Utopia - chapter 2
O'maha Beach
"My Lord, your presence is demanded at the Imprisonment Area."
Grinder got up irritably and whisked back to the IA. He hoped it was something urgent, or he'd have the director tortured for that.
"My Lord, the prisoner Mallveet, in his demency, has been screaming information concerning the Resistance."
Grinder listened, interested.
"Did he say where the base was?"
"Yes, in the sub-city, near the river bend, apparently. He… He also mentioned something on an attack to the Andalite-"
"That will be enough! I will question him myself." Grinder snapped. So, there was a traitor in his ministers? The solution was simple. Have them all tortured, and confined for a cycle. No-one must know that he was planning to attack the Andalites.
Mallveet had revealed little. Grinder had ordered the guardians to torture his Yeert as well. He sat heavily at his desk. So there were some traitors! Grinder had already had one too many problems with this Resistance. They were out of any camera range, it was impossible to locate them, and to find out who were the adepts to this movement. The river bend was still partly wild, and had little camera surveillance.
"My Lord, there has been an amazing discovery, in the sector 1302, you… It would be desirable for you to witness it. I suspect it may be of great interest to you." A security guard said.
"What kind of discovery?" he asked severely. He'd had enough time wasted like that!
"From white I've heard, it is some sort of remain of alien technology, unidentified… It is very unclear."
Sighing, Grinder followed. On the way he called one or two attendants. The guard led him to a platform ship, and they quickly hovered towards sector 1302. Suddenly the hoverer stopped.
"This isn't sector 1302!" he protested. In fact, it was the river bend. What…
Suddenly something hit him very hard on the back of the head. The floor approached his face in a jerk, then he lost consciousness.
Grinder woke up. Everything was gray at first. Then gradually his mind cleared. He was in a small cabin, alone. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a door. It was magnetically locked. Still faint, he struggled to get up. He had never felt this weak. Probably he'd been drugged. Surprise let place to anger. How dare those vile rats do this to him! He was at a climax of rage. The damned traitors! He would have… He struggled to think of the worst punishment he could inflict. Torturing would do it; slow torture. A few hours a day; and each day they would know they were going to experience a pain beyond their imagination, with short inserts of pure pleasure, to contrast. He did not even think of how he could escape. He was instead planning how to punish the cause of the problem.
He also noticed someone had taken his mask off. So the people who had seen his face, would be tortured to insanity, confined, their Yeert returned un-vaccined so they could watch their companion die slowly inside them… He felt very moist on the face, and wiped it. Stunned, he looked at his hand; there was a trail of blood on it. This simple fact was incomprehensible; for a long time, so long he'd forgotten the times before it, Grinder had really believed he was immortal, all-powerful. Mallveet's words came back into his mind; "You think you're God, you think you're all powerful. But you aren't. You're not immortal. We'll kill you."
He could not possibly conceive that this simple, stupid man could have been right; that he was really a human being like any other. He was already starting to extrapolate how they maybe had cut themselves on his implants, and blood had dripped on his forehead. It sounded unlikely but it was the only solution he could think of. Then he went on to thinking about how he could make them suffer more for fouling him with their blood.
Grinder was still deep down in his crazed thoughts when the door opened. Again, he quickly wondered how he could react to this situation where he was weaker than his enemies. To save his honor he acted unconscious. To his regret, no-one talked. He heard something very large being sort of rolled in.
"Wake up, you damned tartar!" Someone kicked him hard in the sides. Part of Grinder wondered what a tartar was, but the rest of him was in indignation that someone had dared kick him.
He opened his eyes, and looked up furiously at the people around him. His vision was still blurry and he couldn't make out the faces though; but he could definitely see a huge white sphere. Someone took his hand and pressed it against the sphere, it was a hard, smooth texture. Then suddenly he felt the world around him fading; it slowly dissolved to show another one, completely new.
He was suddenly lying on a strange-colored grass, a lighter green than usual. Near him there were trees with extremely rough and gnarled barks. The smell of the air was different; much more pure and fresh and oxygen-rich. Grinder felt strange breathing an air like that, like he was getting drunk. He heard a voice near him.
"Have a horrid life, tartar!" Then everything was silent again.
Grinder, already drugged, was now somewhat drunk from the amount of oxygen in the air. Maybe he was on another planet, but this felt like Gaâ. He was feeling exhausted and didn't try to move just yet.
A few hours later he felt better. His brain got used to the abundance of oxygen. He managed to stand up and look around him. The area looked near the seaside but details were different from what he knew. He certainly was on another part of the planet, but maybe he'd also been carried into time; that seemed likely. A worrying thought went to him; maybe he was in the past, where he would not yet be ruling. In which case he needed to find a way to get back to his time. For once, his mind was not concentrating on punishing the criminals; instead he was trying to figure out what he should do now.
In the distance he saw a few buildings; they looked primitive enough. He just hoped he was after the 0 years; he did not want to be caught in the middle of war-time.
Further out at sea, the fleet of black boats approached the coast. In them were gaggles of ashen faced men, wearing army uniforms. A sickening atmosphere hung over each boat. And there was a horrible stench, a vile smell that filled the mind with dread; death was aboard the ships too and would come into action soon.
On the beach other men were preparing various weapons; cannons, guns. The atmosphere was slightly different among the soldiers there - it was anticipation, nervousness. The fleet of black boats was visible, and they were getting closer.
Now the black boats stopped. A first few soldiers jumped into the waist-deep freezing water. Then the shooting started; several of them fell dead before they had done a step. The other soldiers that jumped out treaded in a water red and brown with blood, dead bodies already floating. Nevertheless they continued to advance in a suicidal determination; the opposing camp never ceased shooting.
Now the first few soldiers crawled onto the beach. Mines and grenades started flying. A soldier was projected ten feet into the air by an exploding grenade. No-one knew his last though was for his five kids at home, and his wife, to whom he'd promised to come back soon.
Another one lay writhing and screaming in agony until his eyes popped. His arm and half his face had been torn off. A bullet in his head silenced him.
A very young soldier fell under the rifle of shots. He yelled his girlfriend's name, that no-one heard, and fell dead.
It was onto this sinister and morbid battle that Grinder walked in. He watched with a morbid fascination the ongoing slaughter. More and more soldiers flowed in, treading past the dead ones. Behind him there was a noise. A man in the German uniform approached him.
"Was macht du da?"
Grinder looked at him blankly.
"Americaner?!" the soldier asked again.
"I'm sorry what did you?…"
"Americaner! Americaner!" started yelling the soldier frantically, pointing at him. Other men started heading towards him suspiciously. Grinder did not like this attitude, but he couldn't go on, with the bloody battle a few feet away from him. Just then, a misplaced mine exploded; Grinder saw a brilliant white flash and felt himself thrust in the air. He landed several feet away, body numb. He felt horrendous; his outer skin tissues were ripped, his face bleeding, his whole body screaming with excruciating pain. He could not move; for a fleeting instant, his mind panicked by the pain wondered how it was possible that he, the powerful, immortal god of Gaâ, could be treated like this. But it was sheer instinct that saved Grinder from death; in an almost convulsive movement he rolled away, lying low, at a few seconds after a few bullets hit the sand where he had been.
At that moment, Grinder finally knew where he'd landed; this place was Hell. Then Hell became black.
Grinder was woken up a few minutes later. A strange personage was staring up at him.
"So, tartar, you liked that?" came the mocking voice.
Grinder didn't answer. He wasn't sure his mind was in a sane state; the brisk change from control of the planet to absolute Hell was too brutal. But he had a feeling it was only a start…
Again, the world around him dissolved. Now he was in a field, it was the same kind of atmosphere and nature as the beach, but at least here it was peaceful.
"Let's try you at the Seerow wars, for a few years, shall we? Five years in the middle of it should do you a lot of good."
No, not the Seerow wars… His mind pleaded. But he could not find the strength to speak - his mouth muscles were sore and bleeding.
A few hours later the bleeding had stopped but there was still raw, burnt flesh in some areas. His mind was no longer thinking about the past - or rather, the future - he was trying to clean up his thoughts and try to decide to do something.
He heard a cry of surprise from somewhere near, and felt footsteps running towards him.
"Dear Lord, what on Earth happened?!" yelled a feminine voice.
"What is it, honey?" asked a male voice further off.
"Tell Cassie to call the ambulance, quick! And come and help me."
The man approached, and bent over Grinder. He had black skin, and short thick hair.
"What the hell happened to you boy? Susan, help me lift him to the house."
Grinder felt himself clumsily lifted and carried, then carried inside, and put on a table.
"Mom, Dad, what hap…" The girl gasped at the sight.
"Cassie, give me some cotton," said the woman. Then she dabbed his more serious wounds. It was painful, and Grinder worried that the 0-years medical knowledge was feeble compared to the year 1000 technology. He didn't really trust those people even if he knew they wanted to help him.
Soon after an ambulance arrived. Grinder's wounds were disinfected and cleansed, and there was a bumpy ride to the hospital. In here the conditions were more hygienic. They'd plastered his broken ribs in some stiff bandage - primitive methods, even though they'd be efficient in the end.
While Grinder's body was healing steadily, his mind was far from it. He knew he'd have no power in this world - and it hit him fully in the face that he wasn't all-mighty. He was a normal human being, as vulnerable as any other - he was forced to accept that. Yet he couldn't keep going back to his original way of thinking - punishing the cause of the problem. The problem was the Resistance. Why were they there? His mind drifted to Mallveet, then onto the Yeerts… Impossible to think straight.
Then he was annoyed at the incapacity of the people at the hospital - they kept manipulating his implants, a most annoying thing. They also kept asking him his name, and his family name. Grinder had no idea what that was, and anyway his face hurt far too much for him to pronounce words.