Short Story
I awoke in a daze, with the taste of feet and an ashtray fresh in my mouth. I didn't bother looking around, I'd memorized my cell ; a hard rubber corner for sleeping, a dispenser unit on one side for food and water, a slightly dipped corner for using as a toilet-it got cleaned with decontaminant one ever half hour (just a soft trickle of powder from a hole in the ceiling) and a blank corner with no use. The ceiling was high up, illuminating my cell was a collection of three lights-all white. It was impossible to kill yourself by not eating the food or drinking the water. They put little additives in it to make sure you ate and drank it nonstop. Choking was impossible-they sprayed a gas in the room at the slightest sign of lowering mortality that flexed every muscle in your body at once to force you to vomit and convulse and force food out. I got the taste of cigarettes and feet from the rubber-the previous owner had seemed to keep a stench on him that stayed with whatever it came into contact with. I tried to escape, repeatedly, I tried climbing the walls and prying open the food chute, but nothing worked. I counted days as the times I'm awake and the time I'm asleep. I've lost count too many times and decided it's been at least two and a half years. I slumped against the blank wall, trying to force myself to go crazy, my body to self terminate, anything. But all I got was the sound of stale, processed air floating trhough the room.
Suddenly, there was blackness.
And then there was light again, and I woke up looking out at the Earth.
My cell had finally reached the barrel, I was going to fired back into the Earth and turn into a big meaty tree and capture more people like myself.The walls closed in, curved, forced me into a tight standing position. I didn't protest or squirm, I just waited. There was a barely noticeable shock as my small bullet-shaped pod disengaged and was railgunned into the void across which I'd uncontrollably travel and slam into the Earth's atmosphere. No shock of hitting the ground, though, the brief glimpse I got of the Earth had dissappeared when the walls closed, all that was left was the inevetable fell of striking the Earth, but all I felt was a continued floaty feeling. Then I fell, soundlessly sucked into out space and looking up behind me, the large, meaty mechanoid sending a pod around to recapture me.
I forced all the air out of my lungs, did everything possible to suffocate and die. I tried swimming, even. But I was still caught. I bit the meaty bits inside the pod. I spat on them. I tried to force my body to shit, ANYTHING to get out, but I just tired myself out. A small slat in the pod opened and I saw the face of whatever was trying to devour our planet, it was like a shell with a million mourning faces forming the features, little stingers jutting out for teeth and metal protrusions the size of a high rise building for eyes. It was enormous, and I saw the hate. This indiscribable feeling of resentment and bitterness and fury. I felt a sharp pain the back of my head as it prepared to bring me into it, to force me as a part of it's mind. I just sat there, waiting for it, but it didn't happen. The pod appeared to already be putting me on life support, and I realized where I was. This is a lifelite pod. This is going to keep me alive and conscious. I'm going to sit here like this forever.
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I see you jockin' me.
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), which made it really good.
