Ahem...
Well... I know it's probably remarkably tame considering SOME of what's out there, so don't get too disappointed if you read it and go... what... that's it? I wasn't really going for a "hot" reaction, I was trying to write an emotionally powerful scene from both a confused and a repressed state of mind. Writing this story from a dual perspective has confused many people, certainly myself included, and I'm not entirely convinced it works, but people seem to enjoy the story, so I suppose it would be stupid to change it. In ANY case, this is the first time I've written something like this, so I'm kinda nervous... and embarassed. Still, it was gonna come up in my writing career eventually, so if I'm going to grow as a writer, I need to do this stuff.
So, with the excuses all past, on with the show. A special little mention goes out to Maran Zelde, for her awesome contribution to this rapidly growing story. Her fanart is greatly appreciated, covetted and other such verbs. Her rendition of Medical Drone Vic can be seen on her sideseven gallery at: www dotside7 dotcom/art/maranzelde/gallery dothtml. Can't actually write the link down properly because the document manager removes all urls from stories, but if you're smart, you'll figure it out, eh? You don't need an Enigma box to figure this one out, I trust. Give it a look and let her know what you think. While you're at it, she's a pretty damn good writer too, so be nice with the reviews, ok?
One final IMPORTANT note. The song lyrics below, while long (it's the whole song) are particularly important, hence the different format from how I normally write them. The reason being is that this song is the one I've selected to typify Medical Drone Vic, and it holds alot of meaning and insight into her character. Plus, if you've ever heard it, it's an awesome song, though to be honest I like the live version better than the original.
With that being said, on with the show!
"Oh Mary was unhappy with the life that she led /She was a simple girl without much to say /So one day she just upped and left her dreary home /And she left all her friends behind to wander all alone /And at first she was afraid, she was so far away /From her home but slowly she got to like it anyway
Oh Mary won't you please come...
Well in time she found that /The mountain that she had been taught /Her whole life, that she must avoid /And though at first it hurt, and no one could comfort her /She finally came to appreciate it /And she liked it, she liked it--oh wasn't she surprised And though still alone, she grew so much inside
Oh Mary won't you please come...
And after a time, she became so sublime /She could look in people's eyes and read their minds /Though her hands would sometimes bleed and occasionally /She would long for her past and the memories they bring /She decided to return to her old home town /And her heart was burning with all the things she found
Oh Mary won't you please come...
So Mary came back and at first no one recognized her face /And her friends were all a little bit afraid /When they heard what she had to say /They all slowly backed away /And her family took her aside and put their arms around her /They said Mary, won't you please come back to us now /There is still time to repent for all your sins /And Mary started to cry when she realized /That she'd never come home again in her life
Oh Mary won't you please come Mary won't you please come Mary won't you please come... please come home"
-Oingo Boingo, Mary
Good Lord, I hate this place.
Now those of you who have been a partner to this sad, sordid little tale of woe and desperation from the beginning are probably getting a LITTLE tired of me expounding upon this particular premise, but bear with me, because unless you've been here... you really don't GET how terrible this place is.
The smell... how do I begin to define the smell? It changes. It... evolves, defying the nose's ability to rationalize any terrible odor into something palatable. 101 elements that human scientists never defined, and all of them in various states of nausome decay, right here in my own backyard.
I tell you, I envy Vic her lack of a nose every day. It's like some idiot randomly popping outta the woodwork and jabbing you in the face every few hours.
But that doesn't begin to describe how FOUL everything smells about an hour after it rains.
Just after a rain, things are at their best... the only detectable odor is a kind of corroded iron taint... not pleasant, but entirely bearable. Then it starts to creep up on you, a rotten, gymshorts-worn-without-underwear-for-three-days-then-stashed-in-a-damp-locker-and-left-there kind of odor... yeaowwch.
I set my stirring stick down and wipe sweat off my forehead, staring down at the swirling mass of partially decontaminated (I hope) water with a nice crop of Greenstuff floating on top. After finding this bottom half of a upside down vat sometime last year, and spending the next several days righting it and scrubbing the inside with dried Greenstuff pads (think a green scrubby pad or brillo pad, with just a slight scent of mushrooms and nutmeg, for some odd reason) I was able to turn it into a "water processing plant" of sorts. Took me a long time to get it clean to the point where drinking from it even after the Greenstuff had done it's work didn't give me the runs, but it's been my primary source of drinking and (YES, WOO HOO) washing water for several months now. For those of you who think that's terribly wasteful of me to use water to wash in, I remind you that Greenstuff will eat ANYTHING but glass, metal, and living tissue when mixed with water. For those of you who think recycling water I used to wash myself in back into drinking water is disgusting, I invite you to blow me.
Hard.
Still, you have to stir up the mix every once in a while so that the Greenstuff actually digests the heavier sediments that gather around the bottom. After a month or so, you skim the Greenstuff off the top, then light a fire under the vat until it boils, and cover it with a sterilized plastic tarp. Viola... instant water supply.
I step around the vat gingerly, wincing as I pick up a tall container of water and take a long swig. A slightly annoyed, amusingly cultured female voice clears it's throat behind me.
I freeze.
I'm not sure why all the Irken females I've met (A grand total of 2) sound vaguely British, but I have to admit, it's kinda cute.
Unfortunately, Vic is annoyed with me.
"Dib, I have told you on numerous occasions that your knee is not going to heal if you do not use the crutches I gave you. I do not understand what is so terrible about them."
I turn around and look at her, an apologetic shrug waiting in the wings. I am a little annoyed, because they aren't comfortable, but what are you gonna do?
There is something impossibly endearing and more than a little disarming about a four and a half foot green female showing inordinate amounts of concern as to your wellbeing.
Particularly when she herself is recovering from 1st and 2nd degree chemical burns over half her body.
I never did find out what it was that set her off that day... she refuses to discuss it, and I leave it at that. I might have been a little annoyed at that, but I don't think it's an Irken thing, at least, not entirely. I think it might be a female thing, and I have little to no... well honestly, no experience with how to deal with females.
I doubt very much that Gaz would have made a good control group for that particular sort of research. Sometimes, I'm not even sure Gaz was HUMAN.
In any case, in the days that followed, we just sort of let the subject slide. Although there was THAT incident...
Eh, doesn't matter. Couldn't have been what it seemed like. I don't know why my stupid brain keeps bring it up... I guess fear is a universal agent in both Human and Irken psychology.
"Alright Vic, I get the point. I'm sorry, you're right." I sigh. "You know, you shouldn't be moving around so much yourself. I'm not the only one who needs to heal."
We really are a sad, pathetic looking pair of fools. Apparently running and stumbling and sliding around in the middle of a thunderstorm jacked up one of my knees, along with numerous little cuts and scrapes, any one of which could have gotten horribly infected. Vic didn't want to mess around with my knee, the philosophy being that since it was only deeply bruised and a little hyperextended, she didn't want to risk actually damaging it out of ignorance to our physiology trying to fix it surgically. She felt it best to just wrap it up tight and have me hobble around like hop-along Cassidy for a few days. That and a few bandages are all I warranted.
Vic... she was something else. Certain parts of her resemble a mummy, albeit a grey, slightly shiny one. Irken bandages are suspiciously similar in look and feel to duct tape, with the only difference being an ingenious irradiating tool she has that activates and deactivates the glue depending on what she needs. Tighter than a human bandaid, can do anything that surgical staples and butterfly bandaids can do, and when you wanna take it off, wave that scanner thingy over it, and it just falls off.
Neat.
The large bandage covering her eye gives her a somewhat waifish appearance, further heightened by the fact that she comes up to my breastbone when she's on her tippy-toes... if she wasn't vaguely insectile, I'd want to gather her up and carry her around like a poor injured child.
The human brain is a remarkably strange and gullible beast, some times.
I shake my head. "So... what are you doing out here, anyway?"
She raises one antennae in what I am fast coming to realize is the Irken equivalent of a raised eyebrow and shakes a couple of large snack baggies in her right hand, and in her left, a roll of Irken bandages. She shakes her head.
"You got preoccupied with your work and forgot about your midday meal. AND your daily wound inspection. Do you want to get sick again, like before?"
I shake my head and sit down at the edge of the platform I made to hold the vat. She eases herself down carefully next to me and tosses one of the bags onto my lap.
I stare down at it. I'm starting to hate Jalapeno flavored fiberchunks. Where the hell does an extraterrestrial species millions of lightyears away get information about Jalapenos anyway? I swear, it's like some crazy diety is having a field day with the universe, and the Irken Empire is it's personal sideproject. "Oh sure... you get the Irken Salted Nachocuboids."
"Medical Drone's perogative, Dib. Besides, you don't need sodium right now."
"Eh, a likely story." I grouse, but I'm not really annoyed. I can't tell you how... how nice it is to have someone to talk to... to banter back and forth with. Don't you dare say it's meaningless either. It has loads of meaning. You never really find out HOW much that typical conversational bullshit that passes back and forth between people means to you until you lose it for several years.
Trust me, I'll take banality over insanity any day.
Not to mention... this is a huge step forward for Vic. Irkens don't have pleasant conversations with one another. They don't need to. Either the other guy is higher or lower rank than you, and therefore too superior or inferior to socialize with, or he's a near carbon copy of you anyway. The first time I asked Vic what she thought of something, she stared at me blankly as though to concept of being asked one's opinion on something had never occured to her.
It probably hadn't.
We pass the next few moments in semi-companionable silence, me with my long legs dangling over the edge of the platform overlooking the vat, her crosslegged a good foot away from the edge. She tries not to look at the water pooled beneath her, but I can tell it's on her mind. Her breathing unconsciously speeds up.
I don't say anything. I think she's pushing herself, confronting her fear. Why, I'm not entirely sure, but it's obviously important to her, so I'm not going to object. Hell, I kind of approve. I mean, she's got every reason to be scared to death of a fluid that can reduce her to a little steaming green slag pile in very short order, especially after having experienced the effects of said liquid firsthand. I know I'd be a little terrified if it were me.
Just because I don't understand her reasons for it doesn't mean it isn't right. Vic, for all of her alienness, is changing into something stranger, but in a good way. Her time here, on this world, despite its harshness, or perhaps because of it, has made her take the first hesitant steps towards independance, which is more than most, if ANY Irken can say. She's a little pioneer, though I doubt she understands that.
It's just too bad the universe will never see her. Me... I'm kinda like the punchline to some horribly obscure and not overly funny anyway joke... Vic... she could be the start of something amazing... something special and precious.
Such a terrible tragedy, to be trapped on this hellhole, with a punchline.
Still, if someone tried to take her away from me I'd fight 'em tooth and nail. Selfish, I know, but I don't think I can be alone again.
I shudder to think about it.
I might hate this planet, and certainly I might not be happy really... but right now... I guess, I'm contented.
In a way.
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Oh that reminds me. I'm sure you're all curious about that incident I referred to earlier. Well, I think it's nothing really, but I'll let you be the judge. It certainly can't be what I THINK it was, because the very idea of it is just... absurd.
Well anyway, here's what happened. The first thing that hits me, as I regain consciousness after that hellrun I made carrying Vic is the smell, of course. Now my leg is friggin' throbbing, my pants leg over that knee feels tight, and I ache all over, but other than that, I'm cool. It doesn't take long for you to dry out on this planet, something to do with the Irken fabric I've had to use to replace my own clothing once it got too worn out to wear anymore. In any case, I'm dry as a bone, hurt and thirsty.
So I sit up and that's just too goddamn painful on my leg. Takes me a few moments of stubborn agony, but I finally manage to tear my pants leg open and THAT was a relief, let me tell you. My knee is this nice purple color and swollen.
Joy.
Around this time I remember that Vic is probably just as bad if not worse than me, so I start looking around for her.
I don't see her at first. Finally I start looking, hobbling down the metal cooridors like a gimp, until I finally find her...
One look and I have to turn away.
"Oh shit Vic... man, I am so sorry." I gasp out.
Her face is, for the most part, not so bad. Aside from her eye, which almost makes me gag to look at, and a couple of angry looking dark green spots, her face is relatively intact.
She is holding herself in a manner which suggests that to even think about moving would be impossibly painful, her good eye slightly glazed. While my dumb ass was unconscious, she just sat here and suffered. I can TELL she suffered, because whatever wounds she has under her clothing, which was apparently too painful to remove, have broken open, and a very slight weeping of greenish blood has started. At my voice she seems to shake herself out of her stupor and blink at me.
"D-dib?" She chatters... it's not hot or cold in the room, but I've heard severe burns can do wierd things to the bodies temperature... and that's with humans.
I rush to her as quickly as I can and hover over her, panicky but not entirely sure what to do.
"Vic... man... you should have woke me up! This is... man this is bad."
"C-could not... wake you... could not... touch you... too much... water. Not... your fault." She said weakly.
"Christ Vic... what can I do? Tell me... tell me how to fix you."
She sighs. Turns away, wincing as she does so. "I do not... think that... I-I... t-that is..."
I raise an eyebrow. "Give me somewhere to start, Vic. You're a doctor, I'm not-"
"I am n-not a Doctor..." She pauses. "M-medical Drone-"
Panic makes me snappish. "Don't give me that Irken BULLSHIT. You fix people, YOU'RE A GODDAMN DOC-"
"DON'T... YELL... AT... ME..." She screams, which of course, shuts me up like she hit me with a baseball bat.
"Vic... I'm... I'm sorry, but if you can't do it yourself, you NEED my help."
She is silent for a moment, breathing hard, then she shakes her head as though clearing it.
"Help me... H-help me remove my... uniform." She croaks after a while. One shout and she sounds like she hurt her vocal cords... of course, there was alot of pain in that yell, and pain does wierd shit to you.
I kneel down carefully next to her on her good side and look into her eye. "It's gonna hurt." I whisper.
She blinks. "I-I know that."
I nod and look her over, huddled and shaking in the corner. She's got little green bloody splotches all over her, and I can tell it's agonizing. Still, I stare at her for a long time, until finally.
"Um... Vic, how... how does it open?" I say, embarassed.
She blinks, then reaches pain numbed fingers, catching my hand and drawing it to what looks like a small metal bead just under her chin. I touch it, and something clicks. Drawing my finger down with her hand until the pains too much to continue moving her arm, she shows me how her uniform clasp works. I can't tell what kind of mechanism is making this work, but where my finger passes, the cloth just kinda magically parts. It's facinating, and I would have liked to experiment, but the situation doesn't seem... appropriate.
Now comes the... er... hard part.
See, I've never seen an Irken naked before, so I hope you understand when I say that I AM curious. That sounds really... um... perverted, but come on... you can't blame me for looking. Besides, I was SUPPOSED to look.
Sigh.
Anyway, the really important bits were covered, because the uniform is a one piece and apparently somewhat resistant to hazardous materials, so her legs and lower body were relatively untouched.
Now I'm moving slow, because I don't want to hurt her. When I get the... um... zipper to just under where her navel would be if she was human, she jerks her hand to mine and stops me, letting out a little whimper from the pain it causes. I look at her, frozen.
"T-that's... far enough.... Dib."
My ears burn and I KNOW my face is red. "S-sorry. Um. Right. I'll try and be careful."
She let's out a shaky breath. "Just... just do it."
I nod. Carefully taking the edges of the split down her uniform front, I start to ease it over her shoulders. The blood makes it stick to her skin and she gasps, trying to pull in on herself. I'm still holding the uniform , and this makes it come loose with a sticky sound off her back, arms and shoulders.
Pieces of skin come with it.
I almost want to gag, but I can't. She shudders and shakes, her eye narrows from the pain of it.
I very carefully put my hand on a portion of skin that isn't an ulcerated sore or her Pack and rub her back gently. Her skin is cool, but not cold, not as I expected, and smooth, soft, like baby skin. Not what I... expected at all.
Well what WAS I expecting... PLASTIC? Heh. Well, I guess I KINDA was...
She trembles for several seconds, her breathing rapidly slowing, then she lets out a great shuddery sigh and starts to ease out of her hunched over state.
She is very small, and without her uniform above the waist she looks even smaller. Contrastingly, the ulcerated burns on her back and upper chest look impossibly large and nasty. Clustered mostly along her upper back and just below what would be her collarbone on a human, they weep a slightly greenish, clear fluid. I am startled at the similarities more than the differences between us... small shoulderblades, what look like collarbones. Her breasts are small, and there is no nipple... guess the Irken race doesn't suckle it's young. Wait a minute, if they don't nurse their young, why do they have breasts? Probably... removed surgically or genetically altered over time. Sounds like something the Irken race would do to itself. Christ... Dib, get your mind off of Irken breasts and back onto helping her, you asshole...
From behind she could a small green human, save of course for the metal Pack surgically attached to her back. Untouched by age and wear, like the ones I am used to, it is silk smooth as though coated with teflon or something. A slot opens in her Pack and what can only be described as a drawer opens, revealing a roll of something.
Something that looks like duct tape and a small, handheld checkout scanner.
"Um... what next?" I ask, embarassed.
"Y-you should see a roll of bandages and... an applicator on my Pak. You're going to have to bandage me, I can't... I-I'm sorry." She sounds embarassed, as though it's her fault she's not double jointed.
I sigh. There is just no easy way to do this, with me roughly twice her size. I sit down awkwardly with my bad leg, stretching my long limbs out to either side of her. I take the roll of duct ta- er, bandages and look at her back.
"You use the applicator run the applicator over them, there should be a button on t-the side, then place them over the burns. The glue is.. m-medicated. Do-don't obscure my Pak... place them around it..." She takes a deep breath and lets it out heavily.
"H-how bad... is it?" She asks.
"Not... terribly bad, considering." I say evasively. I have no idea how bad it is, but I think she understands that.
I start placing the bandages, pretty much like I would tape up a beanbag chair if it were full of holes. As ordered, I'm careful not to cover her Pak. There must be some kind of anesthetic in the bandages because I know what relief sounds like when I hear it. The burns are ugly, supperating and hot to the touch, in stark contrast to her cool flesh. Before long the burns immediately around her Pak are covered. I look her over.
Not bad.
The um... bandage job, I mean.
Right.
"Vic, um... sorry, but you're going to have to lift your arms." I say awkwardly.
She nods and slowly raises her arms, wincing. Taking the tape... BANDAGE in both hands, I stretch out a longish strip of it (It even SOUNDS like duct tape coming off the roll) and scan it quickly, then carefully place the start of it on the bandage I've already laid down, wrapping it under her arms (no hair... not that I'm surprised) and over her small breasts carefully. Ahem.
Very... carefully.
Still, when my hands inevitably brush them, she jerks in response. I wince in sympathy.
"Sorry."
"D-don't d... ah... s-stop." She says falteringly.
I blink.
"Um... what?"
She blinks. "Hmm?" she says woozily.
I shake my head. What was THAT? Couldn't have been what I thought it was. Ah, I get it. She was trying to say don't do something, and stop, and... ok.
That... makes sense. I'll be more careful.
Stupid, overactive imagination. Don't be a callous moron, Dib. She's in alot of pain.
She shivers as I continue to wrap her like a mummy, finally covering all the burns. This completed, I hand her the bandages and she does her eye herself. Probably a good idea because I have no idea how I should do something as delicate as bandage a wounded eye and I wouldn't want to fuck up and blind her completely or something. Finally, her strength obviously at its end, she slumps down and drops the bandages and applicator.
"Vic?" I ask, somewhat alarmed.
"C-cold..." She chatters. "Need to... in... my Pak."
I carefully rub her arms, trying to keep her conscious. She hisses at the contact so I stop.
"Stay awake, Vic. Tell me what you need."
A spider-arm comes out of her Pak and hovers near my nose. She cocks her head towards me and eyes me pitiously. I can tell she's trying to do something with it, but they just weren't made for manipulating herself. Shortsighted design, that.
Then again, maybe it's just the way the Irken Empire wants it. A Medical Drone who can't heal himself is dependant on other Irkens.
"Sedative... compound. W-will put in... a healing... state. Like... your sleep. Need to.... keep w-warm..." She shivers.
"How do I apply it?" I ask gently.
"Touch... to neck. Works... automatically." She chatters.
I carefully apply the armature to her neck and almost instantly her head slumps down, her eye closes, and her antennae draw close to her skull. She looks... dead. Well, except that she's still breathing and shivering to pieces.
I sigh.
Carefully, I wrap my arms around her and draw my coat over her again, holding her like a china doll until the worst of the shivers stops. Somewhere in there she turns in her... sleep... instinctively pressing her cheek into my chest.
It's not a very comfortable solution, but like alot of things I've done on this planet, it's the best I could do.
Again... it's the similarities that startle me... not the differences. Which is, of course, a very dangerous path to follow.
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I find it odd how peaceful things are now, considering how they were during the storm. I can blame no one but myself for what happened to me, though my companion has never mentioned anything resembling blame or censure for the current state of his limb. Worse, that he injured it saving me from my own folly... now it is MY turn to feel guilt.
A strange emotion, one whose definition I did not understand, as with so many human sayings and terms.
I understand now.
Never in my existence have I known pain like that.
I have treated burns before, and from what I have seen of the state it is quite painful, but nothing really prepared me for the reality of that pain until I had experienced it for myself. There were times when I would have gladly shot myself in the head just to rid myself of that sensation, but moving threatened to tear my sanity apart. It is one thing to clinically observe the reactions an injury can cause, quite another to feel it's effects on one's self.
I inched my way deeper into the Dreadnought, away from that hellish fluid, and the human who so confuses me. After a time I could no longer do even that, and so I huddled miserably on myself in a shivering little ball of anguish, blind to the world until Dib finally found me.
I know... that my reactions to his ministrations confused him. I know he has rationalized it into something safe for himself, and I... I let him keep that illusion. It is safer for both of us.
Dib is such a mystery to me. I can no longer imagine life without him, and as much as I know he hates this planet, there is no other place that I would rather be. It is worth every bit of pain and suffering this planet can inflict upon me to be here.
How can I go back to that... existence when I have a life here now? I do not profess to understand the emotions Dib inspires in me, but somehow, despite my early scared confusion, I no longer truly fear them.
Alright, that is not entirely true... let us say, that I no longer fear Dib.
I KNOW that I have grown in my short time here, that I have become something, in my head, that is not entirely Irken... not anymore. I think... I think I even understand why the human culture is restricted to Invaders.
Why the Tallest coldheartedly murdered them.
Alien species are eradicated on two occasions. One, if completely useless... which, as Dib's ingenuity demonstrates, is patently impossible for mankind. Dib seems to think that humanity was destroyed for being too tall, and while I'm certain this did factor into the Tallest' decision, I do not think it was the entire REASON they were destroyed.
They ARE dangerous. No species is even close to just how dangerous humanity is.
How do I explain? It is like my whole life was laid before me in a perfect, orderly sterile pattern, from creation, to profession, on into my inevitable deterioration and replacement several centuries later. I knew this, without evening thinking about it, just as every Medical Drone... every IRKEN knows, from the beginning.
There was comfort in this, yes. Comforting, to have no surprises.
But it was a cold comfort. A sterile comfort. Empty. It is not a life, it is an existence. Like a part in a machine. The only emotions known are fear and cruelty... petty lusts for monies... or snacks... or power...
I do not want to EXIST. I want to live. Only humanity has words like these. Beautiful, frightening, terrible words.
I am only a castoff... one defective, battered Drone amid millions, a fitting bit of trash on this trashworld, but he... Dib... he...
He could be the enlightenment of an entire people. The most powerful... important thing my race has ever encountered since the creation of the Control Brains.
For this reason, we MUST get off this planet. Somehow.
I can't tell him... can't explain to him why... and it frightens me, these emotions he awakens in me.
Safer, that he misunderstand my reactions while he was bandaging me... so much safer.
Because when he touched me... even though I was hurt... I...
I did not want him to...
I didn't want him to stop.
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