Transferred 2 (Patreon)

This part gave me one helluva time. Hopefully, it was worth it!

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Sarsuk snorted the white powder the best he could, then struggled to keep from sneezing it back out. Despite his dry, aching throat, he chewed up the envelope and forced it down.

After that, the guards returned him to his cell, taunting him the whole way. But this time, it didn’t really bother him. He was going to beat them one way or another. Either he’d escape, or he’d be so far gone by his execution that he wouldn’t care.

Intrigued about the process, the yellow krakun continuously self-analyzed how he was doing. Was this really going to work? Would he feel like his consciousness was being transferred? Or was this all just a trick to get him to agree?

It didn’t really matter at this point, but he certainly hoped it would.

The first change that he consciously noticed was a confusion about the color blue. What color was that? He certainly had to have seen blue before, but the harder he tried to imagine something that was blue, the more elusive his thoughts became.

Was his clone thinking about blue now?

As the day progressed, he felt confused about more and more things. He skipped dinner, wanting to do nothing else besides lay on his cell’s floor and wonder about the transfer.

In the morning, he felt like his senses were failing. His eyes were dim, smells were muted, and he could barely hear anything. If the guards were taunting him for refusing to cooperate, he couldn’t make it out. He felt dizzy and wanted to rest more than anything else in the galaxy.

He thought he heard something.

“Hello?” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”

Sarsuk looked around his cell but couldn’t connect the sound to anything he saw.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

“Can you hear me, Sarsuk?” asked a distant voice.

“Yes, I think I can,” he said. “Where are you?”

“I’m just outside the window. I’m waving to you,” said the voice. “Can you see me?”

He couldn’t. What window? “Um, maybe?” he said with a bumbling sort of optimism. “Is it working?”

“Good so far,” said the voice. “Can you define circumscribe?”

The question puzzled him. He tried so hard to pull out what the word meant, but if he knew, he couldn’t seem to access it. “Is that a vegetable?”

“What about the oldest memory you have?” she asked. “Where were you?”

He tried to recall, but his brain felt muddy. He couldn’t remember anything, so shook his head.

“What’s your favorite color?” she asked.

Finally, something he knew. “Blue.”

# # #

Near the end of the second day, Sarsuk felt like he might be regaining some motor control. He tapped his fingers against something soft, trying to keep a rhythm. Then, he tried a single finger, but that was too exhausting. Looking around with his eyes only wasn’t bad, but his head felt heavier than the planet itself.

He was in a sealed metal room lying back on what he presumed was an exam table. Something heavy had been bolted to his head and it whirred and chirped endlessly—the 3D printer, he presumed.

At first, he wondered why he was alone in a metal room, but later—as his brain began operating more efficiently—he decided that it must be to seal his open cranium away from germs. He felt comforted in that thought.

To his right, much of the wall was a huge video screen. From time to time, he noticed the black krakun’s face—overly magnified, as if she stopped by to peer into the camera.

When he woke on the third day, he felt more able to think, but that’s when he realized that something was terribly wrong. His color vision had narrowed and both infrared and ultraviolet were absent, leaving his vision stark and flat.

He realized too that the huge video screen to his right was no screen at all, but a glass window. “No…” he whispered, afraid to look down at himself. Though he willed the sight to be anything else—absolutely anything else—he recognized the body of a russet-furred geroo with a white belly.

“No!” he shrieked. “Why would you do this to me?”

The black krakun peeked in through the window once more. “Ah! I see you’re awake,” she said.

“Why?” he sobbed, trying to climb from the exam table. “You said you were transferring my consciousness into a young adult clone!”

“And I did,” she said. “I never said a cloned krakun body. The ethics committee would never allow that.”

“But… But… You tricked me!” he wailed.

Looking bored, she said, “I predicted that you’ll probably spend at least a day crying and wallowing in self-pity.” A metal door creaked open behind the former commissioner. “And I haven’t any interest in listening to that, so I’m sending in someone to take over for me. I’ll peek back in on you tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”

She turned and walked away from the window. Sarsuk gripped the exam table and leaned to see around it. A pudgy geroo with yellow fur and nervous ears gave him a small wave before edging her way along the wall, away from him.

“What in the dead gods’ names is going on here?” demanded Sarsuk. “Did she do this to you too?”

The yellow geroo backed into the corner. She shook her head. “No, sir,” she said quietly in the Geroo language. “I was born in this body.”

Sarsuk threw himself onto the table and beat it with both fists until the tears finally ran out. Then, he curled into a ball and whimpered, only to flinch away when he felt someone touch his shoulder. “Would you like a glass of water?” she asked.

“Get away from me!” he shrieked, and she backed quickly off with palms raised.

Only moments later, her words made him realize just how thirsty he’d been. “I’ll get it myself,” he muttered. But when he tried to climb down, he realized that he lacked the motor coordination to stand, and down he went.

He struggled with his new bipedal legs for a while on the floor before the yellow geroo slid her paws into his armpits and helped him stand. He wanted to shove her away, to yell at her some more, but he was certain he’d only crumple a second time if she did.

When she got him back on the table, she fetched and offered him a plastic cup filled with water. Glaring at her, he snatched it from her paw, splashing some of it onto the floor.

She acted indifferent to his enmity and grabbed his right ankle and heel, raising his leg until his thigh and shin were at right angles. He cursed at her, but she only said, “Push.”

He fought her still, but only for a moment until it became obvious that he lacked the coordination to do so. He glared at her a moment longer. “Geroo don’t order me around.”

“Would you rather hobble around like a cripple?” she asked. “Is that more dignified?”

He growled at her, refusing to reply but eventually did as she told him. Sarsuk’s new legs felt powerful, but they didn’t move as he expected. Was his brain not wired up correctly?

“Was this your doing too?” he huffed. Then, he gestured at the empty window. “Did you conspire with … her to stick me in this … abomination?”

“Erridiah,” she said. Without conscious effort, his ears stood upright. “Her name. It’s Erridiah.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled. “Were you in on this?”

“I think you understand quite well what role geroo play in krakun society,” she said, switching to his left leg. “I do as I’m instructed. I have no part in designing experiments. Now, pull.”

She pulled on his ankle until he managed to yank it from her.

The two worked out his legs in near silence, her giving him one word instructions and him grunting in frustration. Eventually, he asked, “You’re not very sympathetic, are you?”

“Why, because you’ve been turned into a geroo?” she asked. “Am I supposed to think that’s a horrible fate?”

“I didn’t get turned into a geroo!” he snapped. “I got my consciousness transferred into … this body.”

She shrugged. “It’s not a bad body.”

“And the lifespan!” he practically yelled. “How long could I possibly hope to live before this body gets old and dies? Another hundred years? I could have lived another six thousand years in my old body!”

“I thought they’re executing your old body today,” she said with only the slightest smirk on her ears. “Seems to me that a hundred years would be a huge improvement over a couple more hours.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16X0hSN_4sNK56GBWtc1fYdEkz26kCxeWKVA-mJ2hv4E/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?