Book Chapter - The Visitor - WIP - 11/14/21 (Patreon)

The test was going splendidly, and the specimen was reacting perfectly as expected without even a slight deviation in its form or activity. Andra typed her notes into her tablet, which prove difficult through the rubber gloves of her hazmat suit, especially through the transparent protective face shield, but she didn’t mind much. The room was circular, kind of like a small dome at least 34 ft.² in all directions, connected to a long secure corridor with a metallic sliding door to seal it off in case of emergency. It wasn’t what she was used to but perfect for testing Rie-Unos unique specimen, giving it a controlled environment to avoid any anomalous reactions. With her was a rubber-clad security guard, covered in white rubber with black gloves and stockings with a metallic visor over her eyes, as well as another lab worker who also wore a hazmat suit typing away at the consoles placed around the specimen.

In the very center of the room, floating underneath a circular disc, the specimen appeared as a rippling ball of reflective rubber, pulsing with strange vibrations which almost caused the room to shake, almost like a car stereo put on full blast. Paying no mind, Angela took notes on all of the forms and shapes the rubber ball had taken since the start of their test, hexagons, squares, and even a spiked form, all with perfect symmetry consistent with their hypothesis. However, the unexpected powerful vibrations coming from the orb made her skin crawl, reminding her of the earthquakes she experienced back home. Her tablet was filled with pages and pages of pleasing results, getting ready to close it up as she looked over to the security guard and coworker. “All right, I think we have enough, let’s wrap things up and get ready to...” before she could finish, she suddenly saw the sphere shifting again.

However, instead of changing into something symmetrical, it began stretching out vertically, taking on a rectangular shape. It had never morphed into something so specific. Andra quickly looked down at the console, thinking she may have accidentally typed in a command by she didn’t mean to write, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was like the sphere was acting on its own, sending a cold shiver down the young woman's spine. Even the security guard seemed a bit wary, and though armed, she wasn’t nearly as well equipped as the androids were. Andra’s lab assistant was the last to notice the rubbers anomalous reaction, looking up from her equipment for a split second before tilting her head up with a gasp. Finally, the latex became still, stretching out 9 x 5‘ as if to mimic the shape of a window or door.

Andra checked the console again as she was about to type in a new command to reset the transforming rubber. But instead, realizing that it may cause more harm than good with its unpredictable properties, she exited the command consul end looked at the analytics and internal readings of the object, seeing something that she just couldn’t explain. While the instruments took the rubber’s new form into consideration, the readings on its mass and dimensions were baffling. The rubber sphere read as if it had its own flux of gravity, and its dimensions seem to invert along with its vertical form. Andra stepped around the rubber object, seeing that it still had a two-dimensional shape contrary to the readings which she had read seconds earlier. The scanner read its dimensions is almost 4D, its vertical plane collapsing on itself as it was a broken 3-D model. It was almost like it was reading as a black hole, collapsing in on itself.

Just then, small ripples could be seen on the surface of the rectangular rubber, like a vibration on a small pond. Not long after did another ripple appear, and then another but with two waves this time. It was like a puddle reacting to footsteps that were growing closer and closer. Despite all three women being completely secure in their rubber suits, they all cautiously stepped away from the center of the room as far as they could, unsure what Rei-Unos experiment was up to. The rubber rippled more and more with every passing second, sending out vibrations with every pulse as if it was getting ready for something big. Then all of a sudden, it stopped. The readings on the specimen stayed the same, keeping the suspense high as the room was frozen with silence.

Under normal circumstances, anyone would have fled the room immediately had they the choice. Unfortunately, the blast door could only open from the outside via securities authorization, and with the specimen acting as strange as it was that wasn’t gonna happen anytime soon. As the seconds passed, nothing happened, the specimen seemingly inactive despite keeping its rectangular shape. Looking down from the object, Andra was about to place her tablet next to one of the consoles, right as a humanoid silhouette suddenly bulged out of from rubber surface, reaching towards her with its hand outstretched. Frightened out of her mind, Andra just simply dropped her tablet without so much as it sound as she jumped back. The figure was lunging forward, its mouth stretched out as if trying to scream, it was like a latex ghost had emerged from the experiment.

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11/14/21

Suddenly, with a loud snap, the liquid rubber pulled away from the frightening silhouette, splashing back against the specimen as the figure dropped to the floor with a loud thud. Angela couldn’t believe her eyes, laying before her was what looked like a werewolf, one with pastel green and light brown fur, wearing what appeared to be sporty shorts. The wolf gasped and hyperventilated as if in shock, laying mostly still on the cold floor, giving Andra a moment to get a good look at its form. Rather than looking monstrous, the wolf's figure appeared rather lean and fit, like a bipedal swimmer as opposed to a mythological beast. After regaining its bearings, the wolf pushed itself up on his hands and knees looking up to Andra with a winded look on his face. Finally getting over her initial shock, the young woman reached behind her, and grabbed the emergency quarantine button attached to the waist of her suit.

The wolf’s eyes widened as she pulled out the gadget from behind her, quickly swiping it out of her hand before lunging towards her without warning. Time almost seemed to freeze for Andra, watching the wolf’s jaws open wide with its clawed hands reaching out to grab her shoulders. Just when she thought that it was the last thing she would ever see, a black ball suddenly smacked into the wolf’s face, thrown by the security guard with the metallic visor. Taken off guard, the wolf stumbled and fell to his left side, narrowly missing Andra before the ball suddenly unraveled into a large black sheet. Before he even knew what was happening, everything went dark, tight, and constricting as he was squeezed from all sides in what felt like stretchy latex. With the strange intruder finally subdued, writhing on the floor in a tight rubber cocoon, the security guard activated a silent alarm by touching a button on her visor. “We have anomalous activity down here, and unknown my form has emerged from the experiment please and back up!” the security guard said.

Dizzy, head thumping, and feeling as if he was tumbling in a washer, the young wolf let out a weak groan as he reached up to rub his head. “Ugh… what a weird nightmare…” he thought, attempting to sit back up, only to quickly lose his balance as he fell back against something soft and jiggly. The wolf was so dizzy he couldn’t even sit up straight, almost like a hangover without the headache. Slowly, he opened his eyes to see a curved dome-like ceiling with a bright light shining above him. The wolf squinted, shielding his eyes with his left paw as he struggled to get his sight clear. “Ugh… Did I fall asleep on the bench again?” he thought to himself, hearing some muffled voices somewhere nearby. Thinking he had taken a short nap, he shook the dizziness off and attempted to sit back up, only for the surface beneath him to wobble like jelly. Confused, he opened his eyes completely, and noticed that there was a strange reflective shine above him. Then, with a simple scan of his surroundings, he suddenly realized his situation.

Surrounding him were multiple figures wearing orange rubber hazmat suits in a metallic spherical dome-like room, with consoles and what looked like monitoring equipment lining the walls. It was almost completely identical to the room he was in before. But what was most bizarre, was the flexible transparent bubble surrounding him, floating just 3 feet above the floor. Completely at a loss for words, he finally came to the horrifying realization that what had happened earlier wasn’t a dream. The bubble surrounding him was very soft and jiggly, almost like sitting on a trampoline made of Jell-O. Bringing his attention back to his supposed captors, it seemed that they were observing him as if he were some kind of exotic animal. Even more puzzling was their species, he couldn’t recognize what they were, lacking any fur or notable features that he could identify.

“What do you mean? It came out of the specimen?” said a deep feminine voice. The wolf quickly turned his head around to see the woman he had attempted to strike before, talking with a tall dark-skinned lizard woman of some kind. He was almost relieved to see a species he could identify, however, couldn’t put his finger on what breed she was. Even for a lizard, her skin had an almost seamless shine as if slathered in oil, making her nearly impossible to identify. Without a clue what was going on, all he could do was observe whatever conversation she was having with the hazmat suit an individual. “I don’t know how to explain it, the shape of the specimen was completely two-dimensional, but in the instruments, it appeared as if it was warping into itself.” the woman in the orange suit explained, looking up from her tablet and back to the tall lizard. “Rei-Uno, it’s like the rubber specimen morphed into a door, or some kind of gate.

“A door?” the wolf thought to himself, thinking back to how this all transpired… It was the weekend, college midterms were over and he was getting into his swim trunks in the changing room of his school’s swimming pool. Running later than usual, all his friends and teammates were already out and ready to start practice, while he was still getting into his swimwear. With haste, he stuffed all of his clothes into his locker and power walked his way out of the bathroom and into the pool area, where his teammates were already lined up in position, ready to greet the coach. On his team was his best friend Lock, a grey hyena who was slightly shorter than him, and his dorm mate Jewel, a chocolate lab who had a no-nonsense personality despite his family face. There were plenty others among their team, but it seemed one of them was missing, an orange fox whose name he couldn’t quite remember, but stuck out because of his mischievous personality.