I AM EMPOWERED, pt.23: The prose experiment continues (with the vol.10 pages derived from it)! (Patreon)

You can check out I Am Empowered's previous installment here, or check out the entire archive of this defunct project here.

In case you'd forgotten, or are a semi-recent Patron and haven't had the time nor the inclination to look back though this site's sprawling archive, I Am Empowered was a short-lived prose project in which I tried to flesh out aspects of Emp's story not fully addressed in the comic proper. I wrote Emp's first-person narration in (old) Twitter-based 140-character format, with the time-jumping narrative taking place roughly around the beginning of Empowered vol.1.

We've hit the point in this loose jumble of episodes that no remaining chapter is complete; all the remaining material from this abortive project is a series of fragmentary sketches that wheeze to a halt in an inconclusive manner.

Anyhoo, with this particular incomplete chapter, I introduced the Suprahuman Teatment Wing's alien bioscanner "Ginny" (or "Ginnie," in the original's spelling) who would later appear once again in the pages from  Empowered vol. 10 in the image gallery above. As you'll see shortly, I strip-mined concepts from I Am Empowered quite directly for ol' vol. 10.

UPDATE: In our previous excerpt, a new-to-the-team Emp was dispatched to a "baseline medical exam"  appointment at the Purple Paladin Memorial Hospital’s Suprahuman Treatment Wing.”

ELISSA GETS SCANNED (Part 3)

<First, a fragmentary description of the Hospital's exterior:>

The civilian-accessible portion of the Purple Paladin Memorial Hospital is a modest, unremarkable, entirely conventional-looking structure.

Ten boring floors, yawnworthy box architecture. Red cross up high, ambulances out front. Overall, begs for the image tag “GENERIC HOSPITAL.”

The dullness quickly evaporates, however, once one looks upward and is visually assaulted by the Purple Paladin’s Suprahuman Treatment Wing.

The misnomered “Wing” utterly dwarfs the Memorial Hospital proper, looming overhead like a giant alien robot bent on crushing it underfoot.

Many times its parent building’s size, the Wing’s X-shaped colossus straddles it between the glass-and-steel arches of gargantuan legs.

(Except that the “glass” is transparent, nanowoven diamond and the “steel” is an exotic alloy vomit-formed by a mobile alien factory mech.)

The occasional medical-transport helicopter whup-whups-whups down onto the main Hospital’s rooftop helipad, dropping off a lone patient.

Meanwhile, hulking spaceships, blimp-sized flying beasties and ornate retrofuture airships constantly alight on the Wing’s landing pads—

—disgorging a steady stream of 18-wheeler-sized gurneys, wounded alien monstrosities, and limping giantcapes in acres of bloodied spandex.

<And now we jump ahead to Emp being brought into the scanning room by UberNurses:.>

A hulking monstrosity only vaguely shaped like an MRI scanner fills the room, a sprawling pile of creepily baroque biomechanical detail.

Then I notice that some of the machine’s disturbingly insectile black carapaces are trembling, a few of its glistening cables quivering.

“Is... is that thing alive?” I stammer, my skin crawling as I realize that I can hear wet, squelching sounds issuing from the biomachinery.

“Yes, of course it is,” the Übernurse says. “But don’t worry, dear, this scanning analytophore is fully tamed and domesticated.”

She taps a glowing extrusion on the beast’s side, and a flat, lumpy mass—like a tumorous surfboard—slides out from its gaping, circular maw.

“Lie down on the scanning bed,” she chirps brightly, patting the slimy, bumpy surface, “and we can get this imaging party started, okay?”

“Um, that looks more like a tongue than a bed,” I whine nervously, eyeing the perceptibly rippling shape with shaky trepidation.

“That’s because this IS a tongue,” the nurse says, with a bored tone indicating that she’s dealt with this reaction many, many times before.

“Be a hero, won’t you, and hop up on Ginnie’s lingual bed before she gets insulted?” she continues a bit wearily, while I’m thinking, Ginnie?

Reluctantly—very reluctantly—I shuffle over to the gently swaying tongue/bed and gingerly plant my rapidly goose-pimpling behind on it.

I barely stifle a scream down to a sharp intake of breath at the grotesque sensation of sitting on warm, wet, undulating alien flesh.

I swing my legs up and slowly, anxiously, cringingly settle myself back, my body stiff as a board and quivering with revulsion and dread.

A strangled little sheep-bleat of terror escapes me as what feels like a hundred rubbery fingers thrust up from the surface underneath me—

—and simultaneously clutch fiercely at the back of my head and neck, at my arms and wrists, at my waist and hips and thighs and ankles.

“That’s just Ginnie’s gripping papillae, making sure you remain absolutely still during the scan,” the Übernurse assures me, unreassuringly.

I whimper miserably, completely helpless and immobilized by the bed’s web of stubby, wet pseudopods clenching me tightly from head to toe.

“A single analytophore scan replaces a dozen different conventional-tech scans,” singsongs the nurse. “Quite the medical breakthough, really.”

She taps the extrusion again. The scanning bed slides back into Ginnie’s maw, my shuddering body now firmly papillae-bolted to its surface.

Feeling not unlike a terrified sacrificial virgin—without the virgin part, admittedly—I’m inexorably drawn into a biomechanical Moloch’s gullet.

The nurse’s voice quickly recedes and dwindles as I’m swallowed. “Don’t worry, this will all be over quickly.” Pause. “Well, quickly-ish.”

The light from the room outside likewise recedes and dwindles, as I’m drawn onward and inward into wet, humid, softly rustling darkness.

After ten feet of wobbly backwards travel—or has it been 50 feet?—I’m submerged in total, utterly featureless blackness deep inside Ginnie.

Soundtrack: My bicycle-pump-rapid breathing, obscenely loud. Faint, skin-crawling skittering and gluey squelches from the gullet around me.

I blink, the imaging lenses of my supersuit’s mask spring to life, and a horrific, night-vision-green nightmare assaults my reeling senses.

Glistening, misshapen slabs of striated muscle. Skeins of interwoven veins or tendons or cables. Twisted, wet, indecipherable alien organs.

All of it visibly moving, pulsing, throbbing in hideously clear detail, only a few inches away from my face. Cue another horrified sheep bleat.

Frantically, I blink repeatedly until my suit’s lenses finally go black once again, plunging me back into comparatively welcome darkness.

I’m trapped inside Ginnie’s scanning chamber—or throat, or belly, who knows—for what could be ten minutes, or ten hours, or ten weeks.

Hard to maintain a remotely objective sense of time when your poor, beleaguered brain devolves to an animal state of pure, unending terror.

My trembly lips are pressed together so tightly, so bloodlessly that I’m beginning to worry that I might lose all circulation in them.

Hogtied or shackled, duct-taped or spiderwebbed by the scariest of bad guys, I’ve never felt as powerless and petrified as I do right now.

Siren-loud, my fear-stupefied mind is blaring, DON’T SCREAM. DON’T SCREAM. DON’T SCREAM. DON’T SCREAM. DO NOT START SCREAMING.

YOU’RE NOT CLAUSTROPHOBIC, REMEMBER? AT LEAST, YOU WEREN’T CLAUSTROPHOBIC UNTIL YOU LET A GIANT, SLIMY ALIEN MONSTER SWALLOW YOU.

ALSO, DON’T WET YOURSELF. COME TO THINK OF IT, BETTER CONCENTRATE PRIMARILY ON NOT WETTING YOURSELF, OKAY?

Does this tongue have taste buds? If so, what do I taste like? I must, I think, taste like fear. I hope fear doesn’t taste too unpleasant.

Ah, but then my experience takes a turn for the comically—and audibly—absurd, as the colorful sounds of Ginnie’s scanning begin in earnest.

I don’t hear anything like the buzzes or bleeps or banging or other mechanical cacophony that you’d expect from an MRI scanner or the like.

Instead, my ears are bludgeoned by an increasingly bizarre onslaught of freakishly, almost laughably anthropomorphic noises.

The barrage begins with a ribcage-rattle humming, which somehow sounds just like a giant-scale human mouthing a mantra—“OM”—at 125 decibels.

Then we transition into a keening, high-pitched ululation that sounds utterly fake, like a child attempting a quite frankly racist war cry.

Next, a series of neonatal gurgles, clucks and coos, as if vocalized by hulking Baby Killa, the world’s largest infant-shaped supervillain.

Then I hear the familiar low, creaky rattle of “vocal fry” at deafening volume, as if I’m lodged in the throat of a gigantic teenage girl.

That’s followed by earsplitting wails, trills, croaks and moans, all of them seeming eerily like a human giant voicing inept sound effects.

Imagine an overenthused eight-year-old breathlessly attempting to imitate an alien biomachine at work: “HUMMMM BRAAAP YIYIYI BLEEEP VRRRTT.”

Now imagine that eight-year-old’s squeals and honks pumped up to concert-level volume in a context that was, until now, wholly terrifying.

Before long, I’m struggling mightily not to giggle—or pig-snort, worse yet—at the sheer absurdity of the ludicrous soundscape deluging me.

Without moving my lips, I softly mumble “Who’s a good girl?” into the darkness during a brief gap of silence in the ongoing vocal symphony.

Again, I murmur, “Who’s a good girl?” This time, I receive what sounds like a questioning, high-pitched yelp in seeming response.

“Ginnie’s a good girl,” I whisper, as if I’m baby-talking to a puppy, and get a loud, clear hoot in reply. “Yes, she is!” Another hoot.

(END PART 3)

Yeahp, years after this prose experiment ground to a halt, I used some of its material for the comic proper. And now you know... the rest of the story. (Well, mostly.)

NEXT TIME ON I AM EMPOWERED: Brace yourselves for Emp's first encounter with Dr. Big McLarge Huge and his notably poor bedside manner, in a scene which might seem quite familiar indeed!

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, to be perfectly frank!  (I'm probably squeezing in at least one bonus post this week beyond the usual M/W/F schedule, though.)