Mitneirsaweramuul

To the murmur of voices, I opened my eyes. Before me, several small figures in matching smocks stared at me in awe. They spoke, tiny voices, but it was all gibberish. They seemed excited though. There was a tray wheeled out, enough that four of the figures could stand abreast to cover the length of it. It was loaded with meat, and the figures motioned from me to the tray's contents. It smelled fine, so I took a bite. My first conscious act was a mistake. I instantly felt uneasy, and swallowing greeted me with a wave of nausea. Before I knew it, the figures were coated with the chewed meat and spittle.

It was a few days later that I found I could understand these small beings, calling themselves Setari. They showed me moving pictures of their world, their peoples, and me. Made through an act of collective will. Did it mean I was thought into being? Or that they had worked to a goal and I was the result? Regardless of answers, they had grown troubled. Because I had grown, even though I hadn't yet been able to stomach any of the meat.

I hadn't seen the light of day until now. It seems so warm, so right. It is a shame it took me this long.

I had to count based on when certain members of the researchers arrived in the room to look at me in my cage. It had grown small very quickly, enough so that I felt the desire to pull myself inwards, from all sides. That made the room feel bigger. It also made them prod me more. And the unpleasant feeling of the cold cuff that trapped my arm so a machine could ram a needle in, and pull blood out. I figured out one, in a slightly different smock, gave the others orders, soon after his (or her) words, more prods, pokes, and sometimes incisions and insertions to extract things from me would follow. The person in the smock occasionally changed, and rarer still the smock changed, but rarely together. But the attitude never changed. Sometimes the only true respite I had was when they wheeled in the video screen to show me new or old things while they left me alone.

It was shortly after 100,000 times for the cruelest to darken the doorway to the room that I decided they would never stop. Every time they'd slowed, they soon get more callous, more invasive, and less apologetic. They had just slowed again. The words that came from the researchers were again about 'new initiatives, and I realized I wasn't willing to accept any more. It had to stop. I let go, and the room went white, so intense that the smocks became formless ash. The walls started to scream, and I realized the cage was now too small to hold me, it had burst to pieces. I pushed through the doorway out of the room, and felt the walls curl back as I made my way through small halls and crowed little rooms of equipment. I barely noticed when more Setari without smock leveled sticks at me to sting at my scales and make my muscles twitch. I did not let them keep going. I slapped them with a hand, and they bounced off the walls.

I continues through these small spaces, hurting mind and body. Then I felt the wave of heat and searing light beneath me. A survivor somewhere in the place had tried to destroy the place with me inside, but it only opened the way. With the last of the shell around me torn away, I could see incredible sights farther away than I thought was possible. The air smelled different. Beyond the smoke from the fires I had crawled from, it smelled good. I wanted to take in more of it, but Setari surrounded me, and fired guns at me for great contraptions. The shells were as big as the soldiers themselves, but I barely felt them sting. I opened my mouth to channel the burning inside, and the heat that was released melted them.

I was done with their cages, I was done with the pain. I was done with them. I saw the sky, and knew that was where I belonged.

15 times the sun rose, 15 times it set. The pace in which they had come to my cage before now showed reason. They stopped after 15 days, when nothing they threw at me harmed me, even when they ignited a star upon my back, it only made me angrier. But now it had stopped. They had stopped.

The next 300 cycles I roamed, finding nothing stirred at my approach, as those cycles wore on, things shriveled more and more. The sun stopped rising... or so I thought. Above the clouds that had set it shone on. Stuff began to crumble. I flew in straight lines, level with the land and sea, and even when I returned to where I started I found nothing alive to greet me. I was alone. I was so alone.

I'd stopped being angry. I was sad. Had I gone too far? Was the loneliness worth no more pain? It didn't feel like it. And seeing the world around me wither just made things hurt in a new way. This wouldn't do. I couldn't stay here anymore. Where would I go? I thought about finding a new people. But then why would they be any different? They'd want to study me, maybe put me in a cage again. I couldn't let that happen. I needed to get away, as far away from this world, my mistakes, as I possibly could.

It meant I would go a long time without food. I needed to stock up as much as possible. But over those 300 cycles, more and more things built by the Setari were stopping. Things would not run forever without being looked after. I only had so long before everything stopped working.

Another 400 cycles, I spent seeking anything still working, poring over what knowledge lay within. I tried to use some of what I read to keep a few more things working a bit longer, but with just me, there was only so much I could do. The last terminal switched off. The last generator seized. Maybe there was more, secreted somewhere, but it seemed unworth the effort.

I took to the air, and kept going higher. The color faded from the sky, and even with the sun as a pinprick of brilliance, I saw the other points in the sky. The sun had sisters, maybe with worlds of their own. I looked back at the grey mess beneath me. I had seen the images of what it looked like before. Colorful land and stunning oceans with caps of white at the poles. Here in the vacuum, it was just grey. A corpse. I couldn't visit the sun's sisters. It would end up the same. I couldn't do that again.

I picked the darkest, most devoid spot in the sky. Where no stars lay. I pushed away from the world, and pulled the darkness toward me. Barely a blink and the sun was behind me, fading into the spray of points behind me.

I have never looked back.