-Chapter 4-
Life Changing
Jared's eyes jerked open, he felt himself slumped over in a cramped sleeping position. He slowly rose up, noticing that the pain was not just from his back, but also from the cold metal chair he found himself in. The chair itself was unusual, it was a sleek black with several lines scattering over its smooth surface, the seat seemed small as it barely covered his rear, but the back was the worst part. It only reached just to the middle of his spine, which led his upper body to hang in an uncomfortable way. Jared tried to adjust his position in order to alleviate the pain, however he could not move at all. He was only met with resistance as he felt he was restricted to the chair, but in what way, he could not tell from a simple glance. There appeared to be no ropes or chains tied to him, nor any tape, yet he could not move from his initial sitting position, he was completely stuck within this chair. As he was contemplating the sitting arrangement, something else caught his attention, he was no longer wearing his clothes. Instead of the maroon shirt with jeans, he was now sporting a blue jumpsuit made of an unknown material. The way it felt on his skin made it seem like cloth, but the appearance looked much more like denim. The collar of the jumpsuit led down to his sternum in a V pattern, the sleeves seemed to be rolled up as well as the legs, which were tucked into the black, rubber boots he was now in. There were no discernable markings on the clothing, no designer brands, or anything, just all blue. Jared tried to reach for the back of the suit to check for a tag, but was reminded of his inability to move. Then, a thought crossed his mind; when he first awoke, he was slumped over himself but was able to readjust his position to be upright, now, he could not move at all, he couldn't even attempt to repeat the same movement. The sudden restriction in motion led Jared to one conclusion : Someone's watching me.
Jared's gaze quickly scanned the room. From what he could tell, he was in the center of a completely small, steel chamber. All the walls, the floor, and the ceiling were made of steel, or at least, something that resembled it. Across the surface of each were the same lines that were covering the chair. Must be some kind of design choice Jared thought. Kind of creeped out I can't see behind me though. Besides himself and the chair, the room was completely bare, there was not even a door, from what he could see. No cameras, not in front of me at least. Jared took a deep breath and exhaled. Okay, where the hell am I and what the hell do I remember? It didn't take long for him to recall the moment in which everything went wrong. The sound, the ships, all of it. The last thing I remember was floating in the air, I saw parts of the building floating with me and I saw other students as well. So what the fuck happened? Abduction? Did aliens really come to Earth? I mean I always expected aliens were real to some degree but this is fucking insane, there's no way right? Before he could answer his own question, the answer appeared right behind him. Without warning Jared's chair swung around to reveal two, hideous figures.
They stood on four legs, each leg had a translucent green exoskeleton covering the inner workings below, which was a mess of white sinew and yellow and purple veins. The feet, if they could even be called that, were thin green platforms that had small, yellow feelers extending out the top. The legs converged at a round piece of the exoskeleton which was connected to an elongated torso, covered in the same exoskeleton. The inner workings this time were protected by a brown, rigid bone-like structure similar to the ribs. Connected to the torso were two arms, which looked similar to the legs in appearance, the hands however, were two yellow feelers, similar to the ones on top of the feet except longer and more robust. At the top of the torso was a thin neck which led to an almond shaped head. The mouth of the beast was vertical and had two rows of teeth, the mouth seemed to be constantly open and never closed fully. Above the mouth were two large, black pores which were most likely the nose. Finally, above the nose, were the eyes, of which there were four. Each side of the face had two, which were perfectly parallel to each other, the eyes themselves were slanted and had no color to speak of, just pools of blackness. On top of the head were more feelers, these were a lot shorter but dotted the entire head. There were no ears that could be seen. They stood at about five foot seven and looked most similar to praying mantises. While there were two of them, there was not much difference between them. The only one that was immediately noticeable was that the eyes on the right one were not as slanted, and the feelers on its head were a bit longer.
"What the hell are you?!" Jared cried out in fear.
The beasts twitched their heads back and forth rapidly, as if trying to discern the question, or maybe even understand it. After several seconds of head twitches, they finally slowed down and came to a stop.
"Greetings subject 636!" The one on the left spoke with striking clarity and grace. "We would like to welcome you to your new home, the Ulzo mothership!" As it spoke, its mouth moved to enunciate each word, but never fully closed. Its voice sounded like a generic British super villain, as if it had tried its best to imitate ones it had seen.
"What did you call me?" Jared could barely process what he just heard "And where am I? The Ulzo mothership, and how do you know English?"
"Yes that is correct, the Ulzo mothership!" The left one spoke again in a hurried tone, as if it didn't like being interrupted.. "And, you are called that due to your identification number, which is 636. And, since you're so full of questions, we assimilated every human language long ago."
"Okay I get the I.D thing and I suppose I get the language thing, but WHO are the Ulzo?" Jared felt they were toying with him, purposefully choosing to leave out certain parts of their answer.
"The Ulzo are a magnificent race!" The left one started saying. Hailing from the Unov quadrant of the Bengabos system, we have one simple desire, to create the ultimate form of entertainment!" The left one extended both of his feelers out to gesture the magnitude of their mission.
"After years of careful observation." The one on the right began to speak, which sounded like the British woman that would accompany the villain. "We have decided your race is ready for entertainment purposes and servitude."
"Years?" Jared couldn't understand. "You things have been watching us for years?"
"Well in human years at least, it has been much longer for us." The left one spoke again, gesturing with its feeler.
"It has been approximately" the right one brought its feeler up and swiftly brought it down, as it came down, a holographic screen appeared in front of it. The right one began moving about the screen with swiftness, despite the imprecise nature of the feelers, it was clearly skilled at doing this. "500 years since we began watching you, to the date." With one swift flick upward with the feeler, the right one closed the screen.
"500 years?! You've been watching us for that long? Why?" Jared screamed back, trying to break free of whatever was containing him.
"Why indeed!" The left lifted it up one of its legs and began to pace about, each leg seemed to move on its own yet all of the movement came together in a formulated way that supported the creature. The way it was pacing made one thing clear, it was about to give a speech. "As stated earlier, we strive to create entertainment, and your race," the left one pointed at Jared with his feeler "has finally become ready!" The creature's mouth suddenly flickered back and forth making its teeth chatter together, although it was much different to what he was used to, Jared could tell it was meant to be a laugh.
"We have been fascinated with human entertainment for quite some time." The right one interjected. "The worlds you create, the relationships you make, the characters you kill in order to elicit heartbreak!" It began to wrap its feelers together and brought them up to its face. "It's quite amazing!"
"Yes it is!" The left one picked up without missing a beat. "From plays to movies, from movies to TV, from TV to video games." it brought its feeler up to where its chin was supposed to be. "You humans are quite like us in that way." Quickly, it skittered up to Jared and leaned into his face. "Never stopping until the ultimate form of entertainment is made." With each word it said, the creature got closer and closer to Jared's face and its voice became more sinister and more sinister breaking away from the pleasant voice before and becoming a lot more guttural.
A feeler suddenly wrapped around the left one's neck and jerked it back with unusual strength. The right one gave it what looked like a condescending look. "We went through the same motions as you humans long ago, our entertainment was lavish and filled with spectacle! However, we noticed overtime that entertainment lacks a certain appeal once you take an element away. The element of reality!" The right one gave the same laugh action the other gave.
"Reality?" Jared's head was still swimming with thoughts, barely able to utter one word.
"Yes, reality! Once everything is scripted there are no risks, no consequences!" The left one chimed in passionately. "It's just no fun!"
"So" The right one interrupted the left, giving a further look of what could be seen as condescension. "We decided that in order to create the ultimate form of entertainment, we needed to add a healthy dose of reality!"
The left one let out somewhat of a sigh. "Unfortunately for us though, no one on our planets wanted to volunteer to be a part of the ultimate entertainment plan" The left one continued on. "Everyone was either too scared or too lazy to want to change the way entertainment would forever be presented."
The right one went on., not giving Jared a chance for questions. "So we decided the only way would be to seek out other races in order to do this for us! So far it has been a rousing success!"
Jared picked up on when the right one was going to stop and fired a question he had loaded for awhile. "Okay, I get all of that, kind of, but why us? Why humans?"
"Well once every couple of human decades." The left one begrudgingly answered. "We get bored of seeing the same race in our entertainment, so we decide to switch it up and select a new race to watch. You humans have just been perceived as ready and are already looking very promising."
"And" Jared started to ask, not knowing if he wanted to hear the answer. "What happens to the race that you get bored of?"
"Oh we simply exterminate them and their microverses" The right one said quickly, no tone or inflection.
Exterminate. The word stuck out in Jared's head, exterminate, gone, never to come back. It was a terrifying thought that the fate of his species could ride on the enjoyment of aliens. Then, Jared recalled the word in that sentence that confused him.
"Did you say microverses? What is that exactly?"
"We were going to tell you if you would have stopped interrupting with your incessant questions" The left one angrily said.
"Yes, indeed." The right one seemed to believe itself above showing anger. "Microverses, universes that stem from your mind with certain parameters.' The right one slowly spoke, knowing this was important. "We use an individual's mind to create a universe to inhabit, we then transplant that individual into this mircoverse which is then broadcasted for all the Ulzo to see."
Jared was utterly confused by this logic. "Wait, you can create universes yet you need us to inhibit them for entertainment? Why not just go yourselves?"
The left one was clearly irritated by this question, as it had been for all of them. "Microverses! Creating a universe would be utterly impossible. I also stated earlier that the Ulzo were either too scared or too lazy; those that did go did not end up being very good entertainment, because they died very quickly."
"We are a very scientific race you see, we're not very fit for environments that aren't our ships or our planets." The right one hurriedly added.
A microverse, created by Jared's own mind. Normally, in any other situation, this would be a dream come true, but, this sounded like hell. Forcibly being placed in a universe for the entertainment of others was not the idea of a dream.
Jared collected his thoughts. "Is everyone on Earth being forced to do this?"
The right one laughed "No, no, that would be way too many things to watch. Too many plots to keep up with, that sort of thing. No, only about a million of you got chosen for this, with the rest being forced to be put to work for us. You were lucky enough to get chosen."
"Forced to work?!" Jared loudly questioned. "You're telling me that we're your slaves?!"
"In a way" The left one chirped up. "I suppose you could put it that way. But don't worry! In their free time, everyone still on Earth is allowed to watch you all as well!"
What the hell. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON! Literally minutes ago I was getting ready for a test, now this shit is happening? My parents, my friends, Drew, everyone on Earth is either in this shit show or enslaved?! How the fuck can this be happening? This isn't real right? Is it a dream?
"Now, 636" The right one spoke up in a very curt manner. "We must discuss your microverse arrangement." It pulled down the hologram again and began to quickly scroll through it. "You see, it would be boring to have everyone in the same microverse, so, before every microverse creation, we add a parameter that is followed in order to spice things up."
Jared came back to his senses, he figured he was nearing the end of his "conversation" so he knew his next question would be his last. "Why?" He spoke up. "Why tell me all this?"
The left one titled its head. "Whatever do you mean 636?"
Jared spoke up, louder than he had before. "Why the hell did you tell me this! Wouldn't it be more entertaining to have me not know at all?!" He was tired of the rigamarole , he just wanted answers.
"Ahh, that's always the last question isn't it?" The left one looked over at the right one. "Yes, it always is." The right one responded without looking up from the hologram.
The left one clearly wanted the other to explain but they blissfully ignored it. "You see, we find it entertaining to wait for the moment where the individual in the microverse starts up with ' 'You don't understand ''' The left one started in a mocking tone. " 'I am from a different universe, you need to help me!' All of that makes for great entertainment, especially when the natives to the microverse see them as crazy from there on out." The left one concluded, with a sadistic tone.
Jesus Christ, their not fucking around. If I go into that microverse, I'm dead. I will die in there for their entertainment and nobody in there or out here is going to give a shit.
"Ah, finally, the algorithm picked one for you!" The right one stated. "Let's see" It began to trail off. "Oh, well now that is surprising, you got lucky once more 636."
That's funny, because I really don't feel fucking lucky right now.
"Your microverse designation is: Your Dream Universe." The right one stated with spirit. "That is usually the least threatening one, but who knows? Maybe your dream is deadlier than expected."
"So, what, is it whatever my mind believes my dream universe to be?" Jared exhaustingly questioned.
"Yes, in simple terms." The right one confirmed. "We shall see what becomes of it."
That doesn't sound too bad but why the hell would it be included in their algorithm if it was all sunshine and rainbows?
"Well, no time to waste then. We have to get you ready" The left one concluded walking toward Jared. "Computer, put 636 under with a sedative."
Suddenly Jared felt the back of the chair move then, a slight prick in his neck. The loss of feeling started in his toes, which slowly creeped its way up his body.
As it got to his chest, the left one spoke up. "Computer, disengage forcefield around 636." Jared suddenly dropped to the ground, he tried to bring his arms out to brace himself, but they wouldn't move.
"Have a good rest 636." The left one said, running the feeler across Jared's face. "You'll need to keep your wits about you in the microverse." The laugh, one final time.
Jared's eyelids fell closed through no volition of his own. His body got increasingly heavy, eventually he felt the weight of his own brain crushing down on him. Jared slowly, but surely fell into a deep sleep, only to see a snowy path in front of him. Now, the boot prints were gone, the path was covered in snow, and Jared could not move an inch.