefully curl and extend. I hadn't thought about it but the fact that I could do that was incredible in and of itself. This was supposed to be a memory, something that already happened and was set in stone but I felt in complete control. Was I truly in command of this delicate creature's faculties or was my self-control an illusion, were my impulses to do what I did part of the memory? Was I unknowingly playing a role?
Dorniya, that is what I was called, that is what Scar's people were called before they forgot their names. As for the individual whom I was standing in for her name, yes I am calling it a her since I, a female am the one possessing this hermaphroditic entity, her name was more or less unpronounceable through the human senses. Much of the Dorniya's speech was imperceptible by the human ear and for the most part wasn't even based on sound per se rather through electromagnetic radiation in the form of low frequency radio waves. That which was spoken fell mainly in the infrasonic category so what was audible to the human ear sounded like gibberish. Nonetheless apart from the squelch and static and the deep unrecognizable hum both of which I was only able to ascertain through my host body I will call this creature Chi'i as that is the closest approximation I could come up with. Not only were my powers of perception enhanced in the audible range but in the visual range I could also perceive part of the infrared spectrum, possibly something that would be advantageous in murkier waters than the clear freshwater swamp-sea I was currently surrounded by. In addition to new sounds and sights this being's mind also contained a wealth of new information which I was privy too. However it would take some time before I was able to make sense of it all so for now I put that aside and concentrated more on the world around me.
I looked up into the sky filled with thick yellow and orange clouds. This certainly wasn't Earth though I felt a familiarity with it. Was this too part of the memory exchange? Beyond the clouds a pale sun much like our own shone low in the sky. It went comfortably warm but not hot, I'm assuming in relation to these creatures' tolerance though in human terms I would assume them to be similar to our own. They lived in our world just fine I could only suppose that humans could have lived in theirs just as well. As for my surroundings I was in the midst of a large lake of some sort, or perhaps a shallow sea standing on a gnarled tree branch reaching up from the still water. The waves were gentle, blown by the soft breeze and nothing more, implying that this world did not have a moon, or at least it did not have one large enough to give a noticeable effect to the tides. Other trees and gargantuan forms of vegetation broke the surface of the water and mingled together in the air forming much of the solid ground in my field of vision. I saw little actual earth from where I was, only the great jungle plants of which there were truly many. To my back and left side it was so dense that one could hardly notice the surface of the sea, as if this was a true land based forest. Ahead of me it thinned out a bit where I could see the sun and sky. To my right and slightly ahead of me was a broad, seemingly endless expanse of open water ending only with the faint outline of another forest on the far horizon. In the water strange varieties of fish and reptiles swam between the tree trunks and exposed undersea roots. In the air insects the size of birds and rats buzzed and crawled about. A reddish purple moss grew out of the knots and orifices of some of the trees, a moss which I felt compelled to eat for some reason. At first glance I could notice nothing that seemed indicative of a civilization of this presumably advanced alien species. At least I assumed they would be advanced. I hadn't considered that perhaps before they were enslaved that they might have been more primitive technologically speaking than we humans were. On the far distant horizon however I could see it, something like a castle in the trees which I instinctively knew was but the entrance to an expansive underwater city. I knew I would probably go explore that location later but for now I was immersed in the moment where I was. I could hear all the sounds around me, see the sights and feel the smooth bark beneath my six feet. I was truly in a new world, and about to relive a life very different from my own though something told me that very soon I would have something very much in common with the experiences of this individual whom I was portraying in a body that had undoubtedly long since turned to dust and been scattered among the stars.
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Author's Note:So much for the introduction. This one was simply a setup to get the premise started, the following chapters will be more substantive concerning what happened on the Skitter homeworld (which will be given a name) and so forth. Let me know what you think of the story and the underlying concept. Any suggestions for improvement are welcome.